Training Log Archive: cedarcreekIn the 7 days ending Aug 22, 2008:
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Friday Aug 22, 2008 #
Orienteering race 38:38 [5] *** 2.7 km (14:19 / km)
24c
Sprint 5 of the Canadian Orienteering Champs. Map. A really nice course by Wil Smith. I ran the same course as the WRE participants, but I was really, really slow.
Here is my track laid over the map.
I started off pretty fast, by my standards. The start corridor was fast and down hill to the start triangle, then a quick line up for the first control. I was really surprised that my route to the second control was in full sight of the starters. (I did go right, but it looked best to me.) I had been in the start area for about an hour, and I hadn't noticed anyone running there. I must have been focussed on something else...
The first 7 controls went fast, and then I got into the control picking section in the old chalets. I did 9, 10, 11...slower than I would have liked, with too much hesitation leaving controls...but then on the way to 12 I just randomly went left around a building rather than the first route I saw on the map, and I saw a control with code 52. Completely out of habit---I knew it wasn't my control---I checked my clue sheet (on my left arm) for 52---and found a number 52. I spun around and punched it before I had the problem figured out, checked my map, saw that I had run directly from 7 to 9, skipping 8, so I said, "Crap!", then headed back to get 9, 10, and 11 again. I think several people did exactly the same 7-9. I am very lucky that I happened by my control 8, or I would have finished without knowing. I have set courses with three controls in a straight line, but I really try not to. Mike Minium always calls me on it. I think most course consultants or vetters would, too. My personal standard would say that if two people mispunch a control, that I screwed up as setter. It's not like a control was misplaced, but it's something I try to avoid.
12 was tucked in a little gap, accessible from both sides, but I thought the placement was a little too cute. It was an area where people piled up to punch, and had to slow down to get in and out. Certainly no biggie.
A few quick controls by the finish, and then into the woods. Up to now it had been mostly open running.
15 actually made me mad, but I really don't know if it was right for me to be mad about it. I eyeballed the map and the terrain, and aimed for the exact spot I expected to see the control. There was a gap there, but no control. I had seen people entering a gap to the west, and turning west was the obvious direction. I had to go back uphill about 3m to punch. The placement of the circle made me think it would be at the bottom of the slope. I honestly think these are nitpicks, but I'm throwing them out to see if anyone else noticed.
After 15, the woods got thick. From 16-17, I went straight. Having run the leg, I wish I'd diverted left just to hope for a little less green. 17-18 had a few lines of climb, and that's when I lost all my energy. I was taking baby steps.
18 was another cute placement, but I think it was legitimate because of the two openings and the relatively minor penalty if you figured it out quickly. I wondered if straight might be faster. I went left through the grass.
18-19 was another really slow hill climb for me.
20 was a slow speed spike. A lot of people had trouble. I didn't because I was walking down the trail and had all the time I needed to read the map.
As I was getting closer to the finish, my brain was getting more and more oxygen deprived. As I went to 24, the go control, I popped out of the woods and ran to a control, punched it, checked the code, and...it was the wrong code. In full view of the finish, I stood there for about 10 seconds trying to figure out why the code was wrong. I think it was the second-to-last Course 1 control. Oh well.
I was impressed with the course. It was fun and challenging. It had both urban and woods sections, so it was a good test of sprint ability. The legs were interesting and mostly fast.
Watching the Red Group run after my finish was a really neat spectator opportunity. The coolest single thing was watching eddie and the kempster race head-to-head the whole time they were visible to us.
Here is my track laid over the map.
I started off pretty fast, by my standards. The start corridor was fast and down hill to the start triangle, then a quick line up for the first control. I was really surprised that my route to the second control was in full sight of the starters. (I did go right, but it looked best to me.) I had been in the start area for about an hour, and I hadn't noticed anyone running there. I must have been focussed on something else...
The first 7 controls went fast, and then I got into the control picking section in the old chalets. I did 9, 10, 11...slower than I would have liked, with too much hesitation leaving controls...but then on the way to 12 I just randomly went left around a building rather than the first route I saw on the map, and I saw a control with code 52. Completely out of habit---I knew it wasn't my control---I checked my clue sheet (on my left arm) for 52---and found a number 52. I spun around and punched it before I had the problem figured out, checked my map, saw that I had run directly from 7 to 9, skipping 8, so I said, "Crap!", then headed back to get 9, 10, and 11 again. I think several people did exactly the same 7-9. I am very lucky that I happened by my control 8, or I would have finished without knowing. I have set courses with three controls in a straight line, but I really try not to. Mike Minium always calls me on it. I think most course consultants or vetters would, too. My personal standard would say that if two people mispunch a control, that I screwed up as setter. It's not like a control was misplaced, but it's something I try to avoid.
