Training Log Archive: BigWillyStyle

Event: WOC 2015 & Scottish 6 days
 

Best of luck to everyone at WOC! Enjoy it.

But where's my photo shoot!?!?

http://www.kirklandreporter.com/sports/318365061.h...

Improbably, whoever wrote this appears to have nailed every orienteering term, name, and fact spot on. Investigative journalism at its best.

C • Glen? 3

CYA 1 - Lord Hill Score-O. Mainly a trail run but I took three substantial off-trail cuts and was pleased to navigate bang-on all three times. In many places forest was quite thick, consisting of various combinations of nettles, salal, blackberries, and devil's club, so still probably not optimal route choices, but wanted to get off the trails for a bit at least. Didn't feel good physically; even felt some thigh cramping near the end. Finished 70s behind Eric.

Went to the Mariners game against the Jays with some friends in town. So. Many. Canadians. It was unbelievable. I've never seen Safeco like that even for the Yankees or Sox. Vancouver must be empty right now, because every 20-something is in downtown Seattle.

Later on we made friends with two Frenchmen in FC Nantes shirts who taught me some good French swearwords; I forgot to ask them if they know of Thierry Gueorgiou. A missed opportunity. Every bar was 65% Jays fans, 10% Cougars fans. A woman wanted to slap me in the face, so I let her, because everyone needs a good solid slap once in a while. Down near the stadiums there was also a military convoy and some sort of clown gathering, and people giving out 12-packs of yogurt. A real weird night.

Here is a joke I heard:

"If they had done it right, Canada could have had French cuisine, British culture, and American technology. Instead, they ended up with British cuisine, American culture, and French technology."

C • Jays 1

Bridle Trails run. Calves not happy; they may be slightly strained, particularly the left one. Too much pavement!

It's a little heartrending to see all the cool kids gathering in Europe for racing and fun. Wishing right now that I hadn't chosen not to go, why didn't anyone tell me it was a bad choice...

C • Bad Choice 5

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/secret-cold-war-maps/

"And even that wasn’t the end of it. The Soviets produced hundreds of remarkably detailed 1:10,000 maps of foreign cities, mostly in Europe, and they may have mapped the entire USSR at this scale, which Watt estimated would take 440,000 sheets."

Registered for CROC's Deschutes Daze!

C • Sweet! 5

Ascent of Mount St. Helens. For those who might not be aware, Mount St. Helens is the volcano that erupted in 1980 in the biggest eruption in US history, blew the living crap out of everything around and is now 1300' shorter than it used to be, and if you're from Washington and under 35 you got sick of hearing about it around age 6.

We left around 830am and gained the summit in ~5h15m, progressing at a leisurely pace with several breaks, including lunch. ~1.8 horizontal miles to the tree line at 4800', then the rest up through ashy rocks mixed with rocky ash. Very barren and moonscapey. A lot of weird exotic-looking insects too. Glorious 360-degree views at the top of Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount Hood, and surroundings.

C • Permit 2

A little jog just to say I did. Looking down into the crater, you can see several steam vents coming out of the lava dome. There were also a couple rock slides while we were at the top, at a point on the crater rim far away from us but still very loud.

Descent. Did a little bit of glissading on some of the snow chutes nearer to the top. Ran out of water about halfway down but was still well hydrated at that point. I chose to wear my metal-spiked Orocs, which worked excellently and held on to the bare rock with the grip of death. Wildlife report: I saw a chipmunk and some butterflies. Audrey allegedly saw a marmot, but I find her claim specious at best.

Happily, the day's exertions didn't adversely affect me much; my calves were extremely sore when we left the parking lot and they were more or less in the same state when we returned. Although we were exposed for 7-8 straight hours without succor, the temperature was very comfortable, especially higher up, and I escaped with just a little redness on my wrist, nose, and neck that barely register as effects of the sun.

The most treacherous part of the trip was the drive home from 9-11pm. Front windows all the way down, music blasting, slapping myself and poking my pained calves to stay awake. It's a minor miracle that I survived.

