Training Log Archive: barb

I took a couple different bikes for test rides yesterday, and my knee hurt a lot last night.
I have been eating way too much. Every morning, I resolve to eat less, but I end up eating a lot by the end of the day.

C • Bikes 2

Today I met with the 4 junior high school teachers, plus the French teacher and special ed teacher, and we planned a field trip to the woods for early in September. 80 kids. I hope to improve on a few things from last time, but the basic idea will be the same. Teams of kids will be working to find controls - hopefully some of which will be moving, a la bus stop O. (Need to find some orienteers to volunteer to do that - no takers yet.)

The science teacher was on leave last year, and I'm very glad to be working with her this year. She pulled a 3D model of Somerville/Melrose out of her closet, and other models, and told me that contour lines are tested (bleah) by the state, so it's nice that the kids can learn it this way. (Wouldn't it be cool if most of their learning was as fun as this? Actually, with these great teachers, it might be.) I'm particularly pleased that I'll be able to spend 40-50 minutes in the classroom with all 4 classes a couple days before the field trip, to teach navigation, and talk about their team challenge.

Teams of 4 or 5 will basically do a score-O, with some controls being unique to that team (so higher priority for them); maybe there will be some puzzle element for those controls. One team got pretty lost last year, which was worrisome, so this year they have to have a cell phone and/or an adult. But teams can get a "navigation license" by taking a test ahead of time, which allows them to opt out of having an adult chaperone along. If at least 2 of the kids get some minimum grade on the test, the team gets a license. The test will be administered the day before we go to the woods.

The teams will be organized into 2-4 large groups, and groups with the highest score win. So there is cooperation amongst the 4-5 person teams instead of them all being in competition with each other.

I'm hoping that we can also have an overall reward: if the combined score of all the teams is greater than 10,000 or whatever, then they get a pizza party or a movie night where they vote on the movie and get in free...

My son David's latest work (click on the image, and then on the green flag to start it over):

Right knee was "clicky".
(Doctor said on Monday to wait and see how it feels after a couple weeks.)

Minor comments on PG's writeup.

I observed that there were some buff-looking people doing the rogaine. By buff I just meant that meaty hyper-muscular look. Which doesn't mean faster or better for rogaining. Or the only way to look strong. But might make for better TV coverage.

I think any apprehension I had about the race ahead of time might have been anticipating the thick woods and the rain (less pleasant than out west), and knowing what strong competition there would be (Bash/Leanimal, Joe, Ernst/Adam...). Plus the fact that it just might not be as fun the second time around for PG. In fact, in the middle of the event I was worried that I was contributing a lot less than our first rogaine, mainly because Peter was in front of me most of the time. So I said this was what I was feeling, and we had a little discussion about what was actually going on, which was that we were talking stuff through and working well as a team, so then I felt better.

I think my precise quotes at the rapids, each repeated several times, were:

"Dude, I can't believe you're doing this."

and

"Dude, I don't think this is a good idea."

C • Competition 10

1706 points out of nearly 2400 possible.

We were slowed down by a knee injury I sustained when I fell hard on a small log and struck my knees. Outside front of right knee, below the kneecap; hurt more and more until the last few hours it was very tough to go downhill and sometimes just to lift the leg. Interestingly, the pain sometimes lessened and didn't seem timed in any obvious way to the massive dosings of ibuprofen I took. Main result was that we didn't gather a few points we otherwise might have gotten in the last few hours.

Wet the whole time. I applied Unpetroleum jelly to my feet at the beginning of the race. I think that helped a lot. But I think it may have worn off after a few hours of completely wet feet, and I did not reapply any, and ended up with blisters.

As before, it was amazing to rogaine with Peter. It's so much fun to work with such a strong navigator.

A couple times Peter seemed to create passageways where there weren't really any. For example, he found a narrow overgrown intermittent not-on-the-map line of land so we could cross between a lake and a deep marsh - and this crossing was hidden from our lakeside "trail" (another Peter concoction, I think, as it was extremely difficult to pick out [and not on the map either]) by a huge downed tree root. Crossing the river at the rapids was another example. Maybe he'll write that up when he posts the map.

Francis put GPS-mapped trails on the map, and they were wonderfully accurate and reliable. Which was a good thing in terrain where the woods could be really thick (so different from Oregon!). We did a lot of careful navigation using these trails.

