Training Log Archive: DWildfogel

JCCLG, around the soccer field. Sunny, low 50's breezy, but a lot nicer than at home. Came down because I was going to meet L at the Saratoga farmers market anyway.

Tried to practice running with a little lean, as Kevin wanted, to help my knees, but no idea if I was doing it right.

Would've been OK with an easy run, but felt decent after a couple of laps, and was short on time, so after the third split, picked up the pace to make it a threshold run over the last 1.15 miles.

Splits for 2 laps at a time (0.3833 mi [see Nov 13 2017]):
406, 344, 330, 316, 310, 304

Right knee was pretty sore for a while a few hours later. Lower right quad was sore after I rolled it out this morning - related?

[Running Threshold]

C • Related? 3

JCCLG soccer field. Cool down in reverse direction, 2 laps.

JCCLG. Did one set of military presses before running, and one set of triceps pulldowns after running, two exercises I was a little short on in yesterday's quick upper body session.

[Strength exercises]

The usual weekly accumulation of morning exercises.

At home. Upper body only. # theraband exercises, 15 bar dips, curls (3x12 with 25 lbs), military presses (2x20 with 15 lbs; neck bothering me a little). No pull down exercises.

[Strength exercises]

Lake Ranch Reservoir. Very cold (35) and windy. Jumped out of the car and started running. Took 1.5 miles for my knees to loosen up. A little heavy breathing going up to the third bridge, but then was just cruising until Fern Creek (a mile to go). Decided to push it up the big hill, with good results. Turned into a surprisingly good run.

504(536)1040(505)1546(457)2043
321 - up to third bridge
215 - down
446, 434, 520, 420 (1901 total for the return)

Usual 4.0: 3944
Extra half-mile: 536
Loop backs: 319

[Easy distance w/hills]

Cool down

Kevin's, for sore knees. Knees have been sore since at least November; should have come here a long time ago.

After treadmill running, Kevin thinks it's mostly running mechanics. Have to bend a little more at the waist to allow knee to bend more on landing to spread shock, and have to keep hip of landing leg up to keep knee from being forced outwards. Gave me some exercises to work on both of those things.

[Physical therapy]

Gave me sore legs an extra day's rest.

JCCLG. Two sets of everything instead of three. High weights, though, including 90 lbs on the triceps pull downs. 16 bar dips.

[Strength exercises]

Rachel was home for the day.

Both knees are pretty sore.

Event: BAOC: Tilden Park
 

Tilden B-meet. Sunny, chilly and breezy. Brown: 4.1 km, climb: 193 (advertised), 260 (my count along optimal routes), 270 (what I actually did). Third out of 24 (1. Chuck Spalding 101:33; 2. Lori Huberman (F33) 103:58, 4. Steve Haas 107:19; 5. Matthias Kohler 109:40; 6. Christine Brew 116:33, 7. Bob Cooley 120:57)

Not a fun day of orienteering. Very steep, lots of bashing. Finished with blood dripping down my arm and a couple of subdural hematoma on the same arm. Towards the end there was a nice sequence of 6 runnable legs, but perhaps because I was both tired and excited about finally getting to run, made 3 dumb errors on this portion, when I'd made only one small error (in a very vague portion of the map) prior to that.

My first mistake was thinking that orienteering at Tilden might be worthwhile because at least the ground would be soft. But the vegetation on the map is badly out of date, making some seemingly viable route choices very suboptimal, leading to bashing. The downhills were really tough on my knees, and were quite slippery in places.

My second mistake was running Brown instead of Short Brown. Figured it would take about an hour, but didn't realize it would be a mostly unpleasant hour. The reason I made that choice was that the "difficulty" for Short Brown was listed as Moderate, as opposed to Hard for the other advanced courses. In fact, Short Brown was largely a subset of Brown, so it would have been fine.

Struggled physically. My sore knees did not like the downhills, and didn't have much strength on the uphills. Best legs were the fairly flat ones, e.g., 5 and 14. Interesting route choices, but with the vegetation mapped so inaccurately, one can hardly make accurate evaluations about the routes: sometimes you could get through where you wouldn't expect to, sometimes you couldn't get through where you thought you could.

1. Uphill on the trail, jogging a good deal of it. Used the shape of the boundary of the forest on the left to tell me when I was at the same contour as the control. As soon as I left the trail, I spotted the bag.

