Training Log Archive: j-man

Here is a closer look at why Zhyk was the orienteer of the decade. Simply put, his best was really the best. It is sort of sad that his peak happened to be when I was away or convalescing. If I had been competing it is possible, even likely, that he wouldn't have scored quite as high. And, conversely, some of my better years were when he wasn't around.

Year	McGrath	Zhyk
2000	103.35
2001	89.03	97.49
2002		105.74
2003	88.56	104.58
2004	94.32	106.13
2005	99.44
2006	100.26
2007	101.37	93.19
2008	95.26	100.14
2009	99.99	99.47
Average	96.84	100.96

Level 9 hills.

Level 8 hills.
Adam Smith.

Level 8 hills.

Level 9 hills.

Level 8 hills.

No lectures today because I wasn't in the mood. Rather, as my now customary feeling of resentment was a few degrees hotter than normal today*, I opted for Killers radio on the iPod Touch.

* nothing to do with the State of the Union Address. At worst, that was amusing.

Level 9 hills.

More Hume.

This will be occupying me for days.

It is great when data illustrates the story you know qualitatively. And the more data, the stronger the inferences.

So, the story... this will grow.

It is really the tale of two decades. 2000 I regard as j-man v1. I think it may have been one of my best years ever. And it was a continuation of the 1990s, when I tend to think I was a bit like Johnnie or Ross today (or maybe Ross yesterday)... just teeing it high and letting it fly. I would just sort of uncork it at the start of a race and things would happen. Mostly good enough. In other words, my physical abilities were good enough that I would get through the woods fairly well and do things well without real structured training. My orienteering wasn't super, but it was pretty good. This was the year when I think I got my highest score ever (a 130 or so at Pakim Pond in the summer vegetation.)

And then there was my hiatus after blowing out the butt. I wandered in the wilderness.

I did a few events in 2001, but the injury hadn't abated. 2002 was nothing. And then I started orienteering recreationally in 2003--introducing Dasha to the sport. 2004, especially toward the end, I tried to be a little more competitive and was able to do some cross training. And in 2005, I started training again.

I am glad to see that even with three throw away years, I was still competitive when everything was averaged out. z-man obviously has my number, and on average, should beat me. But, if you take out 2001, 2003, and 2004 my ranking increases by ~3.5 points, and the gap goes away. On the other hand, z-man himself was injured during parts of this decade, so my subsetting may not be applicable.

The numbers corroborate my feeling that 2000 was one of my better years, but 2007 was actually better ranking-wise.

As I was mentioning to Wyatt, since I came back, my orienteering has had a different flavor. I can no longer overpower a course. I'm old, and so is he. Never again will we be able to compete with Greg A or his ilk. Now, guile is our only asset.

Anyway, back on subject. Before looking at the map rankings, I assumed I would have owned FCE. I thought I would be pretty good at HR (but I had the feeling that Zhyk may have overtaken me there.) I also thought I would be good at Washington Crossing. Unfortunately, there are no rankings for the latter.

At FCE, Eddie actually edges me. But, with almost twice the events, my per K time of 7:26 is much better. Considering some of the crap events I've been to at FCE, I'm very happy with that. I will crown myself King of FCE, even if no one deigns to genuflect.

I did edge Zhyk out at HR, but I need to get my mojo back there.

Surprisingly, I also owned Mt. Joy. But, that is mostly the vapors of my old speed.

My best map is Pakim (no doubt owing to that big race), with a score of 123+, just ever so slightly ahead of Wyatt's own 123 at Stuckey. (In both cases, these big scores are at first blush surprising as the average of the scores earned for our individual races are not that high. But, I am guessing that the algorithm must be calibrating the top three per map to average 100 points, per map, rather than overall. That would do it.)

With respect to overall per k times: my 1,074.33 KM were run at 7:52. I guess I'm happy with that. Zhyk's 468.45 KM was slightly faster at 7:42. (Gnatiouk at 7:40 over 152.14 KM is actually the fastest.)

On a per map basis, I get the title at Fatlands, with a 6:18 (to Mihai's 6:33) over 6 events. On more "real maps" Eddie clocks in at a 6:33 at Fair Hill. Still, I think my Washington Crossing times are clearly faster than Fatlands, although there may not be enough to rank.

