Training Log Archive: AliC

Hmph. I'm disagreeing with my Garmin again. It's taking forever to upload and it reports all activities as having occurred just now, when I've most recently turned it on and doesn't have my most recent workout. Boo. So numbers made up from what I remember.

Anyways, on a brighter note, this was a great run at Rock Creek State Park, IA where we camped for the night.

I intended to do the full loop around the lake, but the trail was closed at some point going clockwise, so reversed and went along the roads on the other side for awhile. Tom was mountain biking kinda-sorta with me, meaning on roads he was much faster and on the trail bit he had to work pretty hard. =)

Scenic around the lake and nice to have more hills! Was pretty happy cruising at 7:30ish pace towards the end of the run, although, yeah, hills matter!

C • well done! 2

Journey begun, goodbye Toledo! Should be camping in Iowa tonight, hoping for a nice run around the lake tomorrow morning!

Later note: didn't arrive to the campsite in time to bike, just cook dinner, boo!

C • Have a great trip! 5

Track pyramid with kinda tired legs from past few days. So I cut out the planned 1600 at the top of the pyramid and just did 400-800-1200-1200-800-400. I lost the .gpx of the workout, but I remember times weren't what I wanted. It was hard just to do the 800s in 2:45 and that's the pace I ran the whole 5k in for Saturday?

Going to say moving/packing/leaving stress and solid workouts the past few days account for it...

Last Wildwood run. Got around to almost all the trails, mid-60s and a strong breeze, pretty great running!

And then core back at Tom's apartment, which he joined me for. Just the normal 10 min abs, 2 min back.

Then ran off to the Post Office to ship three 40 lb boxes of physics+math books to Reed. Yay for media mail!

So this planning-my-training thing worked well last week, if I get the orienteering in as planned today, will be to the letter! So here goes on next week's plan, which is a bit more tricksey due to moving across the country:

Monday - ~1hr good bye to Wildwood, core
Tuesday - track pyramid: 400,800,1200,1600,1200,800,400; running drills
Wed - run or bike at Rock Creek State Park, IA, ankle plyo drills
Thurs - run or bike at Rock Creek State Park, IA, core in evening at Nebraska hotel
Fri - Laramie Daze 1, running drills
Sat - Laramie Daze 2, core in evening
Sun - easy run at The Dalles, OR campsite

C • Training Plan 5

Warm-up jog, including extracting the maps from the awesome hiding place found by Barbara + Michelle, woo!

Bishop Lake Training

A great course, with a lot of legs I hadn't really considered or ever run, despite setting courses here twice, racing twice and training a good handful of times... so thanks Igor! =)

Really tripped up on a few, I'll document those since time is precious and need to pack!

2- Ran too low and right passed it. I really should have been more attentive that the ditch was up a form line and a contour from the flat bottom. Distance judgment made me worry/stop at the right distance, just not high enough and then instead of going higher, continued on.
11- Tried to make the dot knoll to the SE be my hill, but saw the streamer actually on the way. I had judged that the correct hill was too far down the nose, wrong. Slightly twisted contour picture, I think.
13 - Drifted N on my way across, and when I came out the big trail things were not as certain as to let me boldly dive in and try to go find a vague spur. So I trotted on the trail, until I figured I really was in about the right spot (lost time!) and the spur was in fact there.

All in all, great to be out in the woods, really wasn't as terribly thick as I'd been fearing and really very few prickly things, just lots of ground cover. And definitely a fun last course to do in this neck of the woods!

C • Were all the streamers stil... 2

Jog back to the car and off to Barbara's! Really great to say bye to a good number of SMOC folks instead of just disappearing over an orienteering-quiet summer. Will miss everyone!!

Jogging in place in the potty line. Which was too long and they split between men and women. Seriously? For portapotties? I mean, I understand when the dudes have the 4-slot urinal thing, but otherwise...

