Training Log Archive: Thompass

Feeling better. Nose congested still. Lungs will probably need a few days more break before feeling normally, so I'll give that to them. Have a long, long day of traveling tomorrow anyway, so we'll see how we are upon arrival in Edinburgh. I expect to be fine to run the Six Days.

Went for a walk. Chest clearly abnormal. Felt a little tired. Essentially a pretty bad cold. Getting some air is good in the end.

Been feeling ill since the night before the sprint and I'd resolved to play it by ear each warm up. General symptoms have been blocked nose, chesty cough, feeling sluggish and ill in my leg muscles, and some struggles to join in conversations, especially this morning. Learned on bus to arena about Ali's covid test, and decided not to run. Extremely frustrating to come here and have no good forest performances to show for it. I get that in the end it was my decision, and I can't really complain, people could say, "Well, you intended on running until you heard about someone else's test, so it can't be that bad." Don't really have an answer. I was going to run through it, and now I'm not.

We move, there will be more races. I'm sure I'll forget that I'm sad with time. Just getting tested now. A negative test doesn't make the symptoms go away, so not sure what to do with that information if it comes.

Positive test. Races end for me, focus on recovery and hopefully I'll be healthy again for the Six Days. That'll getcha.

Gonna spend some time today preparing orienteering training sessions for the future.

C • Sorry to hear that. I hope... 7

fugma that was garbage, two mega mistakes.

3DRerun

Really frustrating. From number 4, I am doing decently well. I was hesitating quite a bit, but routes were getting executed. It is good to see that my orienteering was generally okay today for the most part, because it was easy to see it as a disaster. I lost a lot of speed from being out there for those mistakes, so I'm okay with that.

The focus, then, is to see how to reduce the big problems we see at 2 and 4.

2: The critical moment is when I hit the fairly major spur northeast of 6. I was not aware of how big that spur was from the map. I thought I was closer to the top of the hill, and I was aware that I had followed the shape of the hill through the forest to hit the spur. I reasoned that I had followed the shape to the big spur that's connected to the top of the hill. So as I passed 6, I thought I was passing the dotted rocks to the north of 2. The lack of green woods gave me a bit of stress, but then saw how close I was to the big reentrant and started working to relocate. When I hit the rocks to the north of 2, I thought I was lower, and from the curve of the hill I thought I was west of 2 at the rectangular big rock, which was what I saw in the terrain. I saw the crag to my left and saw Greg running 6 to 7, which allowed me to figure it out and fix my mistake. The mistake happened coming up to that open spur. I lost map contact completely, and from there the rest of the mistake is a product of that. It seems like I was blind to the feature, and should have taken the extra time to locate such a prominent spur on the map, since I couldn't possibly have been at the top of the hill.

4: I did not take the climb. I did not use my compass properly. I made a parallel error running along a ride, entering an open space and crossing a spur. Did not see 7. The shape of the hill should have been a primary tool. I planned to use the snakey yellow along the line, but did not see it and compass was off. Possible that I was shaken up from my other mistake, I tried my best to refocus. The mistake happened when I took a bad bearing from the water.

Some core processes failed there. Really disappointed in myself. Close to 11 minutes lost on those two controls.

C14 - Splits

Event: 2023 North American Orienteering Championships
 

Feeling a little bit under the weather this morning, started to feel it going to bed. Hoping that it's nothing serious, just a change in scenery. Will bundle up nice and warm in bed, it's hot going to sleep but absolutely freezing at night.

Stuck it out and tried to do the race to the best of my ability. Went alright, felt a bit ill again during the cooldown, tomorrow I will either feel decently better or much worse. We'll see.

For the race itself, was an intensely tricky course, kudos to Erin. Did not expect anything like it. Some filthy undulating climb getting around the barriers. Air was super, super dry and ran out of gas in the last few controls, lost 10 seconds to Joe just to speed on 16. Threw away time at the beginning, picked a bad route and feeling like I was desperately trying to adapt to the style of the course, then hit arena control, thought I had to follow the arena passage, turns out I didn't, lost a few seconds but got on my way, but then missed the stairs down and almost went into some olive green because the gate was open. Firmly in view of the arena, fantastic. Decided my best bet of salvaging the situation was to come all the way around to the left, which wasn't actually too bad, but lost around 20 seconds. At this point my throat has completely dried up, so not having a great time.

Just tried to read all the routes as best I could, found the crucial passages, lost some significant speed as it went on, maybe because of altitude and illness. Finished joint 3rd with Keegan, 4th including the M20s. Okay with this, didn't expect top form so I'll take it.

C10 - Splits

Staying nicely fresh on this lovely morning. Big drive ahead to model event.

Interesting terrain, vegetation and vegetation boundaries are arguably heavily overmapped, not as clear as the map suggests.

Super foggy. Cool vibes. Tried to stick to a ridge to keep it flat, clearly failed.