Tuesday Oct 31 |
 | machines 25:00 [3] | |
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| 15 bike, 10 elliptical. Not much time for exercise. |
Monday Oct 30 |
| Road Run (tempo) 28:51 [4] 4.1 mi (7:01 / mi) | |
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| UMass loop, includes Amity hill. A hard effort. Breathing/fitness seemed OK, but after nearly two months off from any speedwork, the legs aren't used to trying to run fast. Foot held up OK. |
Sunday Oct 29 |
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| Event: WCOC Osbornedale State Park
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| Orienteering race 1:18:33 [3] 6.36 km (12:21 / km) | |
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| Osbornedale meet, by Jim and Rich. Nice course with lots of climb and a number of technical legs. I orienteered pretty well: lost 2 minutes on #5, circling around the reentrant before coming to the right spot, and a bad route choice (not really my fault!) on #7 cost about 3-4 minutes: vegetation was much worse than mapped, and I had to detour a number of times to find a way through it. Physically, I was moving pretty slow in the technical areas, but that's what it takes for me to keep contact on a map like this that I find hard to read. Sneaky Charlie got me by one second, speedy George by about 15. (Blame the lady on the white course going to #11 who cost me at least 10 seconds; see leg comments.) Glen ran well and would have had me even without my lost time on #7. |
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Red - Splits |
Friday Oct 27 |
| Orienteering 1:00:51 [3] 5.41 km (11:15 / km) | |
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| Norwottuck, same course as Tuesday, two and a half minutes faster. Lost a couple minutes being careless, thinking I knew where I was going and so not looking at the map. Lots of climb, so a good workout. |
Wednesday Oct 25 |
| Road Run (hills) 39:48 [3] 4.7 mi (8:28 / mi) | |
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| After dark, 3 Amity hills. My body didn't like running on the road, but I felt strong on the hills. 3:38, 3:35, 3:27. |
Tuesday Oct 24 |
| Orienteering 1:03:20 [3] 5.41 km (11:42 / km) | |
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| Norwottuck, taking a long lunch. Re-ran a course I made up for myself a couple of years ago on the north side, from the visitors center. I'm definitely faster and more accurate now than I was then! But I still lost about three minutes: two when I hit a reentrant and turned the wrong way to look for a boulder; one on a trail mix-up. Should be able easily to break an hour next time I do it.
Orienteering sure is a lot more fun than work. Too bad nobody will pay me to do it. |
Monday Oct 23 |
| machines (elliptical h14) 30:00 [3] | |
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Sunday Oct 22 |
| Orienteering 50:00 [2] 3.5 km (14:17 / km) | |
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| Mt Tom. Tired after squash with Adam, so more walking than jogging. Chose control locations for the advanced points south of the road. Ran out of daylight, so need to go back for one more outing to pick advanced points north of the road. Great day to be out in the woods: accurate map, open woods. |
Saturday Oct 21 |
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| Event: WCOC Tarrywile Meet
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| Orienteering race 1:05:15 [4] 7.18 km (9:05 / km) +360m 7:16 / km | |
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| Tarryville red. An excellent run on a fine fall day: just one 30 second miss, when I went to the southern dot knoll first on #8. Fast course in spite of over 350 m of climb. |
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Red - Splits |
Thursday Oct 19 |
| Orienteering 49:52 [3] 4.8 km (10:23 / km) +175m 8:47 / km | |
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| Same course at Norwottuck, 6 minutes faster. At this point, I hardly need to look at the map or compass, so it made for good physical training, and allowed me to focus more on micro-route choice. (But again I missed the junk car, losing almost two minutes; not sure what's going on with that.) |
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| C • If it's the junk car I'm think... 2 |
Wednesday Oct 18 |
| grass 35:52 [3] 4.75 mi (7:33 / mi) | |
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| 5 laps around UMass fields, hard enough to get my heartrate up. (7:25, 7:06, 6:55, 6:39, 7:44) My foot's doing a lot better, but I need to keep being careful not to aggravate it. Overall, my legs felt pretty good except for a bit of tendonitis in my lower right hamstring -- an injury I used to get on and off, but not for at least ten years. More confirmation for the Nietzschean theory of eternal recurrence. |
Tuesday Oct 17 |
| machines (elliptical) 20:00 [3] | |
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| At Smith, after stretching and lifting. Cold rain and darkness made staying inside a no-brainer. But my legs feel OK. |
Sunday Oct 15 |
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| Event: Hudson Highlander
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| Orienteering race 4:50:00 [3] 25.5 km (11:22 / km) | |
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| Highlander, my sixth, and my fastest by 30 minutes. Finished 27th, compared with 20th last year, but a much better run: no mistakes to speak of, just stuck in laurel a little more than necessary. A combination of fast legs early on with people around, and slower legs on my own on Rockhouse and almost the whole last section on Silver Mine. Starting cramping bad towards the end of Rockhouse, both hamstrings, and had to walk almost the entire last section, even the trails. One nasty fall smashed my elbow and my magnifier; but no injuries I expect to last very long. |
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XI - Splits |
Saturday Oct 14 |
| Note | |
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| Two hours walking around Mt Tom checking control locations for a meet (Western Mass Rules) the Sunday after Thanksgiving. |
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| C • Mt Tom 11 |
Wednesday Oct 11 |
| Orienteering 55:53 [3] 4.8 km (11:39 / km) | |
