Training Log Archive: BorisGrIn the 7 days ending Mar 28, 2010:
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Sunday Mar 28, 2010 #
10 AM
Running 35:00 [2] 5.83 km (6:00 / km)
shoes: Fall 2009 VJ Falcons
Cool-down and warm-up with Andy
Orienteering race 31:22 [4] 3.6 km (8:43 / km)
shoes: Fall 2009 VJ Falcons
Sydney MetrO League Race #2
Mitchell Park in Cattai National Park
My first orienteering off-trails in Australia. Also, first time with a compass, which I borrowed from Tracy. Need to buy my own before the weekend. The woods were nice and less green and spidery than what I've seen in Sydney. The orienteering started ok, but I got stuck in the bushes going to 4 (should have just gone around on the road - 40 seconds lost), then was a bit wobbly to 6 and 7, but didnt lose much time. On 9, I came to the right boulder but didn't see the flag and ran around all the boulders in the circle before returning to the original one. Lost all confidence in rock mapping going to 10 and stopped early and was tentative going to 11. The biggest blunder was not seeing the small side trail going to 12 and running past it nearly to the start. Probably about 4 minutes lost altogether - very sloppy.
Ended up 2nd, 2 minutes behind Andy's 29:14.
QR: http://www.dxdeluxe.se/linnekartparmen/show_map.ph...
Lots of yummy food and ping-pong at Andy's parents' afterwards.
Mitchell Park in Cattai National Park
My first orienteering off-trails in Australia. Also, first time with a compass, which I borrowed from Tracy. Need to buy my own before the weekend. The woods were nice and less green and spidery than what I've seen in Sydney. The orienteering started ok, but I got stuck in the bushes going to 4 (should have just gone around on the road - 40 seconds lost), then was a bit wobbly to 6 and 7, but didnt lose much time. On 9, I came to the right boulder but didn't see the flag and ran around all the boulders in the circle before returning to the original one. Lost all confidence in rock mapping going to 10 and stopped early and was tentative going to 11. The biggest blunder was not seeing the small side trail going to 12 and running past it nearly to the start. Probably about 4 minutes lost altogether - very sloppy.
Ended up 2nd, 2 minutes behind Andy's 29:14.
QR: http://www.dxdeluxe.se/linnekartparmen/show_map.ph...
Lots of yummy food and ping-pong at Andy's parents' afterwards.
Saturday Mar 27, 2010 #
Event: City Chase
Running 2:00:00 [1] 15.0 km (8:00 / km)
shoes: Blue Asics 2009
Sydney City Chase
Team Konrad Diwold Fan Club with Nicholas Ho
Nick is the husband of my friend Tanya from Sydney Uni who I am working with, and it didn't take me long to convince him to do the Chase with me. I've wanted to try one of these for a while now, inspired by the stories told by Andy and read in the longs of Craney, Nails, and the like. And since Kat has brought up the idea of trying out for Amazing Race or Mantracker, I figured I should try a City Chase first to see if it's my cup of tea.
The idea is simple: it's basically a 6-hour rogaine with a twist. Or several twist. The first twist is that you don't know where the controls are. You are given a clue sheet, which reveals some information about the locations of the check points. In most cases, that information is enough to find the point, but sometimes you need luck, extra clues, or the help of other teams, with which you are explicitly allowed to collaborate.
The second twist is that when you get to the checkpoints, you have to pass a challenge before you can claim the point. The challenges range from physical to mental to gross to bizarre, and you can choose not to do the challenge, since you need to collect 10 points out of the (in this case) 16 available.
Nick is a Canadian who has lived in Sydney for two years or so, and has some local knowledge, and I have virtually none. Our strategy was to get the clue sheet, sit down with an atlas of Sydney and an iPhone and try to figure out as many of the checkpoint locations as we can from the clues, and then email our "tech. support" back home, our friend Konrad sitting at a computer, who would then let us know when he figures out more clues.
Oh yeah, one more difference from a rogaine: you are allowed to use public transport to get around.
