Thursday on call in the ER, brutally busy. On my feet for about 20 hours that day and night - pretty much awake for 26 hours to complete my shift. Followed directly by 10 hours in the OR (there were two added cases which prolonged our day and made our departure for Navstock late by about 3 hours). And then a 7-hour drive to Huntsville, arriving just after midnight. Fell soundly asleep, which is no surprise, considering I had been up for about 40 hours straight, with only a tiny snippet or two of sleep interspersed in there. Then up at 0600 again to eat and complete the drive to Navstock. Raced twice on Saturday, then an unexpectedly-long run on Sunday (Nick just wouldn't quit...), and an immediate 8-hour drive back home, arriving just before midnight last night.
So, yeah, it was time for a rest day today.
My legs were actually a bit sore today, despite not really having any cramping problems in the Raid. Only notice it when climbing stairs. Ibuprofen seems to help, which is convenient.
Orienteering race 5:10:00 40.0 km (7:45 / km) +1600m6:28 / km shoes: 07 New Balance 790
Navstock Raid.
An interesting day. Hadn't planned on running this, but Nick called at the very last minute and asked me to fill in for his missing teammate. I only agreed after some coaxing, plus an agreement that since the WOC is only a month away, we would only run for 3 hours, or until we were feeling tired. I made it clear that I would quit immediately if I began to experience any leg cramps.
Brutally hot weather, about 30-32 C plus fairly long stretches on roads and trails, exposed to sun. Didn't help much. Carried a 1-liter Camelbak plus Nuun tablets to replace electrolytes and a couple Enervitene cheer packs. Refilled the water twice (at both opportunities on the course), and drank extra both times. Probably consumed about 4 liters of electrolyte fluids during the race, though that was not nearly enough in retrospect.
The course itself was not very technically challenging. The only technical bit (which we managed to screw up anyway by not really being clear about which of us was navigating, so neither of us really navigated well) was in the very beginning, when the teams were still bunched up anyway. So not really a spot to make a huge gap on other teams as it would have been if later in the course. After that, all the controls seemed to be very close (about 100m give or take) to trails/roads. I guess that's what adventure racers do and like, though it seemed pretty straightforward navigationally. Nowhere to make huge mistakes out there. Lots of dead time on roads and trails doing transport legs. And a strange section of photo-O where you were given a sheet of 10 photos and had to write down the location of each as you went along a mostly-paved transport leg. Except that the photos were in random order. And you were forced to pretty much walk on that section, which really, really bogged down the whole process. And when we didn't find one of the pictures and had completed the leg, the only choices were to suck it up and lose a ton of points (lost 80 points, compared to the paltry 100 points given for completing the first 25km of the Raid), or else to go back and do it over again. Uhhhhhhh, don't think so. Bad enough the first time around, didn't relish the thought of going it again.
At this point, our once-significant lead had shrunk considerably, but we were still clearly in first place.
Nick started getting cooked by the heat about 2 hours into the race. We started walking the hills soon after that. At first I didn't realize how bad he felt, but then it became more clear once we were out on the roads and trails, so we slacked off a bit. He's running the WOC too, so no point in pushing ourselves too much.
We hit the rogaine section about 3 hours into the race. I was ready to let it all drop there, having at least had a decent physical outing, if not much of a navigational challenge. Despite his discomfort, Nick was all for pressing on a little bit, and it did seem a bit silly to finish well ahead of the other teams at the point but only have a paltry score to show for it. So we ended up doing some rogaine controls. Again, I proposed quitting after 3 of those, but again Nick persuaded me to continue. So we did a couple more. And then one easy way home took us past one more control. And then there were only two left to get on the northern half of the map, so we decided to finish off that half of the map for completeness sake. By that time, a significant proportion of the moving time was spent walking, so productivity was suffering. And we were waaaaaay past our 3-hour cutoff. So we rolled into the finish and headed to the refreshments.
In the end, we came a surprising 2nd overall. The Salomon gals won the race - we could see they were going strong and were looking to drop Grizzly Bender on the physical aspect of it all. When we heard Bender dropped out at the start of the rogaine section, their victory seemed quite clear to us. I don't think there were really any other teams out there who could touch them physically and navigationally except possibly for us, and we were definitely not going out past 5 hours. We would have had to do the whole 6 hours to be assured of victory, and this close to the WOC that would have been madness.
Will see how recovery goes, but for my part I didn't feel any cramps and didn't hit the wall. I was fortunate in that Nick being cooked in the heat saved me from too much exertion myself. The only downside was running out of water at the 4-hour mark, and no place to refill it anywhere nearby. I had been aggressively re-hydrating all along, though, so I was able to withstand an hour of water deprivation even that late into the course.
Excellent choice of footwear and clothing. I wore my New Balance 790 trail racing shoes - very light and comfy the whole day, and great even on pavement. I was one of the few orienteers who elected to wear shorts; I got a few superficial scratches as a result, but my body temperature felt much better than if I had been wearing full leg cover. And a cycling shirt that zipped way down in the front was also useful; maybe a light tank top would have been even better though.
Orienteering race (Middle) 32:00 [4] 5.0 km (6:24 / km) shoes: 07 VJ Integrator
Navstock Middle
At Schumacher Mountain. Nice little course. Had some trouble navigationally, but considering I had been up for 46 of the preceding 52 hours I felt quite good physically.
Missed some time at both 2 and 3; I don't think I would choose to map the strips of yellow that way - they just don't stand out enough to see. Maybe cut lines would be easier to read on the map. Missed even more time on 9; felt that I could see an old trail bed or shallow ditch in the terrain next to a yellow patch, but it was not on the map. Took me a little while to decide where I was exactly; turns out I had passed within 5 meters of the tree that hid the control, but on the wrong side of it so didn't see it on the way through. Oh well.
A very nice (if slightly longish) course on the Bass Lake map. Quite technical, given the terrain. My first time running there - very nice venue for the camping and sprint. Would have been even nicer had the finish been at the beach - the weather was super hot (over 30 C) and I was feeling the heat through the race.
Missed small amounts at multiple controls, but nothing bigger than 30 seconds at any one of them. Nearly made the mistake of running from 6 to 8 (7 was pretty much in line with them), but luckily caught myself halfway through to avoid disaster; suboptimal route to 7 but way better than running back from 8 to get it, or else being DSQ.
Took out the victory by some small margin I think, though haven't seen results yet. Basically just returning the favor to Mr. Pither, who had embarrassed us in the morning.
Running intervals 16:00 [4] shoes: 07 New Balance 873
A brief 4x4 session just before starting call at 0800. It will be a busy weekend and now is the only chance to get a session in before Navstock. Nice to run in the morning, although I do like my sleep and am probably running into a little bit of sleep debt so have to be careful to get as many hours in bed as I can....
Running warm up/down 20:00 [2] shoes: 07 New Balance 873
Though I dearly hate to do it, this was junk training today. I should realize by now that I just can't do any real quality the day after a 24-hour ER call (especially one that blends into a further 8 hours in the OR). Very little sleep overnight (broken bits of sleep here and there), and soooooo tired in the OR today. How nice to have a 4-hour cholecystectomy that was too difficult to complete laparoscopically and had to be opened, only to face further challenges. Sigh.
Anyway, the best I could do today was zone 2, and even that felt tough to maintain. I think this weekend will be a bad one for me - I have a 24-hour call on Thursday, followed immediately by an 8-hour OR day on Friday, and then a 5-hour drive until we can crash for the night, hitting the road again at 0700 to make it to the start of the middle distance race. Oh, the things we do living in the north, just to make it to some orienteering meets from time to time....