First 5 hours of Racoongaine (stop button got pressed somehow at that point)
www.wpoc.orgResults:
http://www.wpoc.org/results/150322results.htmSplits:
http://www.wpoc.org/results/150322splits.htm Quickroute:
The Garmin stopped at almost exactly 5-hours and I had to restart it and that created a separate file. I merged the two files from before and after the watch stopped. I still had to walk up the hill and get the watch to find the satellites:
https://flic.kr/p/rtX9tFMy post from last time I did Racoongaine 2 years ago:
http://www.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp?userid=1164...OK, first is the physical side. I have no explanation and had no business and therefor no anticipation of this, but my left calf was absolutely fine. I felt great hip weight shift and was light and easy running?! As I moved into the 4th hour today I cramped in my abductors and hamstrings, but was still able to run relaxed through the finish. Now I planned to stop early, maybe even at 3 hours due to my calf and that was with a mostly walking. I ended up going 5.5 hours and ran whenever I could. I kept my pace very controlled and was restricted only by my lack of endurance fitness. I covered 20 miles today, just as I had wanted to when I first signed up months ago. My recovery is not going to be as if I went into this at 100%. As I said, I am not fit endurance-wise and I am just finding a way to get the strength, especially in my left leg, to use the form that leaves me the least vulnerable to my arthritis. I felt no knee irritation during the competition, but it swelled up a bunch afterward and the car ride back was full of cramping in my hamstrings and abductors, and even my right T.A. I am simply not strong enough yet to do this and I pay a price.
Here is my route analysis. I was pretty sure I would have some problems with my knee and my left calf that I strained last weekend, so I thought I would not be making the full 6-hours. That meant I wanted to get out to high value controls as quickly as I could. I only had about 2 minutes to look at the map ahead of time because I was helping a few North Park Trail Runners plan, so a quick look suggested that big point controls were more concentrated out by the lake with an obvious grab of the 50-point 144 on my way out. I decided to ignore everything worth less then 30- points until the end.
Due to not having any time to plan, I wasn’t sure I had figured right, but looking the splits showed that this was a popular thought process (two years ago I had chosen a very poor strategy after no planning time as well- I discussed it in that log entry), at least in the master division. Several people headed to 144 first and out to the lake as I did. One person- Tom Rycroft (CrazyTom on Attackpoint- during the race he told me he has actually read my log… I guess I should try to keep my ramblings semi-intelligent. I was pretty sure I was just keeping the log for my own review later in) was near me for much of the race taking an identical route until we crossed back to the west side of rt. 18. He won the masters division and provided a lot for me to base analysis on.
I started taking it very easy physically as I was so unsure of my calf. Was in with a lot of people when I turned off the road to head up the trail up to my attackpoint for 144. A few of the people ahead of me turned up another trail. There were no other controls in the area so I am not sure where they were headed. That and the fact that I seemed to be heading southeast and up for more distance then the map suggested made me stop a few times to confirm. I passed one runner and had another woman cross the trail as she was heading directly to the control, but according to the splits I was the first to hit the control. When I turned around to plan for the next control there were a few people on my tail. One came out with me as I got back on the trail for a long trail run to 123. I don’t know if that individual was headed to 123 or elsewhere, but I didn’t see them behind me on the trail when I got to rt. 18 or anytime afterward.
I shot past the lower points 108 and 116 and took a long trail run out to 123 and then 122. The evergreen boundaries were a bit more scattered then they appeared on the map approaching 122 but I still got in to the circle pretty OK (but slowly). I was lax on my way back out to the trail and turned almost 90 degrees and headed north toward the road when I was almost at the trail I was heading for. As a result I went all the way back to the road. All of the sudden on the trail run toward 148 I ran into Crazy Tom ahead of me. According to the splits I was 3.5 minutes ahead of him at 123 (after being 30 seconds ahead at 144) and then 2+ minutes ahead on 122. I had been moving quite a bit quicker than he was on the trail to build up that advantage. As I would see as the next few controls went by, he did some running and a lot of walking which gave me another good insight into seeing how much time I can lose very quickly by mistakes. 122 was a prime example. He must have made up the 2+ minutes while I was wandering back to the road and getting back on the trail. He was ahead of me on the trail and I never saw him the whole time… Just a loss of a direct angle back to the trail lost me that whole advantage. I was moving the whole time as well.
