Training Log Archive: fredder

Champs day 2. Resolving not to make the same mistakes as yesterday, I started more cautiously and managed the first couple controls OK. #5 proved to be another nightmare. Got to about 200m from control with good map contact, then it should have been a cakewalk to hold a line and find the second swamp with the control on it. Unfortunately, there were a lot more swamps than I was expecting, and I had not paid enough attention to distance and other features to know which were the mapped ones. Not wanting to have another 1hr leg like yesterday, I decided to bale quickly--which in this case was probably the wrong decision as I could have probably just continued on my bearing, checking each swamp as I went along. Instead I decided to head S to what should have been a huge obvious swamp--then never found it. Now with even less confidence, I decided to change tactics and head E, expecting to either reach the uncrossable swamp (would I know an uncrossable swamp by just looking at it???), or a trail (not likely given the previous day's experience with trails). Surprisingly, I did come across the swamp (and it looked particularly nasty), and then for good measure hunted around for the trail and found it too. After that, it was easy to find #5. So then, on the route to #6, I figured I could find that same trail again and use it. That worked great for a few minutes until the mapped trail exploded into a network of unmapped trails. Several minutes of backtracking and hunting around for a blaze later, I got back on the map and went on to 6.
Determined not to make the same mistakes as yesterday, I compensated by making a new one--skipping the second to last control, leading to a mispunch.

Event: US Two-day Classic O Championships
 

First day of 2-day classic champs. Distance and climb probably about 3x nominal after all the wasted effort. Clearly not mentally prepared for such intense navigation. What a mess.
Positives: felt pretty good running in the woods, about half the legs I actually was pretty happy about.
Negatives: easily distracted by other people and imagined (probably not real) issues with the map and park. Re the latter, marked trails were invisible on the ground and so badly blazed that it would have been better to ignore them entirely. But the killer was a nearly 1hr leg to #9 that also had me baffled by the map. Went off line low with a last minute route change to avoid a crowd of people (mistake 1), I ended up overcompensating by going too high later and stumbled upon a feature that "just had to be" the narrow hill I was looking for. It was long, narrow and clearly stood out, with a line of rock/cliffs on the upper side. There wasn't anything else mapped within 500 meters that it could be, and this just seemed to be far to obvious to be not mapped. Looking at the map now, I still can't come close to reconciling what I saw with what's on the map. In any case, my stubbornness prevented me considering any alternatives, so I kept looking for the control where it "had to be". I even to relocate several times to some nearby streams and trails (should have known better...) and convinced myself I was still right about the narrow hill. Only after baling in the opposite direction and finding #10 could I work backwards and find #9. Clearly, the relocation skills need some work. I could have gone to the car in the parking lot, had a drink, and gone back to #9 in the time it took me to find it.

C • Technique 2

Day 1 Green X - Splits

Around the block again, with a longer (~4min) pace run thrown in the middle as well as some shorter ones. Felt better than yesterday, but not great. Not sure about tomorrow.