Training Log Archive: Sandy

Picked up some x-rays this morning (one step in the long process of trying to get my medical insurance to pay for a new knee brace). And the official diagnosis is: "Severe lateral femorotibial joint osteoarthritis with marked joint narrowing; with standing, the lateral femorotibial joint space is effectively obliterated (there are small marginal osteophytes at this articulation)". Hopefully that's enough to impress whoever has to approve my brace!

C • wow 2

Yoga class with Sandy A. Very nice class. Sweated buckets and muscles got a real workout. The only bad thing is that the class is Thursdays so conflicts with TNT. Although the Thursday class looks to be the best one to attend, I may try classes on other days to see.

Core workout.

Lots of yard work; sweated buckets. Knees have been sore but feeling a bit better today. Fighting a nasty cold that I picked up the last day or so of ORingen.

Oh boy, this was tough going. On the drive.

C • Yoga 1

Walking down and up and some stretching.

Travel back home.

I will definitely fly SAS whenever possible.

C • Welcome home 7

C • SAS 1

Travel back to Stockholm.

Woohoo - spiked every control. I wasn't running much and we only had 5 real controls but I still read my way right into each one. Great experience on real Swedish terrain. Loved it! Might even be enough to inspire me to start really training again. I couldn't even run the whole the marked route to finish and that's pretty pathetic so maybe this will get me going again.

C • What a great 3

C • Howdy neighbor 4

Another long walk to start - this time it was really, really hot.

Speaking of which, we had amazing hot and sunny weather all week for the competitions. It rained once or twice in the evenings but nothing like some of the rains we had last week. There are a lot of sunburned Swedes walking around here! Luckily it cools off in the evenings so altogether very pleasant.

Another reasonably good day with only one slight miss for a couple of minutes. The terrain was similar to Tuscon or Wyoming so familiar. We took a ski lift up to the top of a mountain, orienteered up top for a bit and then came down the hill and in. I was very concerned about the downhill bit as it was brutal on my knees when we did it Sunday. As I slogged across a longish leg up top (not in good enough shape to run although it was definitely runnable) I looked ahead and got really worried about the leg straight down one of the ski slopes. The terrain into the control at the top was rocky and i was getting nervous. And then I found that if I stayed in the midddle of the slope and not on the elephant tracks on the edges that the ground was really spongy and it felt like I just jumping on a trampoline and I was just bouncing down laughing and singing since it was so much easier than I was anticipating. The footing was tough at the bottom again so I got passed by several people but it didn't matter! I was just so happy to be down the hill.

C • Downhill singing 2

Woohoo - no big misses. But the terrain was definitely easier - very high visibility in most places and where it wasn't, I just had to cross not actually find any controls. But I was still well back (bottom 10% maybe? - haven't checked, too depressing) because running was not an option for all but the very last bit. Perhaps if I was in better shape I could have run some of the uphills and some of the marshy stuff but the steep rocky downhills and the very hummocky marshes are just too much for my knees. But another very fun day of orienteering. Winning time around 35 mins, so less than twice as long (as opposed to more than three times on the first day and more than twice on the second).

C • Improvement 5

Another long walk to start... I actually took more than an hour but I stopped at both water stops and used the bathrooms and took my time.

Good news - way better than yesterday. Bad news - still not particularly good. But I'll take it!

Middle distance course so twice as many controls as yesterday and I only had one really bad one. And just like yesterday, I just wasn't smart about it - there was a great attackpoint that I should have used and didn't. Anyway, unlike yesterday, I bailed to the good attackpoint and then went into the control fine so only lost about 7 or 8 minutes instead of the 10 or 20 like yesterday. So I guess I did learn something.

Real slow to lots of other controls - a combination of being careful and pretty physical terrain.

C • Yay! 1

Walk to start - which was longer than my course (!) and uphill again - and walking to and from the Oringen shops where I bought some duct tape since my O shoes are falling apart and that's the one thing I forgot to bring with me.