I passed him on the way to 148 (where he introduced himself and seemed to have figured out who I was?! He joked about reading in my log how much I hate my mistakes, which was such a great ironic moment as I made one almost immediately to allow him to punch 148 two minutes ahead of me even though I was through the circle first…) but he punched the control first as I ran down the spine of the hill to far and went right over top of the control and had to go back. He headed out on the creek to 147 and I went up to the high route, thinking the creek might be slow. I did get to 147 first as he came up to the top of the ridge behind me as I approached the control, but I stopped to take in some food and water after the control and he kept on rolling. I didn’t see him through 136 but caught him along the trail up above the cliffs on the shore heading to 124. We hit the control together and crossed the creek together… only I fell in… I caught back up to him right after he got to 146. Here I got stupid. I wanted to take a different route to not just follow but it was just a bad route. His was the only real logical route. I went up the east slope toward the trail. I realized on my way up how this was a much slower route and stayed low, but that only slowed the bleeding compared to his route on the west slope with trail. We did come across each other in the creek, but only because he was scrambling to find his dibbler he had dropped. He found it right as I came in to help and we hit the control together. I did pull away from him up the hill to 135.
In our conversations, I mentioned my calf and he made the logical conclusion that I should not be trying to run through the woods at this point. This is, of course, a good point due to the exponential gain in energy waste on the rougher terrain. For me and my arthritis the loss is even more as I get tired. It reminds me of my coaching work with steeplechasers as the cost of going out to hard has exponential detrimental effects as you get tired and still have to try to be efficient over the exaggerated terrain (hurdles and water). It isn’t that I don’t know this, but I had my plan of going short and seeing how long I could move safely on my calf and arthritis at a relaxed but consistent pace. That was what I wanted to get out of this. I did end up out much longer than planned and I did slow and cramp and the whole works due to the fact that my calf held up so unbelievably well, so it would have been a good idea given that result. In reality I did consciously slow my pace a little after our exchange at 148 though.
Back to analysis. I stuck to my plan of skipping all controls below 30-points but the mystery control was so close. In retrospect, maybe I should have grabbed it. Crazy Tom didn’t grab it either and we headed off to 134 by different routes. I wasn’t moving quick in the woods compared to him, but was still feeling pretty strong on trail. I took the trail route and he cut straight through and made up his losses at the last control on me. We split again as he seemed to break south lower on the slope of the climb then I did. I would like to see his route here because I never saw him until the after the next control, so he clearly got to this control faster then me. I planned to go through the saddle and down the reentrant, but broke from the trail too early and went over the knob and then ended up to low in the reentrant as I hot the boulders. I had to readjust to get up to the control, which I could not see from below and wasted a little time thinking I was already high enough.
This brought up some of my wonderings on my orienteering. I often cannot beat people who are walking when I run. Sometimes it is due to mistakes such as 122, but there is also the arthritis that really limits my ability to move well on terrain (especially as I get tired- see the steeplechase reference above). Tom was mostly walking so he was perfect to test some things with. I was not particularly tired yet so I looked to use trail on some of these legs versus his cutting across. This had nothing that would hurt me drastically. I kept losing out though to him. In the open forest I couldn’t move faster than him (an example was moving toward 146 on the lake when I couldn’t pull him in) and choosing trail wasn’t pulling him in either. He was getting the best of me by a little bit on everything but long trail legs.
120 was easy enough, and I saw Crazy Tom leaving as I got in to the control. I stopped to eat and drink again. This was the last time I would see him again for a while. As I mentioned before I had been feeling pretty strong, but now I was approaching 3 hours and was starting to get tired enough that I was slowing on terrain and was needing to stop and walk periodically on long trail segments to avoid losing my form.
I felt like 125 would be a terrain and fight nightmare and loss of time and I might do better getting out on the trail to higher point controls on the other side of rt. 18. I decided it would be an easy pickup to grab 115 along the way though. This took longer than expected due to terrain and a creek crossing that I hesitated at- this showed I was losing trust in myself physically. The lost time was made up nicely in finding that this control had a mystery control right along the way back to the trail. Then came a long trail run (the type I mentioned before that now need periodic walking breaks) skipping small point controls to get out to 126 and 143. Near the location I would be attack 126 from I came across Ryan K. I must have been tired because the conversation caused me to lose track of where I was on the map and ended up going right past my attack point and ending up at the edge of the park and having to attack 143 first and go back to 126. It brought back memories of going through this area 2-years ago and disliking this north west side of the park due to a lot of undergrowth. It took a bit to get to 143 which I should have read the clue (top of knob) as I felt that the control should have been lower then it was. It was easy to attack 126 on top of the hill from here. Next I wanted again to skip small controls with low value to get out to bigger ones and keeping in mind I was still planning on stopping early, although this kept getting later and later. I picked a trail route out to 132. In retrospect I think I it was probably a little ridiculous to skip 103 just to take the single track trail that might have been slightly shorter. Then again, that and the mystery control are short distances, but it is still time and maybe that time would have been enough to keep me from chasing a 50 pointer at the end? This could have happened with 142 if things had gone differently in the end.
