Saturday Oct 4 |
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| Event: Prospect Hill
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 | Orienteering 12:00 [2] *** 1.2 km (10:00 / km) +50m 8:17 / km | |
| spiked:7/7c shoes: NB ABZORB EX 11.5 |
| Picking up controls on the white course. A straightforward run, including some time untying the controls. Uneventuful.
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| Orienteering 1:15:00  *** 5 km (15:00 / km) +120m 13:24 / km | |
| 14c shoes: NB ABZORB EX 11.5 |
| Picking up controls on the green and orange courses. |
| Orienteering race 57:13 [5] 4.3 km (13:18 / km) +120m 11:41 / km | |
| shoes: NB ABZORB EX 11.5 |
| The NEOC Prospect Hill Green course. I started navigating well, but made a rather costly error (~ 8-10 minutes) at control 6. I was in good contact and had a reasonable attack, but I was confused by the vegetation boundaries in the vicinity of 6 and just didn't recover very well from my error. Apart from that control, I was generally pleased with my run. I could have chosen a better route to control 5, and I didn't run as fast as I should have, but I did fairly well.
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Wednesday Oct 1 |
| Running 15:00 [2] 2.2 km (6:49 / km) | |
| shoes: NB ABZORB EX 11.5 |
| My right calf has been hurting since the North Americans; I did a bit of light running today to stress my muscle a bit. I'm insufficiently experienced to gauge what the nature of the damage, but the pain is localized - perhaps a single muscle, tendon, or God forbid, a ligament. I have the full range of motion, but my leg buckles a bit when I put weight on it in certain ways.
I still can run passably, though I feel the pain when I apply power down through my leg, e.g. after my right foot strikes the ground during a running stride. If I were to conjecture, I would guess I may have bruised a muscle somehow while sprinting last week, which was perhaps compounded by my extensively leg workout last Tuesday. I still plan to run the NEOC meet this Saturday. |
Sunday Sep 28 |
| Orienteering race 3:06:50 [5] 12.81 km (14:35 / km) +230m 13:23 / km | |
| weight:83kg shoes: NB MT800 Alpha |
| While my performance at this meet was my best at an A-meet, my long race featured a catastrophic error from which I didn't recover. I was tired from the previous races, and my muscles were very sore, which may have contributed to my bad decision. I wasn't moving that quickly, and I had a few bobbles on early controls - a few minutes at 4, for instance. However, I was satisfied with my run given the wear on my body and the difficult footing and swamps to negotiate.
I fundamentally misunderstood the large swamp crossed by the major trail in the middle of the map. There was a parallel, narrower stream a few hundred meters to the south, and for whatever reason, when looking at the map, I treated them as the same feature. En route to 10, I meant to attack after I ran south of the narrow stream, but completely repositioned myself in my head and attacked early - after passing the swamp band. This really confused me, but I did eventually find the control after some confusion. However, I didn't take the time to figure out what was the source of my problem.
Controls 11 through 13 went very well, but on the way to 14, I made the same error, meaning to attack after the narrow stream but instead attacking after wide swamp band. This was completely wrong; I had planned to follow the water feature to 14, but following the edge of the lake north of the wide swamp band lead me back to the major trail. This was my opportunity to correct my error, but I figured I had accidentally turned around and charged into the vegetation on the northeast edge of the lake. I then idiotically followed the edge of the lake for several hundred meters - about a kilometer away from my control. I realized I was in trouble some time later when I saw a house - which was not on the map. I was increasingly frustrated with this problem; I saw a field on a ridge to the north which I thought could be the field to the west of 14. I ran to it and eventually realized I was not where I thought I was. Moving east to relocate on the trail, I saw Joseph Huberman walking Presto near the fire station to the northeast of the start - where the parking was.
I can't describe the shock at seeing Joseph effectively, but I realized that I was both off the map and over 2 kilometers from my control. I decided to go to the control anyway (even though I had wasted about an hour in total) to more accurately figure out my error. I would have finished the course, but I knew the Hubermans were waiting for me before the could start the long drive back to Boston, so I skipped controls 17-20, which were in the same area as controls 11-13.
I'm glad I understand my mistake, but this is easily the largest navigational error I have ever made. It seems appropriate that I would attain so many superlatives at a single meet - my personal best sprint, personal best middle, and personal best catastrophic error. |
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Blue - Splits |