Training Log Archive: dbakker

Finishing up the upper hill. Fair bit of deadfall unfortunately.

Another solid (if shorter) day of mapping. Got a fair bit done in the heat (it was 34°C when I got back to my car), but called it a little earlier than I was planning because I could feel my brain starting to go - not a recipe for good mapping.

Ran into the same bear again today, but he is happily munching on berries and figured they were tastier and easier than munching on a David. All joking aside though, this bear is not acclimated to people, and is scared of people. As in, he ran off as soon as he noticed me. Exactly as it should be. I gave him some space as well.

I've got three days of mapping left, maybe two if I really push it, but looking at how hot the weather is supposed to be, I think three is a more reasonable estimate.

Home again to Salmon Arm for Sunday, Monday, then back out in the woods next week to finish up. Flagging for BCOC long on Saturday/Sunday as well.

Also, got a totally awesome picture of a frog: https://www.instagram.com/p/BlzDEGTHMKV/?taken-by=...

C • Great shot! 1

Starting to get a little smokey from the forest fires in the Okanagan today. Enough that long exposure starts to irritate the lungs, but not so much that you can smell it or to have low visibility (I can still see the tops of the nearby mountains).

Finished off the western boundary of the map, now I just have around three days of filling in a few mapping holes. Two days should be enjoyable, and one day will be miserable, so I'll leave that for last.

Had to modify mapping plans a bit today when I ran into a bear going into the direction I was planning on going, so I decided to pull a U-turn and map a different chunk instead.

A mix of nastiness in the forest today, but lots of hope for the future. The hillsides suck (doing northern and about half of western today) with a fair bit of deadfall, and a 25-30ish year old clearcut on the north-western corner, but the top of the hill is awesome. Finally figured out where this last trail goes (and it doesn't ruin too much), so that's a positive too.

Spent most of the late afternoon/evening fixing up the drafting of the Revelstoke sprint map, updating BCOC website (and adding a ton of content), launching BCOC registration, and first initial announcements of Registration being open. Hopefully haven't screwed anything up too bad.

It really sucks mapping sprint areas where I have absolutely no contour data (short of the 20m government contours), aerial imagery is 7 years out of date and super fuzzy (but there's good quality imagery available from 12 years ago!), and to top it all off none of it is corrected for elevation change, so all the imagery is really warped. So basically, I was drawing a map from scratch. I'd roughed this chunk of the sprint map in last year, but really didn't want to do it. BCOC course planners wanted to use it though, so I spent a good chunk of today mapping that instead of being up at MacPherson.

Mapping about 75% of a super steep hill on the inner chunk of MacPherson. Pretty darn green, very hilly, will only be used for routechoice problems, but still has to be mapped. Ditched out of mapping early today to meet up with the BCOC sprint planning team (Alan, Marion, and Bart) to update the sprint map as we went.

Sprint Mapping/Walk.

Mapping at MacPherson. Doing updating in the chunk I initially mapped last spring. Was getting towards the end of the mapping day, when I hit a brand new 500m long trail (that was not there at all a month ago) which affects all but one of my courses for the long. Back to the course drafting table I go...

Longish morning run with Phil starting at his house. Into the trails at the gun range, up the equestrian trails, then around some the Black Road trails. Solid pace on the run, mix of quad tracks, single track, semi-brushed out but no tread, and straight up bushwacking along some of the more open ridges.

Caught my foot under a root cutting through a marshy area, and had a nice face plant and bruised my right shin pretty good. Was walking for a bit after that.

Forest is on the greenier and hillier side, but decent terrain for Salmon Arm. Phil is planning on mapping it this fall/winter/next spring depending on work, so I need to get on getting him the LiDAR data for it. Gonna have to finally buy the stuff from the City I guess. Nice to have someone else doing some mapping close to home, looking forward to getting on a map that I'm not making.

Out in Eagle Bay at Oma and Opa's this afternoon/evening. Paddled across the lake to Anglemont, and played around in the outwash of Ross Creek, and then came back.

Easy evening ride with Dad at Rubberhead.

