Training Log Archive: JanetT

Event: Canadian Championships Long
 

Foley Mtn CA, 1:10000, 5m; 3.9km course with 100m climb advertised. Mostly clear morning with a breeze and temps in the low 60s.

Took the trail to a safe attackpoint to 1 when I probably could have gone straight, but I found it confidently. On the long leg to 2, I ran the trail and road until just before the OOB buildings' driveway where I headed north and stayed in or alongside yellow/open areas, passed the cliffs, and to the knoll. Good to three, a short leg.

To 4 I took the slight left route, crossing the marshy/wet area where it wasn't too green; didn't really see the ride but found the trail through the pine woods which I followed to the open area which looked a lot like the Barrens near Carp. Hooked into it from the north, not quite a spike.

Not careful on my bearing to the next one, and I believe I crossed the stream at the cliffs WNW of the ones before my control and investigated the rises and open areas behind them for too long. Should have backtracked to the stream sooner, and made sure of the cliffs. At least 10 minutes lost.

Okay for about two-thirds of the next leg, checking features, getting into the area of our control 2 from the middle yesterday, then I lost contact and confidence and checked several other dot-knoll-y thngs with flags but didn't find the right number. I eventually came to yesterday's first control (just outside the control circle) and found it from there. Ugh. Then on the short leg to 7 I think I went by the top of the correct rocky reentrant and looked down, but did not see a flag (and didn't want to climb down the rocks), and so I continued to check other reentrants before circling back to it from below. I'm sure it was just out of sight from above, but I lost about 7 min here.

To 8 I wanted to get off that hill so I angled down to the trail to run it past the junction near Saturday's start. Went as far as the spur near trail before I crossed the marshy stream and crossed the N end of the clearing to the control. SW to the road, hitting it near the bend and crossed the stream on it before heading west to find the reentrant on the hillside which several others were also headed for making it easy to find. Then straight to 10, mostly straight (on trails) to the final control, and then was just happy we didn't have the same uphill climb we had yesterday (thank you, course designer!).

Kitty Jones is remarkable to make it around that course in ~54 minutes! Such confidence in navigation and woods speed. And Janet F did well too, getting around in ~1:10 for silver!


Relive my mistakes and loop-de-loops.

Relive videos don't seem to be useful for much to me at this point, but they're kinda fun.

I didn't have my watch on, but this was a physical climb to start, about as much as yesterday's walk to start. Glad I got there early enough to chill for awhile; it gave me time to see where other F55s were starting before and after me, which may or may not have been a good thing.

Course 5 - Splits

Event: Canadian Championships Middle
 

COC Middle at Foley Mtn Conservation Area, 1:10000, 5 m contours; 2.0km nominal, no climb given on control description but was described as 55m in the meet notes. AP says 100; I counted about 60 from the map.

Weather was unsettled but it didn't rain while we were at the park; breezy and mid 60s or so was a nice change of pace.

Footing is tricky in this area with many areas of jumbled broken granite blocks especially on slopes, which made for slow going for me as I'm nursing a sore ankle. I might have been faster to #1 if I'd skirted the hillside a bit to the right to avoid some of the rocks. Joanne Woods, who'd started two minutes back, had caught up by the time I was leaving 1, and had a better line to #2; she was away before I punched and speedy to the end finishing more than 10 minutes ahead of me.

Straight to three. To four I was unsure of the yellow and green closer to the line so I angled to the trail, hitting it (I think) at the bend because there was a control flag there. Up the trail til it started to turn more W, then N toward the break in the cliff SE of control. It seemed to take longer than I expected to 5 but I found it okay. A bit to the right of the hill/water stop near the road but someone was standing there which helped me pin it down.

To 7 I may have gone a bit out of the way to the right of the line, but I had a solid attackpoint...went west on road to get around marshiness then south to kink in trail, whereupon I ran to the next kink, then in...no problem. 8 seemed farther to the east than mapped, and was hard to get to through some deadfall but I reached it okay. The rest were straightforward; finish was uphill, a 2-contour climb in a short leg. Ugh.

7th in F55-64; top three were 32-35 minutes. Janet F had a good run at 40 minutes.

Trivia Score O in Perth, Ontario. We drove to one of them after dinner at O'Reilly's, but walked to the rest, parking near the Crystal Palace.

5 - Splits

Drove back up to Ottawa for the day. We hoped to get tickets for a Parliament tour but by 11:30 there were no English language tours left doe the day. I'm not sure how much Québécois French I would understand so we didn't try for that. If we come back and still can't get English language tours I might give it a try.

So we walked around the grounds that we could access (they're stil in the process of sand-blasting...I think... in any case cleaning the facades of the buildings around parliament square, so there are areas blocked off). Then headed to Byward market for lunch, then the Gallery of Art which kept me out of the sun in the middle of the day. Some interesting exhibits; I love looking at the Inuit art and carvings.