12 was tucked in a little gap, accessible from both sides, but I thought the placement was a little too cute. It was an area where people piled up to punch, and had to slow down to get in and out. Certainly no biggie.
A few quick controls by the finish, and then into the woods. Up to now it had been mostly open running.
15 actually made me mad, but I really don't know if it was right for me to be mad about it. I eyeballed the map and the terrain, and aimed for the exact spot I expected to see the control. There was a gap there, but no control. I had seen people entering a gap to the west, and turning west was the obvious direction. I had to go back uphill about 3m to punch. The placement of the circle made me think it would be at the bottom of the slope. I honestly think these are nitpicks, but I'm throwing them out to see if anyone else noticed.
After 15, the woods got thick. From 16-17, I went straight. Having run the leg, I wish I'd diverted left just to hope for a little less green. 17-18 had a few lines of climb, and that's when I lost all my energy. I was taking baby steps.
18 was another cute placement, but I think it was legitimate because of the two openings and the relatively minor penalty if you figured it out quickly. I wondered if straight might be faster. I went left through the grass.
18-19 was another really slow hill climb for me.
20 was a slow speed spike. A lot of people had trouble. I didn't because I was walking down the trail and had all the time I needed to read the map.
As I was getting closer to the finish, my brain was getting more and more oxygen deprived. As I went to 24, the go control, I popped out of the woods and ran to a control, punched it, checked the code, and...it was the wrong code. In full view of the finish, I stood there for about 10 seconds trying to figure out why the code was wrong. I think it was the second-to-last Course 1 control. Oh well.
I was impressed with the course. It was fun and challenging. It had both urban and woods sections, so it was a good test of sprint ability. The legs were interesting and mostly fast.
Watching the Red Group run after my finish was a really neat spectator opportunity. The coolest single thing was watching eddie and the kempster race head-to-head the whole time they were visible to us.
Thursday Aug 21, 2008 #
Orienteering race 21:13 [5] *** 2.2 km (9:39 / km)
23c shoes: Nike Trail (Blue)
Hopewell Rocks Sprint, Course 3, set by falcon.
Very fun sprint. The natural rock forms were much more difficult than sprints set around (most) buildings. The course was an out-and-back format in which you turned your map over at the turnaround for the trip back.
As I was walking around before my start, trying to get ready for 4 events in 4 days, I thought (mistakenly) that this sprint was the only one where I had a stake, since it was a sprint series event. (Obviously, the WRE sprint was too, but I wasn't thinking clearly.) Anyway, I was really trying.
Seeing the map point-of-view and then trying to match that up with my point-of-view was much more difficult and interesting than you'd think. Even running for the visible tangent point (the thing sticking out the most) as an attackpoint often meant you were running for the wrong place because your eye lines up the rock tips rather than your actual position some distance away from the rock tips. It was really intense.
Another big difference with running around buildings was getting the angle right once you cleared the tangent point. I repeatedly eyeballed it and then had to correct after glancing down at my map and compass and seeing I had the angle wrong.
Another cool thing for me was the change in navigation between the outbound and returning sections. I got used to keying off the tangent points on the way out, but when we came back falcon used different types of controls, more away from the cliffs, and it was a whole other type of challenge.
I think Mike Smith (falcon) did a great job setting. He kept it at 2.2km, and that made it much more intense for me because I was moving faster, especially at the end. If I had one complaint, and this is a total nitpick, it was that there wasn't a leg going outward from the cliffs toward the water. I think there were two going the other way.
Another funny thing that happened to me was the vegetation mapping. The mapper used a blue-green color for the seaweed growing on the rocks. When I first saw it (during the race), I thought it was water, and I didn't see any water as I did the leg. It wasn't until after the turnaround that I realized that the seaweed-covered rocks were the blue-green stuff.
My biggest mistake was going right on the first or second legs going back to the finish, where I went right and lost time in the muck. Going left was much firmer running, I think.
I am not as fit as I'd hoped I was. I had to walk at least twice for 10 or 15 seconds. I'm getting into the flag well enough, but then I take a few walking steps to catch my breath and to read the map and line up the next leg. I'm taking too much time to get out of the control. It's certainly fitness related rather than slow map reading.
Very fun sprint. The natural rock forms were much more difficult than sprints set around (most) buildings. The course was an out-and-back format in which you turned your map over at the turnaround for the trip back.
