Training Archive: barbIn the 30 days ending 2007-09-30:
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| S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Saturday Sep 29 | ||
| Event: Boulder Dash 2007 | ||
Friday Sep 28 | ||
| Running 20:00 [1] | |
| weight:136lbs | ||
| Dropped David off at an appointment in Arlington, then jogged to Alewife where I shopped for kids' stuff and lettuce.
In a recent Science magazine, I read a bit in an article about foxes being tamed. | ||
| Bicycling 8:00 [1] | |
| Tonight we watched a documentary about the NY Cosmos with Pele and others in the 70s. | ||
Thursday Sep 27 | ||
| Running 16:00 [1] | |
| Oh my god I actually went RUNNING! It was really hard, too.
To work early in the morning to start an analysis program, and write email to Randy Hall & Clare Durand about the importance of providing babysitting at A meets... | ||
| Stair climbing 4:00 [3] | |
| weight:135lbs | ||
| oof
(Every 2 minutes is another climb...) | ||
Wednesday Sep 26 | ||
| Bicycling 8:00 [3] | |
| We had our 2nd meeting of our lego robotics club. We built the robot and programmed it to go in a square, which I guess is the robotics equivalent of "Hello, World!" | ||
Tuesday Sep 25 | ||
| Bicycling 1:15:00 [3]14.2 mi (5:17 / mi) | |
| To Wakefield. Went to visit my tax guy for a 7 am meeting; he's still waiting to get info from me to file 2006 taxes. It occurred to me that maybe I should get PG to teach me something practical about taxes instead of me trying to explain molecular biology, on the next rogaine.
On the ride, I thought a little about the unused money for US junior/senior team coaching, and also about what Donna F said to me at the meet this weekend - that they want to know how to support people working with kids. Maybe some money could go toward deposits on places for training camps in the coming year? Those are always so helpful both for skills and for building the team as a community. Or maybe travel grants to get the junior team together at one or more of the upcoming A meets? Until this summer I thought juniors meant all kids, but realized slowly (as a result of the "junior training camp" that was not for all kids) that juniors means older teens. So I'm assuming that money available from USOF for juniors is not for development of younger kids. As to developing younger kids, and working with schools - sounds like Chris Cassone and maybe others are thinking to develop a training for people who then go into schools. I don't think I need that. What I think I could use for my work in schools includes: money for printing maps, money for equipment (compasses - to share with club & other teachers), money for transportation of city kids to mapped areas, insurance coverage (do I have that as a NEOC member acting sort of on behalf of NEOC?), great printed brochures to explain orienteering to teachers and students - ideally with an up-to-date schedule of local events, money to pay the local club for map copyright when the club doesn't donate it, mappers to make maps of parks within walking distance, excellent movies about orienteering (kids usually like watching movies), ... Another thing that would be pretty useful is a collection of stories from people about their experiences teaching O in schools, so that we can see what actually works in different situations, and for different personalities. | ||
| C • It occurred to me that mayb... 3 | ||
Monday Sep 24 | ||
| Bicycling 12:00 [1] | |
| home work home soccer practice home | ||
| Note | |
| I read Kathy Greeley's book today, about a year with some pretty tough kids at the junior high. Creating a play brought them together as a community. I shed a few tears as I read the book. Hey, it was moving.
While I'm on the topic of books, we read "The Savage Lady and the Dwarf" this weekend. I started reading it to Isabel and we really liked it, so I read it to everyone. Recommended for anyone old enough (or young enough?) to not get too freaked out about the concept of knights beheading each other in tournaments. Great characters, funny dialogue. | ||
Sunday Sep 23 | ||
| Orienteering race 28:12 [4] | |
| First leg of 8-point relay. Caren & Kai Bedwell ran the 2nd & 4th legs. | ||
| Orienteering race 59:35 [4] | |
| 3rd leg of relay. | ||
| Note | |
David complained nonstop (or so it seemed to me) from the moment we left Cambridge until he started his first sprint on Saturday. This was annoying because he had agreed to come on the trip. Interestingly, he kept citing his homework as a reason he didn't want to be distracted with traveling and orienteering. I had pretty much decided to never ever bring him to any orienteering events ever again. Then on Sunday he came up to me, flushed from his relay race and said, this is really fun! and went on about his whole experience doing the relay. I think he performs well under pressure, and with a mass start. He hung out a lot on Sunday with Alec and the girls. He didn't start complaining again until Alec was gone, and then it was, I want to go - where's my GameBoy?
