Training Archive: kupackmanIn the 7 days ending 2007-08-05:
| [csv] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| « | » |
| » now | ||||||||||
|
|
|
| ||||||||||
| M | T | W | H | F | S | S | |||||||
Saturday Aug 4 | ||
| Orienteering race 2:08:06 [3]*** 10.65 km (12:02 / km) | |
| spiked:11/16c shoes: Vasque Lightspeed | ||
| The long orienteering course that was held in conjunction with the Six Degrees of Naviation Adventure Race out in Cle Elum. Teanaway Forks map.
More route analysis later if I have time for it. | ||
Wednesday Aug 1 | ||
| Orienteering race 32:20 [4]*** 5.1 km (6:20 / km) | |
| spiked:20/22c shoes: Vasque Lightspeed | ||
| One of my favorite courses of the year, the annual "August Wednesday Sammamish meet at Luther Burbank Park". Ok, so it doesn't have that title, but it's an event that I've now attended three years in a row.
Why do I like it? 1) It's fast. I've recorded 74 orienteering events in my database, and my 1st, 2nd, and 5th fastest are all here. 2) It's sprint-y. The park isn't very big, and the coutours are simple. But, it's open enough, and there are enough obstacles and a variety of mapped features (the snail shell berm thing, the hidden pond, the intricate tennis court and playground area, the terraced ampitheater, the clump of thickets around) that allows for route choices that are more interesting than "do I take the left trail or the right trail?". 3) It's very beginner friendly (Nick, Mike, and Jeremy all had their first O-meets here, and all three have done it since). 4) It's right on the lake, and the weather is great, and there's always a cookout afterwards. Let's get to the courses. I ran courses 3 and 2 (together combine as course 4). I wanted to treat this is sprint training, so I wanted to maximise speed and plan exit strategies ahead of time. I also wanted to scrutinize every minor route choice detail. Start to 1: 150m. No-brainer sidewalk run. 1 to 2: 125m. Across the parking lot and up the hill. I probably lost a second or two because I didn't go diagonally across the lot. However, there were cars, people unloading their AR gear and stuff, so going straight really wasn't a great option here. 2 to 3: 200m. My original thought was to backtrack to 1 and continue 75 meters to the flag (which wasn't a bad idea), but my pre-planning identified a flatter, easier to negotiate, and faster route. 3 to 4: 200m. Very poor exit, as I didn't fully analyze this one, which is unforgivable since I had a plain-Jane leg before it. I took a really awkward and backwards way into the field. However, the alternate route choice here, which seemingly looks 10x better, is also pretty awkward, and only saves you 20 meters! So, even though I didn't pay enough attention, I made my decision fast enough that I didn't lose that much time (7 seconds or so). 4 to 5: 300m. Very good leg. Straight across the field and I headed left of the hill and tennis courts. Afterwards, I wanted to compare the alternative, heading straight at the hill and then to the right of the tennis courts. This route was only 10 meters shorter, but required 10 more meters of climb. I liked my gut instinct on this one. 5 to 6: 300m. Navigationally, pretty boring. I headed over to the new part of the map up on the hill, which required a lot of stair climbing. This one hurt. 6 to 7: 125m. Across rough open on the hill. Great view. 7 to 8: 400m. The long one. This was a good leg, as I never had to stop running, and double-check my features. I could have overrun a trail junction or a spot between thickets. I nailed everything on this one, all the way to the end. 8 to 9: 100m. This was a tricky control to find, but since the leg was so short, and the approach from the easier side, this one was pretty easy. (there was a control in this area last year that was seemingly impossible to find... for a minute). 9 to 10: 200m. Paved trail to the small attack point of the gap in the thicket. Not too tricky. 10 to 11: 350m. The toughest part of this one was to not stand at the control and decide on the best exit. Either way you went was going to be decent. I headed left (which was better), and pushed it hard. 11 to finish: 350m. This was the toughest route choice of the day. 11 was halfway up a hill. I could either go back down and run this narrow trail along the shoreline, and finish going uphill (definitely shorter, but the trail doesn't lend itself to 100% speed). Or, I could get the climb over with early, and blast through the upper field and finish downhill). I decided to go with the latter, which was 60 meters longer (with an option to only be 40 meters longer, but I stayed on the gravel path too much). The course setter thinks my way was faster, but who knows? -- MAP EXCHANGE -- Start to 1: 200m. This took me back the way of the route I didn't choose on the previous leg, so I got to experience the slowness of the trail. At one point, I had to stop and crawl under a tree, and slow down as I passed some other orienteers. 