Training Log Archive: bishop22

We stayed in Salida one more night, so we had to leave at 7am to catch our 12:45 flight, which didn't arrive in Rochester until almost 9pm.

Started off OK - chose to run around on the road to C2. Missed C3 to the right and as I was searching Anders caught me (from 4 minutes down). I punched just before or after him at C4 thru C7, but didn't see him all that much in between. I did notice that he walks uphills with his hands behind his back (speedskater form). I came down the hilltop just before C8 and missed the control. I thought I may have been on the hilltop to the left, so I went way right before coming back, probably a minute behind Anders. PG caught me on the next leg, so I picked up the pace. His line seemed right of mine (he was aiming for the trail junction, I was conservatively aiming just left of that), so I lost contact. I had a costly problem at C10, not recognizing the shape of the clearing, so I spent some time looking high (I originally thought I had spiked this leg, because there was a control just about where I was aiming, but it must have been Green). I missed C12 right, and just could not read what kind of yellow or yellow/white combinations were on the map, so I just headed for what looked like the center of the local boulders (I could see I was on the edge of the serious boulders). I then missed C13 left, but it was probably the highest control of the whole week, so I saw it from a distance. Getting to C14 was tricky, but I knew right where it would be when I got there. I punched just behind someone who was pretty quick - thought I had a better line to the GO control, but he edged me out, and outkicked me by a couple of seconds.

Nate and Zach both made some errors today, but they were small enough that they each hung on to win their age groups!

Just a short warm-up. No real warm-down, just plenty of walking around and a little football tossing with the boys.

Red Day 2 - Splits

Event: US Classic Champs
 

Event: Canadian Orienteering Championships Festival
 

Don't have the map handy, so I can't recall all of the details, but I ran great thru 5 controls. I caught someone going into C5, and had already picked out my line for C6, which was a long leg. But it was easy to simplify (started out just right of the line thru a long field), and I got a jump on the other guy. I heard his footsteps behind me, so I was really hustling. The middle section of the leg had some undulations, leading into the final section that had some rock detail, but there was a dry stream that I could catch to make the attack easy. Well, as it turned out, I stayed too far right, and missed the dry stream, and because of the high speed, my pace counting was off, and I came to another dry stream, with the other guy not too far behind me. I found a boulder all alone on the side of the hill (which was what we were looking for), but no flag. I checked around as a 3rd guy joined us, then attacked from some other prominent features, and came to the same boulder. We eventually gave up, thinking the flag must be in the wrong place. I followed the dry stream/reentrant for awhile, just in case, then came out to a clearing that was near the model event. I realized I was not where I should be, and went back (about 6 minutes worth) in the direction of the real boulder and found it (just after one of the other guys had found it). A 20-25 minute mistake (I’ll have to check others’ splits) - very depressing! I did too much walking on the next couple of legs, before I rallied and put forth a good effort again (with only 1 small miss and 1 60-90 second miss) the rest of the way.

All I can do is try to turn in a respectable performance tomorrow.

Nate ran quite well and leads Yellow by about 4 minutes. Z was in the lead on M-10 (only 2.5 minutes behind Ethan Childs), but the youngster who beat him in the Night-O did not yet have a time posted, well after the last start (which is what happened at the Night-O). The White course was more of a Cross Country race than an Orienteering race: all of the legs were streamered, except one, which was all on the main dirt road.

Warm-up was a little hectic because Zach's compass wasn't in the car when I went to get it after Nate's start - I did bring the backup for him.

Longer warm-down than usual (but the amount I should do).

Red - Splits

Model event outside of Buena Vista. Tried to jog the course, but not much jogging involved: a lot of downhill which required running, and a lot of uphill which required walking. Read the map quite well (although the white vs. rough w/scattered trees is sometimes tough to see) - hopefully that can carry over to the weekend.

Mostly walked the model controls with Nate and Zach, letting them take turns navigating. From the bottom, Nate wanted to run back, so I picked features for Zach to find on the way back up the hill.

