Training Log Archive: mikeminium

Joyce Park. Bike Trail. 90% on grass parallel to the paved path. North to the dam & back.

Event: MVOC Pumpkin Hunt
 

shadowed student for 3.5 km yellow course. jogged a very small amount (less than 10%). MVOC event at Germantown Metropark.

Red course at Germantown. Lots of climb, lots of green. Manual punching. I recorded my time as 79:12, but the finish recorded 87:27. I can't resolve the discrepancy for absolute certainty, since I missed a few splits on my watch, but the ones I piece together (plus the fact that I checked my cumulative time several times during the course, because I knew Matt Bond was the current leader with 89 minutes) points toward my watch being accurate.

At the finish, only one of the two stop watches being used for the event appeared to still be keeping time, and its certainly possible that one got reset, clock time got used as a start, etc.

I'm guessing that my start of 132 was accurate, since I did the yellow course with Josh starting at 16 and we had a time of 104, which means we finished around 120. I returned to the car, chugged a water, changed shirts, signed in and paid for my own map and waited only a minute or so to start, so a 12 minute gap seems right for that. I wish I'd made note of clock time at some point or matched clock time to meet time, but, oh well...

Steve set some challenging route choices, although a couple trail runs were necessary just because of the shape of the park. He set some of the controls in extremely steep spots, which became muddy, slippery, and somewhat perilous. I just wish the map were a little more up-to-date especially re vegetation and the accuracy / relative position of certain trail bends.

misc yard & garden - dug and moved several wheelbarrow loads of dirt & sod.

Event: OLOU Bernheim Forest
 

OLOU Bernheim Forest meet, red course. Road and trail choices for lots of legs; forest often a little greener than indicated, lots of climb. Had fun, but a couple comments:

Control 2 on rootstock in the green. I don't think the placement accurately matched the map. I and several others lost time fumbling thru the thickets. This was the biggest single course quality complaint. The others are more minor.

Control 11 on inside corner of uncrossable fence. I would have placed it where the streamer was, 1 meter away from the fence so that people on the wrong side of the fence could not reach thru and punch. The distance, approaching from the wrong side was actually shorter, giving the person(s) who did not read or properly interpret the description a few seconds advantage over those who looked ahead, instead of penalizing them a minute to run back to the gate and go around. The uncrossable 3 meter high deer fence is a major and prominent feature of this map, and having already had to pass through it once, alert competitors should have been rewarded for paying careful attention to the description while less alert opponents paid a penalty for ignoring it.

Control 6 was probably the most challenging to find, although several others (3, 5, 8, 9, 10) were good challenges as well. The course setter could have made more use of the intricate area around 6 with a couple short legs, and perhaps created more challenge and route choice in the 3-5 area by moving 4 south or southeast (and sliding the print area of the map farther south.

5 to 6 was probably the best leg as far as giving route choices. 7 to 8 also seemed to offer a good choice of routes and attack points. A little too often, though, it felt like some legs had no real choices.

OLOU Sprint at Bernheim.
essentially a white course, with several long road and trail segments, and only a couple opportunities to shortcut.

Search for lost orienteer, mix of jogging and walking.

Sprint - Splits

Red - Splits

misc. yard and garden, more mulching.

misc. yard & garden, digging and moving several wheelbarrow loads of dirt & sod.

yard and garden work - fall mulching, etc. took it fairly easy and skipped running today since I'm feeling .... well, not exactly sick, but a little off. Hoping to avoid it getting worse.

9 holes at Hillview.

Joyce Park. 1 mile warm-up, .6 mile cool down. very slow.

3 x 1 mile, about 3:15 between runs.
7:05
7:11
7:08