Got a few things done today orienteering wise, but most of the day was spent cleaning/working on our ongoing deck replacement project. Tidied up the Downtown Revelstoke drafting a bit more (went back and added defined cultivation boundary around olive green garden beds, but left off on indistinct private land boundaries, some impassable fence intersections/tick marks tidied, etc.) Just little things, but that together add up and make a much tidier, easier to read map.

Started getting in basemaps for my next Toronto map as well, Swansea Spurs. Next week is all in Revelstoke assuming it doesn't rain, but once Revelstoke is done (could be up to two weeks, I'm guessing around 1.5 though) I'm on to working on Toronto full time until I head up to the Yukon.

Minor updates to the BCOC website today, lots more to come next week. Should be opening up registration towards the end of next week as well. Is there any info not on the website that people want before they register? Banquet decision will be made early next week, and will be updated before registration opens. Add a comment to my log or email me if you have questions and want them on the website. BCOC 2018 Website

Working on recruiting organizers for fall orienteering events in Salmon Arm. Working on continuing broadening the number of organizers who can organize a weeknight event. 2/3 event organizers/course planners recruited and their controllers too. Also making sure that the new officials who were trained up this spring who have completed all the requirements of their O100 have their certificates. Sent the appropriate paperwork and instructions to those who don't yet.

Also worked on finishing up tracing some more roads and cliffs on a kartapaullatin map close(ish) to my house.

Joined in with the ski team practice today. Pretty small crowd, only one group so we were all able to paddle and then run together. Pretty light paddle, nice and easy for the first one of the year for me.

Easy jog with the ski team in Park Hill. A few more days in Salmon Arm over the weekend while it rains, then out to Revelstoke for all of next week (and possible the week after) until the mapping (and flagging for the long course) is done.

Went to physio this morning, helped to unknot my lower and mid back. Was totally awesome, my back is actually able to move again! Still having some issues with IT band tightness and upper back though.

Easy jog with Lillian to and around Little Mountain.

Drive back to Salmon Arm from Vancouver day. Bought 110 pounds of blueberries.

Flying Budapest -> Paris
Paris -> Seattle
Seattle -> Vancouver

Sleep

Wandering around Budapest. Somewhere around 20-30km of walking I think.

Budapest initial exploration day and thermal baths with Jeff and the American coaches.

Relay. Finally a decent race, just was so far behind I didn't I see anybody so it didn't really matter.

Really hot, felt slow, but navigation was clean. Lost around 1.5 minutes through little bobbles throughout the entire race.

JWOC Middle Final

Blew one control (~3 minutes) when I started following an Aussie, otherwise nothing too bad. Just feeling really bloody slow and hot.

JWOC Middle Qualifier.

Had an enjoyable 5-6 minute visit with a little chunk of juniper that I should have just run around. Ooops. Didn't see a trail that was buried under the line connecting controls, so lost another 3-4 minutes on that one. Once again a disappointing race.

Rest day today. Relaxing, napping, card playing, map study, etc.

Tomorrow "next time" becomes "this time".

C • Caption Contest 1

Time approximate... not exactly keeping track of this - it is more of a continual scattered thing.

Sprint race in downtwon Kecskemet. Main goal for this race was just to restore the orienteering confidence before the middle. Plan was to race within my limits, not try to push the redline, and run a clean race. Push the pace when possible, but I knew my legs were pretty shot starting out.

Happy with how it went, didn't get stuck anywhere, no huge errors. A few minor hesitations less than 3 seconds, and a few minor routechoice errors totaling maybe 30 seconds, but all in all a clean race. Just didn't have the running speed today.

Very happy with the race mentally, didn't let anything get to me, the other competitors, the arena, the artificial fences, nothing. I stayed focused and in the zone the entire race, a very positive sign.

Rest day tomorrow, then on to the middle on Thursday.

The only picture of me that I've found of me so far is here, and it's from the long. I'm munching on a gel just before refreshment stop 3. Trying desperately to hang on to the back of the pain train. https://www.flickr.com/photos/165556057@N06/432587...

Check out all the pictures on the flickr page here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/165556057@N06/albums...

Morning shakeout jog before breakfast.

Sprint Warm-Up.

Event: JWOC 2018 - Hungary
 

Straight line distance.

