Training Log Archive: Tundra/Desert

Event: Anza-Borrego Desert O-Fest
 

Had a wicked headache in the late morning/early afternoon, just like a couple weeks ago, and had no ibuprofen and did taxes. Fun.

Only had time for 2×Baylands. Almost froze to death (Polar says 8 °C). 26:54 26:14. The headache didn't go away.

The camp ended this morning. John, Viktoria, Eric, and Terry loaded up Eric's ancient Volvo and headed to Borrego Springs. I went to work.

I had a long and stressful morning. On Friday, Cheese planned some nice courses for Joe Grant North (Sat. morning training of the camp) and Joe Grant South (the afternoon training session). But, when he sent me the courses on Friday evening for printing, they did not open in my OCAD ("cannot find tmp0004.~cd" and similar such crap). In hindsight now, I think there is a bug in OCAD 8. We probably should have run the 8.13 update on his laptop, but I had no idea whether the update did anything since on all computers that I've had it installed, it complained of not being able to find OCAD and never updated the version in the "About" menu to something other than 8.00. Another reason could have been that Cheese had several starts and finishes in the middle of the course. When I replicated his courses (which he had been successfully able to export to GIF and send me), my starts kept disappearing, so there is some kind of bug associated with that. Anyway.

So, it took me a while to set up the courses in OCAD on Saturday morning, and then I started printing on the R1800 (with a full set of cartridges, and I had run to Circuit City in the middle of Friday night's dinner to make sure we had the blue one) and promptly ran out of yellow, after producing about 9 13"×19" blankets. I had to print the shorter morning courses on legal-sized paper on the CX3800, which took forever. And, we had no time at all to print the afternoon courses.

So, at about 9:40 am, I start moving things down to the car—the R1800, which should have been given to Cheese on Day 1, but there was space in the car to Aptos for either John F or the printer; paper and map cases; and my own O-clothes. As I was moving the giant R1800 box through the lobby door, I looked away for a while (Griffin the dog needed to pee), and when I came back to the elevators to grab the bag with my O-stuff, it was gone.

The building security people were of no help. The whole incident was certainly on camera, but they apparently can't show you the taped footage without a police order. So I called the non-emergency line, and they were very reluctant to come out but said they would. I waited for 30 minutes, then we gave up and took off to San José.

In the stolen bag, the most valued item was a pair of Inov-8 Mudclaw O 330's. And, the main reason I was so upset was not because of its cost, but because the disappearance interrupted the experiment to find out how many miles they would last.

We got to Joe Grant pretty late, and could not find anyone. I ran up to the start of the planned morning exercise, thinking maybe they were waiting for me there; but they weren't. Then ran back.

Note how the satellite pic is way off USGS in the photo... actually, either one is way off the O-map, too. The distance is from the OCAD file.

It turned out that everyone decided to go on a terrain run at Joe Grant South to better utilize the time instead, and to do the planned morning training in the afternoon and to pass on the evening session.

About 15 camp attendeed soon gathered in the main Joe Grant parking lot for some lunch. Johnny ate a giant piece of bison.

I started last on the monster course, with the aim to pick up the downhill controls set by Mr. Cheese himself. Ran up to the start again.

The aim of the course was to train route choice on the uphills, then to do quick control picking on the downhills (which indeed had control flags). I had warned Marc it would take me 2 hours for the course, with last year's A meet Day 1 in mind. Starting at 15:38, I expected to finish just after it got really dark.

I caught up with the next-to-last starter, Viktoria, and it cost me a little. I got to the top of the ridge just as the sun hit the main ridge of Santa Cruz mountains, across Silicon Valley from the Mt. Hamilton range. The view of the valley was awesome. I proceeded on to the second downhill sprint, and then on the last route choice. I could see well enough on the long first leg (where I saw Andrew coming back, and in hindsight, should have just cut it short and joined him), but not so well on the next, short one; lost 3 or 4 minutes there. At the end of the next leg, a long uphill slog, it got dark enough that I could not see the map, so I called it a day just short of Control 19 (marked "21" on the map).

I then proceeded down to the finish/cars, a 385-meter drop. I steered well using the faint glow of Lake Joe Grant as my beacon, and sometimes could even see the taillights of Sandra's van in the parking lot. But, I kept running into swaths of chaparral and had to correct the course, and ended up one large spur to the left of the one I should have taken, accidentally running into one of the downhill controls and picking it up.

The spur I was on terminated into a streak of dark green that lay between the main creek and the road I had to take from the finish to the cars. Had I been one spur over to the right, the dark green obstacle would not be there; but, not being able to see the map or having enough map memory, I didn't realize the correct course. Upon hitting the swath of dark green, I somehow proceeded to the left, up the main creek, and poked three times into the dark green to find a way through, the first two times unsuccessfully.

The fight with the dark green took a while and also took me well out of the way, so when I hit the main road and headed to the cars, I was not surprised to see the Cheese (with a headlamp) looking for me. He sounded borderline concerned, but I was fine. As we got back, the ranger got there and was pretty anxious about us getting out of the park. She also demanded to know exactly where I "got lost". We told her everyone was OK, and proceeded to the nearest megamall just at the other end of Quimby Road to get more yellow R1800 cartridges.

I am just about to have the actual course measured and published, so hold on a bit... the climb is straight form the Polar.

The Flyrocs are awkward and hopeless for Bay Area orienteering.

After a long and stressful day (for all of us, for interrelated and unrelated reasons), six of us (minus Marc) gathered at the Golden Gate Bridge northern vista point for a trail run (1, 2, 3) in the Marin Headlands. It was dark, and we had one light with us. But there were millions of city lights, and one giant moon.

The run was maybe half of what had been planned. We had to hurry up to make it to the dinner.

Tapio and I got to Soquel late, holding up the track training a bit. The gang was already warmed up, running in the playground among the blue balls, so I had to cut my warmup short.

Marc and Sandra handed out the assignment: 800, 1000, 1600, 1000, 800 at the I pace, with the rest equal to 50% of the time it took to do each interval. Some ran by themselves, some less so, with John trying to hang on to Marc and Tapio, the ladies.

I think a single mile is OK within an I ladder, but I disagree with the rest being as short as 50%—I think it should be at least 70% and close to 90%. I was not able to maintain I, starting a bit too fast, feeling miserable on the mile, and slowing down in the end: 2:46 3:32 6:03 3:37 2:56. Too early in the season for I! ah, but it was still fun to run so fast.

Marc tried to videotape the camp runners in order to subsequently analyze the running style, but there apparently was not enough light for that. Marc and Tapio then tried simply taking pictures, and it wasn't working out, either. Santa Cruz Running Club was on the track, and we probably wouldn't have been able to get in had we not scheduled our session at the same time as their weekly workout.

While everyone cooled down at the playground, I tried my hand at a Luchik T.

John, Anna, Christoph, myself, Marc, and Viktoria ran at Nisene Marks early in the morning. John and Anna were constantly pulling ahead, so I had to keep the pace a bit above comfortable initially to stay in touch in order to be able to tell them where to go. Marc shuttled back and forth to keep up the rear.

It was just above freezing, cloudy, and the redwoods looked enchanted. Two young girls passed us on Aptos Creek Road going uphill, and left us in the dust.

C • Hey...! 3

The tick spot is still there. Size unchanged.

Event: US Team Training Camp
 

The training camp started! John and I, the latecomers, ran late in the evening on the beach. The rest of the gang ran for an hour, and earlier, before sunset.

Took another doxycycline last night.

See here for New Year's/new season's resolutions/goals.