Training Log Archive: bcsocal

Event: 2014 US Nationals
 

So much for a relaxing start to my trip. Today's game plan was to catch up on my sleep. The hotel serves breakfast until 9:00. Also the registrar for the meet came to the hotel in the morning to distribute race packets (bibs, start times, directions, a couple of promotional flyers). So I awoke at 8:30, quickly shaved, went downstairs to get my packet, grabbed a bit of breakfast to go, and went back to my room to sleep. My start time was 3:30PM, and the race was nearby, so I slept until 12:30. I had to shoo away the housekeeper.

Today's race was the sprint, for my age group 2.4K, about 20 minutes. It was held in Genesee Valley park, a large city park. The weather was excellent, in the 70s, dry, and gusty winds.

My rust showed, as I made four significant errors among the 19 controls and finished 16th of 20 in my age group.

It began raining late this afternoon. Maybe it's the system blowing in from Chicago? The weather forecast calls for much cooler (50s) and rain for much of the weekend, so I'll get to experience true East Coast autumn orienteering for the first time during the longer races.

My pics from today.

As you can tell from the pictures in the park, fall colors are quite disappointing. Most trees still have their full complement of green leaves. Apparently it's been too warm through September.

Sprint Green - Splits

Flying through Chicago is no fun right now. Everybody was blaming last week's fire at the control center for disrupting air traffic around Chicago, which is still running below capacity. My flight out of OC was 1.5 hours late, but at least it was uneventful. At O'Hare the connecting flight to Rochester had not yet departed - it too was 1.5 hours late. So I waited, and waited. "Maintenance issue". Eventually the flight was cancelled.

Fortunately there was one other flight, scheduled at 7:40 PM CDT. With that flight it was issue after issue. First was "gate roulette" - I counted at least four gate changes, which meant hiking up and down the terminal building from one end to the other when they announced yet another change. Then, they couldn't find a crew. Then they said that the captain was inbound on another flight, but there were no gates for that plane to park. Then thunderstorms went through and shut down the airport for an hour. Then they couldn't find the flight attendant. The terminal area was jammed with people waiting for the Rochester flight and two others in similar circumstances. I wasn't absolutely certain that I would make it out of Chicago any time soon.

Finally we boarded, and the flight joined the long line of flights waiting to take off after midnight. We finally got underway about 12:30AM, arrived in Rochester after 2:00AM. Thankfully my luggage arrived, and someone was at the rental car counter, so I was able to get to the hotel about 3:00AM, at least 8 hours later than the original plan.

I sure hope that things are better in two weeks when I return.

Firing up the diary. I will write here more during the next two weeks.