Maybe one of you html guys can tell me this--why when I drop a table in my AP log do I get so much space before (especially) and after?

Maybe I'll bite the bullet and get a GPS when this is available.

Berkeley and Hume.

Level 9 hills.

Some fooling around.

Too bad I am not really training now, because I discovered another scintillating routine to add to my repertoire. [Hint: BOSU balls]

Event: Weston Ski-o
 

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1853/44265
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1853/9363

Some relaxed control pickup.

DVOA President's Cup, 2010 at Warwick.



Somehow, I was not credited with the last control. Granted, I had just swooped in to punch right ahead of John Campbell and Anthony Carr, but if that control unit was awake, my epunch was in long enough that it should have registered.

I did the "red" configuration, rather than the unadvertised blue "M21" configuration. Seemingly there was expectation, at least by some, that I would do the latter. But, because I am not a M21, because it was unadvertised, because I am rather anal about doing the workout I expect to do, because I would rather race against 10+ people than 1 (Wyatt) and because I am well-read in my Sun Tzu, I was not about to deviate from my plan.

I had a decent race, but it was a lot of work. For instance, I found myself racing head to head with Nathan Ohrwaschel up the hill to the first control. Having done no warmup and no hard running this year, I found that to be quite taxing. In fact, I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest during that control and the next. But, luckily I never saw Nate again after that.

I would see Wyatt off and on, and Anthony Knarr--inevitably in front of me. At the very end, John Campbell was ahead through the window, but the long straight-away should have allowed me to get ahead (and it did, but somehow I mispunched.)

I do give Wyatt props for doing the blue by himself, but in my post analysis, I have determined that the blue configuration is most likely geometrically simpler than the red configuration owing to different symmetries or lack thereof. For instance, typical blue routes would generally have the bilateral symmetry of shapes such as a "Ω" or a "Q", whereas red would typically involve routings such a "N" or "Z". What's the point? None, although some math people may be able to provide a better rigorous argument for something here.

Like yesteday: 20ish rpms and fairly smooth and strong. 13,800 pace for the 60 minutes -> 9,200.

Ran over to Penncrest and around the much-augmented athletic fields. If athletic acreage is correlated with results, they should be a juggernaut. There does seem to be a correlation with taxes.

Attended my first meeting of the Philadelphia area reading group. It was a fairly edifying experience. Around ten people, a skein of lawyers, some PE guys, and our fearless leader. While I wouldn't consider many of them brilliant, they were clever enough to offer some insights into the text. This time it was MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Another rest day of sorts. Moved Dasha's mom, which did afford some weight training, stretching, and deep tissue "massage" courtesy of a refrigerator.

Back to Media by midnight.

Event: Saguaro Training Mini-Week
 

I haven't been this happy in months and probably not this happy about a particular political outcome since sometime in the 1980s.

An unavoidable rest day.

Boston to Philadelphia (train), to Pottstown, to Media, to Gaithersburg (car). Arrived just before midnight.

Another great Scot[t].

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=914717&l=818...

Level 8 hills.

So, I bit the bullet and registered for linear algebra on Thursday evenings during the spring semester at Harvard.

Thursday evenings, of course, are when the CSU winter track workouts occur. This means, as I will be in PA next week, that I will most likely not make any of these workouts. I am done before I've started.

But, I am OK with that. While not giving up on training, I am not prioritizing it at the moment either. Last year I typically ranged between 80 and 90 percent (mostly closer to 90) utilization of my theoretical physical capabilities. And that was fine and all, but, at the same time, my mental utilization averaged well below that.

Because I think I have a comparative mental advantage (rather than a physical one) and while my mental faculties are in a long term secular decline, this decline is currently less steep than the physical one (though the curves may cross at some point down the road) and the absolute maximal output is also higher for the mental at the current time. So, I suppose that my own eudaimonia (and likely my best contribution to the world at the moment) should involve more mental pursuits. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, as they say.

There is a time when the boy needs to put away the balls and bats (and compasses?) and grow up.

Intended to do an hour but my iPod died.

I did finish 50% (according to my Kindle) of the Wealth of Nations. What a most excellent book this is. It is truly a magnum opus.

