Training Log Archive: cporter

Core Workout Class - worked abs, back, shoulders

Event: JWOC 2008
 

Wheaton Regional Park - Since there was no SSS today I re-ran the Red that I did back in the early spring (sometime in March?). It was a delightful 94 degrees out there today so my only goal was to run a faster time than I did back in the spring, which I did. My time when I first ran the course was 1:23:11, so I ran it just about 6 min faster, but I believe that my time per km today was probably even faster than the my time shows - there are two reasons...I tried to take a different route as often as possible, even if it was not the optimal route (and often significantly longer) so that the terrain was as unfamiliar it could be. Also, the woods had grown much greener since March so some route choices I made today were simply to avoid the worst of the green (I wanted to orienteer, but I also wanted to keep up my speed) which meant a lot of trail runs around to controls rather than straight through the forest to them.

I am happy that I got to orienteer today, but I would have to say that I am only mildly satisfied with my run. My largest goal was to run the course faster than I had before, but I also wanted to redeem myself on some of the mistakes that I had made the first time I ran. Fortunately, I did on most of them, but I made the same exact error on my biggest mistake from my first run through the course! Ugh. I also managed to make an error that I did not make on the first run too which I am really mad about. I just simply missed a trail turn off and ran about 200m before I realized that the trail was going down a spur when it should be contouring the hill. Part of what accounts for that error, and a few other minor errors that I made was due to the state of my map. I drew my course on the map after my race in the spring and managed to draw over some rather important navigaional details - it also made it diffcult to determine what feature I was supposed to be finding in each control circle.

Regardless of the miserable heat, poor map quality, and my somewhat sloppy orienteering - it still felt great to be out on a map and in the forest. I cannot wait for Sweden!

We have a blog! Alison Campbell created a blog for the Junior Trip to Sweden this summer which, I might add, is only a week away!!!!! I'm totally psyched, but no where near ready yet. Our internet acess in Sweden might be questionable at some of our stops along the way - but we will be sure to keep everyone stuck in the USA this summer posted. I encourage everyone to check in on us once in a while at http://junioroingsweden2008.blogspot.com/

Cardio Kickboxing - The usual instructor for this class is on vacation for this week so class was structured very differently. Rather than doing a number of short boxing combinations we spent nearly the entire time building one combination. The combination was good and really forced you to think while exercising (orienteering training?), but I got a little tired of going over the same steps and just adding one more thing to the combination each time. Also, since this was a traveling combination we didn't quite have enough room towards the end and all off the stopping/starting didn't help me keep my heart rate up. As nice as it was to do something different, I think I prefer the way the other instructor does things. If only half our cardio time had been spent on the combination it would have been a lot more effective.

We didn't spar today because the gym ordered new gloves - they actually did so because of my hand rash which makes me feel kind of bad, but the instructor said that they needed to be replaced anyway so it gave them a good excuse. Rather than do more boxing moves we worked on the bosue doing different jumping exercises for balance work. We also did some really fun exercises/games while standing in a circle on our bosue's. We started with throwing around medicine balls and then used tension ropes (the stretchy kind with handle on each end) to try and pull each other off our bosue's. Since its Friday we turned the pulling each other off our bosue's exercise into Survivor Bosue - so once you were pulled off you were eliminated and the circle got smaller. I am happy to report that I was one of the three who were left standing. All three of us were pretty evenly matched so we ended up just calling it a draw since we were running out of time. Really FUN!

My instructor informed me that doing all the work on the bosue will zap more out of my legs than I think - so we'll see how running goes tonight.