1000 Days A Event - Blue Course on the First with the Most map. First control was strange - had to run backwards past the callup line and parallel to the walk to the start. Then I wiped out with my knee landing on a rock instead of the grass (found out later that I had a small cut plus a nice little bruise). Was reading pretty well, but ran one cliff past the control and stood still for a 20 secs, figuring that out. C2 went smoothly. I think Ross passed me on the way to C3. I punched (embarrasingly slowly) just before Hillary at C4, then almost stayed with her to C5 (shared leg with Red). C6-9 went great - I was reading wonderfully on the run, perhaps best I've done. I thought C10 was also going well, but it turned out I had drifted left - in hindsight, it should have been obvious that there were too many trees around. C11 was a minor mistake - didn't see the control hung from a single tree in the reentrant, so I sprinted over the top of the next "spur" to bland terrain (no reentrant), so I quickly turned back around. C12 was short and C13 was fun - countouring around right of the line. I ran the road around to C14, which was great for me - I think Peter Gagarin only made up a little ground going straight. Instead of blindly following Peter, I took the time to set a bearing for C15, and was right on 2/3 of the way there, running off a distinct patch of light green, when I decided to try to catch Peter. Unfortunately, he missed this leg pretty badly (for him), and it took me a couple of minutes to relocate and get the flag. John F passed me on the way to C16, but he slowed on the uphill, so I caught back up and tried to hang. We went opposite ways around the knoll, and I set a bearing for C17 on the way in, but he was still long gone by the time I had punched. I ignored the C17 boulders because it looked like they were in the green, and the circle was in a gap (but it was a white gap, so after checking a couple of rock features to the left, I returned and punched right behind someone who totally outran me down the road to C18 and the finish.

Zach did well on Yellow, placing second in about 10min/km, and Nate finished 6 minutes behind the late Orange entry, Andrew Childs, to grab 2nd. Most of the lost time (4 minutes?) was on the penultimate control, where Andrew caught Nate.

1000 Days Crystal Relay on the Antenna Hill map. Nate led off our relay and ran well, although a mistake on the penultimate control switched a 30sec+ lead over Andrew Childs to a 2min+ defecit. Zach did quite well on the 2nd leg - just over 40 minutes for 3.1K of tough yellow/easy orange orienteering. Kathy Bannister ran the 3rd leg, and finished shortly after the "catch-up mass start" - they started the last 14 teams together (out of 34), but the order of finish was still the order coming across the line, no adjustments were added for late 3rd runners.

Since I had seen Boris run the early part of the 4th leg course, and C1 was actually visible in the distance from the hilltop that served as the start/finish area, I was off quickly on the mass start. I ran around just a bit, and almost beat Marty Hawkes-Teeter to the first control. I punched just behind him (and one other person slid ahead of me) at the next two controls, then I didn't follow them to C4, and wound up going slightly longer, plus I was slow on the big upill to the control, so I was down about a minute. I eventually caught and passed the other guy, but wound up over 2 minutes behind Marty. I guess I also caught 5 others who started before the mass start, so out team moved up to 16th. I'm not sure where I passed everyone - I passed a few people on running sections by walking slightly less on the uphills. I think I also passed a couple of people by spiking the control that Nate had trouble with. That control was followed by "The Wall", which was steep enough that I lost sight of the antenna at the top of the hill that was my aiming point. After the top of the hill, the other courses came to the finish, but we still had 4 controls up top. I thought I was alone, but as I left C18 (of 19), someone was coming right in to punch. I guess that made some adrenaline kick in, as I ended up finishing 50 seconds in front of him, even though I thought I was out of gas before I punched.

So, maybe this anti-taper stuff can work. Or, maybe these courses were "runners' courses", boding well for Nate, Zach and me. We're committed to the anti-taper now, as we are all running up a course tomorrow. Luckily it's "middle distance", which means only 7K for Blue (vs 6K for Red).

