Training Log Archive: bgallup

Event: UNO Camping Weekend
 

UNO Pawtuckaway Camping Weekend - Blue Middle

First legit orienteering of the season. Started by going out with the blue ultralong controls. Wasn't helpful.
1) Easy, and moreso the second time around
2) spike
3) Didn't keep good track of distance, thought I had gone far enough - hadn't.
4) spike
5) spike
6) spike
7) pretty much a spike - went straight to the marsh to see if it was worth fording - it wasn't. obviously would've been faster to shoot for the end of it from the start
8) spike
9) standard issue ben catastrophe leg. looks like i went off on a horrible bearing - i've lost my thumb compass, and i had to come to a total stop whenever i wanted a good bearing off the loaner - and i think i wasn't careful coming out of 9. Saw another courses water control near where I expected to find 9 and ran to it, slightly losing contact. Relocated(ish) to the NE, found the bogus control again, relocated to the SE, then worked my way in. Bleh.
10) spike
11) spike
12) spike. had seen it on the way to 5, meant to remember it, didn't remember that until just now.
13) spike
14) spike
15) spike
16) spike
17) spike, got a little hung up in the green
18) started out by charging a control i saw and loosing contact. had to wind a little then reeled it in.
19) a pretty challenging leg, nav-wise, for me. broad and flat. should've been more disciplined
F) heh. not the best route choice, had to cut through the pavilion. spikes on sealed concrete don't work. good at making noise though. fortunately there was a post to grab and skid around the last turn into the finish.

C • Total time 1

UNO Pawtuckaway Camping Weekend - Canoe-O

Pretty much just paddlin' while Ian did the thinking. Think we won this one. I split on first to CP1, where Giacomo and I lost 3-5 minutes learning what canoe-o controls looked like (no flag, hanging off the water, loosely related to the description). Paddled along to three more controls, east across the lake versus a bitchin' crosswind, 3-4 more controls in a loop on the eastern side, skipped the southernmost control and made a dead downwind leg to two more controls. portaged the last control, drove it in, and hustled to the finish. good times.

some people at a boat launch later in the course saw us earlier oh, and told us we were hauling. missed most of their conversation with ian while i punched an inland control, but they sounded impressed. Definitely the fastest I've gone in a canoe - and a faster average speed than I did on the blue middle.

UNO Pawtuckaway Camping Weekend - Wicked Hahd Night O

Almost entirely follow-the-leader behind Ian, Giacomo, and Neil. In a pack with those three plus Giovanni through the first three controls, with Giacomo and Ian to 4, added Neil through 6. For the long (2.3k!) leg to 7 we were partially a group of four, and partially paired off (me with Ian). Gang of four to 9 and 8, then with Ian through to the finish. Neil and Giacomo took another route to the road and got us by about three minutes.

Not a whole lot of orienteering done here, mostly just fighting to keep up with the fast guys and not get ditched in the middle of the woods. It'd be a tough place to navigate alone in. Except for 3, 2, and the really long 6-7 leg i did an acceptable job of staying in rough contact with the map. I was at least taking a bearing and keeping an eye on it while struggling to hang. Added maybe one or two moments of navigational insight and saw three or for reflective markers first (while the others were actually reading maps) - so I wasn't a total parasite. Satisfied to find out that I could pretty well trace out where we had gone. And the torrential rain on the way to 4/5 was an absolutely magnificent moment.


Bonus highlight: Neil and Giacomo split off of Ian and I on the way to 7, going low where we went high. Out of sight, I could hear Neil singing 'you take the high road and I'll take the low road' in an appropriately Irish fashion. Nice touch, that.