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| C • momentarily confused 7 | ||
| C • So while you were out runni... 12 | ||
Saturday Sep 22 | ||
| Event: Sprint Series Final & US Relay Champs | ||
| Orienteering 1:03:00 [3] | |
| A guess about my total time on two sprints. On the first it took me 15 minutes to find the first control! 1:4000 confused me... And supposedly I mispunched although I'm pretty sure I was at #9. Fun though, and Isabel won the white/yellow overall, so that was nice. | ||
| Note | |
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Sprint B Course 3 (R/B) - Splits | ||
Friday Sep 21 | ||
| Bicycling 45:00 [2] | |
| Home to Melrose.
Young guys in a van honked and hooted at me as they approached me from behind; I'm sure they got quite a disappointment when they passed and saw that I was a red-faced bespectacled F45. Still, I count it as a vote in favor of wearing reflective vests and still looking cool, which is not an easy sell to my older child. | ||
| Bicycling 35:00 [2] | |
| Melrose to work | ||
| Note | |
| We had a USOF rogaine committee call last night, attended by Peg D, Eric B, Eric S, Murray F, Jerry R, Mal H, Barb C. Main topics were how to encourage more rogaines to happen in both the US and Canada, and ideas for a Hi-Tec 6-hour rogaine series. Hi-Tec approached Jerry R with this idea; they'd sponsor events and provide a lot of support; local clubs would provide their expertise; someone from the O community might coordinate between the clubs and Hi-Tec. Possibly a good opportunity for spreading the word about orienteering and rogaining, but still very much in the early stages. Would probably happen in 2009. Got some good ideas on both topics from the attendees. Other things we didn't get to because of time include Vlad's proposal for expanding the definition of who can put on a sanctioned event, and getting more people to come to rogaines - committee members have a bunch of good ideas on this as well.
The NARC 2008 bid from Bob Reddick fell through because he wasn't granted access to the land he'd been eyeing. :-( | ||
| Note | |
| Looks like we're all going to CT for the whole weekend, after thinking that Isabel and I might not make it at all. Soccer game was postponed to an unspecified later date. I hope we can find some friends to have dinner with on Saturday! So many O people I'd like to hang out with... | ||
Thursday Sep 20 | ||
| Bicycling 36:00 [2] | |
| Arlington back home, then work then home. | ||
| Running 48:00 [2] | |
| To Arlington to retrieve the bike. Left home around 6:45, and started off by running around the block with David. | ||
Wednesday Sep 19 | ||
| Bicycling 23:00 [3] | |
| to work. To Arlington. Dave left the car there this morning after dropping off a kid at an appointment. I rode out there and took the kid and the car back, leaving my bike. Now I have to find time to run back out there to retrieve the bike.
I'm excited because today will be the first meeting of the Lego robotics club that I'm starting, with 6 kids. | ||
| C • LEGO Robotics 6 | ||
Tuesday Sep 18 | ||
| Bicycling 38:00 [3] | |
| to work, to home, to school, to home.
Went to the parent open house for the junior high. I was blown away. The teaching team (4 core teachers) works closely together, and it really shows. Kathy Greeley, who used to teach in this school's junior high, wrote a book about their approach. All the kids get to do 10 hours of community service this year, and they'll put a lot of thought into what they'll do. The math teacher has been there forever and is really good. In science they're studying life sciences, with a project-based approach, and will do field work over 4 trips. In Humanities, they'll be studying justice and dissent, with three pieces. First comes the birth of the USA, including the declaration of independence, the constitution, the bill of rights. They'll have a "Democracy Forum" evening where each kid will make a speech in support of some side of some issue (ok, i'm a little vague on this at the moment). Then they study a radically unjust society with a focus on the holocaust. Each student will prepare a monolog and deliver it in character, from a historical person who in some way fought for justice for people hurt in such a society. I know I'm going to have to bring the kleenex box for both evenings - I cry way too easily and I know I'm going to be trying not to sob because it's going to be so amazing. Anyway, the third piece is to study a society that is just recovering from some horrible period - how do you create a just society after such an experience? Two years ago they studied Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda and a couple other places. Yay Cambridge public schools! And of course, they started off the year with a day of team orienteering. A couple parents told me their kids were dismayed before the orienteering trip because they were put with other kids they didn't know, and then came back afterwards really having enjoyed being with their teammates. | ||
Sunday Sep 16 | ||
| Bicycling 10:00 [1] | |
| Rode over to the solar house MIT is entering into an upcoming competition. I had Dave drive the kids over - our kids plus two additional boys who were over for what they're too old to term a "playdate".