As I was walking around before my start, trying to get ready for 4 events in 4 days, I thought (mistakenly) that this sprint was the only one where I had a stake, since it was a sprint series event. (Obviously, the WRE sprint was too, but I wasn't thinking clearly.) Anyway, I was really trying.
Seeing the map point-of-view and then trying to match that up with my point-of-view was much more difficult and interesting than you'd think. Even running for the visible tangent point (the thing sticking out the most) as an attackpoint often meant you were running for the wrong place because your eye lines up the rock tips rather than your actual position some distance away from the rock tips. It was really intense.
Another big difference with running around buildings was getting the angle right once you cleared the tangent point. I repeatedly eyeballed it and then had to correct after glancing down at my map and compass and seeing I had the angle wrong.
Another cool thing for me was the change in navigation between the outbound and returning sections. I got used to keying off the tangent points on the way out, but when we came back falcon used different types of controls, more away from the cliffs, and it was a whole other type of challenge.
I think Mike Smith (falcon) did a great job setting. He kept it at 2.2km, and that made it much more intense for me because I was moving faster, especially at the end. If I had one complaint, and this is a total nitpick, it was that there wasn't a leg going outward from the cliffs toward the water. I think there were two going the other way.
Another funny thing that happened to me was the vegetation mapping. The mapper used a blue-green color for the seaweed growing on the rocks. When I first saw it (during the race), I thought it was water, and I didn't see any water as I did the leg. It wasn't until after the turnaround that I realized that the seaweed-covered rocks were the blue-green stuff.
My biggest mistake was going right on the first or second legs going back to the finish, where I went right and lost time in the muck. Going left was much firmer running, I think.
I am not as fit as I'd hoped I was. I had to walk at least twice for 10 or 15 seconds. I'm getting into the flag well enough, but then I take a few walking steps to catch my breath and to read the map and line up the next leg. I'm taking too much time to get out of the control. It's certainly fitness related rather than slow map reading.
Sunday Aug 17, 2008 #
ARDF 2m race 59:34 [3] *** 4.59 km (12:59 / km) +100m 11:42 / km
shoes: Nike Trail (Blue)
A short 2m radio course at Mitchell-Memorial Forest set by k4bri. I'm calling it intensity 3 because I spent a good 25 minutes walking and standing around waiting for transmitters to come on.
This course had the transmitters in more green than I like, but it was good practice. A few times I went less than 50m when the T was on, and that is just too much green.
I prefer courses where you can run all the time, and the winner is the one who figured out the problems at speed.
I saw 4 about the same time it started transmitting, but before I realized it was the one transmitting, so I'd claim this one as off-cycle. I got 3 on the next cycle, which was pretty cool. I was about 20m from it when it started, but it was in no way an offcycle spike.
Next was 2, and it killed my time. The green was so bad. I'll download my GPS later, but I know I spent a good 5 cycles on this---25 min.
Leaving 2, I got on a road (that I'd been hearing for 2 or 3 of those cycles---that might have been a way to speed up getting 2), and ran up to the park entrance and waited for 30 seconds on number 1. I was on a little hilltop, and I thought it would be in the white forest area (based on my bearing as I left the start corridor). It wasn't. It was down along the road. I barely made it to the lake when it went off, and the bearing just wasn't solid---I couldn't tell if it was north or south of the road.
Thinking strategically, I knew the course was short, and that I had 3 minutes to get to the vicinity of 5. 1 was near the finish, so 5 was an obvious choice. I ran by all the people at the grand opening of the new MTB trails, walked up the hill, and cut the corner of the road to get to a high spot. Waited about 45 seconds for 5 to start, delayed just a few seconds getting down the cut to the road, and got to the road intersection with seconds left in number 5's transmission. I turned in a slow circle, and got an even signal---no directivity. This sucks. I tried to sprint away from the intersection up to a little hilltop, but I didn't have time to DF the signal before it went silent. I spent 5 minutes walking around an area I suspected, but found nothing. I was near that intersection, but on top of a hill (again) when it came on again. I had a 5 on the strength, but as I ran toward it, it went down to 4. I hesitated as I checked behind me, and verified that the signal was weaker. I ran along the road trying to get the signal perpendicular, but that was a big nasty green area, so I backtracked and dove into a field. I ran into the field until the signal was perpendicular, then remembered the bearing and looked for a spot to enter the thicket. I saw some clearings inside a little left of my bearing, so I went there, looked along my bearing, then put my head down and started back into the green. I saw the flag almost right away, then touched it (I forgot to mention we didn't have punches).
