Training Log Archive: BigWillyStyle

BT + Watershed loop, at a good pace.

Couple times around the Watershed loop w/dad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ua6mi3gw8

C • Soundtrack 2

A cool orienteering logo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByAB8YjXrPFobzcwW...

Event: COC The 36th Annual Bog Slog
 

Bog Slog 2015! A good back-and-forth battle with Eric; l made a late decisive error and in the end he got me by 45s.

Willvision (Ericvision?)
Routegadget

down goes Frasier

S-1: Ouch, straight up from the parking lot to the bowl. Settled in with Eric and Peteris. P jumped in a little early and lost a few seconds, so E and I punched first.

1-2 (4:30): An easy trail leg; content to sit on E's back. P back up with us as well.

2-3 (9:44): I elected to take the direct approach straight up the hill; E and P went off to the right, presumably using the small trail. E jumped back into view a little before I hit the main trail and led me into it.

3-4 (15:33): On the way out of 3 we passed P heading back into it from the pipeline trail, meaning he had lost ~30s. I was a little more decisive jumping into the woods, so reached 4 first.

4-5 (17:40): Fumbled around for a bit in the circle; the control was farther east than expected. E spotted it first.

5-6 (19:26): Short sidehill leg; spotted it from a good distance away.

6-7 (20:22): This one was almost certainly placed too far to the NW. Both E and I overran it, and it seemed to be in the saddle rather than on the hilltop.

7-8 (22:29): Relatively simple down-the-ridge leg; I chose a poor microroute through some thicker vegetation and lost a few seconds to E near the end of the leg.

8-9 (24:35): Trail back up to and across the pipeline and in. Still with E.

9-10 (28:34): Back out to the main trails, around and in.

10-11 (30:22): E took a direct route back out to main trail, while I slogged through a bunch of ferns (and took a fall), so he gained a 20-25s lead, but then lost it cutting the next corner and getting stuck in the green. Then we both screwed up 11, stopping too early in a place that seemed very like the place where the control should be. E's GPS track appears to show that the control was in fact in the right place and it's the trail that's very inaccurately mapped.

11-12 (37:57): We jumped back out and went right around the swamp; P went left (separately from us) and won the leg. Control was placed a bit too high on the hillside, closer to the fenced area than mapped.

12-13 (41:16): Down the reentrant, only the control wasn't really in the reentrant. I happened to see it off to our left as E continued down the hill. Tried to be sneaky but he saw me :)

13-14 (42:13): Is dis de lead? Around the swamp and up the steep hill, E not far behind.

14-15 (44:50): The decisive leg. First goal - get down the hillside without injuring myself. Then cut down to the other main trail. Wasn't sure where E had gone, then he popped out right in front of me as I was heading S - turned out he had cut down earlier than I did. We cut up the hill through the open area, then up to the next trail. I hit a bit of a wall going up this hill, which was lame since it was basically the last bit of climb on the whole course. Anyway, E was stronger up the hill and got ahead a bit, then I wasn't sure whether I had reached the trail N of the circle or the one E of the circle, so I went S (away from the control, as it turned out) and only figured it out when I hit the 180 deg trail bend SW of the control. 1:26 lost to E on the leg; maybe 45-50s due to error, the rest to indecisiveness/route choice earlier in the leg and speed up the hill.

15-16 (54:50): Alone now. Back out to the trail, cut to the other trail. Won this leg pretty handily; E and P went left so my route must have been best.

16-17 (56:30): Realizing that the rest of the course is downhill, that's nice! Took the trail SE to the big bend, then inefficiently cut E over to the pipeline. Should have cut S to the trail but didn't notice the easy route that others did. A little time lost there. Saw E ahead in the distance nearing 17, maybe 1:30 ahead.

17-18 (60:48): Simple trail leg.

18-19 (62:01): You want me to go down that thing?? Actually gained a third of my deficit back on this leg, as E cut through the woods then down into the bowl and up. Saw him heading for 20 as I rounded the bowl.

19-20 (64:02): Running hard in the unlikely event E bobbles it.

20-F (66:02): Extreme downhill finish. Probably a good thing we didn't have to sprint it out.

