Training Log Archive: Bash

U.S. Ultra-Long Orienteering Champs - This wasn't as bad as my only other Ultra-Long race in early 2008... it was much, much worse. The disturbing thing is that I'm not sure what lessons I can take away from it. I knew I'd be moving cautiously because of yesterday's ankle sprain, but that certainly didn't cause me to finish almost an hour behind the winner. (Great job, Peggy!)

The race started on a muddy track pockmarked with deep ruts and horse tracks. We had a 150 m marked run to the start triangle, and I knew it would be a great time to look at my map, but I was afraid for my ankle. I took a quick glance after about 60 m and caught my toe in a rut and went sprawling face first into the mud. The other members of my start group were still with me, and I said, "Well THAT's a great way to start", and a very serious fellow runner said, "No, it isn't." Um, yeah, no kidding. But following up on yesterday's goals, I found the start triangle easily and executed a good route to #1. So far, so good.

After that, my goal today was to remain focused for the entire race - stopping to review the map if necessary rather than making poor route choices. I thought I had a good route choice to #2, and I was really careful going there, but I still ended up wandering when I got to the general vicinity. Unfortunately, I can't put my finger on anything I would do differently. In this area - and also in the area of #3 and #4 - it just seemed that the map didn't fit my style of navigating. There's no question that visibility played a role - it takes a better navigator than I am to be precise in relatively bland areas when there are leaves on the trees. But it also seemed like I was seeing more features in the terrain than there were on the map - although I don't know much about maps. I do know that some other people did just fine in this area of the map, so I have to take responsibility for not being skilled enough to deal with it.

I was one of the earlier starters, and eventually the woods around #2 became crowded with other wandering orienteers looking for the same control. I was the one who eventually found it, but as the first person to arrive, I got the longest split - yahoo. My journey to #3 was a similar experience of matching map and terrain - but far more disastrous when I overshot the control by an embarrassing distance, arriving at a water control on a road (!!!) I briefly considered dropping out because it had taken me so long to get just to #3, and my ankle didn't need more exercise. But that would be a really dumb thing to do on a day when my goal was to stay focused for the entire race. (Woo hoo - I stayed focused for 3 controls, two of which took me longer than an average middle distance race.)

Things actually went OK after that. I wasted a couple of minutes around #4 because I hadn't read the control description, and it looked like a hilltop on the map when it was actually down by a stream. Yay - finally an error that's easy to fix in future races. From there until the end of the course, my only problem was a minor overshoot at #6, but only a couple of minutes wasted, which isn't much in a race this length.

So... my goal of staying focused for the entire race was achieved. That's the good news. The bad news is that I'm so rusty at competitive O that being focused didn't help. I just wasn't skilled enough. I'm not beating up on myself - that's just a fact. If it really were possible to be good at O with as little practice as I've been doing, then it wouldn't be the awesome sport that it is. So hopefully I'll find opportunities to get more training!

UltraLong: Green Y - Splits

U.S. Sprint Champs at Mendon Ponds Park. My main goal for today was to stay relaxed at the start - find the start triangle quickly, then plan and execute a reasonable route to #1. It will be interesting to see how my splits stand up, but in both my races today, I felt reasonably calm at the start, found the start triangle without going cross-eyed from nerves, and took a decent route (I'd give myself a mark of about 8 out of 10) to #1.

After that, the rest of the sprint had no particular goals, but it went reasonably well. It wasn't until #11 that I messed up. It should have been easy - behind a thicket just off the trail, but I briefly forgot about the 1:4,000 map, so I went looking too far at another thicket. Turns out Peggy messed up the same control (before going on to win the gold medal), and we had virtually the same (long) split. I figure it was a 1+ minute error, which is a lot for a sprint, but I have to be happy to only mess up one of 14 controls. Congrats to Peggy & Clare for taking 1st and 2nd, and I was lucky to finish 3rd, about 1:50 out of the lead.

Our sprint today had been designed for maximum spectator friendliness and sociability, which was great. We ran to a spectator control partway through the race, then ran all the way around a field - up and down a hill - enroute to the finish. The elites started together a little after the rest of us, so we could all be there to cheer for them. The emcee was great at giving us an idea of how racers were currently ranked as they approached the start control or the finish, so it really worked well as a spectator event. Bravo to the Rochester Orienteering Club for a great job.

Middle Distance - I'm not a great warmer upper, but today I decided to run for about 10 minutes before the start. And wouldn't you know it, as I ran down a perfectly flat forest trail, averting my eyes from the male orienteers peeing off to each side, I twisted my ankle hard. I'd wrenched it lightly in the playground with AdventureGirl! yesterday, but today I heard a couple of crunching sounds and knew it was the real deal. Not so bad that it turned into a baseball, like it has before, but there is acute pain and a bit of swelling. This happened just a few minutes before I was called to the start line - grrr.

Even so, I got off to a reasonable start. I was very conscious of finding good footing but felt like I was racing well for the first 6 controls. Then I went BOOM on the way to #7. Just wasn't concentrating - passed a few major trails and couldn't place exactly where I was. Saw the pond behind the control and thought it was an earlier pond. Climbed the big ridge thinking it was the big hill in front of the control, even though I should have known better because I'd been on the ridge before. Got on a trail going northwest and had to stop and convince myself of how far wrong I had gone - and that is when I relocated - yikes. Should have stopped much, much earlier.