Then to the grocery store to pick up dinner supplies. I didn't orienteer today because I stayed home with Isabel - wanted to get slightly caught up on the many things I'm overdue on. Dave took David and Aiury. Aiury is David's good friend who has been out of the country for the past year and has just returned. Happily, Aiury really liked orienteering today. The boys raced each other on White and then did Yellow together. Apparently they ran into Michael Commons often; he was also doing Yellow. The boys said Michael kept giving them unsolicited advice, and then told them they should be disqualified for all the help they were getting. Michael told Dave that the kids need to work on distance estimation, and I'm sure that's true. | ||
| C • 3 | ||
| C • solar competition 2 | ||
Saturday Sep 15 | ||
| Note | |
| Dream last night - Dave wanted to adopt a baby, and I acquired her somehow, a cute little girl, dark hair and a ready smile. We were at a gathering of bluegrass bands; each band was playing in its own circle. Dave was over with the Bag Boys, playing the tambourine and dancing around, and didn't seem particularly interested in the babester after a quick hello. I decided he must not realize it was OUR baby, but felt annoyed anyway.
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| C • Poor Dave 4 | ||
| Note | |
| Went to Foxborough to see the Revolution beat FC Dallas last night. Fairly large party, with 4 of the girls from Isabel's soccer team and assorted other families. | ||
Friday Sep 14 | ||
| Bicycling 1:15:00 | |
| home to school to Arlington to work to home | ||
| Hiking 30:00 [1] | |
| A little night O with Dave to pick up the final few envelopes from Wednesday's field trip before the rains come. | ||
Thursday Sep 13 | ||
| Orienteering 1:30:00 [3] | |
| Ran around putting out controls for a work outing. I used some of the control locations from yesterday so I could check for envelopes still in the woods. Got about 10; still have quite a few to check at some point. Beautiful day. David had the day off school, so he and his friend Reid came along and were a bus. As we were heading home he actually thanked me for bringing him to the woods.
I put on 3 bus-stop-O's in 6 days! Map: 
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| Note | |
| OK, 21 hits to 10k. Feel free to leave me comments and I'll try to figure out who is number 10,000. Maybe it will happen while I'm off at dinner with my workmates and Isabel. | ||
| C • counting... 35 | ||
Wednesday Sep 12 | ||
| Orienteering 3:00:00 [2] | |
| Ramble about this excursion: Today's outing to the woods with 85 junior high kids, 6 teachers, 8 parents and J-J went just as well as you might imagine it would for a bunch of humans getting to enjoy being outdoors in woods on a perfect autumn day, with a breeze knocking down tons of yellow leaves, all fluttery and bright against the dark green of the white pine. It was typical of my endeavors: very complicated, with props & printouts, too ambitious for the prep time allotted. I was up all night and late getting the controls out: I arrived with only an hour to go, and there were 58 controls. Most controls were an envelope containing a puzzle piece or two, with a code written on the outside. 40 of these off-trail for 20 groups, each to get 2. There were 18 shared controls, thanks to a generous benefactor in the O community (thank you!), and these were on trails. And two of the controls were moving controls. This time around I asked for the kids' cell phone numbers, and each team had at least one phone, and at the end of the day I got word that one group was lost with no map or compass and had found control 116 and were waiting there to be rescued, so that worked fine. I ran around putting out controls as they did their first exercise, then checked back in with the group to make sure there was a good plan for getting started on the next activity, the team O I just described. It was bad; there are three puzzle controls I never got out. I got a lot of help from Dave and the kids last night: grading the licensing exams, making nametags, stuffing the team envelopes (maps, 3-page instruction manual including bus-stop-O directions, two types of punch cards, a compass loan request card). When I arrived at the parking lot this morning I was expelled by The Man, some guy who owns or works for the owner of that defunct medical center land; they're now enforcing their right to enjoy acres of decaying parking lot without a lot of riffraff coming in to park at the very edge of that asphalt sea and duck into the woods with their dogs or lovers or paint-ball guns or compasses or bird books and binoculars. That threw a loop as our base camp last year and intended one this year is in a meadow on ex-medical-center land, and I'd arranged for the buses to do their pick-up from that parking lot, so I had to figure out what to do about that. By the time the kids left, I was pretty exhausted, figured it was good rogaine training; I trudged slowly around picking up the control flags, but I think there are likely to still be a bunch of envelopes in the woods; I wonder whether, if I posted a map, I could con any CSU people into organizing a training that involves checking to see if there are still envelopes in the woods and if so removing them... My knee hurt after a while, but more in the center under the kneecap than the outside right tendon (?) below the kneecap. There were a remarkable number of vehicles driving around in the woods! I saw a dark SUV, a couple water resource authority trucks, two other vehicles that looked police-y but in a conservation land sort of way, maybe some work trucks. But so weird to see so much traffic in there! I meant to be the second bus (thanks by the way J-J you are a great guy and the hat looks at least as good on you as it has done on all the other wonderful O bus drivers) (I mean, with the obvious exception of Samantha who looks better than the rest of you put together, no offense) but was putting out controls, so random parent-who-has-been-on-an-orienteering-field-trip-with-me-before did that route, way too complicated for him, he got quite off schedule... Kids didn't seem to mind all the snafus and did their kid thing and had fun. My son, who is after all in 7th grade, did not even appear to be embarrassed that I was taking his peers on a field trip. The teachers are great: calm, steady, intelligent, open to doing this. Went home afterwards and went to bed. Woke up to Chinese take-out and some happy kids. Now for a shower and neighborhood walk w/Dave. | ||
| Note | |
| In the next few days, I will be celebrating the 10,000th hit on my AP log. Should I be throwing a party or something? | ||
| C • 10,000 5 | ||
| Note | |
Map for control setting:
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Tuesday Sep 11 | ||
| Bicycling 40:00 [2] | |
| To work, to school to deliver the exams, to home (took a nap!), to Dunkin Donuts (no corn muffins left! - and RAINY), to work (to dry out), to home. | ||
| Note | |
So here is the "navigation licensing exam". If at least half of the 4-person team does pretty well on this, the team can opt out of having an adult chaperone tomorrow. It's supposed to be easy. It was made under duress (little sleep, last-minute) so probably not optimal... One thing I like about it is that every single kid will have visualized their first leg (which is the one in the test). I hope it will be sunny tomorrow!
