Training Log Archive: Lori

2m race at the World ARDF Champs! 15th place. Not my best race, although considering that I basically never get a chance to practice 2m, also not too bad. Came out of the start and, since we were running downhill and the start was relatively high, I took the time to write down some bearings as I came into the mandatory road crossing. The first transmitter sounded close as I was coming out of the exclusion zone, but I'd just gotten up onto another hill and most of the transmitters sounded pretty close... I spent some time poking around on a small hill, but didn't see the transmitter, and continued on. A few minutes later, the transmitter came back on behind me, and I turned around to come back to it. I spent a while poking around on another wrong hill when it came on again, and this time I was close enough to sprint over to it before it went off.

By now I'd been running back and forth along this hill for long enough to have a good idea of the order of the rest of the transmitters and headed off for the next one. I came to a trail junction and after some waffling decided to go right. Sadly this was the incorrect decision, which I discovered the next time the transmitter came on. I didn't really want to run all the way back up the hill to the trail intersection (about 5 minutes of running away), so I attempted to cut between the two trails on a string of grave sights. The locals who were out tending the grave sights were not impressed by this decision and their glares combined with the fact that it was WAY greener than mapped and had a few unmapped agricultural fields (which were all out-of-bounds) made me decide to head back down to the trail and take the long way around.

The transmitter came back on shortly after I made it up to the trail junction, and I felt good about the new trail. There was a small hill at the next trail intersection with some people milling around looking confused. I decided to head up the hill and saw a guy in a Korean military uniform hanging out on the hill. At first I thought I was about to get glared at again, but then he went to sit down in a chair, and I realized he was a juror. Aha! The transmitter must be close. A bit more circling around the top of the hill later, and I saw the flag a little ways down the side. I headed off to the next transmitter, which I had pretty good bearings to by this point. I crossed a bunch of rice paddies and some canals. My bearings were kind of funny in this section because it was so windy, my antenna was getting blown around, but after poking my head into a few poorly mapped residential areas (where the map looked like it would be possible to get through, but the copious unmapped fences suggested otherwise), I managed to find the correct trail up and over the next hill. I saw someone with the self-satisfied look of a person who'd recently located a transmitter coming down a trail, at the next trail junction, so I turned up that trail, and saw an elephant trail up another hill into the transmitter.

I knew the last transmitter was at the northern end of the map, so I headed in that direction, and managed to get myself on a major trail in the correct direction as the transmitter came on. Sadly, I was too far off to actually find it on that cycle, so I spent a bit of time poking my head into side trails when I once again saw a couple of people coming quickly out of another side trail. I dashed up the trail, saw a small opening off to the side, and found the transmitter on the opposite side of a grave sight. The finish was a few km away, and after a brief debate about going the shorter way or the safer saw, decided to head out the shorter way. This was definitely the better decision with a gently sloping downhill run about half of the way to the finish. A Mongolian woman decided to follow me. I was a bit faster on the downhills, but not faster enough to drop her, especially once we got onto the flat trails near the finish. The run along the lake near the finish felt endless, but I eventually made it. I definitely lost several cycles out there on the first couple of controls, but overall, this was definitely one of my more in-control feeling 2m races!

Normal stretching.

80m sprint at the World ARDF Champs! 14th place.

The first several controls were awesome! Then I flailed around aimlessly looking for slow 1. The controls don't have flags at them for the sprint. They're just SI boxes on stakes and slow 1 was mixed in with a bunch of stake-high grass, and thus well camouflaged. I spent 3 minutes running back and forth, missing it whenever it was on. Slow 5 was fine. I'd completely lost touch with the map, though and getting to the spectator control was sloppier than it should have been. I was then completely flustered for the fast controls on the second half. I almost went to fast 1 which I didn't have to get. Then stumbled around trying to figure out which transmitters were on my side of a huge uncrossable fence and randomly stumbled across fast 2, which was broken and made me think it was near the finish, which then completely flustered me. I proceeded to do a series of stupid things. I missed fast 3 and then punched fast 5 then got my head back together and punched fast 4, fast 5 again because it was on the way to fast 3 and I couldn't absolutely convince myself it was indeed fast 5 I'd punched after the weirdness at fast 2, and then fast 3. Then I went to the finish on the best route from fast 3, but not what the best route would have been had I taken the controls in order. I just don't get a chance to practice ARDF sprints enough.

I still had a good time out there, though, so that's good at least!

Warm up.

Dynamic stretching before running and normal stretching after running. My legs are starting to get sore... One more race legs!!!

80m classic race at the World ARDF champs! 7th place!!!!

Woohoo! Tough race! The map today was a mix of impassible forest, uncrossable rice paddies, and towns filled with unmapped power lines. The unmapped powerlines were particularly relevant because powerlines make it impossible to get bearings on 80m.

I came out of the start chute straight into a village completely filled with powerlines. I knew I needed to make a decision on how to exit the village relatively quickly because I needed to know what trail to take. Unfortunately, the bearings I was getting were not good. At one point I turned in a full circle and heard the transmitter at the same volume the entire way around. Ugh. I eventually ruled out the possibility of a transmitter in the southwestern part of the map and headed north west. I finally got on a trail without powerlines and was able to get a good bearing on the first transmitter. I got quite close before the transmitter went off, narrowing it down the location to two small trails quite near each other. Sadly, I chose to explore the wrong small trail, so I lost a cycle there. Once it came on again, I bashed out of the wrong small trail and then up the correct trail just as a couple of people were coming out of the woods, so I was able to pop in and get it off-cycle.

