Training Log Archive: BigWillyStyle

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).