I'm not sure what is worse running in the heat and humidity or the torrential downpour during the thunderstorm that I got caught in today. Usually when the weather person calls for thunderstorms I decide not to run and then it either never rains or doesn't start until long after I would have been done running anyway. I knew that they were calling for thunderstorms and I thought about checking wtop.com, but I decided that doing so would only give me an excuse not to run, so I just went ahead and got ready for my run and went for it. I was only planning a 45-50 min run anyway since my kickboxing class was pretty draining on my legs anyway so I really didn't think I'd get caught in the rain. When I got to the Adelphi Mill Parking lot the sky was starting to look dark, but again, I wasn't about to back down now - especially since I was all ready to run at this point. I think the rain started at about 18 min into my run, and it only rained lightly at this point so I still thought I might be ok, but then, just as I hit the brutal 3+ min climb from Wed's run the bottom dropped out. I was pretty much soaked through by the time I got to the top so I got worrying about that out of the way pretty quickly and just kept running. The only concern I really had was falling tree limbs - the closest one fell about 10 ft in front of me and it definetly would have hurt or could have done some more serious damage had it fallen on me. I figured if the wind got really bad I'd just hang out in one of the tunnels that run under some of the bridges that cross over the trail.

Speaking of the bridges - I didn't anticipate that so much water would be running off the sides of the bridges and across the trail so when I did come to them I had two very fast moving streams of nasty water from the roads above to contend with . The first one wasn't too bad so I just ran through it, however the second one was much wider and deeper. I probably would have still just waded through it had I not known where the water was flowing from (New Hampshire Ave I believe), but since it was going to come up at least to my mid calf I decided to just jump up on the railing and shimmy along that to avoid the worst of it. The problem was that the railing was one of those wire rope fences so there was a lot of slack which meant I had to lean back and hang out over the water. I kind of wish someone had caught me doing this on camera it would probably be hysterical. The positive thing that came out of this is I realized just how far my upper body stregnth has come since I started kickboxing - I don't know that I would have been able to hold myself up an make it across a couple of months ago.

Overall the run was quite an adenture, if not a little nerve wracking. It certainly helped to mix my running up a bit.

Tempo Run along Northeast Branch - 15 min warm-up/down and 4x5min at 80% with 90 sec recovery. I normally enjoy tempo runs, but today's was more difficult that I expected - probably due to the heat and humidity. I made sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day, but I was still sluggish - I definetly felt dehydration kicking in by the 3rd rep. I managed to pull it together for the last one and tried to just maintain a consistent speed for the first 4 min and finished hard the last min.

Northwest Branch Trail - Its been a crazy and stressful couple of days which has prevented me from getting out to run for the past 3 days, but more of that later...Continuing my attempts to "branch" out my running routes I gave the Northwest Branch a try. I jumped on to the trail at Adelphi Mill and ran north for a little over 20 min, till the trail split and the pavement ended. My first instinct was to follow the trail to the left along the stream (Northwest Branch refers to the northwest branch of the Anacostia River) and I did for a little while, but the going got rough because there were many obstacles like downed trees and the rocky shore line - I started to think that I made a mistake because the trail was definetly becoming less well tread so I turned back. I decided to give the trail to the right a go which was a lot tougher going than I expected because this part of the trail goes up to the top of the canyon/ravine/gorge/whatever you call it that the river flows through. The hill started right at the head of the trail, but there was no way to know that I would be climbing at a pretty steep grade for the next 3 min. Just as I thought I had made it to the top, there would be another turn and more hill - I still managed to keep a good pace going up it so I can't complain too much. The icing on the cake, however, is that when I go to the top, the trail deadended at a road that was clearly not the Northwest Branch Trail. So I just turned around and ran back down the hill. Since the going had been rough on the first trail, I decided to just head back and run the other direction once I got back to my starting point. I hit that point at about 45 min so I kept going till I hit University Blvd/193. I turned around and ran around the park a bit to run add some more time then eventually headed back.

Despite some hiccups it was a great run and I look forward to exploring more the of the NW Branch.

Oh about my crazy stress - On Sunday night I developed this strange rash on my hands that actually looks more like a burn than a rash, I also found what looks like an infected bug bite (again doesn't itch just really red) on my hip. To make matters even worse, my one lymphnode in my groin/hipflexor area is swollen so much that I have a bump there (again doesn't hurt or anything). I saw a doctor today and she didn't really know what it was or if any thing is related and could only tell me to wait a few more days on the lymphnode and my hands and come back if it doesn't get better. Just to be cautious she is treating me for lyme disease since I'm developing all these rashes. Normally I'd object since I think that doctor's over prescribe, but since I'm leaving the country in a little over a week I decided to go with it because I don't want to have any medical problems abroad. Now let's just hope that everything rights itself before them. Haha, I feel kind of like a patient from a "House" episode, minus the whole life-threatening part.

