Training Log Archive: TomN

U.S. Nationals Middle Green. I had a fine run with only one problem (but it was a big one): I skipped #12. I never even saw it on the map, and went straight from 11 to 13. I was pushing pretty hard at that point, but it turned out I wasn't in medal contention anyway.

I took a conservative route down the road to #1 (no repeat of yesterday's disaster), and had an easy time with 2, along the narrow ridge to the spur ( and further down than I thought it was going to be). Then 3 and 4 were in complex contour areas, but they were close enough together that a bearing and a control description were good enough. But on 5 I lost a couple of minutes. I went around the lake to the left, and even though the big reentrant was going to be obvious I kept on reading carefully through the terrain and checking off everything I saw, finally going up too high into the big reentrant before coming down to the control.

Middle Green Y - Splits

U.S. Nationals Long Green. Bad start, losing about 10 minutes on the first control. I had a vague idea I was going to run through the white woods to the contour change, then follow it to the control. But I wasn't reading the map well, didn't know if it was up or down, never got there, and headed into the green, ran right through the reentrant and out the other side, found the ridge but lost all track of distance and continued all the way to about the 3-4 crossing before turning back. I was resigned to going back to the road for a do-over when I dropped into the reentrant and found the control.

After that I had a good run. It seems to me there was only one really good leg on this course, 5-6. The leg from 3-4 had a fairly obvious route choice, and on 8-9 the only route I considered was the long road run. It might have been faster to go straight (if you executed well) but not enough faster to justify the risk.

Long Green Y - Splits

U.S. Nationals Sprint Green. We got there really late, drove to the start, and were the last two starters, right around 4 p.m. I was looking forward to this. I prefer a park sprint to an urban sprint, maybe because I get confused with a lot of little changes of direction. I managed to figure out the tricky stuff with the bridges, fences, and underpasses without too much time-wasting. My inclination was to get over to whatever side the next control was on as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of time at #2 because I couldn't grasp the idea that it might be under the bridge. That might have pulled me down a place, but as it was I was 3rd in M60.

Sprint Green - Splits