Training Log Archive: BigWillyStyle

It was a great week-plus of orienteering and hanging out with friends, particularly those from out of town like Boris+Alli+fam. Since I never managed to write anything about the events before the US Champs, here's an abbreviated chronological synopsis of the week using Big W's patented Five Words method of description, but without repeating any word:

COC Ultimate-O Middle @ Moses Lake Sand Dunes: Good as I reasonably get.
COC Ultimate-O Goat @ Fishtrap: Where'd Bonesaw go?? ...Bonesawed again.
EWOC Riverside Sprint #1: Bobbly. That knoll's a rock!
EWOC Riverside Sprint #2: Faster, Cleaner, Straighter - O-lympics motto.
EWOC Riverside Classic: Legs/mind fatigued; hot, dehydrated.
EWOC Liberty Lake Score-O: Rest needed. Jogged, walked. Pleasant.
US Champs Sprint: Easy course, still bungled it.
US Champs Long: Redemption. Better lucky than skilled?
US Champs Middle: Finish on the high note!

C • My hero 4

US Champs Middle. El mapa. Another solid forest race - one of the better non-local middles I've run, actually. No real errors, just some small things here and there, i.e. hooked 2, poorly executed my route to 6, and was unsure/hesitant on some of the later legs, but probably not more than 60-90s total I could have shaved with a "perfect" run. Got Kevin by ~2.5min for the win, with the J another ~40s back.

There were a couple things I would've done differently with the course. Firstly it was too short (again); we needed another k or 1.5k and 5-8 controls (even another 2k I wouldn't have complained about); Secondly there was a weird stretch from 4-9 in an area of numerous ponds where every control was set quite close to the water's edge, which negated the complexity of the terrain and simplified things to a pretty trivial pond-hopping exercise.

That being said I don't want to sound negative about things; the course was once again incredibly enjoyable. Just glorious orienteering. Closest comps I can think of would be the Yukon but more alpiney, or the TT Long map with pine instead of deciduous and more logs on the ground.

[side note: my watch imploded in Spokane this week so I am currently without GPS data]

C • Enhorabuena 8

C • cool courses 2

Blue Middle - Splits

US Champs Long. A solid race! I lost time on two parallel errors - 60-90s at 5 and 90s at 13 - but no real issues other than that. Got Brian May by ~30s for the win. His unerring consistency always impresses me.

Really excellent and enjoyable terrain, lots of intricate positive/negative contour detail, a scattering of rock features, and generally open forest. The woods consisted entirely of pine, with plenty of fallen logs and branches, but essentially zero bushes or other groundcover. So good visibility and mostly good running but slow at times depending on the density of deadfall. Co-favorite orienteering course of the year so far (TT Long being the other).

The published EWT was 90-100min, which had me worried because our course was only 9.8k with 300m climb, and if I'm running 9-10 min/k that sounds like some brutal PNW-style greenery that no one wants to orienteer in. Luckily for all of us they were overly conservative with their estimate.

Here are low-quality pics of the map, Side A and Side B.

C • Congrats! 6

Blue long - Splits

Event: 2017 Gold Rush Meet and USA SML Championships
 

Yuck, really bad race. Did stupid things on 8 and 10, bad route on 17. Most dishearteningly, I got crushed by the J - last year I was 1min behind him, this year I wouldn't have been very close to that even with a good run.

By my count there are five four true M21+ Americans at what is, theoretically, meant to be our national championships. I do not know what to say to people (for example, the Kiwis) when they question me incredulously about this sorry state of affairs.

C • The forest maps look really... 8

Blue sprint - Splits

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