Training Log Archive: jjcote

Stairwell at Bretons' house.

West Point Blue. A pretty uninspired course, and I managed to be pretty much perfect on the boring parts. A few of the legs were actually quite fine, and I managed to screw two of those up, one by about 4 minutes by poor route execution and a bit of misreading the terrain, the other by not being careful enough entering a very detailed area, and having no idea which feature to look on, even though i passed through the circle — had to back up and relocate, losing probably a bit over 5 minutes.

Sprint set by PG. Off to the right a bit on #2, and left #7 at about a 90 degree angle (in retrospect, I might have been looking at the contour line heading NW from the circle) and went between two of the barracks before correcting. Total errors about 40 seconds, I guess, which amounts to a couple of places. But my time in the chute wasn't too embarrassing, at least.

Blue day 1 - Splits

Sprint (Correct) - Splits

A short double loop: down to the esker, powerline trail to the Mystery Blazes, N until the woods opened up, W to the Horse trail, back to the Mystery Blazes to the Enigma Road, shortcut to the crossing log (almost submerged) and home. Pushed pretty hard the whole way.

Carried to the 150' for two flights, then rode the ATV to the 250' for four more. Wind was pretty calm, so these were all short, tame flights, but they were all very good from launch to landing, which is a fine way to start the season after a few months off. I think I should definitely be able to move up to the 450' launch next time if weather conditions cooperate.

Near the Koehlers' house with Stephen. Powerlines down to the artificial island, then through the woods to the Esker trail, up to Dan Parker, then back to the North trail, but cut through the first field before Blood Rd., crossed the straits on the beaver dam, and connected back to the trail. Out to the power lines, then on the trail that heads toward the houses, cut left and went down the steep hill, then back to the power lines, through the tree farm, and home. I made an effort to keep Stephen moving along as fast as I could persuade him to go, which turned out to be a decent pace, especially since a bunch of this was off trail, sometimes through light green. He's slow when going through wet areas, tries to keep his feet dry. I explained that it's not like dance shoes, nobody cares if you get mud on your O shoes, and that thought seemed to entertain him. He still had decent energy at the end, as evidenced by the fact that I was able to persuade him to sprint up the driveway.

Four ticks on me, none on him, though Nancy pulled one off his shoulder this morning.

C • wow! 1

Tomorrow's weather forecast: spot-on perfect.

Nooticeably stiff/sore when I woke up this morning. Not that I should be surprised.

Surebridge Mountain, Blue. Since I had to get back to Worcester for a ballet performance, I arranged for an early start, which had the fine side effect of getting me out while it was still cool. Did pretty well for the first half of the course, then started making errors in the latter half, none of them huge, but a couple of minutes here, a couple of minutes there, and it adds up. Might have just been getting tired. I heard that Ted Good, who had the same time as me yesterday, was 15 minutes ahead today, so it could well be that although my per km times were essentially the same both days, that today's course was faster, and everybody else will have done much better as well. But I left long before results were posted, so I'll have to wait and see.

This was really a fine meet, on the first nice weekend of the year, and on the north part of Surebridge, which is a truly sweet area that has been underutilized. And for once I managed to mostly keep my act together and turn in decent performances here. I was a bit worried coming into this, because I really haven't been orienteering very much lately, compared to what I used to do, and I felt like I might be really rusty, but it turned out okay.

AOWN report: Approaching the 4th control, I got hawked! I've heard stories about this happening to people over the years, but had never had it happen to me before. I don't know birds well enough to know what kind it was (the stories typically involve goshawks), but it was a reasonably good-sized bird. It was making a repeated squawking noise, and on the first pass it came at me from the front, probably passing about a meter or so over my head. Then it made another pass, coming at me from behind. Never got close enough that I felt like it was threatening to actually hit me, and I was just thinking that it was totally cool. I also had a moment of insight and respect. It's a fairly common experience for hang gliders to circle in the same thermal with hawks, in close proximity, and I'm looking forward to being able to do that someday. But it's one thing to be circling out in the wide open. This bird was in a hemlock forest, maneuvering around trunks and branches, which is way, way cooler than I can ever hope to be.

C • ballet 4

Yep, looks like the Blue course today was faster. Per km times were on average almost 10% faster, and only three people had slower per km times, while mine was dead even with yesterday, thanks to getting sloppy at the end. Still, I wound up (barely) in the top half of the two-day finishers on Blue, and I think it's been a while since that happened.

Blue, Day 2 - Splits