Training Log Archive: Keith Andersen

Full on drowning with the gear; it isnt bad until you start getting tired, which happens immediately. Ditching our gear is nice in terms of it becomes easier to swim and float, but doing so requires you to have quite a lot of breath to be able to ditch without drowning. I need to work on that.

C • Drowning 3

time I was running to and from the intersection of 218 and 9.

Up the steep hillside/cliff.

Resetting controls that were misplaced, trying to find controls that were uber-lost (unsuccessful) and validating the ones that were set correctly.

It was wet this morning, which I got mentally prepared for. Registered a few minutes before my "Start Time" and then headed over to the start. They were doing open starts, which meant that my start time meant nothing and suddenly I was waiting for runners to clear out. Turns out I could have run blue, but I had just registered for Red without any clue that Blue was an option; so I had my mind all ready to go run a Red course. Looking back I kinda wish I had run the Blue course; it would have been nice to push my endurance for O-focus a bit farther. (I suppose the Highlander will do that too though!)

Control 1: I had been in this general area before, and took an asmuth towards the knoll, looking for the re-entrant to the north. It was a decent asmuth and I hit the re-entrant, found the point pretty easy. Took it slow but dont consider this type of slow to be error, just getting into the map.

Control 2: Took another asmuth toward the point and picked the finger looking ridge as my attackpoint. Ran along the asmuth picking my way through the undergrowth in a roundabout manner eventually picking up the swamp I wanted to check off, went up over the hill and then could see my ridge so ran to it. Got up on top but didnt fix my asmuth, ended up running to the river and slowing to a walk to quick figure out why I wasnt seeing it, then figured out it was farther off the river than I had previously anticipated. Lost about 10 seconds to hesitation there.

Control 3: Ran down the river and hopped up on the ridge when the river bent, tried to follow and pace an asmuth to the swamp in front of control 3, but ended up north of it and mistakenly read the muddy ground which was mapped as water as the swamp. Ended up too far north on the spur and figured out what I had done. I was being a bit too aggressive once I got off the river and didnt fix myself until I didnt find the point. That cost me about 30 seconds.

Control 4: Noticed that it was a semi vague area and it would require a generalized attack point, picked the hilltop and just ran to that. Then rough compassed Southwest and saw the spur to the west of the depression and let myself drift into the depression. Error to tie my shoes, which took entirely too long fumbling aroudn with my Epunch and compass and wet laces; 30 seconds.

Control 5: Ran back to the top of the hill then took a straight east bearing and saw the indent in the hill to the east. Was a bit hesitant when I got to the top of the hill and didnt make sense of some swamps and the random ditch looking thing that was not mapped. Lost about 15 seconds.

Control 6: Thought this one was easier than it was. Got cocky and decided to do window O, started running west until I would hit rocky ground and then make sense of where I was. The problem was that I drifted south, was running in swamps that I had no idea where they were on the map and didnt take time to figure it out, kept running and eventually saw a massive reentrant to the south. That triggered my red flag enough to make me stop and figure it out. I fumbled around for a while then I crouched down low enough under the brush to see the road and saw that I was much father south than I had expected to be. Ran straight west to the rocky re-entrant then shot northwest to the control. Error: 2 min

Control 7: Easy control, go to the river, cross, run north, find rocky re-entrant as AP, then go to control. Was a bit slow though going through the brush and rocks. Ended up having to tie my shoes again, but this time it was the other shoe so I triple knotted it. That took me about 30 seconds as well.

Control 8: Decided the river was crossable so ran West to the river then to the road then up the cliff area then to the powerline trail. Stopped to tie my shoe again, since the first shoe I tied came loose again, so I triple knotted this one as well. That was the third time I had stopped and I swore to myself never to show up to the start without having shoes either super knotted or taped. Then once I hit the trail intersection on the powerline road I ran/contoured around the hill to the depressions on a bearing. It was easier to get there than I had expected, but figuring out which was which was slow and I hesitated until I got to the spur to the Northeast of the control and bailed back at it. Total time lost on the leg was about 1 minute.

Control 9: wanted to run up the reentrant right to it but failed to pick an attackpoint or commit myself to a smart route so I ended up running to the river, jutting east along it until it curved north, ran in the woods handrailing it until I saw the boulder and then tried to take an asmuth but the vegetation was too bad and I ended up just continuing north along the river until I saw the swampy part then then was able to push northeast to the spur, ran up that and took a bearing but drifted from all the vegetation, then did the one hunch rule and ended up in the reentrant near the knoll, which then relocated me and I ran to the control. The messiness cost me about 2 minutes.

Control 10: Decided to take a play from the danish training, ran the trail and took a bearing from the trail, hitting it perfectly (i could see it from 50m out though).

Control 11, ran back to the trail thinking I would run to the river trail intersection but couldnt force myself to do that safe route. So I went straight through the green and hit a hill-top. Turns out I was able to relocate and then found the control. I think I would have saved maybe 30 seconds if I had stuck to the safe route; but I got lucky this time and found the point.

