Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

Shopping at IKEA is less stressful if you are only interested in buying Lingonberry Jam :) Though a huge sheepskin rug would have been nice too.

Sam very cleverly found a fun new place to run that was near IKEA, so after Sean and Ariane drove home we drove down to Borderlands State Park. On Tuesday a guy from the CSU running section was telling me how great Borderlands was and we also have some friends that go there to play disc golf... it's weird when non-orienteers know more about a park than you do.

Anyway, I was feeling a bit out of it at the beginning, much better for the middle section and then out of it again at the end. Probably just a result of dehydration or strange sleep schedule.

Park itself was beautiful if a little buggy. There are more trails to explore, so maybe we'll go down again sometime... it's only 25 or 30 minutes away.

C • lingonberry jam 4

Socially imposed rest day. A pretty awesome day though. Tossed a Frisbee with Sean before the girls woke up, then made buttermilk chocolate chip pancakes before heading out to play minigolf. Lunch at Union Street followed by a lazy attempt to try some geocaching at Hammond Pond. Frozen yogurt at Chill and then "how to train your dragon" before coming home to play Settlers of Catan all evening.

Biking to work. This has seemed like an awfully busy week. Trying to cram 5 work days into a 4 day span, most likely the culprit.

Splendidly good Cambodian food at lunch though. Myra bought us all lunch from Elephant Walk as a farewell to Raju party. Our little lab is really great most of the time and it will be sad to be a Trio instead of a Quartet in the lab now.

Rushing home. Sam spent a whole day of her vacation cleaning the apartment and stocking the kitchen for a visit from Sean and Ariane this weekend. They had gotten a late start leaving from Albany so we had enough time to visit a Colby gathering down in JP. Misjudged time a bit (typical I suppose) and so arrived late at home after our guests had arrived.

Biking to work. A day late and a dollar short... seems to be a motto I picked up from Mom and Grandma.

C • Inov-8 12

Once more, late out the door, trying to finish experiments but also make it to the park o in time to help with logistics. Rain was giving us a break for the bulk of the park-o and we had a great turnout of new faces (thanks to David and Isabel Byrant's friend group). The frantic biking to the park, trying to collect money and hand out maps and record times doesn't count as great race preparation.

Ian set some fun courses, and there was a lot blooming out there. After the park-o was over I went out and collected a few stands.... way easier when everything is calm.

I struggled a bit with this race. I was freezing when I started and so wore gloves and a coat, but was quickly annoyed at how constrictive the gloves and coat felt. Little annoyances like that seem like a big deal when I'm racing, and I was making lots of little mistakes. Not so clean to 2, not so clean to 3, not so clean to 5 (misread a boulder) not so clean to 6, not so clean to 8. Yikes, it's starting to feel more like pinball than orienteering. A nice solid effort up the hill to 9 calms me down and I start to get feeling like I should. Then out of nowhere, I trip over nothing and sprawl in the mud on the way down to 10... hmm unpleasant and my newfound calm is shattered. I read 10 as being in the white woods and so I run to the corner of the white woods and then realize that the flag is way off to my left. I head to 11, and read it as being at the corner of the white woods, and then realize that I'm too low. really far left on 12. Coming down the hill to 15 I think I'm on the line and I think I see a clearing through the trees.... run in and can't make sense of the vegetation.... control is way off to the left. Finished just feeling like I should do it again, this time without making a dozen little mistakes. I guess this is an indication that race prep is important and if you're not careful one mistake will breed another and another.

Alex proposed woods intervals at 7:15 in the morning. My first instinct for exercise that early is to laugh, but then I realized that I needed to get up and go to work earlyish anyway. Sam and I went over to the start and because I was in a hurry I started right away. Alex was there by the time I got back from my first. Did 4 laps before heading to work. First one slower because of trying to remember the route. 1:30 between laps. Much better with orienteering shoes this time.

4:53
4:42
4:30
4:25

C • How do you do the intervals 9

Was already part way up Hammond Pond Parkway so I just continued up to the top and then biked down past the reservoir as normal. Nice change of scenery. Then spent all morning collecting mouse tissues to send off for sectioning. We're hoping to find something cool in these tissues, as we're submitting a paper next week and if the slides look good we'll add them in.

After work, I went to a farewell dinner for a co-worker that's leaving this week. Plenty of good food and good company. Biked home after.

To work. Hard to be motivated to leave the house when Sam is still abed. I guess that's how she feels every morning.

From work to the Harvard Track for CSU running section workout.

Did some drills and some strides then the workout which was 4x1200 @ 5k pace (ish) 200 jog rest between and 500 jog rest before a magic mile which is a mile where you start at the 100 mark and run the straights hard and just stride out the curves... also, you're not allowed to look at your watch at all.

Ran with Mark for the first 1200, and just as we were about to start the second interval SGB arrives and sprints the length of the track, stripping, to make it in time to run the next one with us.

Left quad was feeling tired by the last 1200, fence still?

3:46
3:51
3:50
3:53

C • Only 200 meter jog? That's ... 2

Magic Mile. Seemed easy, felt like I was only working half the time, so not so shabby that it was a 5:24 mile. SGB pointed out that if I was only working half the time, it was really a 5:24 800. Would have cooled down with the group but wanted to use the remaining daylight to bike home.

Home afterward. Sam had made dinner, which was great. Then we got bogged down in trying to sort through all the maps and quickroutes from the weekend.... not so great.

C • Sam made dinner because Sam... 6

7.3 miles by Garmin. 1990 US Champs Blue course at Baileytown
map without QR

So I was pretty excited for this course. Mikell Platt had won this course in about 71 minutes and I was hoping to best that time. We had been doing a lot of hard work the whole weekend, but my legs felt good at the start.

Our group did a bit of a chase start, sending out Alex, Dancho, Sam, Brendan, Boris, Nikolai and then me in that order. The start triangle had gotten really overgrown so the first 30 seconds of thrashing through the woods were pretty miserable... finally got out of the treacherous footing and low visibility and then starting going okay. 1,2,3 were all clean, 4 I navigated thinking that the control was on a cliff and then had to check my descriptions and drop down into the reentrant. Don't know if seeing Alex here slowed me down or sped me up in figuring out my mistake. 5 and 6 were clean and I caught sight of Boris, Brendan, Sam and Nikolai going over the ridge to 6. Feeling great, chasing Nikolai out towards 7 and got pulled very far right.... which was weird, thought I read a cliff on the front and a cliff on the back side of the ridge to mark where I had come over. Realized I was too far south pretty quickly and then continued on. 8 was clean but 9 I oversimplified and got too low and missed my reentrant. stood a moment at the base of the swamp until I figured it out. 10 clean. 11 running well and running strong, no problem at all with the climb caught Dancho coming down into the reentrant. Again thought it was the cliff but adjusted quickly. for 12 I was going well, found a way up through the green and made my way to the saddle... dropped down towards my control and all of a sudden got really lost. distance estimation was off. Spent 2 or 3 minutes wandering around the hillside until Nikolai came streaming past.... this shook me out of it a little bit and I was able to figure out that I needed to go much further to get the flag. little bobble on the way to 13 and then didn't see the depression when I got to the circle. not navigating all that well to 14 (got a bit lucky I guess) but really smoked it on the way to 15. Got on a sweet contouring deer path and just cruised all the way to the flag catching Nikolai in the process. Feeling strong still and pushed hard to 16, 17 and finish.

Physically very happy with the race, but not crafty enough to outdo the swampfox. Mikell would probably be too gentlemanly or too modest to gloat :)