Training Log Archive: bishop22

Met Steve and Scott at Ellison main lot for a run at lunch. Followed trail S out of park to Penfield Rd - Panorama Tr (via Old Penfield) - path to Iron Creek back to Blossom.

Couldn't get motivated on early 100s, but made up some on the 200s
3:56/7:54
1:30,2,1,2,1,29,8 (on 1:50)
3:17,11

1 quick circuit, made quicker by leg curl machine being out of commission, which sucks, since that is key to avoiding further ham/glute damage.

Ran on the permanent course at Durand Eastman. Tough (impossible) to locate several of the controls due to severe undergrowth, etc. Parked at golf course lot.
C1 - 2:16 - seems to be missing (obvious trail intersection)
C2 - 2:19 - also seems to be missing, or covered with weeds
C5 - 4:31
C6 - 7:17 - trail leads to this one now
C7 - 10:39 - map makes this look like smooth sailing thru mostly open area. Reality was some bushwhacking (had to wear shorts, didn't I)
C8 - 4:58 - found stream junction easily, but could not see control
C9 - 23:35 - map is way off - there is much DARK green to get down to the road south of the private property; it wasn't too bad across the road, but I must have misread the contours, because I traversed a couple of spurs with no luck (and I think I found this one last time).
C10 - 9:28 - since I overshot 9, I wound up further along trails than I thought, ran thru saddle where control allegedly sits and 200m further to the road. Went back to saddle and could not see control - but trail is replaced by lots of wandering disruptions of weedy undergrowth.
C11 - 6:45 - didn't fund this one where the trail crosses the stream
C14 - 3:53 - delay to not disrupt golfers (loose use of the term)
C13 - ~3:00 (accidentally stopped watch)
Finish - 2:40

Ran around Harris-Whalen park before, during and after Nate's first modified XC race. He got outkicked by a teammate to finish 2nd in 9:12 for a rolling 1.5 miles (probably a little short?).

3:55/7:51
1:28,8,8,9,8,5 (on 1:55)
3:22,18

1 circuit

Random Hills level 12 avg rpm = 84

Ran (as it turns out) last year's permanent course at Chestnut Ridge park, with this year's control descriptions - took 3 missing controls and 2 mis-matched descriptions to figure that out. Then smooth sailing. Nice, runnable woods.

Trail run at the Oven Door. Ran the crescent trail - 23 minutes with a group (Vince took us in a circle), then ran out to Woodcliff and back alone on the correct route (well except for my blue loop detour).

With Steve - ugly, ugly 50 on the front on the way to a 94.

Scramble with Chris's staff - led my team to a 38.

AM Run with GTA - luckily an easy day for my return after several weeks. Frank was coming off the Rochester Marathon and Erik is doing some long relay race this weekend, so they went easy, which gave me a chance to keep up.

Shorter with slightly more rest on the 100s to avoid total sluggishness.
3:55/7:51
1:26,9,9,7,8 (on 2:00)
3:20,18

1 circuit

7 x 2 minute pick-ups with 1 min recovery at Cobbs Hill Park. 5 were almost exclusively on trails while the other 2 were mostly thru terrain.

Warm-up (15min), warm-down(15min+) and recovery (6 min). Ran 9:52 for 10 min. section back from park.

Went off at 6:25, hustled around front 9 in 58 minutes (course record) - only shot 44, but that was mostly due to rust (started double-double). Only 1 bogey on the next five holes (and that was a 3-putt, including missing a 3-footer).

Beats the 42 that I shot in 63 minutes earlier this year.

