Training Log Archive: bishop22

Event: Western States + Intercollegiate Championships
 

Day 1 of the Western States Champs, south of Tucson, near Kentucky Camp. I took a conservative start, following the dry stream bed about halfway, which helped me get a feel for the contours. Was cautious going over the hilltop to C2, to make sure I was finding the correct reentrant. I had a bit of a miss on C3 - didn't pick out the "scattered trees" boundary very well. C4 was great, but C5 was a big problem - Greg Balter was catching me on the short trail halfway to the control, and he left it to the right of me, but I wasn't sure that we were on the same course, so I sort of ignored him. Too bad, since I blew about 2.5 minutes searching to the left and not being able to make the contours line up. Gabe S came into the control right after me. We were near each other going to C6, but I went right near the bag and he went left, and had to circle around.

The next stretch was slower than it needed to be, since my legs were feeling quite heavy from all the training. Gabe passed me at C7 when I stopped for a drink and I couldn't close the gap when I saw him intermittently on the way to C8. Going to C9, I crossed the power line right on the line, as planned, but then I went left of the line and did too much up and down on the last few spur/reentrant pairs as I kept changing my mind on whether to stay low or not - lost 1.5 minutes according to WinSplits. Power line was also a nice cheat in getting to C10. I got to C11 by going the road until it turned sharply, where I cut across and then stayed left of the scattered trees until the last big reentrant.

Legs remained heavy, but the last 3 controls were pretty much follow the line. Not a bad run, but it looks like I need some additional conditioning, or zero mistakes, to be competitive in M45+ - the competition was much tougher than in M35+ or M40+!

Sprint Race at the Tucson A-Meet. My legs were even more worn out than this morning - imagine that. Went left around the reentrant to get to C1, then went right of the line to hit C2 nicely, then spiked C3 as well. I went to the right of the hilltop on the way to C4, but feet pointed out that I was near the bigger hilltop, not the little one that I meant to aim for. My pace count eventually ran out and I looked to my right, and there was feet punching. He gave me a good line to C5, but then he was gone. I ran just left of the curve in the road on the way to C6, but that meant I was too far right, so the 2 people that I had passed slipped back by me. I passed the woman on the way to C7, but not the guy. We were then back-and-forth the rest of the way (even though he only had one working arm, he was running about my speed) - I was getting the jump on him leaving each control as, by now, I was successfully using Nate's thumb compass to get a quick reading on a departure bearing each time.

Finished 2nd in M45 and about 10th overall, so not a bad result considering the state of my legs. I even managed to beat Samantha, which has been a very rare occurrence.

Various w/up and w/dn stuff

Sprint - Splits

Red 1 - Splits

AM Training session at Arthur Pack, north of Tucson. It was a precision compass exercise is very flat terrain, and I was able to keep very good lines. The cacti are now my favorite navigation features - I was able to use them to often verify an intermediate point on my bearing / pace count path.

Model event at the Western States Champs. I walked all uphills and all unfriendly terrain - there were lots of the former, but not much of the latter.

The contour exercise yesterday helped me look thru the map and see the contours; the open nature of the terrain allowed me to match the contours on the map with the contours in real life.

Event: US Team training activity
 

AM Training activity in Tucson. I did the morning training with Zach, and we walked most of the way - partly because it was a contour-only map, and partly to make sure we didn't wear Zach out.

The first section was a line-o and we stayed pretty close to the line most of the way - just a couple of sketchy turns where we may have veered off a bit. We found both bags that were out on this stretch.

The course then became a regular course, but on the contour-only map. That should be very good training for this weekend because overlaying the vegetation doesn't really help me, since I can't really tell the difference between white, rough open and scattered trees around here. And on this map, there were not many trails. Also, the afternoon showed that I still can not tell the difference between rocks that are mapped and rocks that are not.

PM Training in Tucson. We did a sampling of "strength intervals", which are tough enough that they will probably be included in Webster XC training next fall. This includes the running portion of the training, which consisted of 7 repetitions of about 200m. Between each interval, the recovery consisted of a different core or leg strength exercise.

The 6 core/leg strength exercises between the intervals included:
- sit-ups (15)
- skating jumps (20)
- push-ups (10)
- sidewinder jumps (20)
- reverse sit-ups (15)
- jumping squat thrusts (10)

I hope I can recover from these by the weekend.

We only did 1 set of these, Tom's club started with 2 and now does 3.

PM Training in Tucson. Middle distance training course with a relay training component - interval mini-mass starts, but I wound up on my own most of the way (which is my problem on mass-start events, I lose contact and the advantage of navigating with others). Nate and I ran an unmapped trail on the way to C1, but it went farther right than we really wanted, so we lost some time. Struggled a bit with C2 but by the time I found it, Nate was still looking in the wrong spot. Tom caught me on the way to C3, which I found by seeing C4 across the way. I couldn't keep up with Tom on the way to C4 (my legs were pretty heavy from the intervals). I didn't see many people after that: Samantha was headed for the finish when I was going to C9, then I saw Cristina to my left as I was headed toward the last control.

w/ups before the AM and PM training sessions

Phoenix Full Moon Hash. Saw bits and pieces of the eclipse while on trail. If I had wanted to watch the eclipse thru persistent clouds, I would have stayed in Rochester. It even rained (a brief downpour) as the circle ended.