Tigertown 5k at Liberty Center, OH

Woo! 17:07 smashes previous PR of 17:24. So excited! Nice and steady at 5:30 miles the whole way, which I knew thanks to Garmin, no mile markers that I saw.

I was a little unsure of how my stomach felt at the beginning and my plan was to do a 5:40 first mile and then hopefully take it down into potential PR territory. I was holding back from the speedster flux at the beginning (high school boys) and still saw 5:08 pace for the first bit. Eep! But settled into a nice pace, and 5:30 felt good, so didn't slow to 5:40. And then it kept feeling fine for 2nd mile and ok, did start to hurt for the last one, but I knew was totally in control.

For the last mile, I was creeping up on training partner Kevin and pulled even at the 3 mile mark. But he had enough to pull a good finish in and got me by just a few seconds. Good to have a race!

C • Awesome! 9

Morning easy bike out the bike trail with Tom. Almost chilly out!

Yesterday learned how to hoe and harvest potatoes out at my friend Liz's farm. Potatoes are like buried treasure, fun to find.

C • neat 5

Last night, went to an author's talk on her book: How To Tell Toledo From the Night Sky. It features astronomers in Toledo who fall in love! Lydia (originally from Detroit, went to Bowling Green) was a great speaker and it was so much fun to hear about the novel-writing process (some connections to science paper writing, some major differences) and science and just life! Very psyched to read the book now. =)

Ok, and then this was my morning long run, interrupted with ankle plyo drills. Happy to have gotten the long run in, listened to 3 TED talks, first pretty boring on business strategy and it's current rapid evolution (Philip Evans). Then on how we are learning how to read peoples brains with fMRI, super cool, kinda scary (Mary Lou Jepsen). And then also cool, was the third talk about the need and a way to reform the big 3 Credit Ratings Agencies. Suggested way forward: make a new, independent and transparent Agency (Annette Heuser).

C • TED talk 2

Easy around Ottawa Park with Tom. Stormed hard last night, so mega-humid this monrning, but luckily only in the 70s.

10 min abs, 2 min core

Then off to get car checked up on before the voyage!

Warm up the long way to the track. Had to sneak through an ambiguous construction zone.

Normal running drills, ROTC just finishing up on the track, perfect timing.

4 x 1200

Was hoping for 4:07.5, for 5:30 pace for all 4, but ran 4:11, 4:07, 4:13, 4:18. These feeling easy at 4:07 would have made me confident for a PR bid Saturday, but I think hills on Sunday + killer Zumba yesterday meant for tireder legs today. So we'll just see, think I'll start on just under 5:40 pace for first mile, and hope to take down if feeling good.

Week plan:
Monday - run + core + Zumba
Tues - 4 x 1200 at 5k pace on track + normal running drills
Wed - easyish run + core
Thurs - ~9 mi run + ankle plyo drills
Fri - off/super easy
Sat - Tigertown 5k + normal running drills
Sun - Orienteering somewhere before heading to Barbara's

C • nice! 6

Ottawa Park with Tom, bonus hill and faster on the commando route. A hot and humid one!

Tried out the new Air Pegasi. They seem to work!

Core15 with Carli.

Kinda boring, just repeats of crunches, planck, bicycles and then supermen at the end. But abs were feeling it, so suppose that does the trick!

Killer Zumba! But no, seriously, this was hard! Carli, the new instructor is way more energetic. She might have been tigger in a former life. So smooth dancey-ness measure is down, but aerobic-ness measure is way up. Holy moly.

And then after slumping down the hill chatting with Leslie, motivated to jog home, where I drank lots and lots of water and then went out to Tony Packo's for a last Toledo-dog with Tom.

Another absorb Toledo day!

Badger brunch at Black Kite, shoe + sandal shopping at Dave's (new pair of Nikes won from 8k race), and then to Fort Meigs! We wandered around the Fort, marveled that trying to take it from the Maumee really would have been tough (it lasted two short sieges from the British in the War of 1812 and formed a place to gather and collect troops to re-take Detroit).