C • Are you allergic to poison ... 2

Kickboxing Bootcamp

Core Workout Class - Chloe, the instructor for this class usually kicks my butt, but (haha) today I felt pretty good. She gave us a nice mix of exercises and alternated between doing each exercise with quick/powerful movements and then slow/controled movements. Its very interesting how the same exercise feels so different when you slow it down. Most of the ab exercises concentrated on just one side of the abs, so we did a lot of twisting today. We also did alot of exercises that required the movement of both the arms and the legs at the same time. These are not my favorite (probably because they require a lot of core stregnth to do well) and serve a constant reminder of why I am an orienteer and a runner and not a team sport athlete - I have NO coordination.

Ran the sprint before people arrived for my SSS (Summer Short Series) at College Park. Fortunately, most of the streamers were still hanging and I made the decision to move the location of one of them from the feed back that I got from Ted on Wed. Nothing really taxing just sort of jogged the course and forced myself to thumb my way along so that I at least got some map reading training.

After every one had run the training Dave Pruden, David Onkst and I ran the course backwards. To make it interesting we each ran a different route to each control to see which route was fastest. We also stopped at several controls and discussed how things were mapped strangely in certain areas (no offense Jon). It was a fun little exercise, but not terribly taxing since we took some long breaks at some of the controls. It also had the added benefit of helping to make taking down the streamers from the course fun.

Thanks to all who attended my SSS at College Park on both Wed. and Sat. I had a lot of fun putting the course together and even more fun running it with every one. I hope you all enjoyed the sprint. If not let me know how I can improve because I'd like to set courses for a club meet in the future.

Also, thanks to all who came to the BBQ at my house afterwards. I had a lovely time and I hope you did as well. See you all sometime after I get back from Sweden (hopefully sooner rather than later!)

C • SSS 3

Cardio-Kickboxing Class - I think I know why they hold the kickboxing class on Friday's...because there is always something that goes wrong or someone that screws you over just as you're ready to start your weekend. At least with the kickboxing class I can release that frustration and get over it in time to still enjoy my weekend. Class was good. I was finally able to talk my one girlfriend, Joey into taking the class with me so we had a lot of fun laughing at each other. I didn't get a great night's sleep so I'm very sluggish today, but it was probably just as well so that Joey could keep up with me. We didn't do so much kicking in class today and focused more on the upper body, which is fine since I'll be doing a long run after work. As always we got our ab work in at the end of the class too.

I just spent the last 10 min writting about my run and when I hit submit I got an error and lost it all. I'm too tired to recap. It will be sufficient to say that it was just your standard long run.

Streamering (no controls) for the sprint training. Jogged from one control spot to the next, but not very exhurting.

Ran the Sprint on the UMD campus, with Eddie, Ted, and Jon. I didn't have to do too much in the way of navigation at this point, but I still tried to force myself to look at my map and at least thumb my way along. I kept a pretty steady pace throughout the course, but I definetly could have (and should have since Ted beat me by 15 sec) run faster. I don't know whether it was because I'm physically pretty tired at this point or that I couldn't maintain my focus very well. You would think that because I pretty much knew where I was going during the sprint that I could just focus on my running, but not having to navigate seemed to only free my mind to wander...a couple of girls that I work with want to get together for a movie tomorrow night so I think I might take the day off ( or at least just go for a quick 30 min jog during lunch) and do something fun that isn't orienteering or running related - I've been a bit of a social hermit lately anyway so it will be good for me.

Boxing Bootcamp - By far the toughest class I have taken so far. We focused on shoulders today so we did a lot curls, lifting, push-ups, etc. What boxing bootcamp wouldn't be complete without jump roping too? I don't remember it ever being so difficult as a little kid, but its one of the toughest things we do in the class, it kills my calf muscles. We didn't do too many new exercise combinations today, but did a lot of the usual boxing combos with weights and the medicine ball, focusing on controled movements. Even with all of the emphasis on controled movement, we never stopped moving and constantly alternated between slow/controled movements and fast repetitions so my heart rate stayed up for most of the class. My instructor used to coach track as well and I can definetly feel the influence of her background. She loves to have us skip for height which takes me right back to my high jumping days...