No bad run-ins with dogs, and only one confrontation with a landowner, and even that was mild. One dog ran toward us and then lay down on its back and exposed its tummy to be rubbed. I didn't rub the tummy but spoke to it in friendly goofy talk and it started following us until Peter spoke commandingly to it to STAY, and it obeyed.

Controls in the north part of the map were farther apart and fewer - but generally high scoring. The hash house was on the left middle of the map. We started going north, clockwise, figuring that it would be easier to make adjustments at the end with the many choices in the south. We decided to ignore at least 3 high-scoring controls at the fringes of the map, because it seemed unlikely we could get all the controls. Part way along Peter suggested changing our plan and getting the 90-pointer in the lower right, because we could get there easily at night, and we'd be in that area of the map at night. So we did that.

Ken Walker Sr & Glen Brake walked with us a bit at the end, which was actually quite invigorating and gave us the energy to go for the last 2 controls (worth 24 points together) instead of skipping them as we otherwise would have done.

Today hips and upper legs are sore, and blisters slow me down. The knee is definitely sore, and I'm being careful with it. I'll make an appointment to see a doctor.

Event: Laurentian Rogaine
 

Out-of-body experience induction is in the news today. Now, can this help with the rogaine in some way?

Tapering.
:-)

C • Excellent Taper! 9

To Melrose and back. I hit a lot of red lights today.

Got a fixed-up dance pad from J-J, in exchange for one still needing modifications.
J-J was encouraging about advocating for a white/white or white/yellow relay at Osbornedale. And he is willing to participate in another bus stop O.
Rachel is getting her learner's permit!

C • Bus stop? 2

C • Rachel 3

Watched "Iraq for Sale". I was aware of the horrible war profiteering going on, but to see it spelled out was extremely disturbing. No-bid, open-ended contracts encouraging the Halliburtons to spend as much as possible because they get a percentage of every dollar spent. The total lack of accountability. Abu Ghraib. No concern for the safety of their employees or the soldiers they're supposedly helping. Though perhaps a relatively small thing, emblematic: insisting on serving meals at set times to minimize cost, resulting in really long lines and vulnerability to attack - could have been easily solved by going to a 24-hour serving schedule. And contractors taking over all the skilled jobs from Army personnel (for 8 times the pay or whatever). And more and more contracts going to those companies, no one seems able to stop it. They even made a killing in New Orleans, post-Katrina.

Recommended, if you can stand it.

with Peter in Ashburnham. 7 am start. Started running to warm up but got asthma, so eventually headed back to the car for the medicine, then went out again.
Handed off my rogaine duffel with tent etc to Peter, who will be driving up next weekend. Hopefully there won't be any problems with any of the contents at the border.

We did some running on the trails too.

To Cristina's mom's house

C • Aha 3

Home.
Along route 20.

First yoga in a long time. Very nice. Weirdly, felt ill 40 minutes into it, like I couldn't handle it. Had some water and powered on. Glad to have done it. There were some poses new to me, like where you do a downward facing dog with your heels against the wall, then lift one leg high with the ball of the foot against the wall.

Got a pleasant surprise at the scale.

Current health concern is asthma. Every evening when I leave the AC at work and head home through the thick warm air, I start to have trouble breathing and end up taking one or two puffs of Ventolin, which I haven't had to do for years. It seems to have started in CO with allergies, and once I start taking the asthma medicine I seem to get hooked on it and it takes a while to wean myself. Must remember to bring it for the rogaine.

C • if there is high levels of ozo... 2

Dreamed about being on a rogaine last night. It was frustrating - lots of stops... I think John was my partner.

C • Laurentian Rogaine 3

Getting around to adding photos & training entries:
July 15, Harvard Square
July 21, Vienna
July 22, Vienna
July 23, Vienna
July 24, Vienna
July 25, Vienna
August 1, Albuquerque
August 3-8, Peaceful Valley
August 9-12, Woodland Park and environs

Just remembered:

My nephew Charlie just turned 6. He loves his cousin David so much! On the relay, he had the third leg, and I went along with him and David to make sure that he'd be able to finish it.

Somehow it came up that the relay was a fundraiser for the US Team. Charlie asked, "Is the US Team poor?" David explained that they needed money to travel across the ocean to competitions. Charlie said he had a collection of money at home, and he felt bad that he hadn't brought it with him to give to the team. He's so cute!!!

Here's a couple pictures of Charlie in July at Plimoth Plantation. He went into one of the Native American huts on his own and came out holding this small Wampanoag girl by the hand.

