Training Log Archive: KFish

... continued from Saturdays log.

73 - We anticipated this being the trickiest control of the entire race, so we really took our time and were very deliberate. Syd was starting to get very tired, so I took more of a lead role on this one. It was slow going, but we got there. We followed property boundaries, looking for the next yellow blaze from the one we were at all the way around in a U shape, and then East to the corner (3 blazes), and then pace counted S to the control and hit it almost right on!

78, 74, 52 - no real problems, but really looking forward to our rest break at HQ. Seemed to take forever to get through these last couple.

HQ - Goal of 35 min, left at about 40. In no particular order: Sat, changed shirt, took shoes off, lubed, ate pringles, drank pepsi and gatorade, filled water, refilled snacks, snoozed for a few min, got slightly chilled, took more ibuprofen, got sprinkled on. Should have: changed socks and probably shoes.

After leaving HQ at ~3:15AM the train derailed until the sun came back up. Lost our entire buffer on the next 2 controls, got rather demoralized, and heightened pain in shin.

64 - we relied on my pace count and bearing, both of which were well off. Explored every tributary before decided to find the main stream junction and realizing we were far short. I think my pace counting was short because my steps were shorter trying to stave off shin pain.

82 - drifted off my bearing, which looked good for the first half. Then thought we found the right trail bend, but ended up hitting another trail instead of the control. Eventually found the hill that was the spur and we were able to find the flag. Then exiting, we headed straight west to the trail, and planned to go north from there to the road. We never found the trail and started going in circles, sometimes heading E instead of N or W, and getting pushed around by swamps and garbage woods and making assumptions about where we were from that. I think the swamps weren't quite perfect on the map, but that is no excuse. I've never been so frustrated leaving a control looking for a road. Eventually we decided to just bash through whatever was in our way going straight N and we had to hit the road, which we did and finally got there. We had spent so long wandering in who knows what direction we weren't sure we had come out on the road where we wanted too, and took a long time to verify where on that road we were. What a disaster.

71 - Once we verified where on the road we were we found the corner of state land and hit the control without too much trouble. Syd was having a down time, so I tried to stay positive and give her a pep talk and took over navigation for a bit. Decided to modify our plan since clearing wasn't going to happen any more.

51 - trail, no problem. Sat down for a few minutes again here. This is where the sun came up. Our navigation immediately improved, but our speed slowed mostly due to the building pain in my shin.

61, 41, 62, 81, 40, 70, 80 - no real problems and syd started to feel a lot better.

88 - the road walk from 80 to 88 did me in. My shin started to hurt really bad. I picked up a walking stick which helped take a little of the pressure off, but once we got back in the woods it wasn't as much help on uneven ground and we slowed to a limping crawl.

69 - I gritted my teeth and made the call to go to 69, but then at 69 I had a bit of a breakdown from pain, frustration with pain, lack of fueling, and decided I was done. We hobbled back to HQ to finish a few hours early instead of continuing the loop to collect points. Its a good thing we went, as it secured us 3rd place!

After stopping at HQ one or the other of us was having a down time, which resulted in also getting worse about fuel and electrolytes. That coupled with my shin pain really slowed us down. I have no clue what caused the shin problems, I don't remember whacking it on anything particularly hard, and I've never had this kind of problem before. I am wondering if some combo of shoes, socks, and ankle tape was putting undue pressure on it. Ibuprofen helped for a long time, but by the end I couldn't bear to swallow it any more (chewables?), and I think its inevitable that pain at 6 hours will be worse by 20 hours (although heal pain did go away entirely).

Notes:
- More real food. Since the intensity was lower I could stomach bars more easily, and got hungry a few times.
- Water stops were perfectly placed to run Nathan with 70 oz bladder even in the heat, which was a lot more comfortable than OutThere with 100 oz.
- Lube everything at the start and often (feet, neck, cheeks). I did a lot, but could have used more. Chafage on outside ankle from rubbing on shoes, especially on side hills, which I had not really experienced before.
- Legs felt fantastic given climb and distance, and could have kept going. Shin pain was limiting factor, and hopefully that was a one off problem.
- Might be worth taking more of a break and sleeping for a few minutes, given how terrible we did after the break. Would need to evaluate that plan in the future.
-Map ink started to rub off in map case. I've never had that problem before. Maybe tape it stationary in the map case? Different kind of bag? Result of waterproof paper?
- Nathan can work for ~15 hours. More than that would be a stretch.
- Don't tape ankles if not planning to run. Twisting didn't seem likely at our pace.
- Re-stocking with bonus snacks (pringles and pepsi) at HQ was fantastic.
-Physically (legs-wise) I think clearing this course would have been tight, but possible for us. Shin pain and night navigation doomed us.
- map and control placement were mostly fantastic. Perfectly spaced water stops with plenty (18 gal) of water. A big thank you and props to Eric and Mary Smith for putting this race on, and we hope to make it back!
-Maybe give syd the punch so I don't get distracted by signing the intention sheet to avoid forgotten punches.