Great workout, I love this class, but since we had thunderstorms again last night I wasn't able to get out to run my speed workout. I'm going to attempt it tonight, but I don't know how its going to go since I'm already pretty tired from class.

Tempo Run - Since yesterday's rain interrupted my training plans I had to bump my tempo run to today. I don't usually like to run a workout on the same day as one of my boxing classes, but I didn't want to skip the tempo run entirely this week, nor did I want to throw off my entire training schedule. This will be a weird week anyway since I'll be running the sprint on the UMD campus with Ted Good, Eddie Bergeron, and Jon Torrance. Oh well. Hopefully all goes well with that tomorrow. We'll soon find out.

The tempo went better than I expected since I felt pretty tired from my boxing class earlier today. I did take a couple of extra min in my warm-up because my calfs were already tight from all of the jump roping and jumping I did in class at noon, but after the first rep they felt pretty good. So the workout went like this: 17 min of warm-up 5x4 min tempo at 80% (or greater during the last two reps) with a min of jogging in between, followed by another 17 min of cool down. My "cool down" was more of just a normal run back to my car. Overall the workout was really great and I felt pretty good minus my feet. My new running shoes are giving me some pretty bad blisters on the outter side of the balls of my feet, right on the bump that sticks out (no idea what the medically correct term for that part of the foot is) where your toes start and also in on the underside of my pinky toe joints. Its uncomfortable to run on my toes (which I do most of the time) and after runs they're really tender and feel quite raw. Forgetting to throw a pair of socks in my gym bag this morning didn't help this either...

Core Workout Class - Focused on hip flexors today with the usual abs and back work. Since we were working our hips there was a lot more leg lifting than usual which always makes for a fun time for me since I am so uncoordinated (especially when you throw me on a stability ball or bosue) Most of the exercises incorporated the lifting of either the medicine ball or stability ball with the legs. Doing so much leg work told me one thing, my lower abs are not in really great shape - I'll just add that to the long list of things that need improvement.

Took a nice running tour of the South Side Flats. For those of you familiar with Pittsburgh I started at S. 27th St and ran up to the Hot Metal St Bridge, ran across it and back and then down this really nice path along the Monongahela (phonetical spelling) down to Station Square, across the Smithsfield Bridge and back and then the whole way back up E. Carson St. It was a really great run with a variety of scenery -- the bridges across the river, the shady river path, storefront lined streets, and of course the ever present remnants of the industrial steel city. The fact that I felt really great for most of the run only enhanced the whole experience (and it allowed me to cover more ground). This weekend has been a nice little vaction, not only from the drudgery of work, but also from my usual running routes (which are not so scenic.)

I'm out in Pittsburgh this weekend to help my brother move into his new apartment (which is awesome btw) so I decided to take advantage of what Pittsburgh has to offer - HILLS!!! There is a really nice hill right at the end of Ryan's street so I decided to run that. All I can say is it was brutal. I ran a 15 min warm-up/cool-down and then ran 5 reps of the hill (a total of about 15 min), which is so steep that stairs have been built (as they have been along many streets in Pittsburgh) along the one side for pedestrians. By the time I finished my 2nd hill I actually had to start running along one of to the streets that intersected the hill to get enough rest because running down the hill was almost as tough as running up it. I plan to take a photo of it at some point this weekend and if I can figure out how to post it I'll add it to this training session.

Cardio Kickboxing - the instructor was in the mood for an intense workout and there were only three of us that showed up today so we got a great workout with a lot of personal attention. However, this meant that there was no cutting corners allowed since she kept an eye on us. Sparring was great since only myself and one of the guys in the class stayed - there were actually two instructors that stood on either side of us which really kept me motivated and helped me a lot with my form.

