Training Log Archive: ndobbs

Not orienteering in the Jura because I'm locked in in my flat.

C • How 6

Gentle jog after being rescued by a neighbour. Keys passed from balcony to window with a mop.

Not only in Boston: On Friday, going to sCool, there was a black mini-SUV type thing with its nose halfway out over the bike lane waiting to pull out of a side street. As I swerved to go around, it accelerated 30cm and stopped. Scary. I shouted. The guy pulled down the window and was saying aggressively, well, were you hit, were you hit? Dick.

I think the car reg is GE 527517, coming out of Ave Bois-de-la-Chapelle, for the record.

C • Scary 7

In four and a half weeks, all going well, I will have
- helped run an orienteering event.
- prepared a sequence of four 1h30 orienteering lessons, each of them undergone by six or more classes of 8-12 yos.
- (largely) given eight of those classes.
- attended and spoken at week-long workshops in Warsaw and Vienna.
- given a two-hour introductory course in holomorphic dynamics with four days notice.
- gone to Scotland for a wedding.
- hosted two maths invitees to Geneva.
- given three out of the eight tutorials I was supposed to.
- attended the WC weekend in Switzerland.
- helped organise a day of orienteering races for the schoolkids.
- flown to Brazil.
- gone to a Neil Hannon concert.
- finished off an eighty-page paper (started many years ago).

Plenty of time.

Survived the first week with kids, a week being two mornings. 1h30 sessions, warm-up, loosen up, relay to collect jigsaw pieces, jigsaw of map over landscape, construction of terrain (gym mats, benches etc), orienteering.

Next week, the teacher will be on his own (as he was for half his classes this week), he'll do cone orienteering and, weather permitting, go outside for a bit. Pose a control, verify another, then some courses I planned.

The week after, who knows?

C • Lessons 1

Timo didn't win the Finnish Champs! http://news.worldofo.com/2015/09/06/finnish-champs...

C • WRE 1

Observed some sCOOLwork today. Little kids are like SportIdent. As long as everything goes like it should, it's fine and fun and easy.

If I had ham, I could make a ham sandwich, if I had bread.

has finally degenerated into

If I had ham, I could make a lamb sandwich, if I had bread.

On yesterday's event.

Planning: Crispin planned courses, I suggested some mods, we taped sites, a couple more mods.
Printing: done in-house, not very high q, waterproof paper.
Setting controls: C&me the night before, plus I did some more the morning of. System is friendly. SI vest is amazing, any club who doesn't have one should buy a couple. Canes were light with a thing to step on at the bottom that also worked as a wedge to stabilise the control. Flags were in a bag. They weren't knotted to the cane, just slid between the manual punch and the SI-holder, good idea! I could run with twelve controls no problem.
Working the event: Crispin, Helen (ex-interloper) and me. Collected stuff from clubroom (9am), drove up. I went out setting controls while C,H and Zheng (helping before the event) set up registration and computers. Mostly ready by 12, except none of us had used SI and the rental SIs had been forgotten. Lennart arrived with those and did the first five minutes of reg, as I watched on.
Big rush of early entries, then a brief lull, then more entrants and the first finishers. But the SI wasn't registering finishers... oops. We had to keep sending people away until Mr Niggli got recruited. Classes (with course names) hadn't been assigned to the courses. He sorted that out and all was good, modulo some errors.
More people entered than expected (140 or so?), so I had barely a break on the computer, and we managed to run out of maps.
We didn't have results up anywhere, just turned the screen occasionally to show people. That could be better, esp with power available, an extra screen would have been great.
Weather was cold, we were all a bit frozen.
We wrapped up a bit later than we ought, it would have been smarter to be ready to collect control at 5 sharp. H went out to get some controls, then returned not finding the right road to drive up, so I swapped. C packed up, I collected my bunch, got changed, H arrived a little stressed and hungry, she hadn't found two or three of the controls, no big deal. C&I went out to collect them, near two roads, so easy enough. Packed the cars, stocked stuff in the clubroom, home for 9pm.

Big problem: not descending in time to buy food in Gex!
While it wasn't particularly smooth, I think 3 people can just about manage an event that size, esp with volunteers to help with SI issues :) I'm surprised how little dead time there was. It's nice that the controls are so light, collecting them isn't a problem. Also, the longest course was only 6km, so they weren't toooo far.

Lignon loop.
Stretched in the park/garden after, felt good/necessary.