Training Log Archive: ndobbs

Just opened my new Icebugs today, ridiculous what they come equipped with these days ;)

C • equipped? 20

Nice to see Boris and Anders nailed what I consider the best route on 14->15 in the long... I like Robbie's ott (nearly) to 8... really nice navigation by Anders in the middle - just a slight swerve 8->9 by the looks of it, and perfect 5->6 downhill slalom!

Girls need to upload routes!

Woke up this morning to pouring rain, sent Becky a text to cheer her up but she seemed very happy, must have been nostalgia for home or sumfing.

Arrived at the event ten minutes before Sam was due to finish and Eric was smiling and relaxed, first time I'd seen that. Twenty minutes later Sam came in with Ali hot on her tail.

Ali came close, but had to wait for Andrew Childs to break 35 minutes on the Red, and for Robbie A on the Blue (three decent runs out of three, respect!), two minutes clear of the best US runner, Jordan.

I though Anders might get close to 30, but 29:33 is damn impressive. BM is now on his top-ten list of maps he has run on ;)

Lots of happy people today, weather got hotter and sunnier as the day went on. Sweltering now. Good times.

A big thank you to all the participants who made the work worthwhile, and a huge, huge thank you to all who helped out!

C • Compliments! :) vs. Complaints :( 12

Talked on the way home about the difference between Sweden and smaller O-nations (Ireland/France/US/UK)... an example:

My club in Sweden organised a middle distance regional champs. My job was to put out four white course controls at path junctions.

I go to the US and I get to plan Team Trials on world class terrain... just a tad more rewarding.

C • White course controls... 1

Becky the star had it all under control by the time I arrived (having been woken up 15 minutes after first start, nice) in time to see the action.

Ali and Sam were as awesome as I expected. On the boys, only a Norwegian star got close to my expected winning time. Oops. A couple of minutes due to optimism, a couple due to the heat and a couple due to silly navigation. Courses were challenging, at least, in this world class terrain ;)

A taster for what WOC has to offer: http://worldchamps2011france.wordpress.com/2011/05...

RG should be interesting.

Closed OCAD for the first time in a couple of weeks! Aaaahhhhh...

Event: US Team Trials for WOC '11
 

Silly Canadians: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0IpW4UHOVY

Got to watch NM sprint too, before heading out to Purchase. Looked like a good race, if a minute or two long for my taste. Loads of route choices which may or may not be 50-50, really hard to tell.

C • Silly 3

Pretty good today... despite control stand bases not arriving when they should nor where they should, managed to get all the controls out and in the right place with the start only delayed by 15 minutes, so first start 3 pm. Ross was almost dead on 14 minutes, Sam and Ali were (unsurprisingly?) faster than I expected. AT ran his first sprint since EM in a sweet 13 flat.

Certainly a fun race to watch, with lots of small mistakes in full view of the spectators ;)

And all the controls out of Purchase and up to Blue Mtn by 5.35pm (all of 5 minutes behind schedule). A bit stressful for some, but mostly a job well done. [Now I wait for the complaints to come streaming in.]

Pity I couldn't be fit in France to kick some ass there. Amazing to see the three Swedish kids on top of the results.

Chest felt a bit weird after wolfing some cookies once everything was packed in the cars. Annoying.

There are a wonderful bunch of orienteers in the US.

C • Complaints 1

Thanks to Valerie and Sandy, RG for the sprint. Draw in your routes!!!
http://www.vmeyer.net/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi

yeehaw

Sad that there is only one clubless person signed up for the sprint. Hopefully there will be a few EODs.

Still run-down, uncharacteristically unhungry, but feeling a whole lot better than a few days ago.

Pepsico land is worth a visit, across the road from SUNY Purchase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_M._Kendall_Scu...

Croton Dam, near Blue Mtn, can be spectacular and is worth a visit, even if it doesn't rain the next few days.

Nearly there!

C • Not What I Expected 1

Went for a walk at lunchtime in the hopes of building up an appetite. Failed.

Since the burger/chips yesterday lunch, I've eaten a couple of tomatoes, a few oranges, a bit of yoghurt and a couple of squares of chocolate. Maybe I'm turning into a girl.

Just gone 4 minutes without receiving a TT-related mail. Wow.

C • TT 7

C • Careful about the generalizations... 1

Walked on a treadmill for twelve minutes with wires attached. Nothing exciting to report.

Visited Purchase to do a terrain correction and a map correction.

C • Terrain correction 1

Not allowed do any exercise until I've done a stress test... which should be soon.

C • Haven't you been... 2

Competent club members are getting all the controls ready. Competent non-club member has taken charge of getting the controls in the woods. Maps are printed, bagged and sealed. Edible awards are ordered. I can probably relax now ;)

Event: Saxon Woods
 

I should make it clear that the 'someone' who was doign the printing is usually competent. In this case he got screwed over by time pressure, his old print shop closing and the print shop he went to not printing samples first, combined with a Blue Mtn Ocad file that inherited all sorts of badness - it wasn't set up at all for laser printing, black dots too big, and CMYK colours all wrong...
And 'someone' stayed with me all evening to help sort it out.

C • Ph.D. 1

Back to fedex for another session, helpful girl, still took forever, but got wyobrg done in time to go to Ellen's for lunch.

did some control stand planning and reorganisation, or talked about it while Ellen did stuff. spent most of the time lying down on the couch.

abstained from map-bagging

aaaaaaaagggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

spent the day half in bed, resting, trying to recover... decided not to go out and do anything useful as tomorrow in theory will be a busy day, except I had to meet someone at the train station to collect maps at 7pm.

