Training Log Archive: Bash

Checking that all of the flags were still in place for tonight's Caledon Navigators training night. I'm less fatigued than yesterday, but I've got a few sore muscles today. Hope I'm mostly recovered by the time this weekend's rogaine begins! We had a decent turn-out for our training night, and there were some solid efforts by relatively new orienteers doing a challenging course. Much thanks to Rocky for working with me on this. Next time you'll be the one hanging the flags! :-)

In a continuing effort to sabotage my tapering for this weekend's 24-hour rogaine, I went out at 8:30 a.m. for some Albion Hills single track with 'Bent and Gazelle. The first half of today's ride was anaerobic as I pushed to keep up with the guys, then I sent them off ahead as planned, and did a gentler forest loop before returning home. I am now officially exhausted. It turns out that a Tim Horton's ice cap at 4 p.m. is a great way to prepare for an evening race, but the combination of caffeine and adrenaline had me awake till 3:30 a.m. That, plus higher intensity effort than usual in recent days, has wiped me out. I'm going to do as little as possible before Saturday. I've got to check flags on a 4 km O course tomorrow, but I'll go as slowly as the bugs will let me.

Ancaster Old Mill 10K Race.

But Bash doesn't run on pavement, you might say... and you would be right. It's a long story, and the bottom line is that it's Hammer's fault. :-)

I had to search the house for shoes that would be appropriate for a road race, and finally settling on cushioned Reeboks that I've only ever used in indoor fitness centres. It was a bit strange to just dress for the weather, without worrying about long tights to avoid poison ivy or eye protection to fend off sticks. It was a tough call, but I didn't use the Active Ankle either, since I was afraid of new blisters from different shoes.

At the start line, I realized that my heart rate was high just because it felt weird to be there. I had no particular goals and no reason to be nervous, so I did some deep breathing and talked myself into calming down - and right then, the cannon went off right beside me to announce the start and I nearly jumped out of my skin!

The first half of the course is pretty hilly. Until 5 km, I was on track to break 50 minutes, which would have been cool, but I tired myself out and got slower in the second half. At the bottom of the longest hill, Hammer, Meridian, Griz and SuperWes were there to cheer me on, which was great timing, since I needed some inspiration as I looked uphill.

I tried to pick up the speed in the last kilometer in an attempt to pass a couple of women 30 meters ahead, but I had nothing left in the tank. Crossing the finish line, I felt light-headed and even read my time wrong. It was nice to see Bender cheering at the finish, and it was great to see Coach Sudden, who finished an amazing 6th of about 360 runners, just two days after pushing hard in the Barebones long orienteering race.

Results are already posted. I went into this with no expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised to finish 3rd of 24 women in my age category, and 19th of 144 women overall. I still feel like an impostor when surrounded by runners, so I am very happy with those results. All the same, I can't see myself doing another road race any time soon. Too boring!

After the race, a bunch of us went back to Hammer's place for a bender - which in my case consisted of one beer, a slice of pizza and a donut. It was a nice summer night to sit on the deck, relax, and listen to everyone's stories. Nice to see Hammer back in town, if only temporarily.

Hard Core Monday - not feeling energetic today.

After very little sleep on Saturday night and a late bedtime last night after travelling home from Edmonton, I was looking forward to sleeping in this morning, especially since I have a 24-hour rogaine in a few days. Nope. Phone rang at 7:25 a.m. - an in-law who had dialled the wrong number. Argghhh.

I took my ankle in to see ThumbsOfDeath, who tortured me for half an hour. This sprain is taking a lo-o-o-ong time to get better. At least my Active Ankle hasn't given me any new blisters since I moved the lower strap up higher.

I'm about to head out on my first 1:15,000 map and my longest-ever O course (9 km), and I am SO sleepy that I can barely keep my eyes open. I'm sure that when this establishment was originally built, there were good reasons to put rooms right above the tavern, but they certainly weren't put here so that people could sleep through the night. It was almost 2:30 a.m. when I last looked at the clock, still listening to hits from the seventies being blared out by the live band below me and breathing the cigarette smoke that drifted up into my non-smoking room. I feel bad for Sudden and Wil S next door, who have an even longer race today. I barely feel safe to drive, let alone interpret tiny little features on a map for 2.5 hours.

Barebones Long - new White Earth map

I was sleepy going into this race, but quickly woke up because I had to pay close attention in this subtle terrain. My first experience with a 1:15,000 map went fine. I had to force myself to go a bit farther than felt right when I was navigating to the first control, but after that, it felt natural. I guess I do so much nav on 1:50,000 topo maps that this map still seemed wonderful.

This is a great area for orienteering - easy to avoid nasty vegetation, and lots of nice, dry, open woods. The only hazard is deadfall, which covers some of the open ridges, and can really slow you down.

This was my longest orienteering race so far, and I am reasonably content with how I did. My execution was far from perfect in some cases, but I think most of my route choices were good. I stayed closely in contact with the map most of the time, since I really wanted to finish this course and get to the airport for an afternoon flight!

One of the positives to take from this race is improved confidence in my relocation skills (although it's too bad I had to use them!) Typically, I have backtracked to a known place and started out anew. Today there were a couple of times when I knew things weren't right, and I was able to figure out where I was and attack from that point, rather than going back. It sounds simple to experienced orienteers, but usually I am afraid of compounding the problem if I keep moving forward, rather than retreating.