C • Anti-tapering? 3

Very brief warm-up, since I was not ready for the mass start. Warm-down was jogging thru the hail back to the car, as a thunderstorm moved in quickly, a little while after my finish.

Crystal Relay Leg 4 - Splits

1000 Days Sprint at the Gates of AMT Hell. Very poor navigation on a very difficult Sprint course. Eric Bone was the only one to go under 20 minutes, and not by much.

I was to anxious to get to C1 and overran it, punched after the next starter (30s intervals). I blew C4 way left, trying to run from the map instead of the compass. Overran C6 to the left (as did about a half dozen others), but recovered in reasonable time - it was just a foreshadow of my problems on the next leg. Again, I tried to be cute and run around left of a hill, but did not come back to the right correctly. My first clue should have been when I was hunting around for a couple of minutes without seeing anyone. After failing to relocate a few times, I finally noticed the dirt road which was only 60m past the control, and ran parallel to it to get back to the control.

The rest of the course went smoothly, but slowly, as my legs were too heavy to make it uphill without walking breaks.

C6 was a total disaster for Nate - he ended up around 48 minutes. The course was too difficult for Zach, but he did make it around (but it took around 100 minutes).

C • Nerves? 2

Warmed up with about 10 min of jogging - mostly with Nate. My warm-down consisted of jogging/walking the course backwards, starting when Z had been out 45 minutes. I spotted him just before C8, and followed him to C10.

Continuing the anti-taper for the upcoming US Champs, Nate, Zach and I headed out to the campgrounds for the hash/pizza party. The trail was all trail, and longer than I expected (and no beer stop). There was a chicken/eagle split, and Zach chose the eagle, which was probably a little more than he needed after the long sprint this AM. Nate and Andrew were the FRBs for much of the way, then they eased back to save something for tomorrow, since they will both be running the leadoff leg of the relay. I walked down Eric Bone (newly named "Head Butt" at his first hash, in honor of his stitches-inducing collision with Mike Smith at the WOC Sprint Qualifier) - nice to say that since it would NEVER happen on an O course.

Abbreviated circle included an A&W birthday down-down for Zach.

Event: US Night Champs
 

Hiked from Lake Marie in the Snowy Range, up the Medicine Bow Peak trail. We planned on going 1 hour up, max, but when we got to the hour mark, the peak seemed to be teasing us, so we kept going. 15 minutes later we saw the real peak in view (the first was false), so we decided to keep going - the peak turned out to be a little farther up: 1:28 in total. Zach and I stayed on the trail, but Nate scrambled up the last 100m or so to the actual peak. The trip down went quicker than expected - it didn't feel like an hour. A little over 1/3 of the way down, we ran into 5 Amish girls that we had passed coming up - they were planning to hike past the peak, down the other side, and around the lakes (a longer, but flatter return route). I suggested that they may want to just turn around - they had been out over 3 hours, so they were still probably 1.5 to the peak.

After the main hike, we stopped down the road and had my first-ever August snowball fight (well, Zach nailed Nate from point blank). Can't believe that there could still be snow, with the sun beating down on it and the number of rain storms they get here.

5 minutes with Zach, then 10 before my start. My warm-down was limited to 5 minutes of walking after midnight.

US Night-O Champs on the Light of Cheyenne map outside of Laramie. BTW, I actually did see the light of Cheyenne (~40 miles away?) during the race.

I struggled on the first control. I got distracted by a green control (turns out it was their C2), and lost focus. I circled back to that control and it was obvious where it was, so I was able to get to C1. C2-C5 went quite smoothly. I actually led some people into some of those controls. I had a reasonable (although zig-zag) approach for C6, and it was going smoothly until the batteries in my light started to die. I had to change the batteries, which cost me time, and more importantly, focus. I recovered with a pretty clean C7, but C8 was a disaster - I tried to ignore others, since I took a different approach, but that backfired, since, in hindsight, there was a clear convergence going on. C9 was just tough going, but that was just a warm-up for the difficulty in leaving C9.