8:30am
I arrive at Darling Harbor and meet up with Nick, as well as his wife Tanya and her sister Steph who are also racing. A bunch of orienteers are here - Andy, Ben, Prong, Dave Meyer. We register and get our mandatory Chase t-shirts and bib numbers and wait around, amusing ourselves by watching the BlackBerry mascots (BlackBerry is the main sponsor and had some people walking around dressed as giant BlackBerries) and some of the teams that came dressed in costumes.
10:05am
Five minutes after the scheduled race start, the event briefing begins. We are told there are about 450 teams, and former winners are trotted out on stage and interviewed. This includes Ben (Rattray) and Andy (Hill) who tell of their experiences jumping out of four-story buildings and getting tattoos during previous CityChase World Finals. Hardcore. After a few more speeches (highlights include one of the BlackBerries tripping over something and falling smack down on the ground) and a bizarre warm-up led by the Australian Navy (another sponsor), we were finally ready to go.
10:35am
We are off. We are told the clue sheet can be acquired by collecting and presenting 5 of the list of 8 items. The list included a foreign coin, a black jellybean, a mouthful of food, lipstick on a cheek, a shoelace, a BlackBerry phone, a live animal, and something else. We scrambled around and, with Tanya's help, had a shoelace, a jellybean, a Swedish coin, a mouthful of jellybean, and an ant. Success.
After that, Nick and I sat down and went through the clue sheet, trying to pin down locations on the Sydney Atlas. Some clues were easy:
7. Get to the hart of the matter on Gloucester Street
Google "Gloucester Street" and "hart", and you get the correct pub.
12. we Really hopE you're on your Best bEhaviour. there's Lots of GrEat fun fOR Good chasErs. Open youR eyes and Be pRepared tO Ask Directions. Which wAY will you choose?
The caps spell out "REBEL GEORGE OR BROADWAY", meaning you can go to Rebel Sports (a sponsor) either on George St or Broadway.
Some were harder:
13. Between a coathanger and a smiling face, a lack of balance will result in disgrace!
A couple of hours later Konrad emailed to tell us the coathanger is a nickname for Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the smiling face was some famous firework that was exploded over it once.
And so on...
We made our tentative plan and were off.
1. Rebel Sports on Broadway
The task: we are given a pair of tights and are told to get a picture of a random person (non-Chaser) wearing them. We make several attempts to ask people in the store, then a few more outside, but to no avail. We return to the store and ask (rather, Nick asks) a middle-aged lady, who helpfully obliges. Success.
2. AB Hotel on Glebe Point Road
We find this one easily, as Nick and Tanya live just down the road. Inside, we are presented with three jars containing, in turn, a bunch of spiders, a bunch of cockroaches, and a bunch of maggots. All live. From each jar we must pull out a token with a particular number on it. Easy.
3. Pirrama Park
We ran to each of these first three points, and had already covered over 7km by the time we got here. Nick was starting to slow down a bit, and I did my best to let him set the pace. We had trouble finding this one at first, as another team told us they couldn't see it down in the park and suggested we look elsewhere. After some looking, we returned to the park and found it.
The task: you get a small cup of chicken liver and a chicken foot. Each teammate must eat one of those. Nick took the foot, I downed the liver. Kind of gross, but not the worst thing I've ever eaten, not by a long shot.
4. Hart Pub on Gloucester Street
The easiest task of all: get a spray tan on one arm and one half of your face. The spray tan could be easily wiped off our sunscreen- and sweat-covered faces, so this was very quick and easy.
5. International Ferry Terminal down at the Rocks
We stopped for lunch (cookies and gatorade) on the way to this one, and the energy level was good again.
This checkpoint was sponsored by BlackBerry, which meant that we were given one of their phones and a list of tasks to do.
We had do 3 of the following 7 tasks plus a mandatory one:
a) Get a video of someone performing a good deed
b) Get a picture of a team member and a random standing on opposite sides of a rainbow
c) Get a picture of a team member and a random eating the same piece of food from opposite sides
d) Get a picture of a tattoo below the waste (spelling theirs, not mine)
e) Get a picture of a random using a BlackBerry
f) Get a picture of 10 randoms arranged in height order
And something else.
The mandatory task was a video of a team member and a random singing "All You Need is Love" together.
