Training Log Archive: TomN

Back in the neighborhood for a Saturday run, sunny and cold. With the extra little bit through the Wayne Goldstein Park.

A run around the GSFC campus at noon. I stayed off the perimeter road for fear it would be too icy, but then I saw some others running on it, so it must have had a fairly clear track.

Didn't find time yesterday, but ran the regular road loop this morning after walking to school with Mei-An. About 20F with some wind. Roads completely clear but the paths had some snow and ice.

QOC Little Bennett Red. This event had been postponed from a couple of weeks ago due to a permitting conflict. But it turned out ok, because there was a general reshuffling of Maryland events for various reasons, and everything got resettled.

I ran pretty well, kept up a good pace and took good routes, but left a good number of minutes on the table as a result of a chronic inability to find the control in the circle. On #3, I aimed for the spring but ended up too high in the reentrant, and wasted a lot of time looking at rootstocks further uphill. On #4, too high again, and didn't spot the shallow reentrant, pace count told me I'd gone far enough but couldn't tell me where the rootstock was. On 7, I saw a zillion likely-looking rocks before the right one, which felt especially stupid because I'd gotten a look at the control on the way from 1 to 2.

#8 was higher up the hill than I anticipated. But #11 was the worst. I figured I'd aim off and come into the reentrant high, then head downhill and hit the ditch broadside. Good strategy, but I didn't aim off enough, came in below the ditch and ran a good ways further down before becoming certain I was too low. That hurt a lot.

The last loop SW of the finish went all right but could have been a lot more crisp. I could see the isolated roostocks pretty well, but couldn't recognize the patterns in the big clusters.

Anyway, just under 9 min per k (climb-adjusted) and I rarely go faster than that. No doubt the long trail runs contributed to that figure.

Red - Splits

Around the GSFC perimeter road, no side detours. Pleasant day, good running on the dirt road with hardly any ice, mud, or standing water.

Drumm loop, same as last time. But this time it was 32F and I hand on fewer clothes.

The regular Drumm loop with the extra bit on Homewood Parkway, adds 0.6 miles. 43F and I was way overdressed for it. It did not feel nearly as fast as the time indicates.

QOC McKeldin Green. Dropped Addie off at Montgomery Mall, where she takes the bus back to school, 12:30 departure time. Then up to McKeldin with Florence, who needed to be at BWI for a 5 p.m. departure. So Green was the right choice, in the interests of time.

The course involved middle-style navigation with classic-style length. Quite a contrast with last week's courses, but a good match for this map, where long legs tend to fall along trails. It was easy to get turned around, and I did, heading off the wrong way from 7, my only real mistake. That started a wobbly stretch, where I was too high on the hill coming over to 9, then a longish detour to 10, thinking I would avoid some climb but failing to do so, and only increasing the distance. Trail to 11, trail to 12, parking lot and trail to 13 (my only first place leg!). Trail from 15 to 16, too, but lost track of my position and backtracked, eventually approaching it along the line from 15.

So, not blazing speed, not brilliant navigation, but good enough at both, and keeping the bad stuff to a minimum, best time by a couple of minutes over a pretty big field (33 runners, same as Green-Y at the GNC).

Green - Splits

The ususal neighborhood loop, solo this time. Quite a bit faster, and it felt like it, too. Time to bump the mileage a little.

Running the usual neighborhood loop with Addie. I thought we were a little faster than last time we ran together, but she thought it was the same. Anyway, this is the first of the runs that I had an actual time for, as opposed to making it up. As it turns out, my made-up numbers were pretty good.

Event: QOC Combat Village
 

QOC Combat Village Red. After a terrible first control, I had a surprisingly good run. Surprising because it's by far the best I've ever navigated here. Maybe I've learned something after all. Or maybe it's just because I was slow.

The terrain is complex spur and reentrant detail, areas of vague flat hilltop and bottom land, some with poor visibility, and vegetation that ranges from the best to the worst possible running. The contours are right on, but this map really needs an update to the vegetation. And the navigation is about as hard as it gets in our area.

On the first control, I was thinking more about my ankle (taped up pretty securely) than the actual orienteering, got way off course, wandered along the river until I recognized something, and finally headed over to the control. I would have been much better off to have run up the road to the river, and that's not even close to the best route.

After that, some very fine navigation. The long run from 2 to 3 was a lousy leg -- no real choice except to slog a couple of k on the road for no reason. Could have been much improved with an intermediate control somewhere off the road, and there still would have been room for a long leg. All the other legs were fine, with a few tricky control placements. I found unexpectedly lovely open forest on the top of the hill marked as green from 4 to 5, and some awful thrash from 7 to 8 mapped as white. And, of course, there was the little 100-meter fight from the end of the field to the reentrant with #3 in it, white woods ha ha ha, but I knew about that from a previous run here. There is actually a good way in, but it's not mapped and I didn't find it. This is a great place for a control, but it would be better if the vegetation were mapped.

C • Long road run from 2 to 3 2

Red - Splits

Another loop around the neighborhood. Same route as previous 2 times.

Same run as the other day, a little faster, in much colder conditions, 8 deg. F with a light wind. Two layers all over was actually a bit warm, maybe a lighter underlayer would have been sufficient.

Easy run around the neighborhood with Addie. Only a few slippery places after the snow this morning.

The last time I ran on the road was October 15, and before that was some time in September. So that was a pretty long rest period. Unfortunately, my ankle still isn't back to normal, but at least it didn't hurt during the run or afterwards.

Training run at Great Falls MD set up by BorisGr on an instant's notice. Three loops from a common start, using control locations from a regular event a couple years ago. Ken, Boris and I each streamered one loop then ran the other two (well, I ran one and then half of the other). The woods were in fine condition, and I was overdressed for the temperature, which seemed to be going up about a degree per minute in the morning.

Training run at Turkey Run Ridge, set up by vmeyer. Counterclockwise around roughly the same course she set the last time we did one of these, some new controls and some of the same ones but in the other direction. All using the existing permanent markers.

I had a very good run for the first 11 or so, maintaining close contact with the map and hitting every one right on center. Then after chugging up a long slope towards 12 I realized I was tired, and about the same time began to make some small mistakes (no coincidence, I'm sure). Lost contact on the final approach to 12 and wasn't sure which reentrant I was in. Some unnecessary confusion with the streams going to 13. Worse still, I navigated back to 12 instead of to 14, only realizing my mistake after doing most of the climbing (unnecessarily). Right around that time cmpbllv passed me, although I had been holding on on to a couple minute lead on her for quite a while.

Addie ran well, pretty good evidence that her European training paid off. She was very shaky on the first edition of this training run last year, and we had come back a week later to re-run it together on a shadowing exercise, which inadvertently had some relocation practice in it as well.