Ran my sprint on the UMD campus twice. Most of the legs have 2 route choices so I ran one option for each leg on the first run and then the other option on the second run. Interestingly most route choices seem to be pretty evenly matched in most cases. My second loop of the sprint was only about a min longer than my first loop, which tiredness probably accounts for (I did take a short break in between loops to stretch my calves, which were pretty tight). I'm also pretty happy that I was able to keep a fairly consistent time between the two. Since I knew I was running the sprint twice I went out fast, but not as fast as I normally would if I were running a sprint once. I thought I was running the second loop a lot more slowly, but I think that I kept a more regular pace than I did on the first loop - rather than speeding up then slowing down I stayed steady the whole time.

The only problem is the course as it stands is a little too long at 4km. I'm probably going to just move the start and adjust the location of the first and last controls - it will actually work out of the better that way too because I should be able to avoid the busiest part of campus and elminate some road crossings. Hopefully I can shorten the course to the 3.0-3.5km range with some adjustments.

Besides the legnth I'm pretty happy with the courses This is the first sprint I've set so I'm a little nervous about how people will like it. I wanted the couse to be physically challenging, navigationally interesting, and of course fun - hopefully I've achieved that. We'll all know soon enough!!!

Trail/ pavement running at Greenbelt. I added a little speed work out in the middle of the run just to get my legs moving faster. After 30 min of moderately paced running (i'd say 60%) I ran a 5 min workout of 15 sec at an all out sprint followed by 15 sec jogging and repeated that 10x. I finished off the run with another 15 min of slightly harder running than the first 30 min.

I have a quick gripe to make...on the first 30 min leg of my run I passed a guy who tried to strike up a conversation with me he even started running so that he could continue to talk to me - I think he was there with a group of bikers that were racing because he made some comment about how I should try biking since its faster (cleary he doesn't get running). Fortunately I didn't have to try to ignore him for too long since my route turned down a different path, but the whole experience annoyed me. I suppose some women would appreciate the attention, but it really annoys me - especially when it comes from another supposed athlete. If I were running on the road and passed a group of construction workers and they started wistling that would be one thing (although I'd still be annoyed), but I just find it really frustrating that I can't even go to a quiet park and run my workout undisturbed.,,

C • Liking the attention? 1

Boxing Bootcamp - good mix of cardio and strength training. Lots of squats, boxing routines with dumbells and the medicine ball, and of course abs and push ups at the end of class. It was a good workout, definetly kept my heartrate up for most of the class because we barely ever stop moving. My ab work wasn't that great though since I just did abs yesterday and was still pretty sore from that. I'm sure I'll feel the squats for the next day or so too, as well as all the shoulder and arm work we did. I was really pleased to see a little bit of arm definition in the mirror today, that's new. Generally I avoid watching myself in the mirror during our boxing routines, because I look really silly doing it with such long arms. I wouldn't want to detract from my enjoyment of kickboxing, by worrying about what I look like anyways. Still its nice to see that I'm getting somewhere.

Jogged around the UMD campus to check out possible control sites for the sprint that I'm designing for QOC's summer series. It's a good thing I checked out the campus too. There are a couple of construction sites on the campus right now that I'll need to design my courses around - one site is actually over where I was plannig to have the start/finish for the sprint, but since the map that I am using to plan the course already has a score-o on it I decided to just use the same start/finish. I ran off and on for about an hour - generally from one potential control site to another. I had some pretty long breaks in between legs since I sat down a coule times to evaluate what I had decided and what else I wanted to check out on the map. I'd say I ran at least half the time or more, but I wasn't really paying attention. It was nice to have a light running day though since I've had a number of consecutive hard days - I also had my kickboxing class earlier in the day so I still got a respectable amount of exercise in today. Here's to hoping that my sprint is challenging, but fun for everyone.

C • Thanks for the effort 5

Core Workout Class - Mostly did worked with the stability ball, and did planks and several variations of reverse crunches today.Concentrated heavily on the obliques too. I didn't like this class as much as past ones and I don't think I got as good of a workout either - most of the exercises required lifting legs and shoulders simultneously which distracted me from concentrating on my form and keeping my abs tight. The variety of exercises from week to week is nice, but I do wish we at least had a core set of exercises that we did every week so that I could keep track of how much I am improving and so that I could at least count on some quality ab work.