Not at all happy with this race. Both physically and mentally this can be regarded as a complete meltdown. Simply put, I failed to live up to what I know I can do. I know I am not in the best shape of my life, but I also know that I can do better (much) better than this.

Here is the race overview from my perspective. Need to do some analysis to figure out what needs to change in my systems.
Started out decently, good pace, in control. 1-2-3, piff, paff poof.
Long leg to 4 - decent (didn't quite nail the first bit of the leg, missed one compass check and lost around 30 seconds from it).
5: Not how I meant to do this leg, let myself get pulled around by a faster runner (I think an Estonian?) who passed me. I went south around the hill, but then looped back to the north refreshment point, when I had been planning on heading further south to the southern refreshment point and then around the second hill. Split was still surprisingly decent.
6: This where things started to fall apart, even if it looks fine on the splits. I was still just behind the Estonian out of 5. I was rushed coming out of the control (not that I was planning on following him, just pushed myself out without checking my compass). Plan was for the eastern routechoice to the east of the vegetation (although looking back the western option was definidently better), but I ended up well east of intended but figured it out quickly. Lost maybe 45 seconds, no stopping, just bloody poor execution due to a lacking compass check.
7: Another failed compass check after coming out of the green. Combined with a lack of a full plan, 5 minute mistake. I was shaken by the previous minor error on 6, and pushed right out of 7 without a full plan. Stupid.
8: Went fine, compass bearing was a little off, but easily corrected.
9: Another solid leg, started to get caught by a few faster runners towards the end of the leg. Happy with this one.
10: Didn't have a good mental picture of where this control was, hooked it pretty bad (15-20 second loss I think).
11: Massive train of around 6 people forms around here... I try to stick with 'em, ends up being a bad choice. Need to have the train running or not built into the raceplan at least somewhat, hadn't even considered it yesterday. Entire group misses control to north slightly (some of the mapping felt a tad wonky right in here), but I was first from the group to correct and lead everyone into the control.
12: Took the gel coming out of 11 as planned right before refreshment stop 3. Two glasses of sportsdrink at this one. Holding onto the tail of the rapidly disintegrating chain along the leg to 13. On my own into the control, and spiked it. Redlining for pretty much this entire leg.
13. Didn't have enough of a plan on this one, but still got the control. Didn't see the pit though.
14. And here is where everything started to fall apart. I didn't have a full plan heading to the control, compass bearing was wonky out of 14, and didn't match up map and terrain well. Ended up lost, and failed to relocate. Ended up using a train of 4 to carry me to a control, and got it figured out from there.
15. Got the angle a little wrong, wrong hilltop. Correctly fairly quickly, but still a bad mistake to make.
16. Good leg.
17. Decent leg, minor error coming into control.
18. Nigh perfect.
19. Happy with this one too, but running speed has dropped significantly. Getting tired at this point.
20. And everything falls apart. Cramping starts on this leg, happy with the leg plan, and firist 3/4 of leg go well, but one failed compass check after rounding a hill, and boom a 4 minute mistake. I'm sensing a recurring theme....
21. Minor hook, 10 seconds (while these do add up, when I'm making tons of 5 minute mistakes, well...).
22. I would really appreciate it if the tapes marking the edge of the arena would be shown on the map. They were clearly visible from a long way away and kind of made this leg feel a little wonky. No real problems though.
23. 3 glasses of sportsdrink through the arena. Control was fine.
24. Control was good, just slow running speed.
25. Leg was good, just legs are barely working at this point.
26. And the legs and brain totally give out. No plan, just kind of not reading the map going in roughly the right direction, and no surprise I blow it. Even when I'm totally dead, I need to tell myself to stop and walk if I have to if that's what it takes to navigate properly. Over ran the control significantly, looped around massively, bloody awful.
27. Decent leg but misread the control circle, missed the fact that the saddle was two contours up, so ended up a saddle too low and took me a bit to figure it out.
28. Hard to mess it up, so thankfully I didn't.
29. Shuffle to go control.
Finish: Stagger to finish line.

C • Quote 2

Sprint race planning music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7CJ8QeBeG4

Happy with my warmup. I was warmed up and relaxed mentally, and physically was in pretty good shape. Will add a bit more speed in the sprint warm-up tomorrow, but otherwise unchanged.