Nate finished 9 seconds out of first. His biggest regret was his hesitation in approaching the last control: he aimed right of the control to hit a fence, then went left, but had second-thoughts, and lost time. Zach was also 2nd - missing by 44 seconds, and was about 9 minutes behind the M-12 winner on White.

Night-O - Red - Splits

Red course at Day 2 of the Western States Champs on the Superfly Marsh map. Got off to a good start, slow but solid for the first 3 controls. Really struggled on 4 and 5 - big mistakes. Then leaving C7, I put my hand down on a cactus and got over 30 needles of various lengths and diameters embedded in my hand - some were easy to pull out, others are still in there nearly 4 hours later. Did a little better in the next section, but did a face plant leaving C11 and that caused me to lose focus and run too far to C12. C14 was bad news, I spent a lot of time stopped, looking at the map, and still managed to miss big, but didn't think I had, since I found a control on my line that was on the correct feature, but I was off by probably 150m east. Then I promptly overran C15. C16 was looking good, but I got distracted by a control at the top of a reentrant, way to my left - foolishly, I went and checked it, so the older woman that I had caught before C10 (and fell behind before C14, and passed again), beat me to the punch. I did manage to pass her again, and caught Cristina (again) at C17.

Zach put in a solid peformance on White, although Ethan Childs beat him by about 8 minutes. He only made 1 big error - going too far off a trail to get to boulders that were only halfway to his control, and were about 3 times the correct distance off trail - that is where Ethan went by him (had started 4 minutes after Zach).

Nate ran fairly well - finished 2.5 minutes behind a 79-point Orange runner. He may have those minutes in him later on Thursday, when he runs Orange again.

About 5 minutes with Nate/Zach, then 12 on my own and 8 warm-down.

Red 2 - Splits

After 5:30 Mass, what else could Zach, Nate and I do, but head out to the old Permian Sins map that Dick loaned us. As we were on our way to park in the lot near the finish from 8/16/99, we found out that the sheep do, in fact, own that section of Happy Jack Rd. So, we backtracked and parked closer to I-80 and played around with Green controls 9, 8, 7, 6 and 9 (again) from that meet - each of us leading a leg or two. Very different O'ing here - there was basically no green on the map, but much of the white was various shades of green, and the visibility was almost nil. I guess we now know what sage is - there were tons of little evergreen-ish bushes that Nate found particularly annoying.

We saw a sign of the subhumans that Swampfox writes about. They had bagged themselves a metal folding chair and left it for dead near C6. There was also a half-filled water container near the control location (which was a water control), but the container was not 7 years old.

We also got to experience another Laramie treat - as we got to control 9 the second time, the wind, which had been non-existent, kicked up pretty good, and the temparature immediately dropped 10+ degrees. Need to keep that in mind when packing for the Night-O.

No time to run at lunch - they kept me too busy to punish me for my upcoming vacation.

Awful 45. Opened with 2 doubles and was OB on 4 again - what's up with that? Had 3 pars, but missed a 2-footer for par on 6.

GTA with Erik, DV, JV, Darren and Leo. Over to Highland and picked up the trail parallel to 590 - comfortable 7:20-ish pace. Then we picked it up a bit and I started to struggle to hang on at 6:50-ish the rest of the way - I fell off a couple of times (before Leo), but they let me catch back up and I was fine the last 1.2 miles.

C • When do you leave for 1000 days? 3

44 - went OB to take a 7 on 4, missed a lot of par putts (including a 2-footer on 6), but made a 4-footer for a birdie-2 on 5 (shot just missed the pin on the way in).

Event: Rocky Mountain 1000 Day
 

Unplanned rest day - meetings scheduled on top of training time, then I had to mow the lawn and Huntz was in town with his family for the Bills camp, so it was pizza and beer for dinner, leaving no chance for a late jog.

5 x 1 slice of Cam's. Hard!

XC Camp at Webster Park - ran fairly easy with the faster intermediate group (included Nate and the Riegers), until I stopped to check on Ashley's rolled ankle, after which I couldn't track them back down.