Then, workout time! Because Fort Meigs features the largest hill in Toledo. I did three intervals of 5 hill-laps (so up+down):
7.38
7.19
6.55
And then was pretty toast. Hot and humid is back!

C • Badgers for brunch 2

Morning loop around Ottawa Park, a slight deviation at the Police Museum, which had a sign indicating it was only open on Saturdays until later notice. Legs feel ok so far, maybe too early for any soreness from last night's race...

Ankle plyo drills - back to these!

Dave's Running Ohio-Michigan 8k

Not bad! 5:47 pace for ~5 miles for 1st woman. The vdot calculator says that's 17:31 5k pace, so good, but not PR-pace I guess.

Anyways, a fun and big race held at Centennial Terrace, an outdoor concert venue coupled with an old quarry that's turned into a commercial swimming hole. (Beach chairs on terraces built into the rock, all sorts of fun floating jungle-gym stuff, watersides.) If we weren't in the middle of a cool snap, totally would have gone in afterwards!

The race course was 100% flat and involved only 5 turns! Not the most captivating. But it did go to Michigan and come back, as advertised. And since it was a big race, there were people around to focus on trying to beat, so not boring.

Brats and beer and live music as part of the post-race party. Plus won a new pair of Nike shoes- anyone wear Nike and have recommendations?

Had to master reset my Garmin. It was freezing on the startup screen for oh, 45 minutes before moving on to the getting satellites business. I tried a soft reset, no help. Hard reset, no help. So then found instructions for the master reset (unsure what exactly it does more than a hard reset) and that seems to have worked. Hopefully Garmin disease is solved for the time being...

Only woke up at 5:30 this morning, not bad jet lag! First bit of run was jogging with Tom.

C • Good to see you are back an... 2

And a quicker paced rest of the two Ottawa Park laps. Such a nice day for running - 54 degrees and sunny! A plank is disarranged on the bridge over the creek on the North side, hope they don't close it for repairs...

New mission: check things off on the must-to-in-Toledo while still here for the next 2 weeks! Today's item was the Toledo Botanical Gardens, extremely close to my old apartment and helpfully on the way to my CSA pickup.

They were nice, with several mini-gardens within a larger landscape of lawns and trees. The best were maybe the herb and tea gardens. Their rose garden was actually pretty terrible, all the plants were small and struggling, some with fungus spots. Perhaps Toledo isn't the climate for roses, or something about this year has been particularly tough.

Anyways, after the gardens, when on an Ottawa Park loop with top, despite feeling very sleepy. Ran the first hill twice (counterclockwise loop) and went hard the commando route too. Tried the new Asics Gel Lyte 3 shoes I intend to race in on Thursday, they seem similar enough to the previous version that they won't be a problem!

Joggeroo around Milan, to see the sights! Because alone and with no one to chat with, totally the way I'd prefer doing it. Plus, it's like a city score-o, I totally took my compass with.

My route:
- Rotunda della Besana
- Palazzo di Giustizia
- Palazzo Reale
- Duomo (Milan Cathedral - impressive!)
- Galleria Vittorio Emanuele (one of first ever indoor shopping malls - very ornate!)
- La Scala (opera hall)
- Castello Sforzesco (a military castle throughout the ages, rebuilt many times, now houses 7 museums)
- S. Simpliciano church
- Palazzo di Brera (fancy library, on days besides Sunday, you can also visit the observatory!)
- Giardini Pubblici

And then, at my final stop in the gardens, I tripped hard and shredded my hands on gravel. Ouchie, ouchie! Finding it ironic that my worst injury from the week will be from a touristic joggeroo. But Leukotape to the rescue! Or at least so the wounds don't weep all over my last Italian pizza this evening...

C • City tour 9

C • I love seeing cities by run... 3

WOC Relay - Campomulo

Running final leg, so I got to spectate Sam through the run-through, but eep! She didn't come for awhile. Just as my brain was starting to worry if she badly sprained her ankle or something, she came through, running strong, focused on her map. Okidoke, then, game on! (She had a tough time particularly on one control in a tricky section and then a bit more on the next one.)