C • Now that 2

Watched Brazilian movie about photographer from the slums, "City of God"

Random notes from the week of orienteering:

• Two great hugs from Valerie.
  
• Mikell Platt never talks to me. He must hate me because I'm dorky or something, which is perfectly reasonable.
  
• Some nice smiles from Cristina.
  
• I could go on with many additional specific examples, but will just say that I loved seeing old and meeting new orienteering friends!
  
• The junior juniors were great together! Go junior juniors! I am hoping that USOF and our US Team will spend some time and attention on these younger, promising and enthusiastic kids.
  
• I like night and long orienteering.
  
• I appear to be allergic to Colorado - lots of sneezing and itchy eyes. By the end, I even had asthma that I'm now having trouble shaking off.
  
• What a great way to spend time with family! (My parents, aunt and uncle, brother, niece, nephew, kids, ...) Maybe I can get everyone to converge on Cobb CA in October. On Sunday I realized I had a lot of people in my family troupe because when we gathered to get coaching from Uncle Carl for the relays, there were enough of us to make critical mass: other people thought this might be some official announcement and started wandering over and joining the crowd, and soon they were raising their hands and asking questions too. :-)
  
• AWESOME orienteering! Thanks to all who made it happen!
  
• I love how capable people are so responsive and just make good things happen. Like John F & Valerie doing the junior junior relay. And Phil, Brendan, Nancy and others making a success of the junior junior training camp. And the Peaceful Valley cafeteria manager who helped us with whatever we asked her for.
  

C • Congratulations 7

Sprint is not my thing. Had trouble with a couple controls.

Walked the white relay course with the young cousins, David and Doug on their third leg.

John Fredrickson and Valerie Meyer are just so... competent! They did a super job of including an easier course for the younger kids at the last minute. 6 teams (18 people) participated, so it was worth it! And, my niece and nephew got their first real taste of official orienteering, with number bibs and everything. John created this extra course at the last minute; I only talked to him about it the day before. Yet by the time the relays started, the kids were fully integrated: their maps were available along with the original relays maps; they started at the same time, etc. And Valerie did the e-magic necessary to allow seamless use of electronic punching.

John F really throws a great party - the relays were super fun, and everyone loved the punching races afterward.

C • Relay 1

On the way out of town, we stopped at the dinosaur museum.





Went to Red Rocks for the String Cheese Incident farewell concert. It was SO GREAT!!!!!!!!

Ah, the long-O. This *is* my thing. Lovely runnable woods. Mmmm....

C • Your thing 2

Awards ceremony









David couldn't get his admiring younger cousin Charlie to stop orbitting around him.

Short-O is not my thing.

A nice evening get-together of junior juniors and their families.







Piotr, Mom, Dave, Alar


My brother Doug, Aunt Linda, Uncle Carl

Travel day. We went to the Garden of the Gods and did part of the Trail-O. It was hot.

We went on to the Olympic training center.



David, Charlie, Isabel, Julia, Theron, Lucy

Picked up some night-O controls early in the morning. Got to see the very nice sunrise from the plains. Got a ride from Rich Gostenik in his british landrover type car; he had fun going fast and we nearly busted right through a closed wire gate. I love being out with a map on gorgeous terrain early in the morning.

I had thought that it might be fun to try out my "mass transit-O" or "bus stop O" game at junior training camp, and talked about it with a few people. I got discouraged and decided against it when J-J said he wouldn't participate, but changed my mind and went ahead after he relented, and others showed interest. So we did it! And it worked!

5 adults were busses, each walking a different line-O (their "route"). Along each route were 5 bus stops, with times at which the bus was scheduled to leave each stop. The bus could arrive early at a bus stop, but could not leave early.

The 5 teams of kids each had a map showing all the bus routes, stops and schedule. Their task was to intercept each bus once. (I will post the map when I get a chance.) In other words, it was like a score-O with precisely timed moving controls. The teams had a little time to plan their strategy before starting. If they arrived at a bus stop early, they could walk the line-O backwards to find the bus. And if they arrived late, they could run the line-O forwards to catch up to the bus.

Brendan was one of the busses, and was able to leave one of his stops just before a team got to him, because it was time, and they had to chase him to catch him.

All 5 teams found all 5 busses. No bus was caught by all 5 teams much before the end of the bus line, so the timing worked out well. Teams got practice working on strategy, doing line-O, off-trail navigation, and in some cases reorienting. And some people even said it was fun!

