Training Log Archive: TomN

Trail run at Wheaton. Well, 2/3 trail, and the rest of it on paved paths. There was construction on the path down from the dog park to the lake. A sign said "Trail Closed" but when I got around to the other end of it there was no sign and nothing to keep people off the trail. It was pretty much the same when we held the O meet at Wheaton last month, trails newly paved, with cones and signs at one end and nothing at all on the other. And people walking on them. In that case I made the executive decision to ignore the signs. I should have done it again today.

Biking to work! Florence is at Goddard today, so I packed a bag and put it in her car. Left around 8 :15, and it was already 70 degrees.

There is bridge work on the Northeast Branch near the West Hyattsville Metro, and the bridge is closed. I went around the other side of the Metro station, through the back side of some apartment buildings, and took a likely-looking path which eventually brought me out to Queens Chapel Road where the trail crosses.

Streamering control locations for Rosaryville. I got there at 9 a.m., got 30 streamers out by 1 p.m., ate a sandwich, and did the remaining 21 in the afternoon. Got the last one at 4 p.m., but it was a half-hour back to the parking lot. I missed one -- there should have been 22 in the afternoon but one of them was off the bottom of my map.

The rootstocks currently on the map are useless. I had 2 controls on rootstocks originally, and I couldn't even find one of them. So I relocated both of them. Another one is on a knoll that's now dwarfed by a 1.5m rootstock, but I left it where it is. The rootstock blocks the view of the knoll from that side, but it wasn't very visible to begin with. I'll hang it high.

I used Open Orienteering Mapper on my phone to great advantage today. I imported the georeferenced OCAD file into OOM on the Mac, and added a PDF of the all-controls map from Condes as a template. I adjusted the template to match the map. Then I made the map invisible, leaving the georeferenced template of the all-controls map. I exported that to my Android phone. It was brilliant. Every time I got to a control location, I turned on the phone and verified that my position dot was right in the center. A few times I was off (too low in a reentrant, wrong depression, obscured trails, the missing rootstocks), and I easily found the right spot. The phone battery lasted all day, although I had some spare batteries in my pack.

Around the Goddard perimeter road and antenna range.

Rain in the forecast, but it wasn't raining when I got up this morning, so I took the slot. There was a little drizzle in the air but comfortable running.

West Point Day 2. My run was cleaner than yesterday's, but I didn't think the course was particularly inspired. I lost a minute on #1, by failing to see the trail right out of the start and heading diagonally through the mountain laurel up and over the summit of the hill. For #4, I crossed the line of cliffs on a ramp diagonaling up to the left, picked up the small trail, and took it just past the brook and cliff, attacking from the bare rock feature. The ground seemed wetter and less rocky than mapped, but I stuck with the terrain features and went straight in. 5 and 6 were kind of fun, the contour features gradually appearing out of the green jungle. Leaving 6, I couldn't find the little white corridor, so I bailed out straight down the hill towards the tower and ran the trail down to the junction. I took the road all the way around the hill on #10, but I think over the top was probably better.

Sunday - Brown - Splits