One of the areas that needs improvement is my rough compass work. There were a couple of controls where I wasted time because of this, and there is no excuse for it. I wonder if this will be easier with my new Spectra thumb compass, which should make its O debut after the North American Champs.

I was the last starter of the day, so it was quiet out there - and the awards started right after I finished.

It's been a fun couple of days - good to see everyone, and fun to compete on challenging courses in the toughest field of women I've ever raced against. Not surprisingly, I finished behind most of the younger, more experienced orienteers - which is how it should be. It was a great experience, and it was nice to see that I'm not too, TOO far behind them.

Barebones - Middle Distance - Wahstao

Another map with subtle terrain, but not as hard to understand as I'd feared. For me, this race had some really good parts, one bad control, and one truly horrible control. I spent 30 minutes finding 10 of the controls - and the remaining 32 minutes finding the other 2 controls!! First, to focus on the positives... I felt like I was making good time through the woods. A couple of controls that caused problems for the best women went fine for me. My injured ankle, knee and heavily-taped blisters weren't an issue. I think my route choices were good, but I had some problems with execution on those two controls.

I managed to run to #3 before #2 - about 200 meters too far. I was pace counting and knew that I should have arrived already, but I need to recalibrate my pace counting. I've been accustomed to going more slowly in adventure racing - and in orienteering too - and my conversion factor is obviously not accurate anymore, because I wasn't looking for features soon enough.

The second HUGE mistake was also an adventure racer-type goof. One of the things you have to do in AR is "forgive" the map its idiosyncrasies, errors and ambiguity, and today I foolishly forgave the map for depicting a trail's shape incorrectly. If I'd questioned it more, I would have realized that I was at a different trail more than 300 meters away. Looking at it now, I can't believe that I didn't consider the possibility. Anyway, I headed off into the woods from there, and compounded the error - sigh... The split for control #7 was 18:30, which is a heck of a lot for a middle distance event!

Barbie provided some good post-event coaching advice:
1) Don't just analyze the legs where things went wrong to learn how to avoid screw-ups. Analyze the legs where things went right too, and figure out the good things that you want to repeat in future.
2) If you don't live near maps with terrain as subtle as this, you need to play more Catching Features.

Barebones - Sprint 2 - Wahstao

The first leg of this sprint had a lot of people scratching their heads. The best route - I think - was very circuitous, avoiding thick vegetation and marshes. I overran #7 and #9, by 75 m and 125 m respectively, then had to relocate quickly and backtrack. Otherwise, there were no glaring errors - certainly not by this morning's standards! There was the opportunity to go quickly in places, but I felt myself being cautious with my ankle, not wanting to do any further damage. I'm reasonably happy with this race, even though many people went faster. I'm not a sprinter.

Event: Barebones 2006 & Team Trials
 

Flew to Edmonton this morning, then wanted to visit a map on my way to Smoky Lake for the Barebones meet. It was almost 30C, and I didn't like to leave my car parked on the side of a remote road with my computer and luggage in the trunk. So I did some low-speed Car-O along the edge of the Bruderheim map, interspersed with several 10-minute walks along major access trails to get a feel for the terrain. One comment on my first orienteering experience in Alberta... Wild Rose Country sounds really nice on a licence plate, but it's not as much fun when you encounter it in the terrain!

Then I headed for Smoky Lake, which feels like the wild west. My hotel room is in a somewhat seedy city hotel, above a tavern and beside a liquor store. Not the usual tourist experience! Amazingly, it has high-speed Internet, so I decided to stay anyway. (We can't get high-speed out in the boonies where we live.)

I started off the Barebones meet with an awesome middle distance time of 32 minutes! Unfortunately, this race was actually a sprint, which means I was slo-o-o-ow. I got off to a bad start when I thought I was starting behind Pamtastic, so I was keeping an eye on her, rather than the clock, and ended up being late. So... I stressed out, confirmed that I could start a minute late, rushed ahead and only had one minute to get ready. I used that minute to completely forget about the fact that the start triangle was somewhere ELSE. So I got the map and was totally disoriented. Luckily, Pamtastic was still waiting, noticed my predicament and shouted to me to head down the path. Well - I sure couldn't have scripted a more impressive start to my one and only national team trials! :-(

After calming down a bit, the race actually went fine. Not one of those magic races where every control appeared exactly where I expected it, but I was close enough in most cases. I just about blew it all at one point when I went into a depression adjacent to the correct one, and found an orienteering training flag. I touched it and turned to go, then thought "This can't be right" and went back to the other depression where I found the correct SI control - phew.

The terrain that had scared me when I reviewed the old version of this map was surprisingly understandable when I was moving through it. I guess the reason Hilton Falls West confuses me so much is because there are so many flavours of rock, not just because of the 2.5 meter contour intervals, which this map had too.

I managed to gouge a chunk from my knee - the same one that is still recovering from the Swan Dive Incident with K/O over a month ago. It took a couple of hours for the bleeding to stop, and I hope I won't need to remove the dressing until the meet is over, because it'll start again. Owww!!