Ragnar, Leg 29. Pretty wrecked after the end of my second leg, especially the calves, and had a bit of a queasy stomach all night, but managed to get about three hours of real sleep and 1-2 more off and on during our van's first three morning legs. I didn't have much speed left in me, and this was also the hilliest of my three (relatively flat) legs, which added up to a pace ~30s slower. I passed 18 people, for a total of 94 (our team had a lot of pace variability, which probably inflated the numbers for some members). Sort of feel like a jerk for keeping track, but counting is definitely a way to stave off the tedium. I also got ambushed and passed early on by an extremely impressive mid/high 30s woman who was crushing at a six-minute pace. I was like, "Damn." Sometimes when you're thinking you're just the awesomest it's good to be reminded that other people are way more awesome.

Overall a fun and successful experience individually, and collectively our team (orienteering members included Ali, Eric, Zarina, and myself) did great - we finished in about 26:45:00, coming in under our projected time by nearly an hour. Thanks to Ali bringing it home strong we also bested Team Beef from Montana, who became our de facto rivals after we started in the same wave and yo-yo-ed back and forth basically the whole race. Team Beef was literally a team of Montana cattle ranchers with pictures of steak dinners on their shirts; one guy was handing out beef jerky samples. I'm told we finished around the 90th percentile overall, and 95th among mixed teams.

Team portrait.

UPDATE: 53/539 Overall; 22/354 Mixed Open.

C • Damn. 4

Ragnar, Leg 5. Plan was to take the first leg pretty easy at a 6:40ish pace, but I started out way too quick (first mile 6:08) and had to consciously scale back to a more comfortably sustainable 6:30-6:40. Quite hot in the sun. Passed 25 people.

#2 favorite team name so far:
"Whidbey Nice to Finish"

#1 fave:
"Your Pace or Mine?"

Miles:
6:08
6:21
6:28
6:41
6:40
6:29 (0.91)

C • #5 1

Ragnar, Leg 17. Went super well and according to plan! Maintained a 6:30 pace then ramped up and pushed hard at the end. Passed 51 people. For the first three or four miles I was lucky enough to catch the tail end of a beautiful sunset over the farm fields. With about 1.5 miles to go I was surprised by our entire Van 2 squad waiting at the side of the road to cheer me on, which was a fantastic morale boost and definitely helped me speed up.

Miles:
6:37
6:26
6:28
6:33
6:27
6:27
6:17
6:08
6:14 (0.19)

Plan for the weekend: Ragnar Fri-Sat followed by climbing Mount St. Helens Sunday. Also known as: "run all night then surmount an icy death volcano." Should go well!

C • Nice! 1

Event: COC Wednesday Evening Series #3 - Big Finn Hill Park
 

Big Finn Hill control placement/pickup.

Quite pleased with how things turned out. The map came out beautifully and the course got some nice compliments, and a couple people even recognized the significance of my Bruce McAlister memorial control. Also, we had ~75 starts, which is another Wednesday Evening Series record!

C • Way to.. 4

I haven't done any training the past few days because I've spent a bunch of time finishing up the mapping project I procrastinated on splendidly. Not gonna log it cuz that seems lame.

C • Intensity 0 3

Redmond Street Scramble

A new street scramble location, right in my backyard; I chose to ride to protect my feet. I finished comfortably in about 2.5 hours and only traveled 24.5 miles, some of it extraneous backtracking. If we subtract about two miles, we come dangerously near the distance range of being able to clear the course on foot, which is my ultimate three-hour Street Scramble goal. With the relatively flat course (e.g. relative to Gig Harbor, Issaquah or Kirkland) this would have been a good one to try, but even were it within my physical capability the mapping/description weirdnesses would most likely have predestined failure in such a venture. When I succeed, it will require a perfect storm of fast/short course, few to no nav errors, efficient checkpoint execution, and no organizational problems.

C • Clearable 1

Ride home. "Broke, with no lights on."

Vignettes from the Yukon:

Most of my logistics were handled by a varying group of middle-aged Canadian ladies from Calgary and Vancouver. The brilliant thing about hanging with the ladies is that they're constantly saying things like: "Here, we couldn't possibly eat all of it;" "This is just taking up car space;" "Why do we have so much food?"

I discovered that Canadians basically know zero Spanish. At one point I said "ocho" and someone didn't know what that meant, so I asked some other folks if they knew 1-10 and the best anyone could do was "dos, tres." Weeeird.

My greatest athletic achievement of the weekend was spitting a cherry pit into Tori's shoe at a distance of approximately five feet, on the first attempt. She seemed not as thrilled as I was.