Results:

2650/3100 points (should have been 2690). First and Second place killed it.
46/58 controls.
3/18 OA (1/3 XO).

C • After 82 2

C • Nice work, 18hr should be n... 4

Event: CNYO Rogaine XXVIII
 

CNYO Rogaine 2018
My first 24hr rogaine!

We've eyed this race since we started orienteering since we both grew up in this area, but this is the first time we were able to swing it. We had a bit of unplanned excitement when the car developed a terrible rattling sound 10 miles from home on Friday night, which we had to juggle to a dealership on Saturday morning before the race (Thanks to my parents for being extremely helpful dealing with it and lending us a car). We got to race HQ a little later than we had planned, and that coupled with not being able to park in the same place as the gear drop/planning area meant it was a little more hectic than we prefer pre-race. Without seeing the map we planned to make a pit stop at HQ for refueling at about the 2/3 mark, which let us run smaller packs with less food. Luckily, this plan panned out well once we saw the map. Planning wasn't too frantic since we had 2 hours, but we had to guess at how far we thought we might make it, and we needed to copy the plan to 3 maps and turn one in to the organizers in case of emergency, which added a little time. We decided to mark our goals as approximately 3.5 scalex miles (following approximate route) every 2 hours. We figured that would be closer to 5 actual miles which we should be able to achieve at a good walking pace. The race notes said it may be clearable - so of course we planned to clear it and our 3.5 mile/2 hour estimates worked out to exactly 24 hours... It sounded like most people planned to go NW first to clear the shorter, point dense region first, but we opted to go SE first to come back to HQ at ~2/3. Being relatively alone in the woods suited us just fine.

We headed off at noon with a group of 3-4 other teams, until we realized we had forgot the GPS logger in the action packer and decided to turn around to get it, giving us a ~3 min delay right from the get go. We still caught up to the last of these teams by the first control. The first ~9 hours in the light went fantastically, with only a few small bobbles:

48, 33, 42, all went well.

89 - we expected the cairn to be huge to make it on a 1:30k map, but it was normal sized and well camoflaged in the green woods, and our bearing wasn't perfect so we had to canvas a bit.

35 - was on a very broad hill top and we just missed the apex on the first pass. relocated from the trail past it.

89 - was on an unmapped track. Luckily syd was peering off in the woods and spotted it from the mapped track, or this could have been a big confusion.

59 - tried to follow the property line, but missed a few blazes and drifted high, but it worked out.

58, 77, W4, 43 all went well.

43 - We found it okay but got in the hashed green leaving and never found the mapped trail.

55, 67, 76 all went well

49 - I FORGOT TO PUNCH :(. I half expected this to happen with needing to punch and sign the intention sheet, but I tried to be very careful and punched a number of them twice when I couldn't remember. Need to make it practice to punch first, but its easy to forget when the clipboard is hanging in front. We also happened across a number of teenagers with guns in the woods, which was a little unnerving.

66, 45, 36, 87, W5, 75 all went well.

86 - we caught up to team TerriYaki (SnailTrail + Omaps) on the road towards 86 and chatted a little bit. We had been slowly gaining time on them on the last 4-5 controls, but hadn't seen their name before that, so we discussed the differences in our initial routes and future plans. We were dreading the giant hill to 86, but it actually wasn't too bad. We put our headlamps on when we got there (a little preemptive), and they caught up to us at the control due to our delay. Then we headed down to the 'worst' control, while they continued north.

46 - I call this the worst control because it was an out and back that required 2 giant uphills for only 40 points. Found it fine though.

The road slog to W3 was long and boring and we got to watch the darkness descend and got sprinkled on. We were feeling overall pretty good, but decided that jogging would be more pain (present and future) than benefit.

After dark we started having a few more problems. Nothing too major, just bobbles and hesitations.

76 was fine.

34 - we took the stream bed north. Due to the distance, we made a time estimate to get to the pipeline field, but we didn't account for the slowness of travel so once we passed the time estimate we started to panic and slowed down even more. There were also a decent amount of stinging nettles to navigate. Saw Jerkface/GG in this part. Finally made it to the pipeline and continued without a problem.

83 - We took the pipeline for a ways and then took a bearing. I pace counted, but came up very short (this would become a theme), and again started to panic. Luckily syd was relatively confident and talked through her thoughts, and we continued on to find the control without too much trouble.

63 - Took the wrong stream bed too far North.

37 - no problem

12 hours in and still feeling pretty good physically. I had slight R heal pain and L shin pain, so I took an ibuprofen which helped a lot. At this point we had put up about 15 or so minutes on most of our 2 hours estimates, so we were about 1.5 hours ahead of schedule for clearing it. We were also REALLY REALLY good about food and electrolytes through this entire half... More on Sundays log.