Training Log Archive: elavallee

This morning I was a bit apprehensive. I wasn't too sore from yesterday, but I didn't get as much sleep as I normally do and I didn't know if I could push on for another eight hours or so. Then to top it off, I got a phone call from a con man. He claimed he was the assistant manager of the hotel and that there was a problem with the computers and they lost all of my data. Chief had been in my room and we were trying to plan the day and time was running short so we were a little frantic. This guy caught me at the worst possible time. By the time I figured it out, I had already given him my name, address and phone number. I was upset by that, but I stopped short of giving him my credit card. I told him I would bring it right down to the desk. That got him off the phone quick. Sure enough, the assistant manager was a women and there was no problem with my data. I hope he can't do too much with the information I gave him.

When we started out, I expressed my concern about my abilities to my team mate, but he only stated his confidence in me. This time, we headed east and got some easy controls quick, 18, 15, and 52. It was still early, but I was actually feeling pretty good. We headed further south and got 83, then back to the snowmobile trail and west for 50. We decided to take the snowmobile trail that ran south and then across the marsh to get it. We were a little hesitant about crossing the water, but as it turned out, it was fine. So back across the marsh and on to 62, 67, and 66. At this point, we were both moving very well and feeling quite confident in how the day would go on. However, it was shortly after that that we ran into our first mishap. We had what we thought was a really good route to 26, but we ended up on a woman's property and she would not let us pass. The map was not clearly marked there with any out-of-bounds markings, but with a map that covers 100 km², it is understandable that not all the details are there. She was nice enough about it and Chief was very patient with her. This forced us a bit out of our way though. I did not note how much time we may have lost, but it looks like it pushed us about 300 to 400 meters more north and then back south again. We finally got 26 and then moved on to 36. Then another error as we headed north to 38. Chief may have a different opinion, but I think we went just east of the control, overshot it and ended up in the marsh, and then had to turn around and come back for it. I think we lost about 10 minutes maybe a little more, maybe less. I had an issue with my map as it had developed a hole right over that control, but we managed. As it was, Chief was in front of me most of the time navigating. At least today I was feeling good enough to stay with it and pay attention to the navigation. Not as much toward the latter half of yesterday.

I think that back at 26 was about the midpoint, because we had decided to skip 36. From 38 though, we headed north to 23 then up to 39, then west to 49. At this point, we made another mistake. We were feeling a bit ambitious and set out to the west to get 37. However, we realized after a bit of trying and searching, that we were unable to find a safe place to cross that body of water. This forced us back up the hill to 49 again. We lost a total of 38 minutes and there was about an hour and 20 minutes left of the race. We got back out to the trails and ran a bit north and picked up 43. Now there was 45 minutes left. We started out for 33 to the north and west, a little away from the camp. We got to the narrow field en route to it and my team mate turned around and asked me if I thought I could do it. I overestimated the distance back to camp and underestimated my ability to sprint down the road back to camp. So we took a bearing out to the trail and headed back. We got back with 20 minutes to spare. As I later found out, that last error in judgement cost us the second place in our category. We missed it by just 8 points. However, to find out from Chief on the ride back that we had gotten third in our category, I was ecstatic. I don't know yet what it was overall or even what all the categories were, but there were some good teams in the men's/women's category.

C • Snowgaine 5

Event: CNYO Snowgaine
 

I teamed up with Chief for this event. He is primarily an adventure racer for about four years now and has been doing more orienteering events more recently. I noted from when I first met him, he was very well prepared for the event. We decided that today we would do a big loop trying to capture as many controls as we could. We started out heading north west towards 41 and 64. The start was very fast as we did not put snow shoes on and just ran hard down the road carrying them. We turned onto the first snowmobile track to the north and then turned at just about the right spot to 41 by reading the contours. The map was 1:30000 with 2.5 meter contours. But honestly, it seemed to me like the snow had smoothed out the contours quite a bit. We got the first control with ease, that was a good confidence builder. We then headed north east to control 64. We hit what we thought was the trail, but as we followed it, we did not see the intersection with the other trail and we ended up down by the state boundary line. So we turned north and headed up to the ridge and found the trail at the top and followed it to the control. From there we took the trail all the way out toward the west and picked up control 56. Then it was snow shoes off to run more of the roads more west again to pick up 85.

Now we turned south, ran down and picked up 45, 21, 46, 65, 63, and 53. My memory is a little fuzzy here, but I think that 63 was about the half-way point for the day. And somewhere around this time, I was getting really tired, and was really dragging my feet. Chief, of course, realized this and offered to take some weight off my pack. I accepted, but I was a bit embarrassed at first. He even carried my snow shoes for me for a little bit. Despite my feelings, it was pointed out to me later at camp that that was a sign of a good team mate. And now I couldn't agree more. He really saved me on that one. I learned my lessons that day, that I had too much weight in my pack, my pack itself is too heavy, and my snow shoes were too big for this event. I know there was some discussion recently about snow types and snow shoes. But I think that maybe I did not pay close enough attention to that and the snow reports that were coming out of the field. I had imagined a much deeper, powdery snow. But in reality it was pretty well frozen and packed hard. The smaller, racing type snow shoes were sufficient.

By this time we started heading back toward the east and north. We got 48, then ran up and across to 51, then down to 42. At this point, I think our plans got a little shifty. I think we may have originally decided to get 43, but when we came across the trail to the east, we took it to 34. Then north to 35. Then another oscillating decision point. Should we head back west to the snowmobile trail and on to camp, or east across the marsh and pick up 22. We were about to go west when another strong team came by us and encouraged us to go for it, so we turned around and did. It worked out great. We got 22 and then made it back to the camp with about 20 to 30 minutes to spare. We collected a total of 17 controls for the day and I was exhausted.

I think I went to bed too late last night. I am tired this morning.

I am almost certain I heard some kind of insect along with birds at one point.