Training Log Archive: DWildfogel

Joaquin Miller Park - Sprint Tournament. Preliminary Round, Course 1A.

Raining pretty hard when I arrived at the park, but fortunately it eased off and was mostly light rain for the rest of the event. Got help from Dan, Matthias, Chuck and others getting my results and start list charts posted in a dry place. The 10:30 briefing went well. The tournament and each round got off on time; the separation of people into divisions (even with 3 no shows and 3 new entries) turned out to be nearly perfect, and the event was a great success.

Had time to jog around for 5 minutes before my start, and felt surprisingly good running during the Preliminary Round. Matched against Joe Maffei. Went out fast, quickly leaving Joe behind. Navigated well and kept pushing the pace. Very good run, missing first in my 8 person division by :13 (to M45 Misha Kreslavsky). Only significant mistake was my route choice leaving #2: should have gone up to the trail instead of going back down to the road and then having to run up again (plus my route was longer). Lost about :30.

Semi-finals, matched against Bruce Wolfe. Had about 25 minutes between rounds, but I was busy most of that time gathering results and figuring out the pairings for the second round. Never relaxed or even sat down. Perhaps partly because of that, my focus just wasn't there for this race. Lost time on nearly every leg (though a bit of that was because of very outdated mapping of vegetation and trails). Started feeling physically weary towards the end, too. Lost more than :30 on both #2 and #4. Still finished only :35 behind Bruce.

Finals. Matched against Joe Maffei for third place in Division 2. Again, spent the time between rounds working on results and pairings, with no chance for a breather. This course was the shortest, but also in the least well mapped part of the park (in my opinion). Had my biggest errors of the day on the first two, though time-wise they were each less than a minute. Did both 3 and 4 very well, a little off on 5, good on 6 and 7. Joe had lots of trouble, so I wound up third, which is right where I had seeded myself.

Overall, the tournament was very successful, running on time and very smoothly (thanks to people who pitched in to help, like Chuck, Matthias, Dan and Joe Maffei). My own orienteering deteriorated as the rounds wore on, but I never had a really bad leg.

Interestingly, none of the twelve people who finished behind me beat me in any of the races; I only beat the top 5 people when two of them mispunched. It was only the 5 people immediately in front of me (in the final results and in the seedings), namely, Deron, Andrew, Tapio, Misha and Bruce, who I was competitive with.

In the morning, noticed that several people were asking questions about tomorrow's Sprint Tournament that showed misconceptions, so even though I had nothing to with organizing the event, I tried to answer them. As the day wore on, I answered more and more questions; by evening, I wound up in charge of the rules and the seeding! Stayed up until 1 AM preparing charts to be posted for results and starts. Then only got about 1 hour of sleep as I kept going over how to present the rules in a very limited amount of time and what to do about the inevitable possibility that some people on the start list wouldn't show up and other people not on the list would.

C • How did you get put in charge? 2

The usual weekly accumulation of morning stretching.

Two front of house loops, mostly getting loose and taking it easy in preparation for Saturday's sprint tournament. 624, 515.

About 2/3 of the usual: pilates mat, theraband, weights, hips.

Went to Palo Alto in the morning with Louise for a consultation with TIAA-CREF, where we got some good help from Casey Smiley. Then a good lunch at Tamarine. Later, Ramsay and Janet came over for dinner. Nice day.

More dizzy today than I've been, even sometimes not in the "usual" position that causes the dizziness.

Interleave pilates mat exercises with theraband, weight and hip exercises. Keep increasing the reps on the mat exercises. Also some BOSU lunge and balance exercises.

Not much time today, but squeeze in a slow (but not as easy as it should have been) 3 mile run.

618, 558, 548, 544, 537, 117

Cool down

Big breakfast, walk around the Sunday art show at the harbor, drive home from Santa Barbara.