Back to Byward to look for dinner. Originally sat down in an Irish pub, but when no one came after 10 minutes to bring water or take any orders at all we got up and left. The Fish Market was more expensive but food and service was very good.

Event: Canadian Championships Sprint
 

Sprint in Perth, Canada, course 3, 2.9 km (measured along the "optimum route" given that there some out-of-bounds areas to deal with--mostly a main road, for which they had a couple of manned crossings forcing a slightly off-line route). I enjoyed the challenge of making sure I was on the correct side of things (the first control, for one) and looking for traps. The only real "mistake" I made, costing probably about 40 seconds, was *not* crossing the crossable watercourse between 14 and 15, or even taking the southern bridge rather than the northern bridge (southern might have been slightly shorter).

A first for me, I think, was finishing the sprint *inside* a building. It appeared to be a venue that could be used for a farmers market, or be rented for events (such as this one), as it overlooks water and has a good sized parking area nearby. They had vendors there selling the local brews and spare rib tacos. :-)

7th in F55-64. The speedy Canadians duke it out for top three and I've been finishing in 6th or 7th.

It was partly cloudy and a bit muggy; temp around 76. Cooling off after we finished so I'm glad I had a dry shirt to change into.

3 - Splits

Retro-O in Parc Gatineau at Camp Fortune. Re-run of the original COC courses from 1968...I did the women veterans' course, the "yellow" (like a modern green), 4.3 km, on a 1:20000 black and white map with 6m contours. With north lines about 45 degrees off vertical (angled left), something else to keep track of. Not all used features were actually mapped, but flags were in the circled locations (control descriptions were English only; international symbols came later).

Mostly sunny and humid; mid 70s to start but low 80s when we finished. I was soaked with sweat enough that the brim of my hat was dripping for most of the last half hour.

Started well, being careful to pace count as I went down the trail to where I wanted to leave it to attack, because of the 1:20000 scale. The marshes showed up right where I expected them to! #2 was reassuring, back to the trail and near a junction. Almost overshot my third control, the terrace, number 86, but saw a couple of people coming out of it so I checked where they came from. The only other control I messed up was near the end when I was running on a trail behind others and just needed to find a bridge, except I wasn't confident which trail we were on and explored some others which apparently aren't on the map (bike trails) for several minutes lost, I'm sure.
When I finally did see the bridge I didn't see the flag at first because several young boys were hanging out there and one was between me and flag, but then he moved. From there to the finish was a bit tricky finding the proper trail. I went up a hill on one with streamers (control descriptions said "150 m from last control to finish. No tapes") and there was the finish banner just ahead of me. Success!

I was in about 18th place overall on the course when we left with only a few more people out.

Because the original event here also apparently had a club team award, Gord encouraged clubs to put together their top three runners' times (as long as they met certain rules). Turns out EMPO (Janet Findlay, David Hunter, and me) were first club team, narrowly beating out Marion Owen's team from Calgary)! Janet and David certainly ran well on the yellow course; as for team times, my time was almost two minutes faster than Glen's (though he ran the longer "red" course).

After a late night, feeling tired from three days of races and a morning trying to find my car key (we eventually found it, kicked under the cabinet in the motel bathroom...), I decided to just walk some of the controls closer in to the Ecowellness Centre. I've been on the Barrens before and didn't relish running (or adding sunscreen to be out in the open). Visited 215-117-121-118-152-114-122-120 (the last two were right along the trail). Yeah, that was enough. Buggy woods with plenty of mosquitoes despite my using spray, but I got some quality woods time (turned my ankle once, not too badly; it's okay).

Gave the Barrens portion of my map to Jean O'Neil from Ireland who hadn't gotten one in her packet and wanted to revisit the area. That gave me a much smaller map to handle. :-)

Night O at Rivermead Golf Club in QC across the river from Ottawa. Because there were mass starts for the three courses offered, they did some forking and mixing up of the controls so following was not advised (not that *I* could keep with anyone :-)).

I was given course 2-A1, 4.3 km. Greens and sand traps were mapped out of bounds and for the most part weren't along leg lines (except 5-6, where I contoured around the hill the green as on). I think I had other people heading into many of the controls which helped. The longest leg was one I called a non-spike because I didn't stay close to the line but got off to the left hitting a pond I needed to skirt, so I lost time there. Otherwise I navigated well and knew which way to turn after punching. It was fun despite my getting so sweaty that the cool evening temps were uncomfortable after finishing. I didn't manage to win a prize; 21st overall on course 2 behind 4-5 other women; 4th F55-64 (an Irish woman who finished about 20 sec ahead of me was F65+).

Order of controls for my forking was:
81-84-107-90-85-105-104-99-87-92-105-93-106-88-101-96