I want to do it again. I'd been thinking of doing it on a larger scale in September for my 80-student junior high outing. And maybe we could try it in Pawtuckaway?

The kids continued to have fun playing together outside of the official junior junior training camp.

Night-O. Came in first, thanks to others struggling, and my ability to just keep plodding along slowly and steadily. My headlamp was highly inadequate; just before the race I gave away a couple other lights to people in our party. I could barely see the stuff on the ground at my feet - reminded me of biking in Vienna when the bike lamp was weak. I could have gone faster if I'd had a better light.

Doug and Dave were razzing me about orienteering better at night - they suggested I try closing my eyes during daytime orienteering.

Nice long hike with John and Dave in Castlewood Canyon. Gorgeous. Can't figure out why I don't have any photos. Didn't I take any? Hm.

Interesting to see the powerful downstream effect of the sudden release of water when the dam failed.

There wasn't any organized activity at the convention for kids age 8-13, so the parents got together and created one; Brendan Shields also helped. We had Stephen & Nicole Koehler, Julia Z, Isabel, David, Maya Rounds from Boulder, Zach Lyons, Adam (Phil's son), Julia Doubson (7 years old, from BAOC), Tiivo & Aanika Ruutopold, and Scott. Christoph Zurcher let us use the yellow and orange controls from the weekend, and we got leftover orange maps to use.

Today we started off with Bob's 100-meter pace-counting exercise. We held a discussion about what was easy and hard for the kids on their courses from the previous day, and what skills they were interested in working on. Then we focused on fine map reading with a line-O designed by Brendan, meant to emphasize the ability to read contours, and a reorienting exercise by Phil, where we took the kids out into the terrain, then gave them a map and asked them to figure out where they were and get to a specific control location. Some of the kids were into it and others were hot and tired and a bit whiny by the end of the reorienting exercise when it was time for lunch. My kids were among the latter group.

In the afternoon, the kids played together and were not bored or whiny at all! The older girls in particular (Maya, Nicole and Aanika) have a magic touch with the kids. They were very inclusive, and suggested and organized all sorts of games like capture the flag and murder and so on. The main goal for me was for my kids to become better friends with other O kids, so that they'd be more interested in going to A-meets, and this goal was fully met! Yay!

In the afternoon some of us went horseback riding.



Julia Z.

Skipped the first ("progressive") Zero-to-Orange exercise, because Dad and I had early start times and it didn't work to change them.

For the orienteering, really felt the heat and altitude and was moving slowly.

Early start so I could go to the airport and meet Theron, arriving with the Koehlers. Pulled a 180 coming out of 3. Lost a lot of time on it.

Last day of Zero to Orange. Took the final exam.

In the afternoon, we tried out archery:




Isabel throwing the atl-atl

Day 2 Green A - Splits

Didn't feel like going out on blue, the way I'd originally planned, and did yellow instead. Not sure of my time. Definitely was moving slowly; walked the whole way. Hot!

The first musical bookend to our time in Colorado. Went to Elbert with Dave Enger, John Lee and Dave to see a local band. I liked the lead guitar best. Dave E stayed and talked to that guitar player afterward, and discovered that he knows the guitar player in String Cheese Incident - they live just 12 miles apart.

Day 1 Green 1 - Splits

Event: 2007 USOF Convention and Colorado 5-Days
 

First day of the Zero to Orange in Three Days class. I took this as a "trainer", though my participation was pretty much identical to that of a "student". Which was fine - it was a very useful course for me, both in terms of my own orienteering and thinking about how I'd like to teach kids.

My kids, parents and partner (Dave) all took this course too.

The first day there was classroom lecture, and an orange-level score-O. I finished in just under the alotted hour, and was surprised to find I'd gotten more controls than Dave. I was glad to see the rest of the family safely back. Isabel had done particularly well, getting the high-score controls without much trouble.

Morning jog in Albuquerque before the kids woke up. From the hotel south on University, across the water channel, and further south. This felt really hard!

We are visiting my kids' paternal grandmother Jan and great-grandmother Grace. Jan, David and Isabel spent the day at a "family fun center" and saw "Ratatouille".



Isabel & David with Grandma Jan Bryant


Out for dinner at a diner: me, Mom, Isabel, David, Jan, Grace


Planting flowers in Grandma's garden

C • Jan 2