For (a), I video-taped Nick cleaning up a piece of litter.
For (e) we collaborated with another team, got a random, and took turns photographing him holding each of our BlackBerrys.
For (d) I found a lady with an ankle tattoo and (unwisely) just dropped down to take a picture of it, freaking her out a bit. Luckily, instead of whacking me over the head, she said "I have a much nicer tattoo on my neck" and proceeded to demonstrate it.
For the singing task, we got a few rejections, before Nick found a guy who was pretty gung-ho and performed a quality duet with him. Done.
6. According to the clue sheet, the next three points were all in the same location and were sponsored by the Navy. We ran over to the Opera House and were told, by a guy in a navy uniform, to wait for a boat.
A few minutes later, the boat came and took us and a few other teams that had gathered by now to a navy base on Garden Island. It was about 1:30pm, and I told Nick that the top teams were most likely finishing around then.
When we got to the island, all the teams got out and jogged to the next check point, which was a kayak race, and which was the most fun point for me. Here, pairs of teams were pitted against each other. The winner got the point, and the loser had to run down to the end of a long pier and back before getting the point. Hearing this, I tried to get Nick to wait until we were matched up against the obviously-struggling team of two older women behind us, but he went ahead, and we were stuck with two big dudes.
Nick said he'd take the back and steer, and I took the front. We started quickly and were ahead, but the other guys caught up, slammed into us, and then passed us on the outside just before the buoy we had to round before returning. However, they couldn't steer at all and took a really wide turn while we, thanks to Nick's good instructions, turned much narrower and closed the gap. Coming to the finish it was looking tight, so we paddled as hard as we could and caught the other guys, going side by side for a bit before edging ahead and hearing them smack into our side and turning sideways. This was definitely the most physical effort I exerted the whole time. On the run over to the next checkpoint Nick told me he'd never been in a 2-person kayak before.
7. An obstacle course. 'Nuff said.
8. Run up to the top of a memorial tower, memorize some facts on a plaque, and run back down.
9. After these we had to a wait a while for the boat off the island, but things were looking good for us to finish on time, with two checkpoints and almost two hours left.
This point was at a bar in Woolloomooloo, and we had to collect money (for charity, supposedly) from people on the street. The amount was determined by spinning a roulette wheel, and we landed on 17 dollars, about the average. However, this bar was in a pretty deserted neighborhood, with not much prospects for hassling people, especially those who haven't already been hassled by other chasers. After a brief discussion and seeing some other teams do this, we decided to take money from our pockets and put it in. I feel sort of bad about this, but I am not sure that it's actually cheating, since we did raise the money, and every other team seemed to be doing the same thing.
After submitting the cash, I had to get a fake tattoo on my face.
10. We ran over to Wynyard and caught the train across the Harbour Bridge to Milson's Point. The Kirribilli Hotel was our final stop. Here, one teammate (Nick) filled in a quiz about himself, and the other one would try to match his answers with a penalty for each wrong answer. Needless to say, I knew very little about Nick and got 7/10 wrong. It would have been 8, except for "Where did you grow up?" he put Edmonton. I guessed Vancouver. The volunteer checking my answers looked confused and asked if it was near Edmonton. I said "Yes, it's a suburb".
Despite this, I still had to eat 7 small mounds of wasabe, which was far more than I'd ever had at one time before. It hurt, but it was the last checkpoint, and we could hop back on the train before sprinting to the finish. Nick put in an impressive sprint, passing 7 teams in the last 200 meters, and we were in, just before 3pm. I think we came in 89th out of 450, but the official results aren't up yet.
This was followed by beers with the guys we kayaked against (they kicked our butts overall, finishing 39th) and waiting for Tanya and Steph to come in, which they did just ten minutes before the deadline.
This was a really fun experience, and I would highly recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor and some athletic ability. Nick was a really great teammate, and I think we both had a lot of fun. It was also a great way to see more of Sydney and to do something different. I would (and will) definitely do another City Chase.
