Training Log Archive: BigWillyStyle

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

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