Sam gained a bunch of places on the second half of the course, and then Alex had probably one of the best runs of a person on that course for the whole day - mistakes were being made left and right out there. She returned with Russia nearly at the same time, Spain and Germany 30-45s ahead and hm, one other team I now forgot.

My goal was just to run clean and under control and only push the pace when my plan was 100% secure. This worked through the first loop, with just a small mistake due to thinking my control was on a rock pile instead of the pit behind it. I lost time to both Germany and Russia (but Russian was long world champ, so that was kind of expected) on the first loop. Heading to the second, I could see Canada up ahead on the hill, and passed her to 9 after a pause in an earlier, but not really evident from the contours reentrant (will have to look at this again when I get a map out). Then I was pretty alone for an uphill hike, when all of the sudden, I saw Germany again - woo! Still, didn't lose my head, took my own route and lost sight of her again. Then she reappeared at the beginning of the big decent leg. Ok off!!

But then I hit a road. Ok, cool, here's a road on the map - but why no cliffs on the upper side that I just fell down? Confused, let's run North until things make sense, I can figure it out at the bend. After a bit, it dawns, I'm on the *upper* road, not the *lower* trail. Whoopsie! Attempt to recover, but when I got down to the trail finally, it was hard to pick out what was actually trail in the open, and I ended up all the way at the road in the valley, before attacking the control from the paved road fork. About a 3.30 min error, so frustrating to have right at the end after a run I'd otherwise have been quite proud of! Gr!

Still, as a team, we did it. Remained close enough to Germany and ahead of Spain so not relegated to just having one spot, phew!

C • Rough go but Yeah for maint... 2

WOC Middle - Campomulo

Not terrible, but not great either. Lost some serious time early on with a bad route choice to #3. Then quite a bit more to #6, which I'm sad about because I was in such good contact nearly all the way there, and then gambled on taking a bearing to a reentrant that was going to lead me in, instead of following my cliff handrail, and it didn't work. =( Maybe the GPS tracking will give me some clues as to why, when I get back somewhere the internet is more solid.

At #6, a train of fast Pole (started 3 behind me) and then Louise (2 behind me) and the woman who started 1 behind, all found the pit before me and headed off on a new direction, which at least let me know where #6 likely was and I was towed a bit to #7, but almost missed it, luckily was enough in touch with my map to realize. So then they went off and I got myself to #8 on my own after attempting to make a 90 degree error (this seems bizarre, but does happen to me sometimes).

Was psyched to catch sight of Louise again at the end of the long leg to #10. So then was racing trying to catch up with her through the next set of controls, but didn't orienteer well enough and totally missed #12. Really? This is an area Wyatt and I discussed last night as being difficult and I just didn't respect it enough.

Then I raced hard up to #13, trying to catch up again to Louise. Probably some of the faster women improved, but at least when I finished I had the fastest split to that one. #14 I used the yellow easy route and was surprised to encounter Louise again there. We then raced over to the final woods control #15 together and I finished just in front of her, within the same second.

So definitely not my best orienteering, but then again, I didn't make any >2 min errors on a quite technical area. So not as much of an implosion as has happened sometimes in WOC Middle Finals!

C • Don't count on your GPS track 2

Walking/waddling/jogging around Monte Meletta, the middle model map.

Holy moly that's a change in terrain! Eep! Boulders and cliffs and trenches, oh my! And some denser vegetation, reducing visibility even more than just the jumbled rockiness. But I've orienteered ok on such complicated terrain before, the name of the game is to stay in contact. At least, that's how I survived the crazy start to the middle qual last year.