What this clearly was NOT is a sport. There is a (huge) element of unfairness and luck built into this type of event, and you can never think of it as an actual sport. Examples: some information is only available to some people (if you owned a BlackBerry, you got a vital extra clue a couple of days before the race - Andy thinks this cost them victory); some transport is only available to some people: two CityChase cars were driving around the city offering rides between checkpoints to teams they came across; the checkpoints are staffed by volunteers, and how stringent they are with their requirements for correct quiz answers or the completeness of having eaten a chicken foot depends on the particular person you happen to get, and so on and so forth.
Most useful equipment: iPhone, Sydney map, water.
Most useless equipment: excerpts from LonelyPlanet Sydney, GPS.
Sorry this has been so long, but writing this down is a great way for me to remember this experience and to be able to look back on it for future races.
Here is where we went: http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/australia/nu/sydney/23...
16.6km running and 10km public transit
Team Konrad Diwold Fan Club with Nicholas Ho
Nick is the husband of my friend Tanya from Sydney Uni who I am working with, and it didn't take me long to convince him to do the Chase with me. I've wanted to try one of these for a while now, inspired by the stories told by Andy and read in the longs of Craney, Nails, and the like. And since Kat has brought up the idea of trying out for Amazing Race or Mantracker, I figured I should try a City Chase first to see if it's my cup of tea.
The idea is simple: it's basically a 6-hour rogaine with a twist. Or several twist. The first twist is that you don't know where the controls are. You are given a clue sheet, which reveals some information about the locations of the check points. In most cases, that information is enough to find the point, but sometimes you need luck, extra clues, or the help of other teams, with which you are explicitly allowed to collaborate.
The second twist is that when you get to the checkpoints, you have to pass a challenge before you can claim the point. The challenges range from physical to mental to gross to bizarre, and you can choose not to do the challenge, since you need to collect 10 points out of the (in this case) 16 available.
Nick is a Canadian who has lived in Sydney for two years or so, and has some local knowledge, and I have virtually none. Our strategy was to get the clue sheet, sit down with an atlas of Sydney and an iPhone and try to figure out as many of the checkpoint locations as we can from the clues, and then email our "tech. support" back home, our friend Konrad sitting at a computer, who would then let us know when he figures out more clues.
Oh yeah, one more difference from a rogaine: you are allowed to use public transport to get around.
8:30am
I arrive at Darling Harbor and meet up with Nick, as well as his wife Tanya and her sister Steph who are also racing. A bunch of orienteers are here - Andy, Ben, Prong, Dave Meyer. We register and get our mandatory Chase t-shirts and bib numbers and wait around, amusing ourselves by watching the BlackBerry mascots (BlackBerry is the main sponsor and had some people walking around dressed as giant BlackBerries) and some of the teams that came dressed in costumes.
10:05am
Five minutes after the scheduled race start, the event briefing begins. We are told there are about 450 teams, and former winners are trotted out on stage and interviewed. This includes Ben (Rattray) and Andy (Hill) who tell of their experiences jumping out of four-story buildings and getting tattoos during previous CityChase World Finals. Hardcore. After a few more speeches (highlights include one of the BlackBerries tripping over something and falling smack down on the ground) and a bizarre warm-up led by the Australian Navy (another sponsor), we were finally ready to go.
10:35am
We are off. We are told the clue sheet can be acquired by collecting and presenting 5 of the list of 8 items. The list included a foreign coin, a black jellybean, a mouthful of food, lipstick on a cheek, a shoelace, a BlackBerry phone, a live animal, and something else. We scrambled around and, with Tanya's help, had a shoelace, a jellybean, a Swedish coin, a mouthful of jellybean, and an ant. Success.
After that, Nick and I sat down and went through the clue sheet, trying to pin down locations on the Sydney Atlas. Some clues were easy:
7. Get to the hart of the matter on Gloucester Street
Google "Gloucester Street" and "hart", and you get the correct pub.
12. we Really hopE you're on your Best bEhaviour. there's Lots of GrEat fun fOR Good chasErs. Open youR eyes and Be pRepared tO Ask Directions. Which wAY will you choose?
The caps spell out "REBEL GEORGE OR BROADWAY", meaning you can go to Rebel Sports (a sponsor) either on George St or Broadway.
