Training Log Archive: Spike

2 x 30 minutes of rowing in the basement.

I spent a fair amount of my day drawing the JCCC and downtown maps. Not much fun, but I was making reasonable progress and I was able to take a few breaks (like mowing, getting a haircut, getting out of the house while some potential buyers looked, and watching bits of the KU football game).

I'm thinking about the next step for the downtown Lawrence map. Currently it covers Ohio to New Hampshire from 6th to 8th. I can think of 4 options for the next stage:

1. Extend the map south, focusing on the area between New Hampshire and Vermont, with the idea of ending the map with South Park.

2. Extend the map west. I could quickly add a few more blocks of Old West Lawrence. If I went as far as Mississippi, I'd get plenty of blocks that include alleys (which would make the map a bit more interesting).

3. Extend the map north. I could add the City Hall grounds and then work across the bridge. That would let me get some interesting terrain around the levee and the old Depot.

4. Extend the map north west. I could add Burcham Park. The advantage is that it would give some "real" (i.e. forested) terrain. I would probably map as far north as the new rowing facility.

I'm not sure which option I'll pick. 1 would be the easiest in terms of use of my lunch hour. 2 would let me add a bunch of area with minimal work. 3 might be the most different. 4 would be the most useful from the standpoint of Orienteer Kansas.

I put in a bit over 30 minutes of fieldchecking on the downtown map. I've decided to extend the map west by another block - to Ohio Street.

Easy jogging on the river trails after work. It was perfect weather (in the traditional sense) - low 70s, low humidity, clear sky. Lots of cyclists out on the trails.

A busy day...started out realizing we had no salt-milk tea in the house. So we hit McDonalds for an egg McMuffin on the way out of the house...

Had a busy day at work and left my desk a bit later than planned.

Stopped at the river trail and ran for 25 minutes. Felt really good.

A bit busy, but managed to spend enough time rowing to break a good sweat.

On the JCCC map. I began with about 15 minutes of orienteering as usual. Then I did an experiment. I set my watch to beep at intervals, alternating between time and distance (e.g. beep after 90 seconds, then again after 200 meters). When the watched beeped, I stopped and looked at the map. Otherwise, I ran without looking at the map. The idea was to simulate the technique required when the map is nearly impossible to read (like in the dark and rain at the middle distance NAOC race last weekend). It seems like a good exercise, but it takes a map that doesn't feel familiar. The same exercise on the KU map wouldn't be very useful because instead of actually reading the map it'd be too easy to just rely on memory of the place (e.g. "oh yeah, the litte bench at the top of the hill just west of the door at Blake Hall.").

I spent almost 3 hours fieldchecking at JCCC. I made good progress.

I decided how to map the parking garages. There are several garages that have two levels of parking. The garages are on slight hillsides. So from one side, the top level looks like a flat parking lot. But coming from the other side it looks like an underground garage with a flat roof that also has parking. The tricky thing is that a runner coming from one side sees a parking area - a big flat area of pavement. But a runner coming from the other side sees a building. From the "building" side it would make sense to map it as a canopy. But that wouldn't make sense from the "parking lot" side.

I decided that the best approach would be to map the features as parking lots with uncrossable walls. This makes the feature uncrossable from the building side, which isn't strictly true. From the building side you can run into the garage.

I guess I ought to re-read the sprint map standards and see if there is a preferred way to map this sort of feature.

Now I should spend some time drafting.