Control 12 was an asmuth point to the swamp and I did a pretty good job of executing that leg.

Control 13 I got a tad risky again thinking I could take an asmuth and run down the ridge, using the series of hilltops to the southeast of the point as my AP, but ended up north of the first thick green patch on the line (touching the swamp) and I continued to run west till I noticed an anvil shaped rentrant and then corrected back to the line and ended up finding the reentrant to the east of my control.

Control 14 was easy, bearing to the hilltop to the northwest of the point

Control 15, run fast to the road which crosses the river then go striaght south to the hilltop to the east of the point then grab the control.

Control 16, was tired and couldnt get in a good running rhythm to pick up the pace for the 400m I could have; got to the cabins and started getting overly cautious. Instead of simplifying, I tried to make sense of it all and ended up walking for quite a bit when I could ahve run to the ampitheater and then hit the trail that I wanted to attack from. Error: 45 seconds

Control 17. Just tired.

Finish.

Red - Splits

Event: DVOA Training & Camping Weekend
 

Compass Course; it was great, I only had bearings and I ended up figuring out what I needed to do to get a decent bearing to work. It was the first time in a while where I have GAINED confidence in my compass.

Contour maps... I walked the line-O with Brian Sutherland to show him what was up and what was down on the map. Then tried to run the mini courses by memory and simplification... turns out that was really really hard. I tried to run on an asmuth to a hill and look left in the reentrant kind of thing, but I was doing terrible at pace count and I totally threw everything out the window I had just learned about staying on a compass bearing. I also got flustered a few times when I realized that my hill was the second hill not the first or whatnot. Basically what I got out of it was that yes I can still read contours, but I have to really keep in contact with the map to feel safe (nothing too revolutionary about that but its always a good thing to re-enforce).

Night O with my dull flashlight was terrible. I also started off entirely wrong, was not expecting 1 to 5, and I ended up botching the first control, followed by a mis-set and tough second control. The next few legs I was sprinting and found them easy like a yellow course, then I got a bit too excited and made another big error where I didnt settle myself down to get to point 5 and ended up overshooting it, and went off the map. 6 was terrible since I was in cut grass approaching thorns and was reluctant to go exploring for a pit, which I eventually found. Through point 9 they were yellow difficulty and I was nailing them, then 10 I had the wrong attitude about since I was trying to stay way too high. the next few were just slow and deliberate in the forest, I botched 14 and 16 and then finished up the course.

Need to do for next time: Get a better light; pick routes that are more conducive to night-O, and dont get an early start time.

Was terrible at the freestyle still but I managed to get credit for the stroke because I didnt DQ myself by picking my head up out of the water. Afterwards we worked on inflating our ACU blouses to float. That was kinda like wearing a lifejacket. not too bad, I can handle that until they tell us to start swimming underwater with ACUs on.

Followed Sutherland to see what his logic is out on the course, only got to point 6, then bailed to go pick up points quickly.

Picking up controls coming back from point 6, running backwards on the course then going to point 13 and booking it back to the vans.

I feel terrible about how practice went today. Looking at the map there were a ton of legs that you could say were focused on one particular skill; and I hit the spread of them for the non-newbies; the problem is that no matter how good it looks on the books it has to feel like you are learning something. The course wasnt hard enough; used too many of the same points as yesterday; and frankly I was just plain unmotivated to run the same untechnical areas that I have traversed so many times before.

I decided that coaching Ian was the best idea for practice; the problem was that I didnt really help that much. I did too much talking at him and couldnt explain to him what exactly that he was doing wrong other than the fact that I had a different way and I explained my reason for it, then tried to explain why my way was faster/smarter/better. The problem is that he is going to default to his own style of thinking; and no matter how many times he sits and tries to figure out why I did something, he is going to make his own decisions on the run.

Maybe I am not explaining it perfectly with this analogy, but I feel as if last year we didnt have a Crawl, Walk, Run phase where we forced the newbies to pick up good habits. Instead we just kinda did a "whatever" phase and by watching the rest of the team run; they've gotten to the point where they are in the Walk phase; except it's a type of walk phase with a terrible limp that doesnt want to go away anytime soon and will prevent them from getting to the run phase.

I figure there are two options as USMAOTWTNCOIC, (USMA O-Team WoodsTraining NCOIC). I can either metaphorically break their legs and put them back down to the crawl phase until they get the basics drilled into their head (which would take quite a bit of time and be relatively boring for them); or I have a come to Jesus meeting with them, preach to them and hopefully do some saving and erase their metaphorical limp. I hope the DVOA training weekend is full of O-vangelism and we see some miracles.

C • Discovery learning 8

Cow drowning, lesson 8. I cannot correctly swim and breathe while doing the front-crawl/freestyle stroke. I have an insatiable need to breathe and the instructor doesnt understand why I cant hold my breath longer.

Setting e-punch and then retrieving them.