Things discovered:
1) Mere contours can sometimes indicate limestone rock edge drops, which might be considered a cliff by another mapper. Even reentrants can be essentially cliffs, without a hint of black.
2) Hard to relocate in rock-detailed areas. Will be best to be careful and not lose contact. Because in full contact, things did make sense.
3) Trails can look like cliffs!
4) Vegetation can be denser than on the long, making for reduced visibility, even without any light green indicated.
5) Scattered tree yellow seems to indicate recently felled, but mostly clean areas.
6) Big boulders are 2m+
7) Trenches require an effortful jump to clear. Where mapped as a ditch is easier.

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Details.
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Basically, the W side of the ridge made sense. The boulder at #42 was right at the end of the cliff, the reentrant at #41, was straight up the hill from it, passed right by the depression and a brown pit on the way, which also made sense. The reentrant at #41 was a little cut into a rock or some such, but no indication on the map that it should be rocky, so something to watch out for tomorrow.

#40 - I passed by too high the first time. I should have thought more actively about contours in order to hit the trail below it that was my attack point.

Then over the top, and decent into chaos. The E side of the ridge is more jumbled rock, I thought. My plan to #39 totally worked. "From trail, find gap in cliffs, defend, bearing straight E over another cliff, head N to first boulder." But there were Russians noisily arguing if the controlled boulder were actually the correct one. (They explained this to me, I haven't magically learned Russian.) It seemed to not fit actually that well with things around, but was very hard to ID which other boulders around were actually mapped. Not the most confidence-boosting.

#37, I sent through reentrant, then climbed to the top of the facing cliffs, I think safer would have been to stay low and be swept around by the steepness, climbing when the steepness was oriented N-S. From the top of the nose, I found it extremely difficult to place anything. It is just tons of broken limestone rock, cliffy in many unmapped places. And denser trees to add to it all. A bearing eventually got me out to the control and once there I could figure out what was what. I was on top of a cliff that was only indicated with a contour line, with two trench-like ingresses which were just marked as reentrants. Ok, now know that mapping style may be used - contours really can be cliffy/rocky!

#38, Picked my way slowly across the top, noting what was mapped as a cliff and what not. If you are in contact, things make sense. If you aren't, it's very hard to pick out what might be mapped and what not. So during the race, will have to stay in contact through zones like this, or have very, very clear catching features. (Preferably contour-based, not rock!)

#34, Back over the ridge, visiting the pit of doom along the way, and noting a totally unmarked cliff right off the trail at one point. Made the mistake of thinking a trail was a set of cliffs upon decent, something to look out for tomorrow as well. #34 itself was nestled in the 3rd little nook in a cliffy contour.

#33 - Followed flat out for awhile, then descending alongside a nose untilI could see a open area below, out to that and bearing to control across a broad shallow reentrant. Things making sense again on this side!

#43 - Down on a bearing, using trails from terraces when they were helpful. Stopped slightly too early, should have pace counted from the trail to give myself confidence.

#44 - Again, stopped to early, but had a good plan of following the forest out, which did in fact work.

WOC Long - Lavarone - 26th

Happy! This was a physically very tough course - the woods were lovely and runnable, it was familiar as New England-like woods, and there was tons of climb. I was just exhausted heading up the ski hill after the arena passage and was walking, even though it wasn't so steep. More hill training or more long runs, or probably more of both would have made the last loop a lot nicer!

Start: Whoa! Barely made it on time. 800m and 60m climb is apparently a fair bit to do in the 6 minutes assigned. But all ok.