Red Course at Hickory Run (DVOA Training Weekend finale). Started off very well for being out of town (given my history). Was right on the first 2 controls and was quite proud of myself for successfully running around via a rocky reentrant (up about 600m) and cutting in at the right spot to get to C3. C4 thru C7 were pretty straightforward (though I lost a minute each being off line to C4 and C5). C8 was a longish challenging leg, but I had a nice plan and almost executed flawlessly (cut to the control too early from a fence when I thought a depression was a ditch). Then all hell broke loose. Grabbing a drink at C8, I forgot to punch - not realizing this until I was approaching C9 and had this uncanny feeling that I hadn't punched. So, I lost 10.5 minutes going back to C8 and returning to C9, very depressed, for the start of the nightmare leg. There was no way out of C9; I was surrounded by mountain laurel constantly for the first 600m or so to the south (which looked quite white with some light/med green mixed in, so I don't think west to get to a trail quicker would have been doable with its dark green abundance). After fightin thru all of this, it was time to run, and I was beat. Leaving C10, there was a strong band of dark green along the river I had to cross, so I tried to run around to the east, thought I saw a gap, but wasn't far enough - crossed the river OK, but after I had started to climb the other side, I ran into mountain laurel that I actually had to crawl through. Disobeyed first instinct and didn't proceed immediately to the trail (thought I could stay in the woods), but eventually decided to bail to the trail anyway. C12 was easy and I should have been home free, safely under the 2 hours that I had told Chris would be the pick up time for heading to a Wilkes Barre sports bar for the Bills game. I traded off a longer run to C13 to give myself an easy attack point, but totally screwed it up - allowed myself to be distracted by another orienteer. After > 30 minutes of wandering I was bailing out west to the power line trail (300m+ away), when I hit a trail after only 150m. Somehow I had drifted about 400m southwest of where I thought I was wandering. Ran to the bend in the trail and attacked quickly and accurately from there. C14 was easy and I got there just before someone else, so now I had to hustle in to stay ahead up the hill to C15 and into the finish. That is the most tired I've been at the end of an orienteering race, and this despite such a poor performance. I hope I can handle the Hudson Highlander in 2 weeks!

After getting into the car to rush off for the Bills game (missed over half of the first quarter), I noticed my sock was blood-soaked. Yep, that fall onto a rock on the way to C1 had drawn blood halfway up my shin - right where Walt's infection started, the infection that caused him to miss the whole weekend (well, except Sunday lunch).

Training Weekend with DVOA at Hickory Run

AM training at DVOA Training Weekend. After a dry land workout - discussing the RedY courses from last month's champs - we did a relay exercise where teams of 3 took turns moving bags from one control location to the next. Teams of 2 would have been better for this - my partners left me waiting at the start for almost an hour before my last leg.

PM training session: 2 parts. First we had to follow a contour line for about 600m, along which we were supposed to spot 5 flags - I only saw 4 somehow. Next we did a short course with 10 controls on a contour-only map, and the controls had no codes. Nice exercise in reading the land.

Night-O at the DVOA Training Weekend at Hickory Run. Ran most of the first leg getting away from the camp, but then had to walk most of the next 3 legs, since I was on compass bearing thru the woods, with not much visibility or many strong checkpoints. The last 4 controls were dominated by road running and were generally easy to find - although C6 cost me a lot of time by appearing to be hung too far northwest of the circle.

My past night-O experience was mostly on/near trails, so this was a nice adventure.

Went out at 7pm to run on the Irondequoit Bay East map (2004 Score-O). Unfortunately, it's starting to get dark early these days - made it thru 4 controls before I could not read the map in the woods, then it turned into a Night-O, and me without a light.

Getting sluggish from the recent lack of swimming:
4:06/8:09
1:30,2,3,1,1,29,9 (on 1:50)
3:26,24

1 circuit

River to UR ped crossing (21:00) and back (19:11). Don't know if I'm that out of shape, the heat was a factor, or my legs are hungover from the Rogaine, but that was not really an easy run.

Ran 3 with the old man before the Bills home opener (win 22-7, but we came to see TDs not FGs).

