Sunday Oct 8 |
 | Orienteering 1:31:00 [3]*** 12.2 km (7:28 / km) +120m 7:07 / km | |
| spiked:19/22c shoes: kaija rautavaara |
| NAOC long. One of the most irritating runs I've had for a long time. Two mistakes, a three minute due to poor course setting and inaccurate mapping (areas of open land shown as existing where they never have), and four minutes due to a slight parallel error in the trail maze leading to confusion. 1:24 would have been a nice time, 1:27 would have been decent, but the mess at the end was intensely annoying. I was first by 45 seconds on the splits after 8 and dropped to fourth after a 3+ minute error, and had recovered to second by 45 seconds after 18, only to drop to 7th at 19. The error looks larger than 4 minutes, maybe 6, but I think I lost a minute in route choice on the long leg before losing time at the end.
However, the mistakes were one of mine and one of GHO's. I'm just as irritated by the second as the first, and would have protested had I not made the mistake of my own so that whether I won wasn't entirely due to errors not of my own making. How could they put all that effort into this event and get something so simple so badly wrong, and then pass it off as 'it was wet this week' when asked? Enough said.
Well, not quite enough. I'm probably most angry since I had high expectations of this race. GHO drops off my list of 'clubs I trust to put on properly organised championships', a big disappointment given there are very few clubs up there (DVOA the obvious one, and a few mapper-run clubs like LROC and CNYO, and only a very few others, WCOC and no more than two or three more, and then a much longer tail of varying confidence levels). I was feeling bad about going to the DVOA meet in November rather than Raid the Hammer - now I'm very confident I made the right decision.
I haven't been this angry after an orienteering event since Easter 1997, which is quite a long time. |
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| C • Easter 1997 9 |
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Long Course 8 - Splits |
Saturday Oct 7 |
| Orienteering 30:18 [3]*** 4.48 km (6:46 / km) +50m 6:24 / km | |
| spiked:12/17c shoes: kaija rautavaara |
| NAOC middle. Second to John. Really quite a bad run, just that everyone else apparently had far worse runs. |
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Middle Course 8 - Splits |
Friday Oct 6 |
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| Event: 2006 North American Championships (Golden Leaf Orienteering Fest)
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Thursday Oct 5 |
| Bike 1:06:00 [3]17.9 mi (3:40 / mi) +25m 2:17 / km | |
| shoes: shimano m-180b |
| Evening ride on a clear and cool day west along the canal: the pre-decided 'half an hour plus a minute or two' outbound distance meant I ended up a little beyond Long Pond Rd at the junction of the current and original routes of the canal (only the current canal still exists, but the stonework for the once-junction is still present). Route. Pushed a little for part of the way; the cool weather helps motivation to keep going.
Beautiful sunset that progressively moved from pink cirrocumulus clouds in the western sky to dull red clouds in front of a full moon in the east. The rabbits and cats are getting more suicidal: at least 6 rabbits and two cats, but no deer. 48F/dp 38F. |
Tuesday Oct 3 |
| Running 42:00 [3]6.02 mi (6:58 / mi) +4m 4:20 / km | |
| shoes: johann aloysius bach |
| Genesee Greenway from Brooks Rd to Scottsville Rd, just past the Thruway. The climb is all in the ascent to the road at the Scottsville end; otherwise this is completely flat. Beautiful evening: sunset, fields misting as the noontime rain evaporated, moon high in the sky, occasional departures from ROC to watch, 65F/dp 61F. |
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| C • Can I deduce 2 |
Monday Oct 2 |
| Bike 1:45:00 [3]25.2 mi (4:09 / mi) +15m 2:35 / km | |
| shoes: shimano m-180b |
| Finally, time for the Genesee Valley Greenway. Standard first two miles out past U of R, then along the Riverway to the point at NY-252A/NY-383 where the trail stops for a while. 1.5 road miles, then along the Greenway from its main beginning as far as Scottsville and the bridge over Oatka Creek. Route. An unseasonably warm evening: 65F dropping to 61F, dewpoint 50F, scattered clouds. One deer, one rabbit, two cats of varying speciation (one 'woolly caterpillar' type cat, one feral creature I couldn't quite catch to run down).
This trail is clearly more 'forested' than some other trails, but the initial section is extremely straight and requires an extra 3 miles roundtrip on Jefferson and/or Scottsville Rds, so it's not the greatest of short rides. Of course, it is pretty good for longer rides (there are another 40 miles or so beyond where I stopped before the first break in the trail, and more beyond that point after a few washed-out miles). |