I headed off to the next transmitter, and again, saw someone coming out as I was coming up to it. I popped up the trail she'd been on and the transmitter came on as I was nearing the it, so I was able to pop off the trail and into the transmitter location fairly easily. I left the control in a direction that looked passible on the map, but was not, in fact passible, so after a brief foray into the forest turned around and went back the way I'd come. (This was absolutely the correct decision.) I headed off up a trail in the direction of the finish when the next transmitter came on again behind me. Sigh. I turned around and headed off to the transmitter. I went up a tiny trail and into a smallish field with a juror in it. I knew the transmitter had to be close, so circled around the field until it came on. It was in the middle of some bushes on the other side of the field. I found the antenna, but then couldn't see the flag, which was vaguely startling. Luckily a bunch of us came into the control around the same time, and I found the control when someone else pushed through the green away from it.

I'd had lots of time to get nice bearings on the last transmitter, so it was just a route choice decision - shorter with tiny looking trails and some running through grave sites or longer on bigger trails. The small trails had not had great running, so I opted for the longer way around (again a good decision). I was quite proud of myself when I went exactly to the correct trail, ran along it until I saw a small hole in the wall of vegetation, poked my head in and found the transmitter off-cycle. Then it was just a downhill run into the finish.

I didn't quite believe it went the download said I was in 5th place. I figured I must have misheard and was actually in 15th, but nope, it was indeed 5th! Two more people came in ahead of me after a while, but I'm extremely happy with 7th!!!

C • Congrats! 4

Normal stretching.

World ARDF champs foxoring! 14th place. Turns out Korean forests are basically impossible to run through, so almost the entire course was on trails. I probably lost 3 minutes out there. One to spending a bit too long at the beginning making sure I saw all the transmitters on the map and frantically looking for some sort of trick to make the decision on order more difficult. I had seen them all and there was no trick, so some extra time there. The map wasn't super accurate (and definitely less accurate than the model map), so I lost a bit of time to hesitations at a few trail intersections. I'm guessing this added up to about a minute over the course. Then a truly idiotic mistake on the way to the finish where I took an elephant trail instead of the real trail. I then thought I was at the wrong rice paddy and sort of stood there dumbfounded for a second before realizing what happened and bashed through the green back to the trail. It felt like this took forever, but my split was only 2:29 and there was a reasonable amount of distance to cover, so it couldn't have actually been that long. Probably could have pushed a bit more at the very end, but the finish was in the wrong place, so I was worried I was going to have to run up a huge hill to the finish but then I didn't actually have to, so I had a bit in the tank when I crossed the line.

Otherwise, the course was pretty fun! I was running with a Russian woman for basically the entire race. I'm not really sure when she started, so I don't know if she caught me or I caught her. There were a bunch of grave sites scattered throughout he forest, which was sort of different. There was also a hilarious set of stairs that told me how many calories I was burning as I ran up it. Turns out you don't actually burn that many calories running up a set of stairs. It seems like it would be somewhat demoralizing if you were running up these stairs with the goal of burning calories.

Oh also, Korean portapotties are the nicest EVER! They were air conditioned with music playing with actual flushing toilets. Unlike the toilets at the rest area on the highway, though, there wasn't a computerized map of the bathroom at the entrance telling you which stalls were in use and there wasn't a button to push to make noise to mask the sound of peeing, which is apparently something people worry about? I guess that's probably what the music was for.

The rest of the team did pretty well. My mom came in 3rd, which is awesome!!! She's super excited :-).

Normal stretching back at the hotel.

80m sprint training! I got all the frequencies marked on my receiver and then checked how strong things were. Sadly one of the transmitters was WAY stronger than the other 3, so I'm actually not really sure what the strength will be like... It also does not appear that the referees can read maps, which is somewhat concerning. I wanted to check out what the various flavors of green were like and a referee told me I couldn't pass because of the golf course and then pointed to a trail intersection. But we were at a different trail intersection. Le sigh. ARDF. Regardless, the lightest green looks passable-ish. The middle green looks unpleasant but doable if absolutely necessary and dark green is definitely out. Wide slash is ok, but narrow slash is not.

C • ARDF 1

Foxoring training! The frequencies are the same for foxoring and sprint (luckily!). The foxoring transmitters are pretty low power. My receiver can get them about 100m out on telegraph.

80m training! The 80m transmitters are powerful! I can get to the control in a minute if the gain is around 2. 500m away is just under 4, a kilometer away is between 4 and 5. I should book it for all I'm worth if the gain is 3 or under. (All of these notes are for tone. We couldn't get far enough away to check telegraph.)

2m training! The beacon annoyingly interferes with the transmitters, as usual. I don't understand why they don't put the frequencies further apart. For what it's worth if the gain is under 3 I should book it. For reasons that were unclear to me, they wouldn't let us go further than 100m away from either transmitter in a direction away from the beacon, so I couldn't really get any other info. That being said, it's 2m so these sorts of things aren't so useful. Also it was raining, which changes everything, so what I'm trying to say is who knows what's going to happen with 2m!

I ended up running more than I wanted today, so it was good to get some stretching in.

Event: World ARDF (Radio Orienteering) Championships
 

Running with Ken around the ARDF event center! We got on the bus over to Sokcho on the east coast of Korea, checked in and then had some time to kill. I wanted to remind my legs what running is, so I headed out for a run and Ken decided to join me. Running was feeling pretty good by the end, so that's good! My stomach's been bothering me a bit for the past couple of days, but it was feeling a bit happier by the end.

Most of my normal stretching. I didn't bring my roller, so I couldn't do any rolling. My quads are strangely sore for no apparent reason.