Training Archive: Cristina

Running (mixed) 26:00 2.3 mi (11:18 / mi) +70m 10:20 / mi
ahr:154 max:178 shoes: Luke (Inov8 Terroc 308)

Morning run in the vicinity of White Rock Lake while Tom rowed and Lisa ran along the lake path.

We were up a little later than planned watching Jukola coverage, so we didn't get out the door as early as planned. It was sticky, though not yet murderously hot or anything.

Even with yesterday's day off I was certainly not fully recovered from all of the TJOCery last week. I ran one loop of Tom's "Dam Hills Loop", not working very hard.

Running (grass/road) 18:00 [1] 1.8 mi (10:00 / mi)
ahr:163 max:181 shoes: Little Piggies

And then went back to the parking lot to change into my new "shoes", a pair of Vibram FiveFingers Sprint. These actually fit me, probably because they are the women's variety and because they have lots of straps to help tighten it on the foot. My toes are still weird and too long, but there's not much I can do about that.

I walked over to a grassy field, trotted around a bit, then did two loops around the hilly field. This all felt great, so I then ran back to the car on the road. The rubber under foot is enough to make even the concrete running feel fine... though I'm sure I wouldn't want to run many miles like that any time soon.

C • Cool! 4

Orienteering 1:30:00 [3] ***
30c shoes: Paul (Inov8 Mudclaw 270)

Final competition, set by Tom. Twenty-one controls were just fine, and one was a disaster. It should have been on the order of a 5 minute mistake, but the vegetation was so nasty and slow and I covered so much ground that it was at least 15. A very sad way for me to my orienteering for the week. Well, almost end. 6km, 22c, ~1:36.

On the positive side, Tucson's own Jaxon Rickel won the intermediate course (again). Maybe he'll be back next year and healthy enough to run so he can win the advanced courses. ;-)

In the afternoon I helped out with the Motala, which had a very exciting finish.

In the evening I helped John HW (a little bit) as he set up his indoor Maze-O and ran e-punch while 21 campers ran the course 91 times. It was a lot of fun to watch and I think everyone got a big kick out of it. Something like that would make a great fundraiser at some meet. I trotted around it after we were done just to have the experience.

C • Arizona Daily Star... 7

Note

There was no cottage cheese at breakfast this morning. They are out of cottage cheese. They may have more tomorrow.

Running (gravel) 35:00 [1] 5 km (7:00 / km)
ahr:150 shoes: Paul (Inov8 Mudclaw 270)

The kids are supposed to be able to run 5km in a certain time in order to attend the camp, and they had their test run on Monday. A lot of them don't pass, and the "make-up" run was this morning. I decided to get up early and run with the girls who were close to making the time. There were other women who did the same, so I ended up with one runner most of the time. She did almost 3 min faster than last time, but still not really speedy. These kids need to run more. And HTFU - it's *supposed* to hurt.

A nice warm up for the rest of the day. Tom (aka slacker) slept in.

Orienteering 1:16:00 ***
24c shoes: Paul (Inov8 Mudclaw 270)

6 pt course: Getting a hang of these morning sprints... which means I'm starting to learn the camp area a little so I can do what Tom does and go, "oh, I have to run to that rock". ;-) Still, I made one good mistake (~30 sec?) and Tom and John both completely whomped me, both under 11 min. 1.6km 14:16, 6c

Line-O: Ralph set up a line-O where the line was streamered through the woods and we got a blank map. There were 8 controls along the line and we had to pinpoint them and write descriptions. Not too challenging but a good exercise for the kids, I think. I think it could be a good exercise for the advanced types if made to do it at a faster pace - anyone who can read a map well shouldn't have trouble doing this at a walking pace, at least with this line. ~30min; "8c"

Relay: In the afternoon we had the team relays, which I remember as one of the highlights from when I was here in 2006. Not so much fanfare this time, but I did have a good team - Trans-American Express. Okay, it was a bit unfair, but John HW was the first one to ask me to be on a team, and it's not like I was going to say no.

John was first out on Orange, and he came in about 2 minutes before Tom (who was on brown) and tagged his mentee, Dilan, who set off on Yellow. Dilan also had a solid run, just one little bobble, and so I was off in good standing for the final leg (brown). Not a bad run with the exception of one control, where I inversed the contours in my head and stopped short, turned around, unconfused myself, and then found it. Maybe 2-3 min? The sad part is that I actually hung that bag on Sunday, obviously didn't help. Even when I got there I had no memory of hanging it! 3.1km, ~36min, 10c Tom was probably just over 30. Ish.

Note

Each day there have been a few things that have surprised me about the ability/knowledge of the kids.

On the first day I was really surprised at how many kids did not really know how to orient their maps. Forget the intuitive turning of map and body to face the right way, most of them seemed like they had never done it before. I had the beginner/intermediate girls standing in the classroom and orienteering the map and themselves to each of their controls from the day, but they could have used this many, many more times. That's such a fundamental skill and I bet a lot of them would do much better if they just nailed that.

On the second day I overheard a mentee/mentor converstaion, where the mentee asked whether the mentor used contours to navigate or just buildings and roads and streams and stuff. The mentor said, "well, I'm not really good at reading contours so I mostly use the other stuff." Okay, I know reading contours isn't intuitive for everyone, but the advanced kids should feel pretty comfortable. Seems like there's room for everyone to do some contour-only training.

On the third day it came to my attention that most of the kids had no idea how to convert their paces to meters, and vice versa. Tell them to divide and expect a blank stare! This isn't terribly surprising, given my experience with random undergraduates at U of A, but these kids are still in high school, where I imagine they actually do have to do math every once in a while.

