Training Log Archive: Thompass

Pretty good. Number 3 was a bad compass, but other than that everything went well.

We attended a local RMOC meet.



After a mistake on number two, the rest of the course went really well. My route decision to number 9 is a little sketchy, but it worked.

Ran out of battery near the beginning...took about 40 minutes.



Lots of pink ribbons and weird trails on the way to four, totally screwed with me, ended up way northeast of the control, I think the exact same thing happened to Michael too.

139 controls total

Control retrieval at walking pace.

Green - Splits

My first Kroki, what a fun experience! For those unfamiliar, a Kroki exercise includes getting a map, and drawing your own simplified version of the map and using your hand-drawn map in the actual run. We did a bit of a different version, where we were given four different mini maps with little intervals instead of a full map, but it was still pretty good. What a way to...learn about yourself? Doubt your drawing ability? No idea, it worked out though. A lack in clarity in my drawing ability made me miss three altogether, so that was a bit awkward. Ten became a bit of a mistake too, I forgot to put in the first of the two reentrants, I only put in the one the control was in, so thank goodness that trail was there to help me relocate. Everything else went surprisingly fine.

What a detailed map. This was probably one of the most difficult maps of the camp, when you went into those high-detail, rocky areas everything went slower, or else. For this one, I'll take a more detailed look at everything that went wrong and right. Really, anything that comes into mind as I look through the map.

1 and 2 went wonderfully, but number 3 was a bit of a weird one. Going into that area, I knew I had to slow it down, but as you can see I still didn't get all the way to the control. Which doesn't matter, I learned later the control was in the wrong place so I wouldn't have found it anyway. Not finding 3 made 4 a lot harder, so after dancing around near the stream for a while, I stumbled upon it while roaming through the woods looking through the cliff. Number 5 was going to be my redeemer, but I hit the rock knoll at the edge of the circle and thought I was in the right spot, but of course, I wasn't. Go figure.

Number 6, back on track, dropped down to the trail (question is, which one, there were three unmapped biker trails, two of which I crossed in a state of 'I'm not doing well enough on my own, don't make it worse'. Found the giant cliffs, navigated the rocks, nailed it. Finally, something. I hit a good streak from then on, nailed 7 (it was kinda easy), and 8 wasn't that bad when I realized all I had to do was cross the rocky saddle on top of the hill. Nine was a case of changing plans halfway through, but I'm actually okay with it. What would have been better is if I either risked the direct path from the stream (remember, my brain was still rattled and in a state of disarray), or just headed down the reentrant to the trail immediately and taken a quicker route to that reentrant. From there on it was easy getting to the control. 10 went superbly, and 11 was a good plan, but I didn't follow the reentrant up high enough. I thought it ended, didn't realize it didn't. 12, 13, easy. 14, had to do a little extra searching but fine.

15. Oh boy. Let's talk about the plan first. Past 11, onto the spur next to the reentrant, attack control. Sounds wonderful. Except I never hit 11, and I lost confidence in my location, and before I knew it I was in the reentrant. Of course, my brain thought I had overrun it and made a parallel error, thinking I was in the reentrant to the left of 15. I mean, things kinda lined up. I went for fifteen, hit twelve (yes, the hill is facing the wrong way, I should have noticed that, but I didn't, deal with it), went for 16, hit 11, then everything started making sense again because I recognized 11.

Everything calmed down a bit there. Almost screwed up 21, but we're good. I don't know what's happening with the GPS track at 18 because I definitely hit it. Unless I hit a stray streamer that wasn't supposed to be there, which would be awkward.

Also, why isn't reentrant in the internet dictionary? I'm sick of my computer underlining it red.

Went nice and easy to get it right. Will not count the controls here because I run them later.

1-2 minutes rest between o-intervals. Nailed 1-2-3, easy. Stopped short of 4, barely missed 5, got back on track for 6, 7 was relatively easy, what a beautiful spur. I set 8-9-10-11, so it would have been embarrassing had I not gotten it perfect, so it's a good thing I did. Raced Michael on the final interval, he made a minor mistake to 12 that gave me a few seconds, he caught up by 13, pulled ahead on the way to 14 by taking a more direct route but a bit too far, which gave me a half-minute to minute lead to complete the interval. Clear winner: this guy :D

109 controls in May.

Messed up three, mental mistake and my compass didn't agree with the terrain. I did head back to three and then went to four, but I shut it off and restarted it at four. Learned from that mistake afterwards, won't be doing that again.

The first three controls were done as a group to help us understand distance estimation better, and then we went on our own. Michael and I did this as a partner run, so some legs may be faster than others ;) Could be anything, really.



# of controls collected so far in May: 54

4x1000m
2:30 Rest in Between

3'28.8
3'35.3
3'36.1
3'31.7

The special education program was having some kind of outdoor activities near and on the track, a little swerving to keep out of their way while trying to maintain speed.

Easy playing with Peter.