Training Log: CleverSky

US Champs Sprint #1, Plymouth Centennial - West. 2.3 km, 40 m, Red M35, 20th/30 on course. Sunny and in the high 40s. Not a lot of room for making mistakes here, although I did avoid the one potential problem on #2 when I correctly saw the route using the allowable crossings of the uncrossable streams. A few seconds lost on the very short #6, when I ran to the wall and was standing a couple of feet from the flag but couldn't see it (hung very low and tucked in close to the back side of the wall). There were a couple of "which way around this obstacle" route choices, where the difference was probably not more than a few seconds. So basically clean, but not running fast enough. I think 4th/5 in M35.

US Champs Sprint #2, Plymouth Centennial Park. 2.6 km, 45 m, Red M35, 15th/29 on course. Nearly 60F by this point, still sunny, but with a stiff wind picking up. Some more running around in parkland, and also some navigating through flat forest, some with low visibility, looking for shallow depressions. The latter probably benefited me, as I had a couple of pretty good splits in the crud, whereas running across a mowed lawn is not my forte. Time loss less than a minute, most of which was on one easy control at a trail junction, where I just wasn't finding the right trail to go in on (not sure the trail symbols were to spec, they seemed tiny). I think I was 2nd/5 on M35 this time, but the two guys I got ahead of were close enough behind me that it didn't make a difference in the summed standings.

Getting back to my car, I was dismayed to find the doors locked and the the key not where I was expecting it. This rental is different from the cars I usually drive, so I couldn't put the key where I normally do, and I had been leaving it on top of the tire. But it wasn't there, so I realized that I must have just left it in my pocket and gone off to the start, and the car locked itself. So I borrowed Ken Walker's phone and called AAA. They seemed to haev some trouble dealing with the fact that I'm from Massachusetts, was calling from a Vermont phone, but I was in Indiana. After being on hold for a long time, they finally arranged for a guy to come out, said it would be less than an hour. While I was waiting, I decided to check one more time. I had already looked on the ground around the tire, but this time I slithered my arm into the wheel well and felt around, and found the key hung up on the brake caliper or something. Apparently the strong wind had blown the key off of the tire. So then there was another protracted phone session, trying to cancel the roadside assistance, which I finally abandoned when they said they had no work order for me. I'll find out tomorrow whether Ken eventually got a call from a tow truck driver saying he was on his way.

And then a drive to Ann Arbor through some variable and sometimes wild weather, and a fine evening visiting with a friend from college, her son, and an exchange student.

US Champs Middle Distance, St. Patrick's/Madeline Bertrand County Parks, MI/IN, 4.6 km, 45m, 23/35. Temps in the 50s and light rain most of the time. This was a particular kind of orienteering, and for that kind of orienteering, I thought it was done quite well for the most part. Mostly flat, a lot of trails and open areas -- some people thought it wasn't worthy of a championship event, but I didn't really have a problem with it. It was for sure a place where there were a lot of opportunites to make good time if you could cover a lot of ground fast, and at my current level of fitness, that's not something I'm real good at.

SA has me with 3:27 in errors, whcih is interesting. A little bit on #3, sure, I got into the circle and had to stop and scrutinize the contours to figure out where the spur was. Then #7, a route choice leg where one option was to go through the green, and that's what I did. It started out with medium green, which wasn't bad at all, definitely worth doing. But then before popping out into the open, there was a strip of light green, and that turned out to be bulletproof. Finding a way through pushed me well off to the right, and I had to cover that extra distance to get to the control. 9 was in a "clearing" in an area that was a patchwork of vegetation colors. I got caught up in some green leaving #8, then when I got to #9, I attacked in a way that took me through "white", but it was all just a bunch of crud. I checked one wrong "clearing" before going to the right one.

But intriguingly, I don't show a time loss on #12, which suggests that it wasn't a very good leg. First, I misread the map, thinking I'd go to a paved road that turned out to be an uncrossable river. Running along the bank of that, I next needed to cross a "ditch". At the spot where I crossed it, it was two steps in ankle-deep water with an adequately firm bottom. Others crossed it in different spots and ended up waist-deep in black printer's ink. Once across that, we hit a real paved road which had an uncrossable fence on the far side, and most people had failed to notice that on the map (yes, it was mentioned in the meet notes, and yes, we had driven along that road on the way in, but still). I could have climbed the fence, but it would have been ugly, so like most people, I went around. Once around, I opted to not take a diagonal route, but instead to go back to where I would have crossed the fence, which saved me from another ditch crossing. The result was a respectable time for the leg, meaning that most people must have gotten similarly busted, or worse.

The rest went fine, despite a mistake on #15, where I ran down the wrong side of a gully, having not read the map closely enough, and had to waste time at the end of the leg.

Not that great a showing, although I do have to remind myself that I'm "running up" on Red -- I am kind of an old man at this point. I think I might have taken 3rd place in M35, for whatever that's worth.