C • Following along 2

Easy Christmas yog. Mass start Bog Slog tomorrow :D :D :D I think I'll GoPro it.

Left work at 1215, on the BT trails by 1300. Would that such could be the case every day. Merry Christmas y'all!

Event: COC Winter O' Series / WIOL #4 - Bridle Trails State Park
 

WIOL 4 @ Bridle Trails. I lost over a minute on 8 due to a momentary loss of focus that led to a bad route choice - an embarrassingly rookie mistake that I should not be making.

A nice course by Jeff which even accessed an area I'd never been before.

Easy shakeout jog before WIOL 4 tomorrow at my home field, Bridle Trails. I am in need of a result to keep pace with the Bonesaw, who is leading at the moment; I know BT about as well as I know anything in this world, but E and P know it too (as does J, but he's very far away right now).

Somehow I got pulled into three fantasy football leagues, but all my teams lost in the first round of the playoffs :(

Luckily the real season has begun and the Enger Management basketballers are off to a smashing start, playing .650 ball and sitting in third early on. Strong international flavor this season including a Frenchman, a German, an Italian, a Latvian, a Serbian and a Spaniard. Could it finally be our year???

Went to the track to do one of my faves the 5 by km (I like to think of this as the lazy man's 5k - "Don't like 5k's? Run 5 K's!") but didn't reckon on the track being iced over with the temp just above freezing. Figured I could do time-based intervals around the soccer field, which worked okay for one rep, then someone turned all the lights off. So then I left the track and wandered around Kirkland, trolling the owls.

historical comp

Many were appalled by the Know-Nothings. Abraham Lincoln expressed his own disgust with the political party in a private letter to Joshua Speed written August 24, 1855. Lincoln never publicly attacked the Know Nothings, whose votes he needed:

"I am not a Know-Nothing — that is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to that I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty."

C • History lesson 3

Meandering through Bridle Trails with a loop through Northwest U. Legs fatigued and calves a little sore.

Street Scramble at the Market, or, Zen and the Art of Jaywalking. In order to excel, you must attune yourself to the rhythms of the concrete jungle - only then will you maximize what I like to call "street speed." What's street speed? Dodger had street speed. He who taps into his full street speed potential becomes greater than the sum of his physical and navigational parts and can best his more gifted rivals.

I have tried for years to clear this course sub-90 and still am yet to succeed; I may have hit the mark or come very close this time if not for a missing checkpoint at 35.

Route: 14 - 28 - 17 - 26 - 44 - 27 - 15 - 25 - 42 - 33 - 16 - 41 - 23 - 55 - 43 - 31 - 54 - 21 - 47 - 32 - 46 - 22 - 52 - 36 - 45 - 51 - 38 - 24 - 37 - 25 - 11 - 12 - 53 - 34 - 13

C • Frogger 4

C • Here is my route 1

C • Dodger 2

As an amateur student of modern history and politics, it has been a surreal few weeks. In times of perceived crisis the greatest beneficiaries are always reactionary political movements that would be otherwise beyond the pale, but for a hundred years in the United States two-party dominance has emasculated the gamut of extremist movements which have menaced and sometimes toppled other Western democracies. We may be witnessing the first time in a century that the system struggles to contain one of the political flavors of the week. At the least, the very word "fascism" has never been a living thing in the American political vocabulary - until now, when all of a sudden it has become unavoidable. It will be fascinating to see how the Republican Party deals with its lunatic fringe turned lunatic voting bloc.

Thankfully, American democracy is almost certainly stronger than this challenge, but the idea of American exceptionalism is being proven a myth, as we see a not-insignificant segment of 21st-century White America shamefully abandon the most basic and sacred ideals of liberty, justice and equality in favor of hysterical xenophobia and mindless fear - just as not-insignificant segments of 20th-century Germans, Italians, Britons (Mosley's British Union of Fascists), Frenchmen (Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front) and others did (and are).

C • This is when... 3

Bridle Trails + Watershed loop. Calves in considerable distress when I woke up this morning, probably due to the steep downhill running yesterday plus not stretching afterward. Took three or four painful miles for them to loosen up at all.