1-4: Not tough controls to find, but not confident or spike-y. Probably because this is the first high-speed woods orienteering I've done, hm, since racing the Michigoat against Nick?
5: First route choice! Full stop. Immediately clear that you had to go left or right of the first hill. Saw a right route, but the end of it looked ugly. Saw a left route, more trails, could diagonal up to the approach I wanted to the control, go! But there was a third, even more on trails to the left that was almost certainly faster, totally didn't see. =(
6 - Easy, contour, find boulder on backside of hill.
7-11 - Battling the Czech woman who caught me on the way to 7. A bit initially disheartened to have been caught so early. But quickly resolved to kick it up a notch and not let her go. I used the trail to 11, hoping to maybe get ahead, but didn't work.
12: Second big route choice! I totally stopped again and thought about how to go. I saw the nice road route to the right, but also that it involved a lot of climb into the control, so looked harder at the straight route and decided enough trails could be put together that it should be pretty fast. And it really wasn't so bad, but apparently not as good as the road.
13-15: Thought I lost the Czech girl to 12, because she went the wrong way at some point, but she came back on route at some point. So the battle continued. I was more accurate to 14, thanks to reading my control description, woo! Then beat her just a smidge to 15, having been more audacious on a steep decent somewhere in the leg.
16-17: In-town legs. Confusing! Especially right at the beginning of going to 17 - a huge section of road was taped off, probably because it was kinda a cliff to get down to the field, but that wasn't indicated on the map and I was scared it was out of bounds or something. An unexpected surprise for a oxygen-poor brain.
18: Third route choice, not as big, but I beat the Czech woman, so I'm proud! Despite feeling awful on the climb out of the arena, my ski-trail to logged area to stonewall to ride into the rocky patch was faster than battling a steep up in the green woods.
19: Still leading, and a tough one with a tired brain, to pick out the right stream reentrant, with cliffs blocking your view of the correct one.
20: Aw, caught again by Czech
21-22-23: Battling just to get in, none hard, liked the right choice of using road and scooting by tennis courts to 23.

So definitely a good run that I'm happy with. Solving the route choices better would have been nice, as would have having more oomph to finish with, but just need to train more to have both of this things happen!

C • Nice!!! Happy for you :) 11

Easy-peasy around Lavarone - Pra' de l'Antal, the model for the long tomorrow.

31 - Mottled vegetation on the way there wasn't so bad to get through. Mostly on a bearing, should have used the curves of both trails past to a bit better advantage. Arrived a bit too far left of control, but knew it.
33 - An easy control from 31, sail down a bright yellow ride to a dull yellow linear depression, cross a stone wall, look for the second and slightly more uphill boulder.
34 - Contour and head slightly up. Checked off cliff with rock above, and then vague row of boulders and then easy to see up to the left the form of the reentrant the boulder was at the apex of.
45 - Contourish until indistinct trail, which was distinct enough, but had a big ugly tree down and blocking the way, so detoured into the light green woods anwaysy, trail, then on a bearing up and over to the hill top. The hill top mini-marsh was very obvious, so from that very easy to go straight E to the also-obvious dot knoll.
42 - Steep down! In a race, would have been skidding and using my hands, not today. Then up and down and up the next ridge. Had floated right already on the in-between ridge, corrected, but then still had to correct again when I was on the control's ridge. Got enough out of the contour flavor to let me know that.
41 - Skirted hill, then had a very clear reentrant in front of me. What? Where is this on the map? I'm supposed to find a hill. Kept on my bearing, intercepted a boulder, decided it had to be one of the low boulders because I also saw the trail below, so darted up and yep, control. I went and redid and discovered a reentrant under the '42' marking the previous control. Duh. Attacked as I intended, using the hill in the flat on the way.
44 - Passed over first trail, then the second one, and ran along it, waiting for a trail junction. *Thought* I had the junction but contours didn't make sense on the far side and the big trail seemed to continue straight, it was supposed to deviate up the hill. Realized after a bit that the 'trail' was actually just a clearing and continued on to the actual trail junction. Then between the hills, through a saddle and to the little reentrant.
43 - Easy control from 44, just along hillside, noted the reentrant on my left and then cliffs started appearing, waited until the last one.
39 - On a bearing and pace counting, took about 100 paces to go just over 1.2 cm. A bit uphill and not full-out. Had drifted a bit left.
38 - Crossed over the ridge at the dot knoll, then dropped a contour or two and skirted right to my cliff.
37 - Walked the trail up hill, because these legs are resting! Then ridge off the trail, only 25 paces to the depression (more of a pit?).
35 - Checking out the fields, long wet grass today, but not terrible footing. Tried to just go behind the big boulder at the edge of the field, but really needed to go a bit further south, which I did after a bit. Looking for the E-W stonewall would have been a good idea.
36 - In the mess of earthen stuff, but came in off of the long nose from the trail, so the pit was right there in front of me. Man and woman from Azerbijan said hello.
40 - Trails for a bit, then up a nose and over contouring, a downed tree made me dip to low and had to climb to reach the control. I should be a bit more fierce monkey-ing over downed trees tomorrow.
32 - Down and on a bearing, correct based on proximity to big cliff on right, cross trail, look to go just left of little hill to spike the dot knoll!