Some were harder:
13. Between a coathanger and a smiling face, a lack of balance will result in disgrace!
A couple of hours later Konrad emailed to tell us the coathanger is a nickname for Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the smiling face was some famous firework that was exploded over it once.
And so on...
We made our tentative plan and were off.
1. Rebel Sports on Broadway
The task: we are given a pair of tights and are told to get a picture of a random person (non-Chaser) wearing them. We make several attempts to ask people in the store, then a few more outside, but to no avail. We return to the store and ask (rather, Nick asks) a middle-aged lady, who helpfully obliges. Success.
2. AB Hotel on Glebe Point Road
We find this one easily, as Nick and Tanya live just down the road. Inside, we are presented with three jars containing, in turn, a bunch of spiders, a bunch of cockroaches, and a bunch of maggots. All live. From each jar we must pull out a token with a particular number on it. Easy.
3. Pirrama Park
We ran to each of these first three points, and had already covered over 7km by the time we got here. Nick was starting to slow down a bit, and I did my best to let him set the pace. We had trouble finding this one at first, as another team told us they couldn't see it down in the park and suggested we look elsewhere. After some looking, we returned to the park and found it.
The task: you get a small cup of chicken liver and a chicken foot. Each teammate must eat one of those. Nick took the foot, I downed the liver. Kind of gross, but not the worst thing I've ever eaten, not by a long shot.
4. Hart Pub on Gloucester Street
The easiest task of all: get a spray tan on one arm and one half of your face. The spray tan could be easily wiped off our sunscreen- and sweat-covered faces, so this was very quick and easy.
5. International Ferry Terminal down at the Rocks
We stopped for lunch (cookies and gatorade) on the way to this one, and the energy level was good again.
This checkpoint was sponsored by BlackBerry, which meant that we were given one of their phones and a list of tasks to do.
We had do 3 of the following 7 tasks plus a mandatory one:
a) Get a video of someone performing a good deed
b) Get a picture of a team member and a random standing on opposite sides of a rainbow
c) Get a picture of a team member and a random eating the same piece of food from opposite sides
d) Get a picture of a tattoo below the waste (spelling theirs, not mine)
e) Get a picture of a random using a BlackBerry
f) Get a picture of 10 randoms arranged in height order
And something else.
The mandatory task was a video of a team member and a random singing "All You Need is Love" together.
For (a), I video-taped Nick cleaning up a piece of litter.
For (e) we collaborated with another team, got a random, and took turns photographing him holding each of our BlackBerrys.
For (d) I found a lady with an ankle tattoo and (unwisely) just dropped down to take a picture of it, freaking her out a bit. Luckily, instead of whacking me over the head, she said "I have a much nicer tattoo on my neck" and proceeded to demonstrate it.
For the singing task, we got a few rejections, before Nick found a guy who was pretty gung-ho and performed a quality duet with him. Done.
6. According to the clue sheet, the next three points were all in the same location and were sponsored by the Navy. We ran over to the Opera House and were told, by a guy in a navy uniform, to wait for a boat.
A few minutes later, the boat came and took us and a few other teams that had gathered by now to a navy base on Garden Island. It was about 1:30pm, and I told Nick that the top teams were most likely finishing around then.
When we got to the island, all the teams got out and jogged to the next check point, which was a kayak race, and which was the most fun point for me. Here, pairs of teams were pitted against each other. The winner got the point, and the loser had to run down to the end of a long pier and back before getting the point. Hearing this, I tried to get Nick to wait until we were matched up against the obviously-struggling team of two older women behind us, but he went ahead, and we were stuck with two big dudes.
Nick said he'd take the back and steer, and I took the front. We started quickly and were ahead, but the other guys caught up, slammed into us, and then passed us on the outside just before the buoy we had to round before returning. However, they couldn't steer at all and took a really wide turn while we, thanks to Nick's good instructions, turned much narrower and closed the gap. Coming to the finish it was looking tight, so we paddled as hard as we could and caught the other guys, going side by side for a bit before edging ahead and hearing them smack into our side and turning sideways. This was definitely the most physical effort I exerted the whole time. On the run over to the next checkpoint Nick told me he'd never been in a 2-person kayak before.