As I was biking home from having dropped off the exams at school this morning I started to worry about whether any of the hill silhouettes or fake little maps might have unfortunate shapes. Those kids are so quick to find stuff to snicker about. You should have heard them when I was explaining about there not being bathrooms in the woods. | ||
Monday Sep 10 | ||
| Note | |
| Taught 4 classes about orienteering today in preparation for Wednesday's field trip to the woods. I used powerpoint animation to explain the bus stop O concept. To prove that orienteering is really a sport, I showed a photo of that Wheaties box. I didn't mention AttackPoint, nor did I explain that the guy on the Wheaties box posts shirtless photos of Zac Efron on AP, even though I bet some of them know who Zac Efron is.
They were kind of quiet; not too many questions. Maybe it's a beginning-of-the-year thing. I brought in a hat to explain the bus stop O part of this. [Things got less quiet in the afternoon 8th grade class... I am definitely not cut out for being a teacher! What an exhausting job.] | ||
| C • The key to teaching 8th graders 3 | ||
| Bicycling 1:00:00 [2] | |
| To school, to appointment in Arlington, to school, to work, to home. | ||
Sunday Sep 9 | ||
| Canoeing 1:00:00 [2] | |
| Canoe-O with Izzy. Got back 4 minutes late... | ||
Saturday Sep 8 | ||
| Event: UNO Camping Weekend | ||
| Orienteering 25:00 [1] | |
| Walking around (with one brief run) as bus driver in the bus stop O | ||
| C • Where's the Hat Photo? 3 | ||
| Orienteering race 1:30:00 [2] | |
| Night-O. Traveled with Dave. Skipped 6 controls. Settled on a slow, straight line strategy that worked well. Knee began to hurt after about 30 minutes of off-trail travel. Actually have no idea how long we were out there. | ||
Wednesday Sep 5 | ||
| Note | |
| Last night's nightmare was that I have to give 2 talks late this week, and hadn't written them yet. When I woke up, I realized that was about the 3 orienteering events I get to design: Saturday's Bus Stop O, Wednesday's junior high outing, and Thursday's orienteering outing with my workmates. | ||
| Note | |
| 10:30 pm. So far I have 3.5 bus routes for Pawtuckaway. Two are for fast people like John and Samantha. Two are for walkers. All pick up at least one control from the day's white, yellow and orange courses. (Passengers get extra points if they bring back picked-up controls from the buses.)
But the main thing is that we sewed 3 hats (so far) for the bus drivers. I am biased, and I think they are hats to die for. They are also very flattering and, well, *enhance* the appearance of the wearer. Sporting such a hat would be more pleasant on a map near Laramie, where there are not so many hat-knocking-off branches. But wearing them at Pawtuckaway will be more pleasant, in that respect, than wearing them off-trail on a rogaine anywhere east of the Mississippi. Maybe I will take a picture. | ||
Tuesday Sep 4 | ||
| Bicycling 8:00 [1] | |
| Am considering whether to set some goals here. Currently floating around untethered when it comes to "training". Plus have injured knee; kids are back and started school; time is tough to find... | ||
Saturday Sep 1 | ||
| Hiking 1:00:00 [1] | |
| Putting down an hour to get the hike on the log, but it was of course longer both Friday and Saturday.
Went to Lonesome Lake hut with 10 kids age 3-12. Dave, Keegan (age 5) and I hiked a bit further along the Fishin Jimmy trail. In the morning all the kids did a 3-mile hike with us before heading back down the mountain and on to mini-golf in Lincoln. Unfortunately, my knee bothered me in the same way it did in the last hours of the rogaine last weekend. It hurt when I was going downhill (and only then). I took 1600 mg ibuprofen in two doses before and during the hike. 
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| C • Eat eat eat 7 | ||