Training Log Archive: PG

Off to the left coast, going through security at Bradley, the guy checking ID's, an old-timer (like me), looks at my ID and says, "Famous name."

And I'm thinking, you don't often run into folks on this continent that remember Yuri Gagarin.

And then he says, "Famous orienteer, long-distance runner, been on the Wheaties box."

I shit you not.... :-)

So we had a short chat, smiles on both faces, he'd done a little orienteering with his kids way back when. And clearly his memory is better than mine these days.

C • wow 6

River Road - Old Deerfield loop. Warm afternoon, but for some reason (taking yesterday off?) my legs had a little energy today. Wasn't pushing it, but a few times up and over a rise there was some zip. A pleasant surprise.

Or maybe it was because of the good karma I had from actually following up on something I'd talked to JJ about a couple of weeks ago, namely, did he know of any places where one could give old bikes to and maybe they could put them to some use, instead of just dumping them in a landfill.

And JJ had sent me several suggestions, all slightly complicated, though one was just to inquire around here at the local shops. I can't say that was exactly what I did -- what actually happened was I was listening to the radio yesterday, local station, not NPR, and on came an ad from a local bike shop, they were having a program this weekend for people to buy/sell old bikes, also for people to donate old bikes and they would be put to use.

And so I swung by the shop yesterday afternoon, yup, they'd take my three old dogs, bring them by on Thursday. I'm away Thursday, how about Wednesday afternoon? Sure, that'll do.

And I managed to stuff all three in the Subaru and deliver them this afternoon and the guy seemed happy to have them ("Ah, Univega's, a lot of these have passed through the shop"), and I was certainly happy to be rid of them in a good way.

I have a few dumb questions, and I figured I'd ask them here before showing my ignorance on the general AP discussion board....

I'm setting courses for a local WCOC meet Sunday, September 19 at Sessions Woods. It's the weekend for national O' day.

I've heard folks talk about how we might benefit (something new for experienced orienteers, or something enticing for newcomers) from allowing or even encouraging participants to use a GPS. I thought it might be interesting to try.

Has anyone done this? If so, what did you do, and how did it work out?

I assume one way would be to just give the coordinates of each point as part of the control description. I would think this would be the most helpful.

Or, you could put a UTM grid on the map, let them plot their own coordinates as needed (beforehand, or real-time?).

Or, maybe for experienced orienteers, just make it explicitly OK to use a GPS and see what they come up with.

Or something else?

Any thoughts? It would be nice to try something out. And maybe a way to attract a few more people without any significant extra workload. (Or maybe it would be a significant extra amount of work?)

Just wondering....

C • GPS 4

Shutesbury - Lake Wyola loop. A long slow grind up the Shutesbury hill. Didn't have much zip today.

C • Tanglefoot 8