Training Log Archive: DanGrabski

Event: Lacamas Park
 

I was feeling sad and depressed this morning after what happened in Orlando last night, which wasn't helped by NPR being all about what happened (though their reporting, I thought, was quite good). But then I got a beautiful view of Mt. Hood on the way to the meet, the weather was perfect, and even though I did badly, the course designer put one control in the shade at the base of a waterfall. And there were a couple other controls perfectly situated to give great views of the woods. And I got to run through excellent specimens of poison oak and blackberry brambles. Err...

I'm taking today as a learning experience. If I end up in the top half of the results I'll be amazed. I know one guy was at least half an hour faster than me, I think I saw him going into control 5 - he caught up to me after my wander going to control 2. I need to get better at judging distances and calibrating my brain to different map scales. I've been working on pace counting but I still need work.

In the history of massive wanders on an orienteering course, this will go down as one of the best...I had a 24 minute wander on one control and got massively lost, and went 15 minutes on two other controls. It's definitely the hardest course I've done. I felt like I got back into a groove halfway through, but I must have lost at least 40 minutes being lost. Gotta happen some time right...

They said this was one of the hardest courses technically that they do, at least it will give me more practice for Laramie.

Advanced - Splits