I started back toward the finish along the high trail, even though the road looked a little shorter. I think I made it back in less than 5 minutes (it was either 4 or 9, I think). I ran by the OH-KY-IN field day site, down past the stairs and waited at the parking lot on the south side of the road near the lake. 1 came on, and it was strong---5, then a few steps later, 6. Then a few steps more and a 5 again. I stopped and looked around. It was no where to be seen, but yet the signal was strong. I swung the antenna back and forth, and started running it, but it went off, and I didn't have time to get a good bearing to follow during the off time. I took a few steps, then turned around and...saw it. The flag was right up against a tree (but well within the rules for visibility).
I hoofed it up to the finish, thinking I had taken so long that everyone would be waiting on me, but I only saw Bob talking to Brian (k4bri). He was pretty winded, so I was pretty sure I beat him. It was some time before Dick finished.
The coolest part of the whole day for me was the reaction of all the people in the park. I got asked about 5 times, "What are ya trackin?", and I just said, "It's a game. We're hunting 5 transmitters", as I ran by. Lots of rangers and sheriffs and miscellaneous law enforcement types; and no indications that they had "crazy people vibes" from us.
Just a beautiful day, and a great day to be in a park. So much fun.
I decided not to check the MTB trails---they had *a lot* of people on them.
This course had the transmitters in more green than I like, but it was good practice. A few times I went less than 50m when the T was on, and that is just too much green.
I prefer courses where you can run all the time, and the winner is the one who figured out the problems at speed.
I saw 4 about the same time it started transmitting, but before I realized it was the one transmitting, so I'd claim this one as off-cycle. I got 3 on the next cycle, which was pretty cool. I was about 20m from it when it started, but it was in no way an offcycle spike.
Next was 2, and it killed my time. The green was so bad. I'll download my GPS later, but I know I spent a good 5 cycles on this---25 min.
Leaving 2, I got on a road (that I'd been hearing for 2 or 3 of those cycles---that might have been a way to speed up getting 2), and ran up to the park entrance and waited for 30 seconds on number 1. I was on a little hilltop, and I thought it would be in the white forest area (based on my bearing as I left the start corridor). It wasn't. It was down along the road. I barely made it to the lake when it went off, and the bearing just wasn't solid---I couldn't tell if it was north or south of the road.
Thinking strategically, I knew the course was short, and that I had 3 minutes to get to the vicinity of 5. 1 was near the finish, so 5 was an obvious choice. I ran by all the people at the grand opening of the new MTB trails, walked up the hill, and cut the corner of the road to get to a high spot. Waited about 45 seconds for 5 to start, delayed just a few seconds getting down the cut to the road, and got to the road intersection with seconds left in number 5's transmission. I turned in a slow circle, and got an even signal---no directivity. This sucks. I tried to sprint away from the intersection up to a little hilltop, but I didn't have time to DF the signal before it went silent. I spent 5 minutes walking around an area I suspected, but found nothing. I was near that intersection, but on top of a hill (again) when it came on again. I had a 5 on the strength, but as I ran toward it, it went down to 4. I hesitated as I checked behind me, and verified that the signal was weaker. I ran along the road trying to get the signal perpendicular, but that was a big nasty green area, so I backtracked and dove into a field. I ran into the field until the signal was perpendicular, then remembered the bearing and looked for a spot to enter the thicket. I saw some clearings inside a little left of my bearing, so I went there, looked along my bearing, then put my head down and started back into the green. I saw the flag almost right away, then touched it (I forgot to mention we didn't have punches).
I started back toward the finish along the high trail, even though the road looked a little shorter. I think I made it back in less than 5 minutes (it was either 4 or 9, I think). I ran by the OH-KY-IN field day site, down past the stairs and waited at the parking lot on the south side of the road near the lake. 1 came on, and it was strong---5, then a few steps later, 6. Then a few steps more and a 5 again. I stopped and looked around. It was no where to be seen, but yet the signal was strong. I swung the antenna back and forth, and started running it, but it went off, and I didn't have time to get a good bearing to follow during the off time. I took a few steps, then turned around and...saw it. The flag was right up against a tree (but well within the rules for visibility).
I hoofed it up to the finish, thinking I had taken so long that everyone would be waiting on me, but I only saw Bob talking to Brian (k4bri). He was pretty winded, so I was pretty sure I beat him. It was some time before Dick finished.
The coolest part of the whole day for me was the reaction of all the people in the park. I got asked about 5 times, "What are ya trackin?", and I just said, "It's a game. We're hunting 5 transmitters", as I ran by. Lots of rangers and sheriffs and miscellaneous law enforcement types; and no indications that they had "crazy people vibes" from us.
Just a beautiful day, and a great day to be in a park. So much fun.
I decided not to check the MTB trails---they had *a lot* of people on them.