ROC Rogaine (3, 6, 12hr - Nate and I signed up for 6) at Rattlesnake Hill

Nate and I competed in the 6-hour category at the Rattlesnake Hill Rogaine. On the way down, we planned to cover 18K (straight line distance) in the 6 hours. When the maps were handed out, we started to piece together a loop, and it happened to add up to exactly 18K. We executed pretty well, but made a decision to skip 2 controls for 78 pts, and wound up coming in 42 minutes early. Luckily the skip did not cost us a place (we managed to edge out Sergey by 7 points, and Rick and Linda by a single point), and we managed 2nd overall behind Pavel who picked up 1298 pts (we had 1107). I'll add some details, a link to the map and our route when I have the map in front of me.

Greens just aereated earlier this week. Put up an 86 which included 38 or 39 putts. Short game was atrocious: hit 9 greens in regulation, within 35 yards on all the others, but couldn't finish.

Hash at Mendon Ponds. Nice O-training actually - it would have been outstanding if I had the map of the park to read along the way. Fetch set live, and managed to have a deja vu (sp?) beer check. I guess our president has asked us to conserve during the national emergency, so recycling a beer stop is kind of patriotic.

3:59/7:56
1:29,31,3,2,1,29,28 (on 1:50)
3:23,18

1 circuit

Random Hill Level 12 - avg 88rpm

VERY sloppy 46

Went to the Y afterwards to do weights and bike, but it was closed - must be shutdown time. The road to sloth is paved with good intentions...

Event: DVOA Club Long-O' Champs
 

Well, I'm not going to drive from Boston to the Poconos, arriving at 1:30am, just to watch Nate start/finish a Yellow course, nor can I bring myself to enter a shorter course than my class. I was not as hobbled as after last week, and I could jog on trails that were level or slightly downhill, with only minor discomfort. Uphills and woods were a different story, and I had to walk most of that, which does not bode well for a Long-O course.

I see that LPSPhoto has referred to some of the flags as "bingo controls", which is an interesting term, that seems to apply. I am used to our local courses where there always seems to be a well-defined attack point that you can fall back on.

Anyway, as slow as I was, Nate was fairly quick and managed to be first on Yellow. His plan was to go out on Orange afterwards, while waiting a couple of hours for me to return, but the DVOA folks said that this was not the place to run your first Orange. They reconsidered after he finished Yellow, and he breezed thru 3 controls before getting stumped on 4 and bailing. C4 was supposed to be at a stream junction, but both streams were dry, and Nate couldn't differentiate them from rocky ground.

Red - Splits

MIT XC Alumni Meet, Franklin Park

Just about any other race, and I would have skipped it, but a 100th anniversary of my old college cross country team doesn't happen often, so I suited up (but where was Ken?): instant replay of last Sunday. Made it almost a mile at a reasonable pace (6:30ish), before re-straining my achilles (plus the lower calf this time) on a quick rise. Had to limp along at 8+ minute pace, and finish DEAD LAST!

Nate jumped in for the last 2 miles with me, as planned, but since he has no business plodding along at 8-min pace on his weekly "hard" day, I made him do a fartlek workout where he had to catch Jeff Lukas 20-30 seconds ahead, then wait for me, and do it again.

The other aspects of the day were great - at least 7 guys that I ran with made it back for the race, and there was a nice dinner that included former runners sharing memories from each decade since the '60s. It was good to see Halston again, after being on the team to break him in 23 years ago.

Did about a mile warm-up with Nate, after walking parts of the course. No warm-down possible (or needed).

3:56/7:55
1:28,9,9,9,9 (on 2:00 to take it easy)
3:22,18

Achilles is more tight than sore now - should be able to make it thru the weekend without disaster (I hope).

Took Nate to Ellison Park to get his run in on an O map. He did 4x3 controls from last month's score-O - I ran/jogged/walked (as the achilles allowed) around and observed.
Splits:
(1,2+10) - 1:00, 5:36
(7,12,6) - 1:47, 2:10, 1:56
(5+11,13) - 2:56, 4:04
(20,19,home) - 8:03, 1:11, 2:32

Nate was able to point out a whole bunch of problems with the map. Maybe we can help update it some day.