Training Log Archive: ginger

Ouch. Just ouch. 21 DNFs (and that's only counting the people who actually found #1 before giving up/being too injured to continue). I gave Jon my un-edited and in the heat of the moment review of his course yesterday, and I do apologize for that. Volunteering is too often a thankless job, and I appreciate that he took the time to set the courses. However, upon several hours of reflection in the ER for a potential torn meniscus/ACL/MCL (not mine, another brown course runner), I stand by my assertion that the control placement and design of the first leg was poor, and borderline dangerous.
Route choice analysis:
1: Oh look. A small pile of rocks in the middle of under-mapped, nasty green in an area of vague contour detail. What could possibly go wrong? I attacked off the swamp to the south, so far, so good, but then I spent the next 10 minutes tripping through the slash and trying not to get slowly eviscerated by the thorny vines of death or whatever they're called. Then I reach the shallow ridgeline so I know the control is *somewhere* in the immediate vicinity, but I can't go look for it just yet, because there are several other orienteers out there taking some pretty significant falls, so I have to make sure none of them are badly hurt. Finally figured out I was a bit west of the control, bashed my way though some more holly and thorny vines of death, and into the control. At this point I am not pleased.
2: Ok, regroup, get back with the plan. Rough compass, check off two streams, pretty sure I'm attacking from the correct ditch-like vague terrain detail (in hindsight, not quite so sure about this, I'll have to check my GPS track), up what seems to be a hilltop, but I can't be sure, because once again I'm in thick, nasty green, and now I start looking for my ditch. Except it's not there, and now there are 3 other orienteers asking if I'm looking for 129. "Yep, I am", I say, and they descend on me like the little green Martian guys in "Toy Story" when they see a new toy. "I've been looking for 129 for 40 minutes!" says the first. "I've only been here for 25!" says the second, "but that's because it took me 40 minutes to find #1". The third just stared sadly at her map. So we all went in search of a point by which to definitively re-locate, which happened (at least in my case) to be the ditch about 200m wnw of the control. The foliage was slightly less stabby on the north side of the control, so I took a good bearing, kept my head up, and only almost missed the control entirely. But a flash of orange caught my eye, and lo and behold, there it was! At this point I am still not pleased, but I've told myself that 1 and 2 were the worst part, and from here on out the course will get better.
3-8. And it did get better! Fun, even! No big problems, just a couple small hesitations on the way to #7 while I was trying not to bite off on any of the ditches too early. Pretty tired at this point, but I was pleased that I was able to keep my focus and execute my plan fairly cleanly despite my general dislike of "classic" courses.
So all in all, the second half of the course was fine, and I got some good training out of it, but I continue to be frustrated by (what I see as) the recurring theme of brown courses failing to take into account the physical constraints of the "typical" brown course runner. I specifically chose to run brown because I wanted more "middle-like" training in terms of intensity, but that was simply not possible until control 3. In the meantime, there were advanced orienteers with various flexibility/mobility/physical training issues required to traverse a minimum of 200m through very dense underbrush and deadfall with no feasible route choice to avoid said foliage. Or, at the very least, if such a route choice did exist, it was not depicted on the map. In summary, I apologize to Jon for venting my frustrations at him immediately following the course, and I'm writing this note to remind myself (and anyone who happens to read this) to take factors like flexibility/balance/range of motion into account when designing brown courses.
*steps off soapbox*

Update: So, the total collateral damage is a torn ACL and MCL, torn meniscus, and a broken femur. Never thought I'd say this, but thank goodness for TRICARE.

Sunday - Brown - Splits

Event: QOC Prince William Forest Park
 

Advanced training (compass, contour, corridor, and control pick), then a route choice exercise that Jeremy and I did together. The compass exercise was sloppier than I would have liked- I let myself get pushed around by the vegetation and ended up correcting based on contours, and then for the contour section, I again got pushed around by the vegetation and had to rely more that I liked on my compass. So, lots of good learning points, and the corridor and control pick sections were lots of fun and a good challenge. Went back out for the route choice training after lunch, and neither of us was feeling super peppy and like we wanted to spend any more time slogging through underbrush, so we started about half-way through the course and just hit controls 6-11. As I expected, the straight-ish or contouring route choice was generally faster than the (much longer) trail routes, but staying higher on the ridgelines also offered some faster micro-routes than contouring slightly lower.

Yay water polo! 2x20 minute halves was tough, but a lot of fun.

Warm-up, then roughly 2 minutes each x 8 sets of exercises. Planks, push-ups, squats, box jumps, crunches, and more push-ups. Lots of push-ups.

400m run in between exercises at 5k or faster pace. Ended in a sprint more than once as I was proving to my petty officers that I might be older than them, and basically useless at volleyball, but I can still run faster and longer :)

Tried heading out to the track to do some intervals, but wimped out when the wind and rain started rather suddenly after my first 400. Went back to the treadmill and ran a reasonably quick 2 miles.

some stretching and free-weights.

Circuit training at command PT. Good full-body workout this morning: squats, lunges, burpees, mountain climbers, planks, crunches, v-ups, sprints, box jumps, jump squats, push-ups, free weights and plyos.