Blue middle - Splits

fresh off the computer, the 'best' route for Saturday's rogaine:

click through for the big'un. only thing i disagree with is this route's 41-45-71 in the north-center. that route throws away a lot of elevation only to take it right back - 41-71-45 is smarter and only marginally longer. to be expected, i didn't to squat to compensate for elevation gain.

turns out there are a lot of borderline calls - substantially different routes that are damn near the same length. Certainly nearer in length than I trust the accuracy of my sketched routes. this one adds up to 51.0km, but i wasn't anal about drawing in my guesses for routes. there were at least four more routes that had major differences, but were still within 2k.


and here's joe and jeff versus the computer
.
i'll figure out how long the ben-routed course through their choice of CPs is tomorrow.

tail end of the rogaine shenanigans:

'best' = 51.0k
joe/jeff chosen order with 'best' routes: 55.1k
joe/jeff actual: 56k
ben chosen order with 'best' routes: 55.6k
ben actual: way more.

well, my chosen route didn't suck as hard as i thought it did. which is nice.

per usual, too fast. well, more too heart-beaty than too fast. goal was 5mi@ 8:30, and hoping that AHR was closer to 75% (142bpm).

can't find the damn garmin charging cradle. mutter mutter.

superpullups/chinups with nate's 50# kettlebell on a belt of webbing, over the course of the day. read: pullup bar and kettlebell are on the way to/from the can

this 8-hour adventure race in nothern NJ is pretty damn tempting. Only a four hour drive, too. But NOACs are the next week, and I think I'm using up all my frequent adventurer points on that. Next year, then. And this is on top of the Shag being the same weekend as UNO's Pawtuckaway weekend. The scheduling gods are not kind.

C • Last year? 2

crap night out at the gym. cleaned a pile of v2's, talled my way out of one v3. two more v3's that i can do in parts but haven't strung together. low reward for the effort slacklining - bizarrely shitty at first trending to adequate. went back to a total shitshow bouldering and decided to go home before i hurt myself. then i tried one more and tweaked a pulley tendon

did some shitty mental math (12 /= 20) and incorrectly justified re-upping for a three month membership. i'll just have to go lots more to make up for it

i've been chewing on finding the best route for Saturday's rogaine, and here's an early result. The blue line's the best straightline distance the computer can find - there may be something better, I had to cut it off early. The red route's the straight connect-the-dots version of Joe and Jeff's route - they pretty much aced it - the difference in the middle of the bottom is trivial, and the difference on the left probably comes down to using real routes.

I've got a plan for real street routing, but that might take a little longer.

C • Best route 4

went out to get the rest of the controls. unfortunately, i'm an idiot, and didn't realize i had forgotten about three on the very edge of the map until i got home. should've drawn my actual route in. i'll have to get those last three some other day.

to and from 55 was a total gong show. missed a turn, backtracked through some sandy/gravelly deliciousness, left my clue card and answer sheet at 55, flatted on the way to 53 (on the pavement, not the gravel) realized i lost the cards, backtracked (through the gravel) to 55, took a fourth lap through the gravel to 55, did an extra lap to near the pin because i had drawn over some important details. blarg.

i think the circle was ~50m off for 67, the lamp with the yield sign.

C • pace counting 11

i really wanted those last three controls

So these roman mud trundle obstacle things are way overpriced. They pique my curiosity, but they sure as hell don't pique $90 worth of curiosity. For $40, though, I think I would try it once. Well, whaddayaknow? If any CSU/NEOCers are willing to similarly debase themselves, I'll have seats available next next weekend. Just bring a change of clothes, a'ight? Maybe a few wet-naps?

quick and dirty map of the available GPS tracks from the rogaine, by way of the increasingly awesome GPS Visualizer. Might try to add the CPs to it. Pick OpenCycleMap Topo from the upper-right dropdown, it's surprisingly o-map-like

per bill pullman's suggestion, i tried some throwing some 800m intervals into my fresh pond loop. didn't really decide to until i was already on the road, so i thought i'd try 10min of ~8:30/mi, then 0.5mi of 'comfortably hard', then 0.5mi back near 8:30. The fasts were faster than they should've been, and the slows slower, but it was fun. brief foray into the pain cave at the end of each fast bit - kind of just looking into the entrance. probably another first since high school. having a bit of a.... runaissance here. yup, went there.