Today I had no revelations, except that I discovered a tick on my leg that yesterday I had thought was just a bug bite (I couldn't see it). Bummer.

C • Yeah, but... 32

C • contours 5

Orienteering 2:30:00 ***
26c shoes: Paul (Inov8 Mudclaw 270)

AM: Tatyana's marathon. This was a great test of concentration and technical ability in terrain that can only be described as "sketch". And I failed. Several many-minute mistakes, and it was a physically demanding course, too, which didn't make me happy. I have to wonder if more of these Texas kids would keep orienteering beyond high school if they had nicer terrain.

Lost several minutes on the 6th control of the first leg, in a small clearing on the side of a hill. I'm pretty sure I was very close the first time but since I didn't see it I figured I was in the wrong place and started trying to figure out where I was from the hillside, which didn't work. Finally bailed out to the top of the hill, where I had seen a control at a hunting stand and had vaguely used for my position on the way down. Took it carefully from there and hit it no problem. Then I was confused about a stream crossing and wasted time going to a bridge that I didn't need to go to. And that was just the first half. Second half, new map, and two total and complete lapses of concentration for many minutes lost at each. About 7 (brutal) km, ~2:19, 24c. Tom was somewhere around 1:40 (?), so it's not like anyone was even close to 10 min/km. Still, I pretty much sucked. At least there were several strings of controls that went very well. I just wasn't able to concentrate that hard in that veg for that long.

In the afternoon I hung around the lake with one of the boy platoons for their water safety training. And I got one launch off of the blob, which was not nearly as exciting as I expected it to be.

In the afternoon we did Tatyana's Bearing-O/Pocket-O. She set up a start with one control located at a stream junction about 300m from the start, with the idea that you can run fast without a precise direction and let either stream catch you. Then there was a streamered ~360m route back to the finish, which everyone was supposed to pace count and give an estimate for. She let everyone run the loop once to learn it, then we sent out each platoon to go fast, then set up heats for one final run. The idea now was for people to run as fast as they could to see how fast they could run through the woods when navigating doesn't get in the way. I only ran around twice, and I didn't have much zing left for that uphill finish! Apparently I was only 2m off of my estimate on the distance, so that makes up for it. ;-) I think I was about 3:25 for my run the second time.

tick count: 1

Orienteering 1:34:00 ***
25c shoes: Paul (Inov8 Mudclaw 270)

6-pt course this morning: A little better than yesterday, perhaps. It's good practice with all the buildings and trails intermixed with nasty woods. :- 1.7km, 6c, ~15:05

Window-O: the morning clinic for the advanced orienteers was a short window orienteering course. It was a good course, the objective being partially to figure out which way you drift. It's also just good to try to keep track of direction and distance in these junky woods. Turns out I drift downhill. ;-) 1.3km, 6c, ~19min

Early afternoon was JROTC training stuff, and I took a break.

Team Score-O: Late afternoon was the team score-o (1 hr). I paired up with a mentor-less beginner, though the pairing was just for a few minutes of planning and then, I suppose, for course review. The map had controls marked by circles and squares. Mentees took the circles, mentors the squares. I got 13 of 17, but dropped my punch card someone around the last one and couldn't find it. I looked for a few minutes but then had to hurry back so as to at least not be late. My mentee got 4 of hers and was back on time. Tom got 15, John got 11.

We do lots a fair amount of walking. It's good, except when Tom leads us through the woods.

Tick count:
Sun: 2
Mon: 4
Tue: 0 (so far)

And there has been cottage cheese available at every single meal!

Orienteering 2:00:00 ***
42c shoes: Paul (Inov8 Mudclaw 270)

It is more efficient to log all of the day's O (5 sessions) in one entry, especially given that it is practically my bed time and I'm am being eaten by Texan mosquitoes.

6-point course: ~11:40; not feeling very slick, over 2 min behind Tom (and John). This camp area is confusing, clearly I need to think more. About 1.2km, 6c.

Memory-O: I didn't have the patience to memorize the entire course like Tom the O-God, so I just did half; for the rest I tried to do two at a time, since that was on the maps posted at each control. Took ~45 min. I should do more of this. Excellent concentration and map simplification exercise. (One idea is to do red at a local meet and then try to memorize the orange or yellow.) About 2.5 km, 14c.

Route-Choice O: This was in the afternoon and it was definitely warmer than yesterday. In fact, I will use a word that I don't use very often: hot. It was hot. I think we had clouds yesterday. Jogged around this route-choice exercise not really worrying about the suggested route choices but just trying to be smooth. Pretty tough when you are fighting the vegetation and you are slipping on your own sweat. About 1km? ~15 min, 6c.

Prologue: Tom led us on a suicidal march to the start. Since he sat out of the route-choice O he was much better rested and was able to cheat (aka run) on the prologue. I had a terrible run, missing the first 4 controls. About 1.5km, ~21:50, 7c.

Chase: Tom had a monstrous lead on John (5 min?), who had an almost two minute lead on me. So Tom was pretty much out of the question, but John was a different story. His goal was to stay ahead of me, which shouldn't be that hard with that kind of a lead. But I passed him on the way to 6 while he was running around looking for it somewhere else. Unfortunately, I took a terrible route to 7 and he passed me just leaving it. So, finished 1-2-3 like we started. About 2.2km, ~24 min, 9c.

In the evening we did some classroom time with the kids. I'm amazed at how few of them can quickly get their map set the right way.

C • TJOC 4