C • Good luck in the long! 5

A very easy map walk with Tori around Lavarone - South at 1:15 scale. Just noticing things, chatting about them.

Things discovered:
1) Low areas with light green may actually be kinda nasty now. We ran into some nettles down low in a stream bed, and there was just generally more deciduous greenery, making visibility lower. Higher light green was either thicker pines or more downed trees, so did reduce speed/visibility, but not as tough.
2) Very hard to ID mapped little cliffs on a hillside full of them and broken rock. My final approach used a stone wall higher than the cliffs to be sure of the right one.
3) Pits varied a lot. One was pretty teeny, would have been easy to see control in it from far away, the other had a built-up rim and could have actually hidden a control pretty well.
4) There was a crazy tall man-made retaining wall that got mapped as a cliff in some parts and a double stone wall in others. Just will be prepared to see either way, in case shows up.
5) Broken ground indicated with brown dots wasn't crazy obvious, but believable if you knew where to look.
6) A sole cliff on an otherwise just contours hillside was actually very obvious, a little dug out area, looked man made actually.
7) Yellow fields may or may not be hay-ed already. If so, super fast, a little harder if not.

Now time for the sprint relay!!!

C • Pits 3

Sprint Relay, leg 4 in Trento

A mixed feeling, because I had a better race myself, so very much happy with that. I battled the speedy Chinese woman for the second half of the race and ended up beating her in the final sprint, woo!

But as a team, we mispunched and that's never a good feeling. So others can learn (not calling Ethan out, he already knows!), might as well spell out: first, the map had a side A you were supposed to use first and then a side B. The organizers totally spelled this out to us, but it's hard to remember in the stress of a start and Ethan went off using the wrong side and totally confused for a minute or a bit more. Second, and the actual DQ: the classic missing a control directly on the line to a further control. Always something to be careful of.

My race started even with Slovenia, we raced on out. She was going a good speed off the start, I felt no compulsion to pass. We had different for kings to #1, then came out together to 2 and then again forked to #3, after which point I must have gotten ahead because I didn't see her again. I was perhaps too timid to 3 finding the passage through the canopy. #4 I messed up, spending awhile checking out the incorrect statue on the open instead of going to the center of the pavement. A few seconds lost and I think the Chinese woman caught me here. #5 and #6 were fine, saw Canada and Ireland for the first times. Maybe should have gone right instead of left to 6, especially given using the air punching.

#7 was easy, taking us to the stadium, although my route may have been very slightly longer because of irregular shaped buildings. Passed Ireland in the stadium and then Canada on the way to #8. #9 and #10 was right on China's heels, so they were made a bit easier. Then the long route to #11. I passed China along the way, but then mistook the passage opening and nearly ran by it, thinking I needed to go further! But the control was visible and looked the right distance and on a water thingy, so I checked it out and phew! Time to go chase down China again! Didn't go overboard, let her lead and just crept the space down to #12 and #13, knowing it was going to come down to who had faster legs. I had a different route in mind to #14, the last control, so took that and was happy to come out to the last control in front. I knew she couldn't be far behind and I'm sure was going to give it her all, so I just accelerated as much as I felt I could and not fall over around the final turn. I heard her grunt in frustration on the very final sprint after the curve, she must have put in too much to reel me in and didn't have the gear needed to push past as I went 100%. Kinda on the other side of the equation than the end to the World Games sprint, but still got it!