2. Contoured over to the lower trail; ground was very rocky and it was slow going. Then a looong trail run (passed George on the way). Thought about staying on the trail all the way to the power line, but decided that from there there was too much vegetation to go through. So, took the second trail up to the higher jeep trail (actually, cut the corner in the open area before the trail, which was a mistake because I had to struggle up a steep embankment). Took the upper trail to the power line, and then down along the power line to the black X - oops, no black X in the terrain. But there was a power pole right there, so knew I was in the right place. Contoured from there. Came to a clearing, figured it was the one just N of the control, which made sense because it felt like I was too close to the top of the hill. In actuality, though, it must've been further W, the feature I thought was rocky ground; looking at that closely in Route Gadget, I think may those black dots mean distinct boundary, not rocky ground. Anyway, started down cautiously because I could see down there and there didn't appear to be any boulders. DIdn't go very far before deciding this was incorrect, so angled up to the same elevation I'd been at originally, continued E, and spotted to control almost immediately. Figure I lost 1.5 to 2 mins. Chuk was nearly 3 minutes ahead of me on this leg.

3. Didn't want any part of trying to contour across the big reentrant two-thirds of the way to 33. So, angled up to the road. Blocked by serious vegetation when I was only ten meters from the road, had to back out a bit and circle over to another spot 30 m away. Up the road to where the little trail branched off, too the little trail until the vegetation on my right opened up (great views in all directions!) then followed a bearing down (quite slippery, even with metal tipped cleats). Lots of scotch broom clogging the field now, so visibility was poor, but hit the boulder right on (and it didn't appear to be at a distinct boundary between yellow and dark green).

4. Gavin said don't go through dark green, but it looked like an awfully long way around to avoid the green, and at a glance I though extra climb was involved (I see now that that was wrong), so I jogged a bit to the right to see if it looked like I could find a way down through the green. After getting near the corner of the green, looked like it wasn't that bad, so I headed down. It wasn't THAT bad, but it was bad, lots bashing and clamboring over fallen trees (going over one of those, got a very unusual cramp in an abdominal muscle for a few seconds). Saw Leslie up ahead on the same route. Eventually got to the finger of clearing I was aiming for. Got out into the open (though it again had many scotch broom bushes, ran past the patch of fight NE of the control, but then couldn't see the boulders presumably ahead because there were many bushes. Used the boulders to the left - which I COULD see - to gauge where the control would be, which meant bending a bit to the left (Leslie was headed a bit too far right as I went by her) and nailed it. Wound up with a good split here (3rd; did Roy Want really beat me by :52?), and Matthias, who went around, was more than a minute back, so I guess this was the better (if less pleasant) route.

5. Best leg of the day (137, 15 secs ahead of 2nd). Knew in advance that I needed to run the contour, so took off without looking at the map. On the run, saw that I wanted to cross the reentrant just below the forest, easily spotted thatin the terrain and then the green patch with the control before I even crossed the reentrant. Knew the control was on the green side of the upper cliff, so when I got up to that level, peeked down the right side of the cliff, saw the bag and that there was little vegetation in the way, so scooted through there.

6. Knew I just needed to go down the spur a bit, so descended along the spine, thinking that with a clue of "bare rock" the bag would be easy to spot. Didn't see it right away, so stopped briefly to double check the map, then went on and soon saw it.

7. Again, knew in advance I needed to cross the reentrant on the contour, so proceeded quickly in that direction, but had a little trouble finding a good spot to cross (probably accounting for why my split appears to be about 20 secs slow). After that, it was easy to read the well-mapped rocks and veg boundaries and get right into the finger of clearing pointing at the control, and then to pick out the correct boulder.

8. Tied for first on this leg. Pretty straight forward. Angled (and bashed) down to the bend in the trail. Right side of the reentrant looked less obstructed, ran down that, spotted the copse well before getting to it, ran around its left side.

9. Tempted to try to cross the reentrant by the patch of white just NE of the straight line, but figured that might be really gnarly, so instead slogged my way up to the trail. Had intended to cross the reentrant and then go under the cliff, but that looked a little treacherous. So, ran 15 m up the trail and then followed a bearing. There was an unexpected, very rocky drop off, and I lost maybe 15 seconds trying to get down, but had no trouble navigating to the control, arriving just ahead of Pierre Del Forge. Saw on RouteGadget that several people went the route I was initially tempted by; looks like that route was about half a minute better.

10. Man, I did NOT want to go all the way down to the trail and then have to climb back up. But what else was possible? Pierre (who may or may not have been heading for the same control I was [turns out he was]) left on the contour, right into the green. Ok, if I could get through that neck of green and then climb a little to that narrow gap between the two huge patches of green, that would be a good route. So, I plunged in, and it wasn't too bad. Got to the next patch, followed the edge up, looking for the opening. Went back and forth a little because it wasn't obvious, but finally decided that I'd identified the very overgrown gap, so bashed through there. Once out in the open field, didn't see the black X (reckon it's gone), and though I must've been looking at the correct patch of green ahead, I couldn't see the mapped gap of yellow above the control. Stopped under the powerline for a few secs to make sure I was where I thought I was, then ran to the edge of green. From there, caught a glimpse of the cliff and the control over the bushes, and realized that the mapped openings had all been filled in by bushes. Had to go nearly across the reentrant before finding what looked like a reasonable place to bash through, and it wasn't too bad. Chuck, who did go down and climb back up, beat me by 52 secs. Lori and Steve Haas also were faster than me.