7. An obstacle course. 'Nuff said.
8. Run up to the top of a memorial tower, memorize some facts on a plaque, and run back down.
9. After these we had to a wait a while for the boat off the island, but things were looking good for us to finish on time, with two checkpoints and almost two hours left.
This point was at a bar in Woolloomooloo, and we had to collect money (for charity, supposedly) from people on the street. The amount was determined by spinning a roulette wheel, and we landed on 17 dollars, about the average. However, this bar was in a pretty deserted neighborhood, with not much prospects for hassling people, especially those who haven't already been hassled by other chasers. After a brief discussion and seeing some other teams do this, we decided to take money from our pockets and put it in. I feel sort of bad about this, but I am not sure that it's actually cheating, since we did raise the money, and every other team seemed to be doing the same thing.
After submitting the cash, I had to get a fake tattoo on my face.
10. We ran over to Wynyard and caught the train across the Harbour Bridge to Milson's Point. The Kirribilli Hotel was our final stop. Here, one teammate (Nick) filled in a quiz about himself, and the other one would try to match his answers with a penalty for each wrong answer. Needless to say, I knew very little about Nick and got 7/10 wrong. It would have been 8, except for "Where did you grow up?" he put Edmonton. I guessed Vancouver. The volunteer checking my answers looked confused and asked if it was near Edmonton. I said "Yes, it's a suburb".
Despite this, I still had to eat 7 small mounds of wasabe, which was far more than I'd ever had at one time before. It hurt, but it was the last checkpoint, and we could hop back on the train before sprinting to the finish. Nick put in an impressive sprint, passing 7 teams in the last 200 meters, and we were in, just before 3pm. I think we came in 89th out of 450, but the official results aren't up yet.
This was followed by beers with the guys we kayaked against (they kicked our butts overall, finishing 39th) and waiting for Tanya and Steph to come in, which they did just ten minutes before the deadline.
This was a really fun experience, and I would highly recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor and some athletic ability. Nick was a really great teammate, and I think we both had a lot of fun. It was also a great way to see more of Sydney and to do something different. I would (and will) definitely do another City Chase.
What this clearly was NOT is a sport. There is a (huge) element of unfairness and luck built into this type of event, and you can never think of it as an actual sport. Examples: some information is only available to some people (if you owned a BlackBerry, you got a vital extra clue a couple of days before the race - Andy thinks this cost them victory); some transport is only available to some people: two CityChase cars were driving around the city offering rides between checkpoints to teams they came across; the checkpoints are staffed by volunteers, and how stringent they are with their requirements for correct quiz answers or the completeness of having eaten a chicken foot depends on the particular person you happen to get, and so on and so forth.
Most useful equipment: iPhone, Sydney map, water.
Most useless equipment: excerpts from LonelyPlanet Sydney, GPS.
Sorry this has been so long, but writing this down is a great way for me to remember this experience and to be able to look back on it for future races.
Here is where we went: http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/australia/nu/sydney/23...
16.6km running and 10km public transit
Thursday Mar 25, 2010 #
5 PM
Running 1:01:14 7.56 mi (8:06 / mi)
Evening run from Pearl Beach, almost the same run as the day before. Pushed a bit harder on the way out, trying to catch my supervisor. He got lost though, so I never saw him.
Wednesday Mar 24, 2010 #
7 AM
Running 1:07:04 [2] 7.85 mi (8:33 / mi)
shoes: Blue Asics 2009
Morning run in Brisbane Waters National Park. Up a fire trail from Pearl Beach towards Patonga, then along the Great North Walk for a while. Great scenery, beautiful views of islands and beaches from the top. I am getting spoiled with all these gorgeous places.
Tuesday Mar 23, 2010 #
Running 23:45 [2] 2.64 mi (9:00 / mi)
shoes: Blue Asics 2009
Run to the beach at Pearl Beach. Hung over. Felt much better after a swim. Saw a cormorant, a sea eagle, a couple of bush turkeys, a bunch of rainbow lorikeets, some magpies, and the usual kookaburras. This place is great.