One of Justine's SOGO kids asked if my last name was Smith; I think he meant the actor though. I tested him by saying "no, and it's not Critchley either" and he was like well yeah duh, in a tone that said "anyone knows this joker isn't Will Critchley." So - at least Will is known and revered among Canadian juniors, if not American juniors.

C • This 3

Got menaced by another dog today. Smh. In the words of Slim Shady, "loud-ass blankerblanking barking dogs."

On a positive note, hooray for the USWNT! Also, hooray for Tyra and her awesome sprint race! #Cascadepride

WCOC middle

Everybody was hyping this area as super technical, so my plan was to go slow, focus, and always maintain contact. Things were going great early on; I immediately caught up to this 6' 5" platinum-blond Euro guy who looked like the skinny version of Dolph Lundgren and started 2:00 ahead of me and had screwed up the first control, then we bounced back and forth on the first few, not going super fast but hitting things cleanly. Turns out I was in the lead at 6.

Then 6-7 was a longer leg; I noticed the Euro yawing well right and knew I should stay on the line, but I just didn't have the confidence to leave my security blanket until it was too late and I ended up on the middle prong of the trident between wherever the heck he was trying to go and where I should've gone from the beginning. 2+ minutes lost with just a momentary lapse in concentration, sigh. Then I lost more minutes miscounting depressions to 8 (Dolph caught back up) and cruising right past 10 and 11 within meters without seeing them (Dolph apparently blew up on 10 and finished way back). Settled down a bit after that and had a group of decent to good legs but what was lost was lost.

I can't say enough good things about the venue and the map; this one lived way way up to the hype. Even when I was confused I was still having a ton of fun bouncing around the crazy depressions and mossy hilltops. If Saturday's forest was dark and sinister, where the menacing trees seem to close in and reach out for you the deeper you go, Sunday's was light, sunny and airy and the woodland creatures would gladly help you find your merry way.

WCOC long; 10:21/km

This one was quite the trainwreck. Little alarm bells go off in my head when I see a course 10+ km, <200 m climb. The alarm bells drone, "Alarm, alarm!" yet don't make any impact on my brain. My first plan was to spike the first control, which I did successfully, then little else went well. Highlights were spending 10-12 bonus minutes wandering around for 10, also being at a total loss on how to attack 17, located on a small hilltop in a flat expanse of medium green. By the end I was mentally and physically checked out and having flashbacks to last year's NAOC long (which was probably my worst race ever). I traveled almost 9.5 miles on a 10.5 km course.

I was also disappointed by the venue; it didn't live up to what everyone had been saying about how amazing the Yukon terrain is.The map was primarily medium green, which was unique in that it generally signified tree density rather than groundcover. Runnability was worse than I was hoping for; everything was vague and looked the same and the contours were uninteresting. If there's one thing I cannot deal with, it's sensory deprivation navigation. I need things.

Event: Western Canadian Orienteering Championships 2015
 

WCOC sprint; 5:34/km

I was having an unimpressive run, until I disqualified myself. There was a big field between 11 and 12 that was out of bounds. Someone said that a giant hole had appeared there some days before the event, so they marked it OOB, then the hole up and disappeared. Anyway, as I happened to near the area a big angry growling dog ran across the street up to me, so I started doing the distracted half-run/half-shoo thing and stopped watching where I was going. Turns out me and the dog went clear across the OOB field, which I figured out when I got to the flagging marking the other side. Finally got the dog to go away but at that point I was all discombobbled so finished out the last couple controls and asked the dudes at the finish to DQ me. Stuff happens, eh?

Sometimes there are the sprints where everyone pretty much does what they want to do, then there are the ones where people get the crazy in em and weird things just seem to happen. This was one of the latter. To name a few besides myself, Magnus skipped 11, Nate finished the course twice, and Tori went to 10 before 8.

I asked around - there is no Dairy Queen in Whitehorse, so I couldn't restore my impugned honour.

It's come to my attention that I may literally be the only American in the Yukon for the WCOCs. As such, the sacred duty shall devolve to me of upholding the honor of our great country on Independence Day. I have some ideas, but am also open to those of my countrymen and women on how best to accomplish this.

The only constraint is that I must be able to either acquire the necessary materials in the Yukon, or be able to take them onto an airplane without getting arrested and PNG'd back to the US (which sadly disqualifies most of what we Americans do best).