Training Log Archive: cedarcreek

Picked up 19 controls from the relay. I got everything left of the big stream plus 177. Bill Swift got everything else from the relay and the sprint. I'm 95% sure every control was out of the woods by dark on Sunday. That's amazing. I'm ready for a break. That was a pretty crazy two weeks. Whew!

Probably the biggest surprise for me was how well the bib number/map number thing worked with my SportIdent set-up (the software class/course set-up), although it did take me a while to find a way to get the finish clock times out of it.

The 2nd biggest surprise for me was that the relay seemed to be as successful as it was. I thought it was exciting, with a fairly small event center so people would be packed together (which was my plan). About 6 or 7 weeks ago, I was standing in the ice-cold rain for about 10 minutes looking at that area with the restrooms thinking it was the place.

Something that is no longer a surprise is the level of support in OCIN to make something like this come off. It's like volunteers just show up knowing what they're supposed to do. I think Mike handles all the asking volunteers---It's pretty amazing.

I'll look for a better place to do this, but I really need to thank everyone who helped make the weekend a success. The one most visible to me was Wyatt Riley, who stepped in and helped in the transition area, but really, these events wouldn't be so smooth if there wasn't so much help. They wouldn't happen at all if there wasn't so much help.

C • Thank you! 4

Carried water to two water controls. (Probably not enough for the runners...) I got 90 minutes of sleep this morning, between 6am and aout 8am. I spent a lot of time last night basically making a spreadsheet to streamline the team entry process. It was so handy to be able to use a lookup table for names and various other information. When I arrived, about 80 minutes after the sprint first start, they were still accepting relay team changes. If I hadn't done the work last night, we would've had to run the relay with filler names and data, and then had to backfill in later. As it was, it was pretty easy to get the new teams entered and the leg changes processed. I'll be looking to see what people thought of the relay. Of everything I had to do, the thing that surprised me the most is probably the smoothness of the SI download. Although I should say I've got some issues with tthe first leg runners not showing up on results because they didn't punch start.

Event: Flying Pig X (OCIN)
 

Finished all the distant controls, and put SI units on all the stands I planted last week. I still have a few maps to bag; I have to seal all the map bags, nearly 300 of them (to handle contingencies with people/teams); and I have to come up with a .csv file that will import teams and map assignments into the SportIdent OE software. I've had really good luck importing entries into OE, but this one is forked, and that makes it somewhat harder---certainly more complex. We have very few solid entries---Is is normal for teams to be put together so late? To handle that, I'm planning to make an entry for each map with a name like "Bib 401". So we can assign bibs and just send them out, and backfill the names later. Obviously, this is not the best way, and I'm hoping we can import a file that will require a minimum of changes afterwards.

Well, that's my break. Back to work! I'm hoping to get to bed by 3am. (I had been running a pretty heavy sleep deficit, but I caught up some last night---I went to bed at 3:30am, and got up at 10am. I'm so glad I did that.)

Where's my ibuprofen? Ahh. Here it is... My back muscles are sore.

Oh, I almost forgot. I did 1 hour of this course setting in deep darkness with a dinky 3 LED headlamp. Night O is so much easier with a big light. I shot across some flat green, got confused, and spent 8 or 10 minutes relocating. It turns out I missed about 60m right, and I thought I was left. It's really hard to relocate when you can only see about 20 feet in front of you.