Training Log Archive: Mess Engineer

About 1 1/2 hrs of map corrections and control placement in OCAD this morning from yesterdays Largs walk before it gets too vague in my mind.

Raking continued until the constant drizzle got too annoying.

Sprint Map. 1:2000. Drizzle throughout.
24 Controls but pivot control removed as oval too wet so actually only 21 controls.
A few errors and time wasting trying to read map to work out where had to go next.

Repeat of my prior run but shadowing Lynda and coughing subtly when she started running in the wrong direction occassionally.
I spent a fair amount of time standing still.

C • coughing? 1

LONG - Splits

Personal Best by 44 seconds so first time under 25 minutes.
Ran in old gaffa tape shoes to compare with the new ones.
Felt dramatically better than Wednesday but (a) flat (b) cooler (c) legs were feeling normal.

Having half the attendance of my last event made it easier as I could pick a target in front of me and slowly overtake each one .. and there wasn't as many slower people running the other way so could overtake on the outside.

11:59 to turn around point (implying I didn't fade much in 2nd half).
21:59 to bridge on way back.
Only one person who I vaguely recognised from Orienteering today.

Dropped yesterdays lizard (who was still in same spot all night) off to Lyndas vet practice on the way back home.

9:40 am - 10:40 am
Continuing to rake leaves, fill 40 litre tubs, and burn leaves (Fire Pit burnt all through last night).

10:40 am - 11:00 am
Whippersnipping grass tussocks in area to make raking easier.

11:00 am - 11:30 am
Leaves and burning continued.
Rain stopped play.
Would have had to stop anyway as need fire to burn down for a few hours prior to going out for afternoon.

Walking around new Largs Street-O map field checking and choosing 50 potential control sites with Lynda Hewson. Warned her in advance that walking rather than driving could take up to 5 hours but we both had an enjoyable day and the rain mostly stayed away.

Planning for an event in next season ... so a year in advance as this years event calendar full.
Lynda learnt a lot about setting whilst we walked as I was critiquing her clue selection on the spot and discussion of all the various debates, confusion and issues I could recall from the last 7 years.

Main concern was map may be too small since its not super steep ... but after walking up every street and lane and bush area today ... even macey won't be remotely capable of covering this in 45 minutes! We could almost just set the bottom 2/3 and leave to top 1/3 for another year.

By the time we walked to the Largs pub and had dinner and walked back to our cars the total was up to 19.5 km (and I had spent 30 minutes solo prior to this before Lynda arrived so I would have covered another 2 km). After sitting at the table for 5 minutes we both realised legs going to be sore for Sundays sprint event at 4 pm.

P.S. The lizard died :(

Different instructor ... which meant lights left on so I could actually see the distance indicator ... so I could push harder to keep up rather than having no clue how I was going.

Walking at > 6 kmph up 15% incline. Harder than it sounds. Class moved back into the next room without me!

Mix of circuit type exercises. And these new shoes are tending more to the crap end of the scale.

Attempting to do a "good deed" today didn't work out.
Very large bearded dragon sunning itself on the road as I approached my house on way home from work.
So I pulled over and got out to move it along.
Neighbour in 4WD pulled out of their driveway and stopped as I walked to the lizard so I pointed it out and stood next to it so they would drive around it.
As soon as the 4WD pulled away the lizard decided to get spooked by me and run under the back wheels!
Yelled out and Neighbour stopped immediately.
No blood and guts but lizards back left leg looks odd (maybe broken).
Put lizard under bush by my front door.
Lizard very alert and aggressive with lots of bluff (as these ones always are) but hasn't moved in over 4 hrs.
If still there in morning will take to Lynda to see what she thinks.

Time approximate intermittent from 4 pm to about 7:30 pm.
Experimented with burning leaves in Fire Pit (compared with vacuuming, mulching or take to dump options) whilst I have Fire Permit and before the next 3 days of (hopefully and desperately needed) pouring rain.
Had previously raked up lots of small leaf piles around Fire Pit and Shed area so filled up 3 x 40 litre tubs at a time and kept walking back and forth dumping in Fire Pit.

The "bottleneck" in the process was the burn rate of leaves as the pit rapidly filled up.
Lots and lots and lots of smoke so most Greenhouse Vandalism option.

Still faster than the vacuum cleaner (considering the unblocking frequency).

Better solution would be to rake and burn in series, so whilst I rake the next pile, fire has more time to consume the last lot.

Another 3 hours on laptop working on new Street-O map of Lorn for next season.
Now finished all the streets and contours.
Image a bit blurry as screen dumped a PDF version to Bitmap rather than direct Bitmap out of OCAD.

From Orienteering

Lynda Hewson and I will walk around Saturday afternoon and field check every street to make sure.
Finding drawing up a map very interesting ... will do other Street-O areas too if the opportunity arises.

Lots of controls on offer again this week.
But in comparison to last week clue sheet simple, clear and concise.

Had NO IDEA which way to go in the 2 minutes preplanning time. Still had NO IDEA through entire run and was changing my mind throughout. Considered this the hardest set event I had ever done and was bamboozled through the entire run. Every method of linking the controls up seemed highly inefficient ... and considering my result my choice must have been one of the most inefficient.

Route 3F 1C 3H 1H 2D 1K 2C 1D 3G 3D 1L 3C 2L 2G for 14 Controls / 28 Points (1 pt x 5, 2 pt x 4, 3 pt x 5) in 46:07 so -2 or 26 points.
Routegadget

Even though runny nose gone lung capacity still not back to normal.
Basically had NOTHING in legs today.
Not sure whether still lingering sickness or the crappy new shoes I bought have no 'spring back' in them or the hills ... but was really really really bad today.
Intensity 5 for an Intensity 3 outcome.
Sweated heavily throughout.
Had to walk up hill to 1D and 3G, and then again up to 3D.
35 minutes in on way to 3C I wanted to give up and walk.
The long distance between 3C and 2L made it clear I was going to be late ... but skipping 2L and then having a huge gap to 2G just wasn't acceptable.

Best was 41 so 63.4%. Came 42nd.
Worst performance in probably 5 years.
Not sure what I can do to get body back into order again for next week.
Turned the sickness tick off as no outwardly visible symptoms.

C • Long way 3

Still coughing but nose seems to have stopped running.

rockman provided a base map of Largs so I can start making my first ever Street-O map.
This will be interesting.