Ran much harder than planned on trail. The pack was much more mobile than I am used to in Rochester and Buffalo. I could stay with the FRBs, but it took quite an effort at times.

Played some two-man (the boys and I smoked Walt and Wilbur - the kids can play). Then played some basketball. Since Nate and I were the only ones who could sink free throws, it kept being Nate and I vs Walt, Wilbur and Zach. I think we always lost; Zach was clearly the high scorer. Also played some 21 and thru the donut frisbee around a bit.

After playing some basketball with Walt, Nate and Zach, I did some running, instead of playing 21, then I did some more running, instead of playing tennis.

When I returned, Nate was bouncing the ball on his racket, pretty high, and it went over the fence and just about hit a car that had recently pulled in. When I went to retrieve the ball, it was clear that the occupants had not noticed, as they were engaged in other activities (PG only, luckily, with children around).

C • interesting story, coach 1

I know I entered this already, but it disappeared.

We hiked up Pikacho Peak (or Peak Peak as we say north of the border). We were about 63 minutes going up and about 49 minutes coming back down. To get back from the peak you have to do a surprising amount of climb to get back over the saddle and head down.

Day 2 of the Texas Stampede. The most disappointing result of the day was Nate's MSP. He punched wrong for his penultimate control - it was at a trail / road junction, and so was the control he punched - only 70m away. Since the minimum separation for 2 controls on similar features is 100m, he filed a protest, so that a zero will not be factored into his rating (the Green HS varsity results from Interscholastics will be included in the Red M-20 ratings for JWOC selection). We had to leave before a jury was convened, but it's clear that, at a minimum, he will receive a SPW. After he punched the wrong control, he had to run right past the correct control to get to the go control, so I think the jury has the option of reinstating his result (although the rules are [intentionally?] ambiguous about what precisely can be done). He would have been 3rd on the day, and that would have moved him up to 4th overall.

Zach had a very nice run, finishing 6th for the day in 34 minutes (8 min / km). I think most of the kids that beat him are 9th graders, so he is spotting them 3 years.

My run on Blue was quite awful. I was fine on C1, but I overran C2, once again because I was excited enough that my pace count took me much further than usual. The recovery wasn't too bad. C3 was short and sweet. C4 was a big problem. It was a long leg (~1300m) without any good trail options. I went quite a bit left of the line in the first half, popping out in the ride at the Yellow/White callup line. I then went north (after going to the right to avoid some green) and took the trail way right of the line and back, rather than cutting thru green (which would have been half the distance). I was way too imprecise cutting off the trail for the control and had to come back down and try again.

I tried to follow the indistinct trails that wound towards C5, but I wound up popping back out on the power line, so I took that up to the marsh S of the control at which point I saw feet running out of the woods. Quite disappointing, since he had started 12 minutes behind me. For C6, I was moving slower (depressed) but executed well (picked up indistinct trail at hilltop to fence to stream. C7 was fine and I don't remember C8 at all, so it must have been OK. C9 was a major disaster. I was wearing the Garmin, so I'll have to check the tracks when I get home next week, but my biggest problem was that I had forgotten that the contours were 3m, not 5m, so I was looking for a deeper large depression (and now looking at the map, I can't tell whether those are contours near C9 or just form lines). In any case, I floundered around in the green for awhile. There was a junior at my control, who was so far from his course that I let him see the location of my control (while telling him that I wasn't supposed to help him). Accidentally followed the line (wanted to be left) to C10, so I got a bit hung up in marsh and junk. C11 and 12 went fine, so did most of C13, but I got lost at the last moment and had to retry from the road.

Lost some time drifting right to C14, but then I was quite happy with my C15 execution. Had to stop for a drink on the way to C16. I started to leave for C17 straight, but then decided I should take the trail to the north, but then I lost that, so just angled to the waterside trail. I left it at the junction before 17 and pace-counted carefully, but missed left and somehow didn't see the building (ruined, I guess) that housed the control. C18 was annoying because I climbed to the top, missed my control, saw the other one that couldn't be mine, but climbed down and over to it anyway, then back up to mine. The rest was clean (just slow as I was running out of gas).

Not a good start to the orienteering season. I had to relearn too many lessons that should be ingrained by now. Too often I make bad decisions about how aggressively to go after a control by not taking into account how I would recover from a miss - wandering aimlessly trying to relocate in green areas is a bad idea. I needlessly take precise bearings at times when there are plenty of map features, while I foolishly use rough bearings at other times. Well, there is a few days to get prepared for the Tucson meet, so there is hope that I can be competitive in M45+ (I'm thinking I won't finish dead last next weekend).

minimal w/up