Tempo Run - I finally go around to getting a new pair of running shoes so I can run on pavement again with only mild discomfort in my knees. For my tempo, I wanted a pretty flat run so that I could keep my pace consistant so I ran along the Northeast Branch Trail (don't be fooled it's paved). After a 15 min warm-up I ran 5x3 min at 80% race pace with 1 min recovery in between. I'm pretty sure I ran faster than 80%, especially on my last 2 reps, but I was feeling pretty good. The heat was really not all that bad either. Most of the trail was heavily shaded and with the breeze it was almost comfortable, at least until my cool down, ironically. I don't know what it is about workouts, but I always seem to get overheated after I finish them. Presumably, because I'm not paying attention to it when I'm running my hardest at the end of a workout - then it all catches up to me in the cool down. Oh well. I was running in just a sports bra and the lightest, most breathable pair of running shorts I had so it still wasn't that bad.

On a side note, I have a theory that the contractor that designed my town house must have been a runner. Our spigot (that's probably misspelled horribly) is located right next to the front door making it very convienient to cool off after running on days like today.

QOC Beer Chase at Jug Bay - I can now say that I am a veteran of the infamous "Chase". It was certainly as much fun as Valeri said it would be, although fortunately it was not as difficult as I had expected it to be. The intense heat was certainly more challenging than consuming beer on the course, but even the heat was not as bad as I thought it would be out in the woods. I don't think that the alcohol had much of an effect at all until I finished my course (then I felt a little woozy and light headed). The course itself was a lot of fun. It consisted of three loops (3.4, 3.3, and 0.9km) and the first two were very similar. They followed the same route, and controls were hung on the same features that were usually within eyesight of each other - therefore you had to be certain to check your control codes. I was pretty happy that I only hit the wrong control once during the whole race. I also tried to avoid the packs that formed for each loop, especially since they seemed to be leaving controls just I was coming into them, yet I would beat them to the next one. Not following also paid off on the second loop since I had already navigated my way through practically the same loop once so for many controls I could just rely on memory to get there with minimal map reading. This was especially helpful since by the second control of the second loop I had left my pack behind (sorry Dave and Jan), but I did pick up another runner and we stuck together for the rest of the race. The thrid leg was just a test of endurance, which I would say I just barely managed a passing grade on, but I made it through, albeit slowly. I can't complain about my race at all. I had a great time out there and finished pretty well. The dip in the river after finishing, a nice picnic, and of course, the excellent company all made for a terrific day. I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow :(

C • Nice job! 3

Long - Splits

Hill Workout - 6 reps of a hill about 200m long. I was running them pretty consistently at 1:32-1:33 for the first 3 and the last 1. I slowed a little to 1:35 for hills 4 and 5 though. Unfortunately that was about the time that the sun broke through the morning haze and it got real hot real quick. Not that it wasn't already pretty hot and humid when I started. I didn't check the temp before I left at around 8:30, but by the time I was done running around 9:30 it was already almost 80 degrees! Still it was a good workout.

Cardio Kickboxing - since it was the general consensus among my coworkers in class today that this has been the week from hell, and that today was perhaps the worst of all, we had a pretty killer class. Sparring was especially intense (so much so that our instructor moved us farther apart so that no one accidentally punched a classmate), but it felt so good everytime I made good contact with my partner's mitt. Ironic that punching things felt so good today because two men in my office almost came to blows within the first hour of work!

Pre and post workout running. I wouldn't call it warm up/down since I tried to keep a steady pace to simulate how tired I would normally be during an orienteering race before my speed workout through the woods. Still the going was a little slow since the trails had been washed out in several places after yesterday's deluge.

