Training Log Archive: BorisGr

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WOC Spectator Races - Day 1

I am running H21A here. Today we ran in the wooded part of the WOC long qualification terrain. It was pretty tough going most of the time, and trail routes were desriable, as were safe attackpoints close to the controls. I started off with a 2-minute mistake where I ran right past the control without seeing the flag, looped around and came back to it. I then ran quite well for a while, but had hesitations on virtually every control starting with 11, and then a big mistake (2 minutes) on the tough #16. It was a fun and challenging race, and I really enjoyed myself out there. Looks like a lot of people had some trouble, as I ended up 5th in the class.

Results: http://www.woc2011.fr/images/ofestival/resultats/E...

Winsplits: http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/default.a...

QR: http://www.dxdeluxe.se/linnekartparmen/show_map.ph...

After the races it was time to spectate and cheer. It was awesome to see Ali flying into 7th place in her heat, and equally great to see the guys have some good races. In the last few years the middle distance has been a bit disastrous for our men, and this was a nice change with three good runs by Ross, Ken, and Sergei. Ross' 20th place was the 6th time our men have had a 20th place since Brian May qualified for the sprint final in 2004, but no one has done better than 20th. Time to break that trend in the sprint?
Also, Alex had a really good run, and that made me really happy for the rest of the day.

1412/2000

C • results 2

Event: WOC 2011 + O'Festival Savoie Grand Revard
 

Training on one of the model maps after a great afternoon of cheering and spectating. The terrain is truly and really tough, both physically and technically. You have to fight for every inch, all the while maintaining focus. There are lots of contour and rock features slightly too small to be mapped, so relocation is extremely difficult, and you get punished severely for momentary loss of map contact or imprecision with direction. I found that I'd rather go straight over a 2-3 contour hill than go around and risk getting thrown off line and missing my next feature.

1392/2000

Team USA blog is up and running again: http://usa-orienteering.blogspot.com/2011/08/woc-2...

Fairly epic run with Biggins and Pat-hetic on a pretty bizarre day. We drove up to just below the top of Col du Chat and ran to the top. We then ran along the ridge and scrambled to the top of a massive tooth using cables and ladders. There were awesome views of the valleys in both directions from the top, and of Mont Blanc, high above everything else. We then ran along the ridge south on a nice trail along the top, then back north and to the car. Great run.

The day got weirder as we first had to collect Ed who was stranded by the side of the road 30km north of Aix-les-Bains after his bike rack broke, and then had to emigrate from our hotel after a series of fights with the hotel manager.

On the bright side, WOC starts tomorrow, and I am excited to cheer on Team USA!

Patrick has some awesome pictures here and
Biggins has some more here.

Shadowing Sam around the WOC long distance model event. Stuff was hard to read at 1:15, but the terrain was simpler than Prepoulain yesterday.

1377/2000

Here are a few photos from the Swiss O Week:
https://picasaweb.google.com/115600040618748380315...
There are more on my facebook page.

Training on Prepoulain, one of the WOC training areas.
I started by walking with Alex through the terrain, identifying features and slowly getting used to the mapping style. I think it went well, and we were both getting comfortable translating the map to terrain and back after a while. I then ran over to the far corner of the map and met up with Ross, whom I then shadowed for several controls at fairly high speed. He was running really well and reading the terrain nicely. It made me happy.

I enjoyed the terrain in general. The parts close to the road wree junky with a lot of brashings, but further up the slope the woods opened up a bit, and it was quite runnable, but still very difficult to read.

1362/2000

Training on Serroue (Marc and Sandra's home map) that Sandra had designed a while ago. There were streamers out at all controls, which was nice. Sandra removed trails from the map, but kept the bigger roads. It was a good training. I tried to focus on running well using the compass, but this was made difficult by the overgrown forest and the large areas with heaps of brashings underfoot.

QR: http://www.dxdeluxe.se/linnekartparmen/show_map.ph...

1354/2000

Swiss O Week 2011 is over. It was really, really fun. I hadn't been to a European multiday event in a couple of years, and I am so glad I made it to this one. For sure, company made a huge difference. One would think that sharing a house with a few foreigners would be pretty lame, but it turned out great, even if some of them insisted on using fake words during cutthroat battles of Bananagrams.

C • SOW 2

C • vocabulary 1

A little bit of core after the run.

Relaxing trail run with Swisscheese from Mr.&Mrs.Cheese's apartment in Neuchatel. Really nice day, pretty forest, great company.