I used the road to go around and attack 132, but used the evergreen boundary more then I should have and ended up north of the control and wandering around a bit to find the oxbow… and ran into Tom again. He had grabbed 125 and cleared most of the smaller controls through the area I had skipped but had not gotten the 40 points of 115 and the mystery control, so we were not much different at all at this point. I was going to use the road to head out to 149 to get a 50 pointer and head back through to collect the big pointers of 140 and 137. He was going to head right to 137 and 140 and move on from there. My plan now committed me to being out 5 hours. The road run was fine but I got some mean abductor cramps moving up the creek to 149. It was a slow go on the terrain up to 140 and 137but they went well navigationally.
Things were interesting now. I could go south on the trail and get 127 and 128 and then head in closer to the 5 hours and pick up anything in close I felt like getting before that point. The other option was going down to the creek and heading up to the hilltop (easy navigation) to get 142. It would pull me further from home and I might be out longer than 5 hours. I choose to grab 142 and maybe be out a little longer. This wasn’t a choice I was certain of because I was cramping and could be starting to cause myself some damage if things went much further south. It just seemed pretty easy. I got to the bottom of the creek and the side of the hillside looking up to 142 was covered with undergrowth and lots of it. I went further down the creek and more and more. I could push through but that terrain would greatly increase the chances of big trouble on my cramping body and I made the choice to readjust to going for 128. Now I was low and instead of trail I was in more and more fight which got much worse as I crossed the wood-road and followed the creek south to the reentrant that 128 was in. It was a mess and took forever. I should have just pushed through to 142 and then I would have attacked 128 from the trail above and would have not taken that much longer…
From 128 I headed back to grab 106 and 109 on my way in. The run back was still with decent form and surprisingly consistent. 109 had a mystery control I grabbed before heading in at 5.5 hours.
All in all I can not complain about how well my body handled itself. Navigationally and strategically I competed probably better than I have before. I was only 50 points behind Tom, who won the masters competition and I came in a half hour early – which I could have picked up in 142 in that 30-minutes if I planned to be out the whole 6-hours. I have never competed as well. In previous years I covered about the same distance (20 miles), but too much different results against the competition. Todd Pownell, Come back Shane, Tom, etc, were far ahead of me 2 years ago and I beat all but Tom today. There were still some who out-strategized me. Mr. Wonderful was now on a team, so he was slower, but his ratio of distance to points was still better than mine. He covered 18.5 miles and I only beat them by 10 points.
As of a little over a week out form the meet the only routes posted on the results are Mr. Wonderful and Olga. Olga was second overall in the 6-hr and was about 70 points ahead of me. She was the only real force in the 6-hr. that went north first. She seemed to, with a few exceptions, clear the area until she got around into the stuff that I did on the north map. She got a few more after 132 and then took a big long trail/road run to the south far edge of the lake and did very close to the reverse of how I started. It was like she went form a clear everything to a strategy that I had to use long road/ trail runs to hot only big value controls. I do not know if she was just faster and stronger then I or more efficient because I do not know her mileage as she doe snot have an Attackpoint entry with this GPS data as Mr. Wonderful does.
Mr. Wonderful's route is of more interest to me because of what I discussed a few paragraphs ago with him getting much more point value per mile then I did. It appears he went for the opposite plan I did in many ways. He headed to 144 first like me, but then hit many of the lower point controls along the way. He hit the mystery control from 135 and 103, which I probably should have and went to 125 along the way. The question is was that a better plan? I had thought I had picked very well in comparison to previous years an that was why I was more competitive this year despite coming in a half hour early, but here stands a different idea. The other possibility is his gain in efficiency was due to being much cleaner, which he was. No missing the entrance to 126, no flubs coming out of 122 etc...
Today had some consequences. Even though it felt good today, it seems that it cleared the way for my spring arthritic selling to get going. Here are some notes over the next few weeks before Dirty Kiln:
http://www.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp?userid=1164... and
http://www.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp?userid=1164...Here is what happened at Dirty Kiln.. adds even more to the story:
http://www.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp?userid=1164...Which was followed by this after taking a week off after the events of Dirty Kiln:
http://www.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp?userid=1164... Here are a few pictures:
https://flic.kr/p/rHcucQhttps://flic.kr/p/rKub6HStrava:
https://www.strava.com/activities/272684812Garmin:
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/7269159...