Needless to say, the gulf is wide between it and the ephemeral tripe that passes for business and (much) economics reading these days. Although, my meta theory about the value of non-fiction writing and knowledge in general in our society should cause me to overlook some of that, and I will--but only in general, not for individuals. I can still bemoan the specific tripe I come across.

Anyway, Whitehead said that our philosophical tradition consists of footnotes to Plato (a characterization that is not far from the mark in my book.) But, if so, business writing over the past century strikes me as sixth grade plagiarism of the great Scott.

Event: Georgia Navigator Cup
 

Fells with Brendan. Nice time, although unsurprisingly, the conditions weren't as sweet as the last outing. While warmer, intervening freezing/thawing had made the trail icier. There was one notable boulder/rock face along the route that was notably covered with a sheen of smooth ice.

Event: Anza-Borrego Orienteering Festival at Buttes Pass
 

Montesquieu tonight.

Late night biking with some more Wealth of Nations.

Nice run with SGB. He was kind enough to circle back to the Boston Common so I didn't need to hike home or take the train (whereas he still had to run home.) A real mensch.

Level 9 hills.

Vico (who along with Bayle are two people I had no exposure to so far in life.)

Level 8 hills.

Locke (at 2X).

I was administered an H1N1 shot. While my extremely uninformed assessment of the epidemiological progression of this virus had caused me to discount the need (from both a public and personal health point of view) to get this (that is a probability measure, I suppose), Dasha's assessment of the consequences (an outcome) made her feel that the expectation was sufficient to justify the investment (of sorts.)

I convinced Dasha to accompany (the vaccinated) me to Lord Hobo. (The 2nd time I had been there in 48 hours.

This time, enjoyed this (very light delivery for a porter) and this (fine, but I'm not sure how I feel about a lot of maltiness in an IPA.)

So I want to compare two vectors (elegantly.) There is a function in a package for that, naturally.

So, go get made4
OK, that needs ade4
And that needs RColorBrewer (what the heck is that?)
And that needs gplots
And, of course, that needs scatterplot3d

Down the wormhole.

And comparelists() seems to do the trick.

Just some quick biking.

I finished (most) of the R stuff. It kept me inside.

Newton.

Of course--just stuff the verbose lm output into the concatenate function and it will chew through it nicely. Almost there...

The Fells with the CSU boys. A very productive run with respect to new mutant powers, bombastic cinema, and sartorial innovation.

It is so easy now.

First this. Sublime. And then this. Exquisite.

Upon leaving, circa 8:30PM, there was a line of people waiting outside to get in. It was ~20 degrees at that point. I'm not sure why they were doing that. Oh, to be young and hip.

R and UltraEdit. Yum!

Introduction to the Enlightenment. More Kors at 2x. Plus some Killers radio on Pandora. Nice.

Finished figuring out the syntax and command line manipulations to do the analysis I've been fiddling with in R (save, perhaps, extracting some info from the lm "object.") Now, I need to wrap this stuff in some sort of function(s)/program, which is the easy part.

Newton.

I accidentally discovered how to play mp3s at 2x speed on the iPod (something I recall Ian enthusing about.)

So, I tried it, and it was great. Kors was so much better at twice the speed.

Hmm: http://www.attackpoint.org/discussionthread.jsp/me...

Those Aussies are a bit worked up, aren't they? http://www.attackpoint.org/discussionthread.jsp/me...

I'd like to egg them on, but that would be j-man version 2009.

I wonder what Putnam would say about HF replicators? I personally think they are nonsensical (though I won't make a value judgment about them.) The thing is--what does it mean to replicate something that you can't define? Well, I'll admit, there are lots of ways around that, but that isn't really important.

Anyway, I think this is one of the more philosophically interesting areas of finance.

A rose is a rose by any other name, as they say.

Dasha allowed us to go to the gym before bowling.

Pascal, which wasn't very good at all.

CSU Bowling night. Great fun.

Bowling is a confounding activity. It should be easier than golf. In both cases, you do something to a ball that you have complete control over. But, with bowling, all other conditions are uniform. Granted, at the margins, due to dust, micro alignments, wind, etc., the conditions may vary, but that is the world we live in. But, at a cruder level, why is it so hard to throw a ball such that it hits the same pin every time? It shouldn't be.

I think practice has to make a big impact in this game.