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| AT Norwottuck, south side. Same course as a couple weeks ago that took me just over an hour. Thought I'd try it at a faster pace. That was no problem, since my legs felt good. But I made a four minute mistake on the junk car (!), and a couple other small errors. Also, took a branch in the right eye, which hurts quite a bit now, and my vision in that eye is quite blurred. No doubt a corneal abrasion. I'm expecting this goes away on it's own in a day or two, but maybe I should have it checked out, and get some antibiotics? I hate going to doctors. |
Tuesday Oct 10 |
| Road Run 42:12 [3] 4.9 mi (8:36 / mi) | |
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| UMass loop, after dark. Foot really painful the last 20 minutes. Looks like I need to stick with terrain running for a while. That'll be good for my orienteering ... but it's hard to get away from work in the daylight. |
Monday Oct 9 |
| cycling 1:10:24 [3] | |
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| Gorgeous day in the 70's. Haydenville loop, legs a bit tired. |
Sunday Oct 8 |
| Orienteering race 1:27:19 [4] 7.1 km (12:18 / km) | |
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| NAOC long, perfect weather. Same area as yesterday, but the terrain seemed different today: much less limestone, but thicker in places, and the marshes were a lot wetter, at least where I went, wading once for 10-15 meters in water up to my crotch. I made a bunch of mistakes (including an idiotic and costly trail error on the way to the go control); at least nothing cost more than 2-3 minutes. I lost the most time on the long leg when I tried to cross a stream. It was only about knee deep, but my first foot kept sinking, and sinking, into the mud. When the water got to the top of my thigh, I got scared I would be stuck for good (or lose a shoe), and I quickly sat down in the water to take the weight off it. Then I slowly extricated my buried foot, which made my hamstring start to cramp. When I finally escaped, I probably should have found another place to cross, but I was totally spooked and instead climbed back through thick vegetation to the trail and went the long way around. Cost at least 3 minutes on what could have been a fast leg for me. All in all, a pretty mediocre result: a decent result (for me) would have been around 80. |
| Orienteering 35:00 [3] 3.5 km (10:00 / km) | |
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| Did the other part of the model, controls 9-12, at a jog before the race as a warm-up. Maybe too much warm-up, as I had really tired legs during in the race. |
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Long Course 6 - Splits |
Saturday Oct 7 |
| Orienteering 40:00 [2] 2.5 km (16:00 / km) | |
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| Model event, controls 1-8. Mostly walking, trying to get a feel for the terrain and the map. Subtle contour detail and the limestone "pavement" make for interesting, but tricky, orienteering. |
| Orienteering race 1:02:07 [3] 3.7 km (16:47 / km) | |
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| Day 2, middle, at Rocky Ridge. Strange: other than one leg, I had a good run, with good contact, and only 1-2 minutes of mistakes. But on that leg from hell, number 3, I lost 23 minutes. It started with a small parallel error, followed by inattentiveness and sloppy compass, unitl I got to a parallel "attack point". I couldn't relocate because I wasn't even close to where I thought I was (I missed by over 150 meters to the north), and the area where I was searching and trying to relocate looked an awful lot like the area I thought I was in. After maybe 2-3 minutes lost, I actually relocated correctly, but I screwed up the approach, didn't find it, and then decided I must be way too far south. After 15 minutes or so, I bailed to a trail 300 meters north of the control, came back south to where I had been near the start, and eventually found it. Worst single leg in 3 years. |
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Middle Course 6 - Splits |
Friday Oct 6 |
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| Event: 2006 North American Championships (Golden Leaf Orienteering Fest)
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| Orienteering race (sprint) 14:51 [4] 2.4 km (6:11 / km) | |
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| NAOC, sprint, M45+, at McMaster Univeristy in Hamilton, Ontario. (First time orienteering in Canada.) A good run, on a pretty easy, totally urban course. One 5-8 second mistake. This was the first time I read ahead on every leg, planning the route for the next leg. (If I couldn't make myself do it on this course, I never would.) That slowed me down in the middle of the legs, but I probably gained more time back by not hesitating leaving the next control, and not making any bad route choices. 6th in M45, second over 50 (well behind Charlie S.) |
| Road Run 14:00 [3] 1.5 mi (9:20 / mi) | |
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| Warm-up for sprint. |
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Sprint 2 - Splits |
Wednesday Oct 4 |
| Orienteering 1:05:03 [2] 5 km (13:01 / km) | |
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| At Norwottuck, very easy. Had trouble reading the map at dusk, so last 20 minutes were a trail run, getting back as darkness fell. |
Tuesday Oct 3 |
| Track 14:04 [3] 2.0 mi (7:01 / mi) | |
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| Plan was to do a four mile tempo run at 7 minute pace, but quit early when my foot got painful. |
| dirt 18:00 [2] 2.0 mi (9:00 / mi) | |
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| Slow jog before and after. |
Monday Oct 2 |
| grass 30:35 [3] 3.8 mi (8:02 / mi) | |
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| UMass fields, 4 laps. |
Sunday Oct 1 |
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| Event: WCOC Trout Brook Valley
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| Orienteering 1:23:25 [3]*** 7.25 km (11:30 / km) +230m 9:56 / km | |
| spiked:12/17c |
| WCOC Trout Brook red, nice course set by Rick, after heavy rain, so the woods were very wet. A modest physical effort, but the orienteering was OK: just a bunch of small mistakes, maybe 4-5 minutes total including three 30 second misses. I like running on this map: it's detailed, and requires good concentration, but it's also readable and accurate. And though there's quite a bit of rocky ground, there's also lots of nice runnable woods. I kept the laces to my left shoe totally loose, which got me through without too much discomfort. Good thing I didn't step in a mud hole: the shoe would have been gone! |
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Red - Splits |