Training Log Archive: Vector

Event: North American Orienteering Championships 2016
 

Mixed bag today, fun course, nice weather for it, and a heck of an amazing bunch of orienteers on Blue! Nice to see Hannah place on the podium today! Most of the course I did well, much better than last Saturday's debacle. But I flew past 13 going too fast, terrible route choice to 14 (the long leg), and I still don't know what I did to get so confused on 19. But I had some amazing moments including my favorite: spiking a control along with a log jump right at the control, using one hand to anchor my jump and the other was a mid-air punching of the control while I was still in flight. :) Most of the course I was doing well and on target, plus the energy and hips were great, really felt for first time like I'm close to where I left off pre-hip problems and the training this week definitely helped too. I think I determined today that middles are my favorite.

Middle - Blue - Splits

Armed Forces USA training camp - Another nice training event at Harriman. Trouble with 1, 2 & 3 so-so, was hauling at a great pace with good groove on 4 through 9, I was slow to 11, and 12-14 were out in the subtle terrain that i was having trouble interpreting so very good challenge and exercise there and walked those ones. Overall happy with this one and I think it was an improvement. Many thanks to Coach and Kevin for setting it all up.

Armed Forces USA training camp - Thierry's training course. Corridor-O section, control picking section, and contours-only section made for an outstanding training session. Grateful for athletes like him who share their time and efforts. Very fun. Managed the corridor-O without much problem. But I got messed up going from the corridor o area to the control pick area, wound up at 12 instead of 5, probsbly parallel errors and too much climb. Once I got into control pick it went well. Same for contour-o. Only one i didnt find was 25, small depression. Teammates say you had to be really close to it to see it. Went slow for this session to focus on technical training.

Armed Forces USA training camp - Course setting and monitoting for USMAOC cadet training session.

Event: U.S. Armed Forces Training Camp (T)
 

Armed Forces USA training camp - Relay. It was a fun one! Ran pretty well except for 1, 2 and 7, and lost TONS of time on those, like 5 min's! I made the mistake on 1 and 2 of just going for a flag that I saw in the general area but both times arrived at a different control. I should have paid more attentioj to the map and got it right the first time instead of trying to rush as it cost me a lot of time having to relocate both times to find my actual control. Fixed that issue after the 2nd control. But #7 was bad exit direcrion out of #6... I told myself to just run fast down the hill to the open space in the distance. Well, I did that, but I didnt't check my compass heading leaving #6 so I ended up screaming down the hill in a slightly offset direction just enough to put me off the map and result in some moments of frantic confusion before realing and correcting. That gave me motivation to finish strong which I did. It only took me about 5 min 30 sec to do 5 more controls. My teammate Ginger did great making only 1 nav mistake!

Person search and control pickup

Armed Forces USA training camp - Goal setting and training strategy. Now that I am back to normal-ish w/ the surgery recovery, my over-arching goal now is to start scoring 70s on Blue. On my worst days I'm in the 40s. Average days are 50s. And good days are lower 60s. So I hope to step up to more consistent 60s and eventually 70s. Gave a lot of thought and took a lot of input from teammates and coach. Bascially there are fitness and technical goals. For fitness I need to work on ~10 mile speed and endurance. I also am going to start incorporating terrain intervals, lower ankle/lower leg strength and flexibility, and continue with hill intervals. My techinical work has been sporadic and largely race-centric, so I need to change that. 2,000 controls per year visited or visualized is a new goal. On days when I cant workout (except Sundays) I will at least visualize 10 controls, usually more using things like route gadget reviews, toutube videos, and catching features, to name a few possibiliites, But I also have a couple O venues close to home, so I need to take advantage of those more often by setting courses for myself, and that goal is at least once a week. I also want to volunteer for control setting at least twice before CISM. I considered upcoming national races. Employment situation brings challenges but my hope is to make it to the next spring training camp and California races, plus some other nationals TBD. GA Navigator and TX are possibilities, but thr Dec SFO is out due to military training. Will flesh this out some more.

C • Good luck going to 70s with... 3

Event: RMOC Rainbow Falls
 

Event: 2016 US Two-Day Classic Championships and Sprint Relay
 

I reconsidered devoting so much time to this sport out there today, not one of my happiest runs, but it did have some good moments. Very nice weather. Some of my problems stemmed from working / flying a full day yesterday, then a red-eye flight DEN-JFK arriving into JFK at 5:30 this morning w/ baby screaming half the flight right behind me (3 hrs sleep total including 1 hrs at a rest stop), and me being an idiot not thinking to drink water after the flight before the race. That's part of what went wrong, but the other part is inadequate fitness and a few navigation mistakes (not many, but consequential ones). After 17 I started nearly blacking out an several occasions...my body just shut down probably as result from fatigue, dehydration and fitness shortcoming, so controls 18 and on were survival mode as I slowly walked and stopped to lean against trees sometimes to when my vision starting fading and head started getting light and funky. Just needed to get over the hill after 20 and I'd be all right.

So the question of the day has been why did this happen? I've already answered that in part, but I've never had this happen before and I've run tougher courses. I think the answer is the combination of dehydration and fatigue because fitness wise I was actually just as prepared as tougher courses I've run in the past. Still, better fitness is certainly something I need.

But navigation was a mix...some good some bad. I had tough time concentrating at the beginning. 1 and 3 were examples of this, 3 especially. Had a good groove from 6 through 12 with split times that were not too shabby. I don't know what I was smoking for 13 though. Should have just gone down to the trail and then pick up the marsh but I went right into all the cliffs and green...that was one of the stupidest things I've done in O for a long time. Sloppy up to 14, 15 and 16 were ok, but coming into 17 and especially after is when my body started shutting down and I've never felt that before, not even in 6 or 8 hour ROGAINES.

Overall I think most of the course I actually had good routes and good technical interpretation of the map. But my problems with 1, 3, and 13 were huge time suckers that made recovery almost impossible. Add to it the fatigue and dehydration and it's no wonder this was such a mess. I was expecting a mess based on the red eye travel, but I didn't expect this bad.

To add insult to injury, the Icebug shoes are digging into my upper heel / back of foot causing blisters. Hmm, not sure about using these anymore.

On the positive side I persevered and finished despite how extremely difficult it was to do so, and I have some lessons learned from all this. I also had a string of 7 controls where I was doing well despite the technical difficulty and that is a big chunk of the course...had the rest of the course been like that and I had taken better care of my rest and hydration I think I would have had a much different end to the story even with the shenanigans at 1, 3 and 13. So I'm counting this as a learning experience, but one I hope to never have to repeat!

Saturday - Blue - Splits