Rest day today. Opening ceremonies and technical model (where we get to test out our SIs, test the sports drink at the refreshment stops, check out how the artificial barriers are marked, etc).

Judgement week starts tomorrow.

Start time tomorrow is at 11:03 local time. I was not assigned a GPS (no surprise there). Race plan and day schedule are built, legs are rested - should be an enjoyable run in the forest. Start list should be available here: http://jwoc2018.hu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/long...

Live spectating should be available here: http://jwoc2018.hu/long-live/

In other news, the Russian team broke the sprint embargo, and have been disqualified from the sprint. Also, the JWOC website just went down, a resource limit issue, so access is spotty (as of 16:36 local time).

A much trickier long training today. Lower visibility, but still good runnability. More technical area than last time, so I no longer think it'll be just a running race.

"You know the two best words in the English Language? 'Next Time'. Everything can change and not just for good you could win the lottery, or get run over by an APC. (...) Next time means the world is wide open to you, next time is possibility, next time is freedom."
- Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz

From the audiobook I'm currently listening to, and somewhat how I'm feeling at the moment after the abysmal training this morning. Except instead of an APC, it's a Juniper tree, and instead of the lottery it's an A final. And it's totally up to me, and how I approach the next week.

So takeaways from the middle distance today:

- I need a plan to each and every control. That means a visualization of the control circle, including a solid attackpoint, and route into the control.

- When I'm racing I need to be selfish. It's all about me when I'm out there. I can't be distracted by other people running wherever they are running. Today I let myself think about other things, how other people were running, how others thought I was running. There is no space in the juniper maze for these thoughts and navigation. I've got some key mental words lined up for when I notice my thoughts drifting to other runners.

- It's okay to go slow in the maze if it prevents errors - a big blow-up is unacceptable because it is completely avoidable, small hesitations to firm up a route is just fine.

- There are places to run fast, and I think I've identified these well in previous trainings. I implemented that well initially today, but failed to back the pace off when I hit the more challenging parts of the maze. I've got a key word lined up for this case as well.

- Trust the compass. It doesn't screw up ... I do. In other words, use the compass on the scattered juniper sections when it isn't a maze but scattered stuff. In maze territory - it pays off to read the map carefully instead of primarily using the compass and bashing through juniper.

- Think that's all for now, but probably more thoughts coming. I neglected to bring any paper or a pen (knew I was forgetting something...), so the good ol' training log is the place for it to go. So y'all are in on the thoughts. Also, sorry for not blogging.

Physical and mental warm-up, keeping it pretty much the same as last year, went well.

Mock middle race with the Canadian and American teams. Plan was to test the upper limits of how fast I could run in this stuff. Started out well, first 4 controls were good, but got distracted by other people heading to 5 and ran off without a full plan. The proverbial excrement hit the fan (or the David hit the juniper bush...), and I never found the next control, even after 30 minutes of bashing around and bailing out to the trail.

Found the upper limit, did not stay within it. Not worried about the fact that I totally lost it, that was sort of the plan to test at what point I did lose it, what was concerning was that I couldn't fix it when I re-attacked at a walking pace...

Skipping the afternoon sprint training to reset mentally for this stuff and figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

Going back over the middle terrain fiasco from earlier today and learning from it. In a much better state of mind now.

Happy Birthday Jonathan!

More middle distance terrain prep. Ripped a decent sized hole in my shirt today when it got caught on a branch.

Stopped for ice cream on the way back. Just one physical training again today, but 2 tomorrow - one sprint and one middle.

Some pictures from Meghan, out team leader: https://www.facebook.com/orienteeringcanada/?hc_re...

Haven't been good at taking pictures thus far, will hope to start rectifying that situation today.

Armchair-O from the past few days. Course speculation, playing with maps, etc.

Easier day for the entire team today. About half the team took a rest day, 1 did intervals, and 4 did an easy run on a sprint map - myself included. Jeff drew in some artificially out of bounds areas on the map to make the fairly boring map more interesting, which was good.

This map has a few chunks that look similar to around 1/3 of the embargoed area, the chunk where we are expecting the course to start.