The result of yesterday's race has had dramatic (and in my personal opinion disastrous) consequences, as #TeamJourdan has come from behind at the last possible strike:

867:45 #TeamWill
866:12 #TeamJourdan

Over 24 races and 14+ hours of orienteering in calendar year 2015, we're separated by 93 seconds (0.18%). As there will be no more head-to-head races this year, the standings appear to be final; however the #TeamWill legal team is swiftly readying an appeal to the Tribunal Arbitral du Sport in Lausanne based on the position that the first 14 controls of this race should be counted. A flimsy argument with little chance of success, to be sure. Looks like I'm buying the beers.

C • Devastating loss 3

Event: COC Winter O' Series / WIOL #3 - St Edward State Park
 

Belated Willvision from last Saturday @ Rick's b-day. I was hoping those curses under my breath wouldn't be audible.

C • Rage 3

9:15/km

WS3 @ St. Edward SP. Quite an awful performance by me; I was smashed by Eric and Jourdan but somehow ended up third. That's what you get for being lazy four days in a row. Lots of unfortunate things going on with this course:

-- Controls 2 and 7 were misplaced.
-- There were several very weird legs (6-7-8, 9-10) which created both strong incentive and easy opportunity for cheating by taking off-trail shortcuts (I'm sure that some or many did). What's worse, at certain points the map was also unclear (even to an experienced orienteer) as to what connected where and therefore which routes were in fact allowed and which were not. And if you successfully acted contrary to all your orienteering instincts and avoided anything questionable, the reward for your uprightness was tedious back-and-forth running all the way around on interminably loopy MTB trails.
-- I'd argue that the control description for 15 was misleading at best and should have read as "foot of earth bank" rather than "clearing." Unless you want to call Lake Washington a clearing.
--Never was able to find the northern entrance to the trail leading into 16 - eventually backtracked into the control via the south entrance.
-- Generally uninspired course design which created precious few route choices and made little or no use of the more interesting areas of the park. For example, even a minor adjustment of 18 would have created a more difficult decision as to which trail to take up the hill.

Basically, trails-only venues = crap orienteering, and it takes a strong course design and/or an abnormally complicated trail network to make things work and end up with an interesting and enjoyable course.

C • bad course 3

~~ Last week was an excellent week of training; this week, instead of training I just sort of went on living my life, which is weird. The source of motivation is mysterious but I believe it is strongly correlative with light. I don't mind the cold and barely notice rain anymore, but I dislike and mistrust the darkness. I believe this is an entirely legitimate and rational fear, as throughout human history few good and many bad things happen to people in the dark. Especially alone people, running.

~~ A fantastic thing happened at work today - I found out that starting next year my employer is finally acting like a real company and will be switching everyone from separate vacation/sick time to general PTO. The upside of this is that, as I am not in the habit of being sick, I will have 2+ more weeks of PTO in 2016 than I thought! This is obviously the best thing ever to happen in the world and means that if I so choose I more than likely could do ALL of the following trips:

Team Trials + Boston Sprint Camp
WOC
Classic Champs + NAOC

~~ I have been trying to teach our kittens a trick our cat knows, which is how to open an inward-swinging door that's ajar by reaching through and pulling it open with the front paw. I have not had much success; the kittens are more interested in attacking each other than paying attention to their lessons. Bad kittens!

~~ Winter Series update on the eve of WS3: Though the women's side already appears all but decided, the men's race is shaping up to be the most interesting four-way battle in a long time, perhaps in the history of the Winter Series. The total times for the three of the top four who have competed in both of the first two races pretty much paint the picture:

Enger 58:39
Bone 58:47
Ledins 58:54

And then there's The Man in Black, whose margin of error is nonexistent being that he'll only be competing in four of the seven events. However, he's already earned one win (by a single second), and is favored by the fact that tomorrow's race will be primarily one of speed rather than navigation.

Overall, still impossible to name a favorite, and it will most likely come down to the final race.

Real headline seen in local newspaper: "Canadian who smuggled turtles in his sweatpants pleads guilty"

Wtf are you guys doing up there.

C • Turtles 6