Training Log Archive: TomN

QOC Cabin John. A very nice Red course by Russ Damtoft. Not a ton of route choice, but plenty of opportunity to mess up. I took the first opportunity at no. 11, the rootstock down on the terrace below the townhouses. I don't know what possessed me to cross the river. And I also failed to read the contours. Just hypoxic, I guess. On 12, I should have read the control description, I was assuming rootstock and no wonder I couldn't see it down in the gully.

From 15-16, I was tempted to cross the river and take the trail, but when I got down to the riverside it looked like a swim. So I stuck it out on the slopes, going high to get out of the green. The controls in the pits, 17 and 19, were well hidden. On 17, I saw the sewer cap first. On 19, I saw someone punch. From 19 to 20, I crossed the river and stayed on the trail. I think it was faster than going up and over, but I fumbled a bit with the map after crossing and wasted some time going south towards the road.

This would be a great orienteering venue if the vegetation weren't so crummy. There are a lot of little trails -- maybe it could support an MTBO event.

Red - Splits

Sunny and 50. Back is feeling much better this week.

Another 3 inches during the night. Whoops, back strain. 800mg IB and hope for the best.

In two periods of about a half-hour each. Got the driveway and sidewalks clear, but there's nowhere to go because the road isn't plowed. It looks like we got about 14 inches. Then the warm front came through and it's been raining all day, which helps quite a bit. More snow tonight.

I wanted to get a run in before the whole place shuts down. Weird day -- I woke up at 3 a.m. for a teleconference with people in Europe, which lasted until afternoon (here). Feeling jet-lagged without moving an inch.

GSFC paved roads. Mid-20s and sunny. Wore the Garmin heart rate monitor for the first time in a long while. It was almost certainly double-counting for most of the run. I had the display on "average" so I didn't get much out of it.

Oh yeah, and the first run on a new pair of shoes. I didn't like the Adrenaline 12s, couldn't get a good fit. But I bought the last 3 pairs of the 11s on sale and I've been on them ever since. Skipped over the 12s and 13s, and got a pair of the 14s, just out. They seem pretty good, a little different feel -- firmer, a little higher in the heel, extraordinarily flexible across the forefoot.

QOC Manassas Green. Normally I would have run Red, but I got there late, and it was cold, and Florence was running Yellow (I thought), and 8K seemed like a lot given my lack of long distance conditioning, so I made a split-second decision to run Green. That's what orienteering is about, right? Making the right decision and doing it quickly.

It was pretty much full speed, no mistakes (thanks, Tero). I thought for a while about the route from 4 to 5, and decided to thread a path through the yellow, but there may have been a little hesitation at the far end where things started to get vague. I thought again about the route from 10 to 11. On that one, I hit the tip end of the parking lot, took the trail to the jog just before the top of the ridge, and ran the side of the ridge in the white, counting paces and cutting right at the last minute into the reentrant.

On 12, I got through the green pretty quickly, but wasn't sure about the clearings. So I ran out to the road and back in at the reentrant just before the hill. That turned out to be a pretty fast route.

What I noticed from the split analysis is that I did relatively well on the legs that required some navigation, like 9, 10, and 12, kind of medium on the route choice legs, like 4, 5, and 11, and relatively poorly on the dead runs, like 13 and F. I didn't expect that.

Anyway, a very clean run, 7:40 per k, but second place by a minute.

When I got back to the car to change, I discovered that my compass magnifier had snapped off. I have no idea when it happened. I think it was in the woods in the last few controls, but I don't remember falling, or any other unusual impact. It was the plastic one that's made for the Moscow Compasses, and it had been working well for me. Gotta get a replacement soon.

Green - Splits

GSFC perimeter road. I figured it was dry enough to attempt today, and it was, except for one muddy patch near the NW corner. Sunny and low 40s. A slightly faster pace today, but no watch, so the time is a guess.

Another easy run around the GSFC campus. I saw Jake's running team twice on this loop. They must have turned around at the Rec Center, near where I started. These guys have been doing masters track meets indoors this winter, with pretty good results.

Road run at GSFC. Forgot to bring a towel today, so made do with some paper towels.

Drumm loop. Shorts weather for a change. Couldn't get the stupid Garmin to locate satellites, but occasionally I do something that allows it to start timing even without them. Can't always make it do it.

QOC Super Stumble Bumble. I must be truly out of it, because I never heard of a Bumble. Anyway, the course was good, and the orienteering was fun. The map updates were good. I'd like to do some more running on it, but one problem area, where the 4th window was, was much more comprehensible than I remember. I skipped one window, I think it was the third one. I made 2 mistakes. I'm not a huge fan of mass start races, and I always have trouble remembering to navigate, not just run.

The first mistake shows just how oblivious I was, and It's pretty comical. I decided to take the controls A-B-C-D. On the way from A to B I got off course and ended up at C instead. Still thinking it was B, I punched it and headed off in the direction that C would have been if I had actually been at B. Needless to say, things didn't work out too well, and I bailed out to the trail. I came back, took a careful attack to C and spiked that control good. No clue that I'd been there before, no recognition at all.

The other mistake was just after entering the 2nd window, where there were 2 controls close together, E and F. I got the first one and forgot there was another one. Headed off to clear the rest of the window, and realized after not too long that I'd left it behind.