Very nice, all the maps arrived, just one small problem... the black was big and blurry and the contours hard to discern on Blue Mtn. You can, if you look hard, understand almost everything, but it would be impossible to do so on the run. My body was already not very happy at being that far away from bed... we debated what to do for half an hour... then took a trip to Fedex in White Plains... where the staff were somewhat apathetic and both colour printers were broken. On the plus side, they did do a little guillotining for us.

So back to the apartment, played with the Ocad files, changed the colour and black dot settings... made new course maps, drove to Scarsdale to another Fedex...

This one had functioning printers, but the DIY printer only managed to open two course maps (after thinking long and hard) and then decided that was enough.

The guy Daniel behind the counter was very busy but helped us out as much as he could (a lot)... so now we have usable Blue and Red course maps. At 11pm. Each file took forever and quite a bit of goodwill. In theory they are being bagged tomorrow.

If I am very good, I may try to get some better maps printed for the spectator courses, but don't count on it. [I feel very badly about this. But at 2.06 for a second printing of 11*17 when the entry costs 8$...]

I don't usually stress, but this evening...

C • yikes 1

I'll be checking this regularly over the next week:
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstrav...

At a printer's yesterday, I was talking about the races and the guy said he had been to both Purchase and Blue Mtn many times - Purchase because it used to host a classic car show of some sort, and Blue Mtn because of the shooting range.

Then went to Trader J's and had three separate conversations with staff members about my footwear. Funny business model. Have enough food to bunker up for another day or two.

C • footwear 3

I've been going through 6+ litres of fluids the last few days (or vv.).

Slowly starting to feel (not good, but) better. I may venture outside today.

Another day mostly in bed. Been dead since Wednesday night. Waiting for the antibiotics to do their job.

Event: Billygoat Run
 

Winning times in the Blue Long are now close to ten minutes off. Thanks Anders. :)

headache mostly gone. still feeling woozy. been a rough five days.

went to the doc on fri. on the way back, stopped for petrol. the guy who filled the tank was nearly 91.

sorry to people who had to go back into the woods after the goat.

Courses, maps uploaded to the printer's server. Time to rest. Guru did a lot of important work the last couple of days, big thanks to him!

Headacheyness back.

On the plus side, my voice has mostly recovered. Not a good day.

C • Run 3

wrecked the last few days... I thought it was mostly lack of sleep, but I went to bed just after 6 yesterday and still (more) wrecked today. oh well.

Came home from work after lunch and went to bed. Then went to Purchase... HVO has now signed and delivered the contract to SUNY... did a final tweak to the Blue and Red... courses are sweet, so is the map, hopefully the participants will do it justice :)

Got home, sent a couple of course maps to the guru, had some food, then spent 2.5hrs consulting with said guru. Got the ok on the sprint, 3/4 of the middle courses and probably not much wrong with the long...

voice brain body all ready to collapse

C • thanks 4

C • Awesome! 8

What will I use now instead of Skype?

And can you really pay 8.5bn for a company that has never made a profit?

C • Dislike! 2

Learning to crawl

C • You did the moving thing! 1

Map editing. Starting to look good, if not exactly from the Danish school of ISSOM.

Aha, forgot about that... just wasted half an hour... if you export a course map to pdf while the background map is in draft mode, you get a nice compass and pace exercise, but not much orienteering map... I got really really confused by that back in France a few years ago...

Went out to Purchase again today, doing some map-checking. Took a few pics while there, check out
http://www.attackpoint.org/discussionthread.jsp/me...

Also did a quick tour of the Neuberger, definitely worth a visit.

Thought I might go for a run, but then thought better. Had a couple of big juicy pork chops in the Cobble Stone afterwards.

Made on Thursday.

C • Beautiful! 1

work, drive, 2hrs at Blue Mtn (in new 5fingers, pretty cool), drive home, quick bite to eat, then 2h50 on the phone about the sprint map... stuff getting sorted, but when do I get to rest?!

C • ed 2

Strange dreams last night. One I was driving along complaining to my parents about how bad Americans are at driving, turning around to do so and swerving from lane to lane myself, driving a bit too fast on a bendy road. Then there was a hilltop which I went over apparently a little too fast, and the car went flying through the air, quite a ways, and landed in Irish mountainside bog. Things went black, I hoped I wasn't dead, was able to think this for two or three seconds and then realised if I was able to think this then I probably wasn't.

In dream two there were 96 people entered for TT Blue Course and 62 for the Red and none for any of the other courses.

Woke up tired with a headache. Obviously got too much on my mind :)

C • Interesting! 1

Still fairly wrecked. Went for a very slow walk out around part of BM I hadn't been to. I liked what I saw, which is a relief. There are some pics from the terrain on AP somewhere.

zzz

Slowly things are coming together... tiredness is sporadic, here today.

C • ... 1

The more I think about it, the more I think it was a baaaad decision excising the 3rd split at the IOC Middle.

It doesn't do any good. Either let the results stand or void the course (and possibly rerun at a later date).

Spent two hours walking around Purchase. Some good stuff out there. Met two groups of students out by black Xs in the woods.

C • IC middle 4

Ajax had live results on the web for the IOC this weekend. Martin Flynn (of Ór fame) is a star... or whoever was responsible. It sounds like it might be pretty easy to do now it is standard in Ór.

For those who don't check biggins' log:
http://catchingfeatures.com/b/skiomapmemory.html

There was a Japanese theme to the cherry blossom festival in the park outside my flat today (tsunami charity stuff), so lots of good music and sunshine and food and really cool psycho child warrior taiko drummers.

Who needs a Speedy Goat partner?

I'm a risky proposition. I may be fastish and good or be jogging the course and slow, depending on fitness.

C • I 2