The Canadian team has mapped around 2/3 of the embargoed area, while other teams (generally the really good ones, and then us...) have also made maps of the embargoed sprint terrain from google streetview and imagery.

Here is the view from where we parked to give you a sense of the apartment style chunks:

Map walk in middle distance relevant terrain.

Imagine slightly rolling, now squish them so they are almost flat. Bring in a couple of world wars, and add a whole bunch of trenches, pits, old half-buried bunkers, tank dugouts, etc. Now for some vegetation: take nice open, grassy ground, and then jam as much juniper onto the top as you can so that you can't see anything, and you can't go anywhere quickly. Sprinkle a few taller deciduous trees on top, and you're almost finished. Cut a very few trails through the juniper and make the surface of the trails sand. Bingo! you've got our JWOC middle terrain.

It is very, very technical, you lose contact with the map and you're done. Super important to have a full plan for every single control. You can forget about reading ahead on the course, you won't have time - you have to concentrate fully on your current leg or you will lose it. It is all about picking the right amount of map detail to read in every location, which dictates your running speed. Very difficult to go fast anywhere, but in the few opportunities that you do have, you have to really push on those sections, and then drop the speed back down right away when it gets insanely technical again.

Really, really enjoying this stuff.

Here is screenshot of the terrain from my GoPro which I wore on a chest mount for the middle stuff.

Running the first 8 controls of the middle course. Bobbled a couple of controls (30seconds on #1, 20 seconds on #4, 10 seconds on #6, 15 seconds on #7, and 20 seconds on #8). It is super difficult not to make any mistakes in this stuff, and it is worth the 10 second hesitations to make sure than to over run things.

Also, don't put your hands on the ground, they'll get embedded with tons of juniper needles - which hurt a little bit. If you want a porcupine costume, just lie down on the ground and roll over a few times.

Warm up for the interval relay training.

O-tervals on a relay terrain map. Insanely fast terrain. If I thought you could run straight on the long terrain, the relay is even faster and straighter.

This was a mock-relay exercise. The entire team started together, and had two to three controls in succession, but they were forked just like they will be in the relay, so you couln't just follow people, but you could figure out part way through the leg who was going to the same places as you. We did four intervals like this, meeting up at the end of each one and resetting the mass start. Each interval was a little over 1 km.

Long Relevant Map Walk.

Familiarizing myself with the mapping, checking out the white, shades of green, unique (read "not to standard") symbols, etc. Mapping is consistent though over-mapped.

Foot placement is very easy, there is almost nothing on the ground (the odd pinecone or fallen branch in older coniferous forest, but almost no deadfall). The ground is smooth and sandy, resulting in trails being looser and slower than running adjacent to them. In open areas there are grasses very similar to Kamloops except the clumps of grass are smaller and more consistent, no big humps in the grass.

Everything is really, really, really flat. All the maps here are using 2m contours, so while there is contour detail, it is really subtle.

Long terrain course - or the first 2/3 of it. Really fast terrain, like, insanely fast. Can run straight 98% of the time.

The entire forest is planted in rows, the only that changes is the tree type and age. Plantations are roughly 50% deciduous (not sure on the tree varieties), and 50% coniferous (some sort of pine tree, only other evergreens here are junipers scattered among open areas). When the trees are very young, the soil is very loose and sandy, making the running a little bit slower, but you can cross the planted rows easily. As the trees get into middle age, they hit a bit of a midlife crisis, and it gets very difficult to cross the rows of planted trees, although you can still run down the aisles between them fairly easily. In the oldest coniferous forest (where I would estimate the trees to be no more than 50 years old) it is easy running in both directions, as all the lower branches have been pruned off and removed.

So, the only routechoice is around sand or if you have the wrong angle in a planted area that is at just the wrong age.

This training went really well, I only made a few little bobbles, but was keeping a good bearing throughout.

Shakeout run with most of the boys JWOC team.

Our accommodations are the only two buildings in one piece in the midst of a crumbling soviet era military barracks. Most buildings haven't been taken care of, are missing windows, floors falling out, etc. Thankfully, our building was renovated a few years ago, so it is in good shape, although sound travels through it very easily.