11. Hadn't planned this leg in advance, so stood at #10 for a few seconds. Missed the best route, which was to contour through the narrow band of forest, climb a little over the green, then make a bee line for #13). Instead, went down through the band of forest, which was very slow going, cut through the triangle of yellow to the fire road, follow the road a short way until in turned up, contour to the little trail, head for #13. Seeing the knoll ahead which 13 was on the other side of, cut around the left side of it and ran W towards the band of forest. Thought about cutting through the little neck, but it looked junky, so continued along the edge, intending to turn the corner and head straight for the control. And then... I'm not exactly sure what happened. I think I must've not turned the corner far enough. My compass was telling me to turn further left, but I didn't heed that. I was looking at the patch of green directly N of the control, thinking that it was some unmapped patch (had seen plenty of those earlier) and that the control must be directly behind. So, ran around the right side (and thought that the patch was mighty big, but nothing made sense when I got there. Could see another control not much further W (that turned out to be mt #14), then noticed the athletic field to the SW, and realized I must be too far W, so looked E, and there was the bag in plain sight, maybe 50m away. As I approached, planning the next control, Mark Blair was arriving from the proper direction.

12. Ah, my next control is the one I had just seen further W! Took off in that direction, spotted it again, started thinking about the next leg, and realized, yikes, that's my #14, not #12! (On the long trail run to #2, had made note of the loop in this part of the course, but had completely forgotten about that.) At this point, I was once again on the SW side of that patch of green, so ran around to the N side and then headed ENE to the saddle (and could see Mark already nearing the saddle). So, in the space of a couple of minutes, I nearly circumnavigated that patch of green twice, and all for naught! Caught Mark just before getting to the control.

13. Knew I just had to run SE on the trail, so took off. Stopped for a second to check the map to make sure I didn't overrun it, which was foolish because the control was in plain sight.

14. NOW I get to go to #14, along a corridor I'd already been in twice. So, ran hard, barely looking at the map. With the control in sight, passed a group heading for that control, and heard one of them say, "Wow, look how fast that guy is running" (which had a role in my next mistake). Slowed a little as I approached the control to evaluate the next leg. My time of 121 was much faster than anyone else among the eventual top 6 (Chuck's 154 was next), but someone named Girts Linde tied me, though there was no other leg in which he was close.

15. In one of my earlier views of #14, I saw Pierre punch in, then head around the N side of the green. In my hasty evaluation (probably thinking a bit about my new found fans who could still see me), it seemed (incorrectly) that that route involved some climb, and meanwhile I'd spotted a clever and more direct route along the N edge of the athletic field, into a cul-de-sac of open surrounded by green, and then on a short path through the green. Got to where the path should be quickly, but... no path. Looked right and left, but no path. (Later heard that others had the same problem: Lori then went S to the road; Gary went back to 14 and around to the N.) I was stubborn: I'm getting through that green. Pretty sure I was on what used to be the path, bashed for a bit, but then further bashing was impossible. However, there was space along the ground, so I crawled on my belly for 20m or so and finally got out into the clearing. This misadventure cost about a minute. Climbed a little to get around the green, then spotted what I thought was the patch of white in the circle for 315 (it was actually the stand of "distinct" trees a little further W). Ran there, noting what seemed like a little spur just N of the trees, went over that expecting to drop into the reentrant with the bad - and found myself on the road. Turned around and looked back, and there was the control, maybe 20 - 25m away. Didn't seem to be in a reentrant (which would cut into the hillside) but rather in a narrow depression parallel to the contours. And if there was a distinct patch of white immediately to the S, I sure didn't see it. This second misadventure on this leg cost another 20 secs or so.

16. Knew I had to get down the hill more or less in the direction of the road I'd just been on, so ran back there and then headed down. (Probably a small mistake: should've just run from #15 parallel to the road.) Saw that the road was pointing pretty much directly at the control, so when I got to the bend, just kept going straight, not worrying about details, figuring I'd soon see the bag, and I did.

F. Continuing this amazing attitude of not relying much on the map (!), I knew the Finish was in the assembly area and I knew pretty much in which direction the assembly area was, so just started in that direction. There was a small hill in the way, so just ran around it to the left, found myself at the start, and proceeded directly to the Finish, finally putting an end to the misadventures.

WinSplits

RouteGadget

[Orienteering race]

Warm up, jogging around the assembly area. Don't feel all that great.