I didn't decide to do this till I actually started running, but since the trails were so muddy and since I found a nice patch of fairly open woods to do a speed workout I made a few adjustments to my plan and did my workout in the woods. I had originally planned to do 8 reps of 15x15 sprints. In the woods however, I upped the time to 30x30 since I figured I rarely do all out sprinting in the woods and 30 second bursts of speed seemed appropriate for a workout (speak anyone who reads this that disagrees) geared toward orienteering speed. I was pleased with the workout, it was definetly fast paced and exhausting. The only thing I'd change would be have a map on hand (wasn't planning for this so didin't think of it) and probably pick a different piece of woods to workout in (there was a lot of deadfall and it wasn't quite a big enough area - I was surprised how far I could go in the woods in only 30 sec). For the future, if I had a map, I would take a bearing and run on that (rather than willy-nilly through the woods like I was) and then relocate once I stopped.

No running for me today. Especially since I am currently sitting on my first floor foyer waiting out the latest Tornado Warning. We've had a number of severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings all evening.

C • sweden 6

Kickboxing Class. A high-intensity boot camp style class. It was pretty intense because were constantly moving at a pretty good pace and the routines we were doing were pretty intense. Lots of boxing moves interspersed with squats and lunges. A lot of ab work as well.

Core Workout Class - mostly stability training and working with medicine balls. Also some squats, crunches and back work. It was kind of like recess - we used every toy we had at our disposal in today's class.

SVO's Hammond's Rocks. So I would definetly have to say that I got some good, albeit humbling orienteering in, which is nice since it was a 4 hour round trip drive for the day. The course wasn't terribly long, but the terrain made it feel like an 8+km course rather than the less than 7km that is was. My time also would lead you to believe that I had run a longer course, however, that was in part due to the fact that I did very little pure running on the course. Most of woods were filled with blueberry bushes (or something like it) that made running risky or impossible (I have the bruised shins to prove it). Yet, the shrubbery was perhaps a hidden advantage because it forced you to go slow. The map itself was very technical in some sections, (just think of what a map would look like if Hickory Run and West Point had a love-child) but I was able to hit a fair number of the 19 total controls close to dead on. Unfortunately, the ones that I didn't nail became major headaches to find.

Controls that gave me some trouble were #7, #10, #11(!!!!!!), and #15. I should say that there was an unexpected thunderstorm that lasted about 20 min in the middle of my course which, I unfortunately allowed to distract me ( for #7 I was paying more attention to the rain and over ran the control), but it ended as quickly as it started. I still got soaked completely through though. Control #10 I actually stopped short on because I got confused about how many streams of rocky ground I had run over and then hesitated. And then we come to control #11... I'm not making an excuse for myself, especially because I saw that there was a safer route and chose not to take it, ( I did however take it when I picked up the control and still had some trouble) but, I still don't know how I feel about that control. The control was hung on a piece of bare rock that was distinctive, however, the dense mountain laurel and surrounding rock almost completely obscured it until you were (literally) standing on top of the control. While my initial route was pretty risky, I had attacked that control 5 different (3 times trying to find it on my course and twice trying to pick it up) times from all directions and still only found it once I was literally right on top of it. After thinking about this control on my ride home, and looking over the map again tonight, I still think that #11 was a bit of a bingo control (sorry Eddie, the rest of the course was terrific!) After #11, I still had a long way to go so I was pretty slow and hesitant. Without e-punching my best guess is that I lost at least 15 min. on #11 and I didn't want to be a repeat offender of the double-digit error time. The rest of the race went fairly well, except en route to #15. I came out on a trail to find a huge section of forrested area that I did not expect to see ( at first I thought I had pulled a 180 somehow and was on the other side of the fold in my map) , but after much head scratching I realized that there was some green slash that must have been meant to indicate some forresting that had obviously grown in size since the map was made. I also encountered a man looking for two younger girls along this trail which delayed me some (I won't lie, a sporting withdraw was starting to sound pretty attractive at this point), but I continued on and was the last out of the woods. I stuck around after my race to help with control pick up, especially to give myself a chance at redemption with #11 (which as I stated did not go well either) so I got a bit more time out in the woods (and they were pretty woods) which was nice. Add in a stop for some pizza afterward and a couple hours spent looking at Mike Ball's photos from China and I call it a Sunday well spent. I'm beginning to think that SVO club members know the location of the closest pizza place for every map that they have as well.