Training Log Archive: bishop22

USOF Middle Distance Champs outside of Woodland Park, CO.

Well, mixed feelings about this race. I let Nate talk me into allowing him to run up on M-20 Red, since Amos and Andy were doing it, given the short distance of the Red course. He ended up beating me by over 3 minutes. I guess that's good and bad.

I was shocked when I flipped the map over. It was basically all white, with a few splotches of yellow inside the course area. As it turned out, the yellow was not so valuable for me to navigate: white sometimes meant widely scattered trees, sometimes meant a little deadfall, and occasionally meant light green (I only saw a couple of patches of medium green), so I couldn't readily distinguish yellow from white.

So, it was all about the contours, and I can't tell a spur from a reentrant unless there is water to clue me in. After the race, Nate pointed out to me that everything was downhill from east to west, so you automatically knew which were which. But I didn't.

I ran conservatively to C1, then I thought a reentrant led to C2, just about 150m away, so I ran hard. It turns out that it was a spur that led to the control, so I ended up running back to the C1 area and trying again - a quick 3 minute loss. I discovered my inability to distinguish yellow from white, when a clearing was supposed to be my catching feature beyond C3, but I couldn't spot it. Another 1 - 1.5 minute loss.

Most of the rest of the way was simply running straight, pace counting and reading the detail when I got within 30-50m of the bag. C11 was a "long" leg (~500m), and I thought I could run down a spur, but it got thick, so I jumped off and ran parallel. I guess I was running much harder than I thought, so I covered much more distance than my pace count indicated, and had to figure that out, and backtrack (in addition to being left of the line, which I knew). Cost me another 1.5 minutes.

It looks like I may have picked up a USOF medal on the cheap. There was a European that ran around 32 minutes in M40+, but Eric B made a big error on C11 and Jeff W must have had problems, and there weren't many other entrants, so???

Zach won White by a bunch. It's tough to figure whether he is better served to smoke the White field (he still has another year on White), or to be challenged by Yellow, and spanked by Ethan Childs.

Luke made his navigation debut on Rec-White, with Chelsea shadowing. He would have been 2nd in M-10 - I think he was about 40 minutes to Zach's 20, but he has 4 more years in that category, so no hurry in going competitive. He was very excited about, and proud of his performance. It was also his first e-punching, which he loved.

The Juniors put on an intense String-O course as a fundraiser ($1 per run), so I took my shot. Nate beat me soundly on this. There were some picnic table options (over, under, around). The third table was tall (Luke could almost run right under it), and I almost didn't make the jump onto it.

Most of my warm-up was walking around with Luke, to get him signed up for a Rec course and into the computer, but I did get some jogging in.

Unable to force myself to do a warm-down afterwards, but I did do plenty of walking around, which was probably good enough.

Red - Splits

Easy run with Chelsea. Sergei came along as well. We ran on the path alongside Rt 67 back towards Woodland Park. Turned around after 16 minutes, since darkness was rolling in quickly. The return was easier and 2 minutes faster, since it was downhill.

Had almost blown off the run, since I carted the juniors around a bit, plus took a nap - IN A BED - after Chris supplied the troops with a large lunch and a place to swim.

Finally made it out for dinner at 9:27, at a place that closed at 9:30. In fact they turned the lights out as Chelsea and I came up, although Chris, Z and Luke were already inside. Decent pizza, excellent cold beverages, but the topper was that it was Thursday, so they provided awesome free cinnamon breadsticks with icing after dinner, with the purchase of a large pizza.

Served as a "bus" for the Jr Jr Training camp. 4 of the 5 groups came to my starting point, before catching the other 4 buses, so I went along my route (1 control every 10 minutes) just waiting for Zach's group to get me. They came along just before I left the 4th stop. Than a latecoming group showed up while I was on my way in.

Picked up some Orange controls with Zach. He led us (solidly) to each of the controls, I just got to carry the flags, e-punch units and stands. The youngsters had driven the van away, so I had no plastic bags, but I took off my sweatpants, tied the legs, and they made a fine carrying case for the flags and units.

C • 800 km 1

C • 800 km? 2

US Night-O Champs. Blew C12 (about 7 minutes), after taking a safe route, but getting lazy at the attackpoint (road intersection, just over 100m away). Had a few other, smaller problems, but that was the bad one (I finished 6.5 minutes behind Emily and 2 minutes behind Ted Good).

Zach flew around his 2.2k course in under 15 minutes, for the win. Nate got Andrew by about 2 minutes, running his 4.7k Orange in just over 40 minutes.

More later - I'm being pressured to leave the HQ area so we can hit the road to Colorado Springs. Gotta make it in time for the Trail-o after all. How is trail-o not even worse than micro-o?

C • Garden of the Gods is worth a ... 2

Night-O Red - Splits

Did part of the Orange Day 2 course at a very relaxed pace, without a compass. Legs are still quite heavy on the uphills. I missed C3 - I was following a path along a reentrant, and it was supposed to turn left up another reentrant, but I didn't see that, so I ended up leaving the trail and heading up the next reentrant and moved onto 4. The line from 3-4 was basically an extension of the line from 2-3.

Splits:
To Start: 2:21
1 - 2:29
2 - 6:13
4 - 6:42
5 - 2:52
6 - 5:10
in - 6:38

blue day 2 - Splits