That wasn't the most memorable moment in the race though. As I approached #12, a cadet said, "Don't step in the mud!" I thought to myself, "What a friendly cadet! Surely he realizes that I am an experienced orienteer who doesn't mind a little - KERSPLASH!" Holy CRAP - after punching the control, I thought I was stepping into mud that might be ankle-deep, but I went in somewhere between waist and chest-deep into stinky liquid mud, and had to extract myself with a combination of swimming strokes and random vegetation grabs while Jon T ran past with a look of sympathy. I guess I should have realized that it was a real emergency when the cadet forgot to call me "Ma'am". He was clearly feeling stressed. AdventureGirl! operated a big hand pump to help me wash off all the oogie stuff.

Nice to chat with friends in the sunshine and eat yummy sundaes from the junior team's fundraising ice cream social. Last time I checked, I was 4th, less than 4 minutes behind 1st. I figure my error was about 6-7 minutes, so it was mostly a good race - but you have to do better than "mostly" in orienteering! At least I met my goal for the day - relaxed starts and good route execution to #1 on each course.

Not sure how the ankle is going to fare with tomorrow's Ultra-Long. If I hadn't come all this way, I'd probably skip it. On the bright side, the need to go slower will fit well with my goal of staying focused for the entire race.

Sprint: Green - Splits

Middle: Green Y - Splits

Off to the U.S. Sprint and Ultra-Long Orienteering Champs while 'Bent and the pooches hold the fort. First A meet in a year and a half, and I am feeling rusty! There haven't been many O events lately, so I've mostly trained by:

- Downloading and studying the 29-page document of IOF control symbols

- Flipping over old race maps and trying to find the stoopid start triangle (one of my worst O skills under pressure). Since my second worst O skill is finding control #1, I practised some route choices on the old maps as well. I can't believe how hard the 2005 COC courses were - I must have been smarter then!

Drove to Rochester with Hammer and AdventureGirl!, then went to Mendon Ponds Park for some pre-event training. Fantastic weather. Some large areas of nasty black-swallow wort - a vine that acts as a lasso around your ankle offering the potential for spectacular face plants.

My goals for this weekend's U.S. Champs meet are modest after doing so little competitive A meet orienteering over the past couple of years. For tomorrow's Sprint and Middle races, I'd just like to practise a smoother, less stressful start - finding the start triangle without the usual "frantic squint with blank brain" moment, then relaxing for a moment to choose a good route to #1 and executing it thoughtfully and accurately. That's really all I'm trying to achieve in these two races.

I have bigger goals for Sunday's Ultra-Long race... I'm planning to make a concerted effort to break my "long O event curse". Building on Saturday's practice in good starting, I'm going to try my darnedest to stay focused for the entire race (about 2-2.5 hrs) instead of losing my mind somewhere on the course as per usual. It's not like I haven't been trying in past long races, so we'll see... But that's the plan! (Rather pathetic compared to the racers whose goal is the podium, but oh well.)

I'm not sure why this "forest mystery" has become such a big deal. Does anyone recognize it? There is a hint that it may be somewhere near Toronto. It would be cool for some orienteer or trail runner to identify the location and alert the Globe and Mail - thus achieving fame (if not fortune) for our sports. (Although I'm not sure what important issues our media and politicians would have left to talk about after that.) Watch the video.
<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/the-m...>

More sets to see if that will make me less of a weakling! Getting tired of having sand kicked in my face. While watching the Colbert Report.

Rodney Yee Yoga for Strength. Haven't done this one in awhile, and didn't think of it as being particularly strength-oriented. However, it felt different when I did half an hour of upper body work immediately beforehand!

Easy run around Palgrave West

After my slow 10K time on Sunday, I wanted to see whether I really am limited to a single running speed these days. I've been told that you can't develop much fast twitch muscle past your mid-40s, and I certainly haven't worked at it. But just to see... I picked a short interval distance of 202 m on smooth double track trail with a couple of small climbs and descents. Five repeats - :54, :53, :54, :56, :53. Not very fast by real standards, but for me, that was flying. Jogged back to the start point between intervals.

Slow jogging between intervals followed by cooldown run home.

While watching the Colbert Report

'Bent is always getting boxes from everywhere (as DLevine knows), and as I tried to clean up some packing material today, a big spider crawled out of the crumpled paper. For all I know, the spider could be some invasive species from Korea or Texas - or he might just be a harmless visitor from downtown Toronto. Regardless, I didn't want him in the house, so I grabbed the box and headed down the driveway. He jumped off and started walking back toward the house, and I confess that I killed him using nearby natural materials. Then I noticed the blood on my finger. Strange, spiders don't bleed bright red, do they? Into the house immediately, wash my hands, and - gack!! - it's *my* finger that is bleeding!! What the heck did that spider look like again?

Soap, water, hydrogen peroxide, bloodletting - even some Benadryl for good measure - followed by a bit of googling. OK, only two lethal spiders in North America - the black widow and the brown recluse. Definitely not the former and probably not the latter - and based on reading the package info, the spider probably came from North America. No explanation for the injury though - maybe a paper cut from taking the box apart. There's always some excitement in our neck of the woods!