Training Log Archive: ajriley

The long went much better than the middle, but still had some problems of its own. I think I did a much better job focusing on compass especially for some of the longer legs through vague terrain. However, I still got off of my compass on some of the easier legs where I didn't rely on it as much and it led to some mistakes.

Number 9 for example I took a bad rough compass and didn't check until I got stuck in green and had to go around losing almost 1 minute.

Then there were other times like Number 5 where I tried to take a good compass and ended up getting pulled off by features in the terrain or overcorrecting.

A few other places the terrain clearly dragged my compass a lot. Looking at Number 3 I had a very good compass then got dragged down the reentrant.

A lot of other legs I used a lot of compass work and they ended up really well, but I feel like sometimes I didn't do it as well as I should've.

Map with route:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/hkziVzUytUd823ca8

Day 2 - Long - Varsity Male - Splits

Event: QOC Junior Nationals
 

The Middle did not go so well, but I think I knew pretty much what went wrong and how to fix it for the Long and I feel like the Long went a lot better because of what I learned in the Middle.

Starting with control Number 2 I made a pretty big mistake. In this case it was definetly because I spaced out while I was running down the reentrant that leads to number 2 and I had no idea how far I went because I just assumed I would be able to tell where I was on the reentrant by the terrain, but because it was so vague I couldn't really tell.

Since I was already making a mistake at the 2nd control I panicked and made the beginners mistake of running around in circles for several minutes before hitting the road and relocating.

So basically what I learned just from this control was that I need to focus on distance when running linear features especially if its not easy to tell where you are on the feature. And I also remembered that when making a mistake I should not panic and instead just find the nearest thing that makes relocating easy and then just re attack since I could've probably saved 3-4 minutes of time just by doing that.

Anyways,

The problems didn't stop there. I tried not to let screwing up the 2nd control bother me and just continue the race normally, but I ended up making the rookie mistake of trying to make up time by pushing harder and not thinking as much. This led to a lot more mistakes and made my race a lot less focused.

For Number 5 I took a compass off of the edge of the spur leading into Number 5 but got completed dragged off the compass by the wrong reentrant. I've been noticing this problem a decent amount in my orienteering recently and need to work on improving my confidence in my compass since I tend to rely too much on reading the terrain even when taking a good compass.

A had a bunch of clean legs after that which I was pretty happy with since I was up there with the faster runners in terms of splits.

Then came Number 10 which confused me a little bit since I did a pretty good job up until the control circle, but again I didn't know how far I was down the stream and I was worried I'd passed Number 10 since it was in a pit. I think if I just remembered where I crossed the streams and just used distance estimation to get to Number 10 it would've worked a lot better.

Number 11 was a small mistake again with distance estimation I just assumed I had gone far enough when I haven't and was afraid I'd missed it. I think I need to be more confident in my routes before stopping and wondering if I've gone too far.

Number 12 was an absolute disaster again because I wasn't able to understand how far I'd went. For some reason I thought I went WAY too far and had passed number 12 when I really just hit the reentrant I was supposed to cross.

Overall a lot of problems on this course came down to me either not taking a good enough compass or just not being confident and hesitating before reaching the control so in the future I want to work on having much more confidence when attacking into controls.

Map with really tiny route :)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Tj7F2WQaehTdaJqg8

Relay with Peter and Jessica. I was first leg and I was going to take it super easy and run it in Crocs (which would've been a terrible idea). Ended up taking it relatively easy trying not to over exert my legs.

Probably my best race of the weekend in a technical sense since I made no mistakes besides a small 10 seconds maybe on the first control but I was able to recover quickly.

I think just going slow helped a lot with this terrain plus the terrain in general wasn't as hard as the part we ran in the middle.

Map with route (the route is really small so you might need to zoom in)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/7B22giCTE1xN3hdW7

Day 1 - Middle - Varsity Male - Splits

Sprint time! It was great to see everybody from the Junior team again and get to meet some of the newcomers for the first time.

This race went incredibly well for me. I did a great job staying focused in the beginning since the course threw you into a somewhat complicated area right off the bat.

I also feel like I did a great job being confident in my routes and not hesitating (for the most part).

The only obvious placed I lost time was Number 10 and Number 12.

Number 10 I'm still debating which route is better, through or around, but nevertheless during the course I was running behind Siri and when we came to number 9 I still hadn't chosen a route for number 10 and had hoped Siri would just pick the right route and I could go that way. Anyways we both ended up losing 10 seconds hesitating before picking to go back around.

Number 12 also I think I took a slightly worse route choice compared to just running up around the construction.

Map with tiny route (zoom in)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/iG6iDNhwWPgaVtRF7

Sprint Course - Splits