Despite my best efforts, Ian crushed me.

OK, time for the recapitulation of 2009.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." and you can keep going, as much more of that quotation is applicable.

One salient feature about 2009. It was a lot of orienteering, across multiple dimensions and probably (OK, definitely) too much across some.

It was a good training year. 458 hours: by far, my most logged, and my most training, logged or not, since college. Over 100 of orienteering, on 97 sessions (big thanks to Ken for making these recaps stupid easy.) There was also some quality training in the fall, and I got faster. Now, I am in a trench.

The other salient thing about this year is that I spent 75% without a full-time job, although that 75% was, for better or worse, not devoid of work, just devoid of much pay.

But, in any case, orienteering could fill that void, and it did in some good and some not so good ways. The good ways was the training. I got to do some good long runs, and my conditioning was very good throughout most of the year. I enjoy being in shape, and it wasn't a problem this year.

It also gave me a good platform to stave off injury/illness, which I sort of did, although I managed to repeatedly tweak my COC-destroyed ankle. With the blows it had taken earlier in life, I wonder if it is too far gone for full recovery?

Anyway, it also gave me a chance to orienteer. And so I did. I had 30 ranked A meet days in 2009 (almost twice as much as any other blue guy, and even more than Cristina.) I attended a lot of sprints (enough that I won the SS, although that didn't seem to mean anything and I am not going to endeavor to do that again.)

My results were erratic, as they always are, but my ~91 score is probably about right. Technically, I think I got off to a good start in the spring (the same way I get off to a good start when I don't play golf for a while--practice actually makes me worse.) So, better practice is required, and I have some thoughts about that, but that's for later.

From a competitive point of view (individual races) there were some good things. US Relays, TT Long, Highlander, a few DVOA races.

From a set point of view--I fumbled my way onto the WOC team due to some key people who declined. I would have been happy enough with my TT performance, but my sprint was ridiculously bad, and I still haven't gotten over that. I will say I wasn't mentally calibrated going in. Anyway...

WOC was decent. My long race was OK from a physical perspective, but with just some stupid flow/execution problems. The sprint was bad, and sort of dispiriting. I could have been better technically--much better flow and micro route choices--but not too, too much. I wonder now if I am better at forest vs city sprints? Anyway... I liked WOC a lot, but that terrain was made for me, and I should have done better when given an opportunity.

I won the DVOA rankings race, which I was happy about, and have sort of satisfied my quest there. So, that brings me to goal setting, which needs to be fleshed out in other fora and/or posts.

Honestly, I have just one goal at this point. I need to have a job; something for intellectual succor. Otherwise, I will not have the psychological vigour to train right, nor the ability to focus appropriately. I cannot set out performance or racing goals until I get my life in order. Unfortunately, I don't know how long that will take.

But, in terms of other orienteering commitments, and to recap that dimension from 2009... in 2010, I am doing far less.

I will help at the US Team/WCOC fundraiser; I will help Brendan with a CSU training camp (because they had the chutzpah to sign me up for that without my consent); I will do the DVOA HR camp; I will set the Sprint A meet courses for the DVOA A meet; and I will write periodic columns for the DVOA newsletter. Oh, and my one remaining USOF committee, which should be dormant for a while. That is it! Nothing else! NO! I will do a little for each of my clubs and the Team in this way. And it already seems like too much.

Somehow, I felt buried under orienteering in 2009. CSU A meet, trainings, local events; WCOC local event; DVOA training, writing, event, and day of event volunteering; Team fundraisers of various stripes and the training camp; USOF committees and stuff/discussions with ED. It wasn't fun at the end, and quality slipped (CSU local event) and I also was getting too wound up in orienteering and posted some stupid things. A little less stuff flying around would be well advised, I think.

So, that is it for this installment.

Level 8 hills.

More from The Wealth of Nations...

Donna did more research, sparing me:

Apparently the Trysons were right behind me with 26 races each.

Others are:

21
Cristina
Rosemary Johnson
Pavlina
Greg Balter

20
Bob Bullions
Charlie DeWeese
Rob Wilkison

The benefits of my indolence, I suppose.

Level 8 hills.

It must be the new year--the gym was crowded.

Hobbes and Spinoza.

Level 8 hills.

Descartes.