Training Log Archive: barb

Fairly clean.
Thanks to all - UNO, Valerie, etc - for the lovely weekend!

Very exciting to see the twins and Alec there, and doing well. It's very cool that Alec did the Highlander this year; apparently Anna and Elina were originally also going to do it, but they had injuries.

Isabel struggled enormously on orange 4-5 on Saturday, and ended up DNFing as a result. Sunday morning on the way to the meet, I went over following a bearing and my recommended control-punching procedure with her. She was not particularly welcoming of this advice, but she had a good run on Sunday, no doubt coincidence.

Sunday Green - Splits

one or two bobbles

Saturday Green - Splits

From the new math teacher:
I really wanted to say thank you for today. This was my first orienteering expierence and I had a great time! I know that my students had been looking forward to it and now I know why. I think it was not only a great team building exercise but I think it was especially important and eye opening to students who normally do not get out of the city and into the woods.

C • Give yourself a pat on the back 6

Walking around control setting, pickup, photography, at the grade 7-8 orienteering field trip at Boojum Rock.

Sayed is in a wheelchair; he contacted the teams by phone to find out where they were, and whether they needed help. Isabel and David provided navigational consultation.





The finish chute systems worked well this year








Teams get points for picking up garbage, which is transformative in our interactions with the land managers.




The store, where kids exchanged tickets for prizes, was well-stocked.


There was a healthful-food store and a knick-knack store, and you can see which was the most popular:


Many of the controls were a gift from PG - thanks!




Thanks to NEOC for the map and the finish banner!

Getting nervous about tomorrow's orienteering field trip. Also getting nervous about 10/21 logistics with the 5th graders. Work is intensifying. David's schoolwork needs a lot of nurturing. Etc. Nervous. Looking forward to a future time of relative calm, but I guess this is fun too. I get to see Isabel's soccer game today.

Early this morning I created four sets of flash cards with orienteering symbols on them. I also made an example course on an old Franklin Park map. Then I met with the teacher before school to plan today's lesson. I rode off to work, then came back to teach the first half hour of the lesson. Then back to work.

Here is the kind of email that just makes me happy. It is from one of the parent chaperones to several of the others. (For the big junior high orienteering field trip that is finally happening on Friday.)


Hello Pond People -- we have a "Pond Transition" set-up to plan. Who can still come to the Fells early? who wants to ride together? anybody have a wagon that they can fit in their car/van? would it fit in mine?

I'm proposing that we meet at 32 Garfield Street at 7:15am on Friday (ouch) and, of course, it would be good to be in as few cars as possible. Leaving at 7:30 - gets us to Fells at 7:50or so - which leaves us about 30 mins to haul & set-up and then get back to parking lot for Barb's chaperone orientation at 8:30. We are about a 7min walk from the parking lot - 3-5minute walk from the drop-off point.

Please let me know your availability and how you want to get there -- looking forward to being in the woods on Friday.

The kid in the wheelchair has decided to come along on Friday's trip instead of staying at school and doing phone support from a distance. Good news, and another challenge...

Also, hugely cool: Richard Ebright, who competed for the US at world Trail-O champs, is willing to come to the school and talk with the kids about his experience.

work commute, Harvard commute. Exam in Epigenetics today; I am underprepared.

I spent an hour with the new 5th grade class at Morse. I brought in a huge ($40) color print of the old version of the Franklin Park map. I talked about the national meet and invited questions. I showed the poster of the US team... in action! They asked whether any of the US team members would be shadowing them at the meet on 10/21. I said probably not, but that I would try to arrange for them to meet US team members. They asked if you can earn medals. I said yes. Some of them wanted know if they could try orienteering without a shadow. I said, at local meets you attend outside of school. We did some orienteering on the school grounds, and counted paces walking and running for 100m. They wanted to know if it was normal for kids to be shadowed. Seems like we're off to a good start, and going to a national meet appears to be motivating.

I need to send home a newsletter for their parents, and plan Wednesday's lessons, and deal with meet logistics, and figure out how I'm going to get enough CORI'd shadows, or how we're going to pull this off... And figure out how I can get them to learn enough about orienteering to do white courses 2 weeks from Friday. Maybe I can have non-CORI'd shadows, but have the CORI'd chaperones stationed around the course? Hm.