1 to 2: 125m. An awkward leg, as I had to go way around at the beginning. I ran 200m of trail to avoid 50m of uphill through light green. And in Seattle, light green is pretty slow. Control was at the top of the hill. 2 to 3: 175m. Diagonally across the other parking lot. 3 to 4: 175m. Navigationally, this was the most challenging leg of the day. Once you exit the parking lot, the leg crosses a large, wide open downhill area, ending at the lake. The control was a meter from the shoreline. However, the shoreline is lined with a strip of darker green, a mix of trees, bushes, and marshy-type plants. There are several small gaps in the vegetation where you can go all the way to the water. Cresting the hill, I needed to know which little gap to attack. Each gap is about 20m apart. Without a compass, I had to wing it, but I was pretty confident that I was choosing the right gap. And I got it! (Though, looking at the map now, this would have been insanely easy had I read the description sheet, which was for a distinctive tree. And there was only one really tall tree in the area.) 4 to 5: 400m. I really didn't want to climb back up most of that hill, but staying on the shoreline sent me to the dog off-leash area, which was obstructed on the map by the words "Dog off-leash area". I didn't know I could sneak around it on the lake side, so I played it safe by going around to the left. I was starting to really hurt on this leg. 5 to 6: 75m. I knew where this flag was because I passed it on the first course. There were two trees "guarding" this control, and I could have easily ran around either one, but I decided to plow through the branched in the middle like barging through the swingin' doors into an old western saloon. I made it through easy enough, but not without some scratches and some blood. :) 6 to 7 to 8: 500m. Some long legs getting me back across the park. Easy navigation, but man, I was really hurting with my fitness. If I would have kept pushing, I think I would have vomited. So I walked about a minute on these legs. 8 to 9 to 10: 300m. I started running again because it was slightly downhill, and the race was almost over, and because there were people milling around the park and I didn't want to look like a wimp. The flags here were visible at least halfway through the leg. 10 to 11: 125m. This one was just past the finish area, so one trick was to actually realize that there was a control here (instead of just finishing). The other trick was realizing that you couldn't access this control from the start/finish/beach area. You had to go around a bit to the south to get it. No problems here. 11 to finish: 50m. Looped around the thicket and through the adventure race circus to the finish. --- In total, 22 controls, I spiked 20 of them. I lost less than a combined 30 seconds on the other two, because of route-choice ineffeciencies. | ||
| C • wow, i just spent more time... 1 | ||
Tuesday Jul 31 | ||
| Volleyball 1:45:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Pearl Izumi SyncroSeek | ||
| Last round of the regular season in volleyball. We officially went 3-3, but two of those were forfeit wins. We played one of the better teams and got beat pretty good both games, despite playing decently. We split against one of the middle teams. We're getting better, but so is everyone else.
I had my best day at the net in a long time, and I didn't make all that many errors overall. It was fun. Big tournament next week! | ||
Monday Jul 30 | ||
| Softball 2:30:00 [2] | |
| Another BEESA doubleheader, our fourth in a row. And, for the fourth time, we win the first game and lose the second.
The first team wasn't that great, and we didn't play that inspired, winning 12-4. Mike (our worst hitter) drew a crucial walk to load the bases with 2 outs one inning, and Ryan hit an inside-the-park grand slam. That was the game-breaker. We came out really flat in the second game, only able to score 1 run in a 10-1 loss. We stranded bases-loaded situations in three innings. One of those situations was a choke-job by me. I'm the lead-off hitter and batting over .650 for the season. I can't do that. I finished both games batting 3-for-8. I played second base in the first game and saw a LOT of action. It was fun. And zero errors! I pitched the second game, and I thought I did a decent job, considering the skill of the other teams' batters. | ||