C • Woo hoo! 5

Sprint Relay Model - Pergine Valgusarna

With Ethan and Ross after successfully navigating from Jesolo and finding the organizer with our maps, woo!

I drew a course on, the guys copied, and we did it as two sections, meeting up after the first and at the end to see if any routes were interesting. Didn't feel that tired, and orienteering felt pretty smooth.

Map walk/jog around Lavarone - South on the 1:15 map to just try to get into that mode. Ross delivered me close to the lake and just went back from there. Legs felt pretty tired on the steep ups, so I just took it mega easy, walking and taking breaks. The idea is to be into the map, not take juice out of the legs!

C • Good luck tomorrow!! 2

Event: WOC 2014 + 5 Days of Italy
 

Sprint Qual - Burano - Mazzorbo

Oof! Caught out by a gate that didn’t look like I could go through it, and although it was right where I thought I should go through, I didn't have enough confidence and just took off in some direction. (On the way to control #12.) And then I relocated *amazingly* poorly, finally actually using the finish... whoops, that's embarrassing.

So not a close miss of making the final and I'm taking it as more a major lesson to learn - when a passage is marked as passable, it really could be, even if it looks like someone's backyard. I probably also need a pinch more confidence coming into that location and should have paused and figured things out and relocated far better than I did. 3 minutes is an awful lot of time to lose!

There was one other minor mistake (#7), that I blame being a bit overconfident, choosing the more direct, but slightly harder route choice, and then not having enough patience to execute it well.

The rest of the controls, I ran pretty well, just a few seconds back from fastest, which does the trick, generally. So I'm happy with lots of things from the race today:
1) I did a good job finding the right narrow passages
2) I never got trapped

C • Hard luck 5

C • Commiserations 4

Sprint Model, Venice
Made it from Milan to Jesolo just fine thanks to Linda and Rick yesterday evening, so woke up and out to the sprint model! Some excitement as we barely made the boat and ended up jumping onto it along with two from the French team. Phew!

The boat ride over from Punto Sabbiono to the model was about 45 minutes, but that was fine as gave us time to draw some courses on our maps and chat a bit. The specific map section we used was “Venezia - S. Marta”, to the west of the bottom bend of the Grand Canal. The rest of the US crew out for the training (Sam, Tori, Ethan) had already been on this section of map, but it was my first time on *any* map of legendary Venice. The canals do add an interesting dimension, but it’s not so different than other dense passage-y European cities. Very ski-o style, but with more dead ends - I realized that we don’t have that many dead ends in ski-o, since snow mobiles generally don’t turn around in their tracks.

The bridges do take a bit out of you, and more so the taller bridges, but there’s no way of judging a bridge’s height on the map. Probably not that important though. They are also a bit slippery right at the edge due to smooth marble, but the majority of the stairs had less slippery material closer in, so will aim for that.

Thoughts on tomorrow:
- Have to have the full route before leaving previous control. In particular, this may take patience off the start if they pull a tricky one.
- Faced with two similar route options, take the simpler one.
- Check all codes, read all descriptions. They seemed to like corners of paved areas on the model map.
- Green light when I have an easy feature to run along (straight road/passage or along a canal)
- Yellow light in the more complicated sets of passageways, or when a narrow passage has to be found (but use anything and everything else around to do this!)
- Pay only enough attention to other people in order not to collide, else ignore
- Be careful of artificial fences blocking routes!!!

After running my course, I jogged slowly around, taking more in.

C • Good luck tomorrow!! 11

C • Venice and orienteering....... 1

And then just a few controls fast, to feel the speed I want to run tomorrow.

Last little workout in Toledo before heading to Italy tomorrow! A putter around Ottawa Park with Tom in the morning. (Woke up at 5:15 am this morning, still dark.)

C • Good luck in Italy! 10