Watched the World Cup sprint race - several Americans in both the men's and women's races. It was a pretty amazing arena. We were sitting up on a hillside across from a huge ski mountain. The mountain was mostly bare with several large reentrants and a half-pipe. The racers walked to the top and came down the hill for a while and then had to go back up and then cross back down and into the woods on the (our) left. Then they came out across the half-pipe to a control and then across and into the woods way on the right where they did a few controls and then into the long finish chute which was up the steep hill we were sitting on. Brutal! So we could see everyone for the first part of their course and watch them go in and then come out of the woods and see who was gaining and who losing time. Pretty amazing.

Event: Oringen 2008
 

An absolute total disaster. I just couldn't keep it together to orienteer smart. I'd get close but not know exactly where I was and couldn't read the features enough to sort it out. I didn't pick good attaackpoints (or any) and there were plenty of good ones. So I don't know what to say except I hope I learned something.

C • Hang in there! 5

3km walk to the start, last 2km uphill.

Not so sure about the workshop yesterday afternoon and what's planned for today. I'm not looking forward to it and sort of got sucked into doing something I don't really want to do. We'll see if it turns out better than I'm anticipating.

C • I hope it will be fun. What... 4

Hanging controls for today's practice.

Shopping in Oringen square is a blast. It's also very dangerous - as in easy to spend lots of money.

I talked to someone at the Noname booth and got the email address of someone who I can talk to after I get home about getting warmup suits for the club. The issue would be customs so it might be the case that we order them and then people going to Europe next summer pick them up ... or something like that. Otherwise they'll be really, really expensive. But I'll check into it now that I have the name and email of an actual person who it was promised speaks good English. So at least there's a possibility.

C • Nice. We always can send so... 1

One of the training courses at Oringen. We took a ski lift up to the top of the mountain and then orienteered up top for a while and then had to come down the ski slopes. The orienteering up top was lots of fun - wide open but hard to run since the ground is so hummocky. It was the equivalent of a sort of hard orange course but I didn't really understand that when I signed up; I went mostly for the distance I wanted to do. Mistakes were of the 10 second pausing to make sure variety. The legs down the ski slopes were not fun. Luckily only day 4 will have something like that I think.

I'll write more at some point, but the Academy is turning out to be pretty good. It's equal parts workshops, training and socializing and I've met some interesting orienteers from Turkey, Brazil and Chili. There are folks from Isreal and Japan and Ireland but I haven't had a chance to talk to them much yet. And of course Canada - I'm in a cabin with the 5 Canadians making language easy! The good part about the training in particular is that you can ask to have someone shadow you on a course or walk you through it or whatever and they've got a bunch of topnotch Swedish junior orienteers (Johan Runesson who won three golds and a silver at the most recent JWOC is one!) and very good adults who are willing to help in whatever way they can. I'd highly recommend it to others in the years to come.

We're off to a moose farm this morning and then more training.

C • Moose farm! 10

C • Academy 1

After the moose park visit we went to a close by map for more training. These are the Oringen model event maps and Hakan (Academy leader) just prints several copies of each of several courses and we can pick and choose what to do.

Today's map was absolutely fantastic terrain - just wide open and runnable parts with lots of contour and rock detail and then marshes and green patches that were still very runnable. But I just walked and talked with Eva Svensson (JWOC gold medalist in the sprint in 2007) and asked her about what she would be looking for on each leg and what information from the map she would be using and so on. She's injured so didn't want to run but I was happy to walk and just pick her brain and get used to the terrain. Unfortunately, she didn't think much of the actual Oringen courses would be on terrain quite as nice as that.

After lunch we talked a bit about the courses we ran on Thursday and some of the elite runners (Johan Runesson, Matt Speake) talked about what routes they would have taken and what they would have looked for.

This major reentrant that totally stymied me - it was just too steep for me to get down - wasn't worth more than something to check off on their route and they both said they'd just go straight. Not so helpful. But some other things they said were very helpful.

And apparently we will all get individual feedback in the evening after each of the first four stages of Oringen if we want it. And there are some "lectures" planned for the evenings with some elites (Gueorgiou one night and Matthias Merz another!)

The academy turns out to have a training session every day and today we trained on one of the maps that was featured on the Oringen website thing about how to orienteer in the mountains. It was great fun and I did fine for the first hour or so which was mostly up the hill. Towards the end after doing quite a bit of downhill I was tired enough to start making errors - not reading the map well and not having good plans. Something to keep in mind for next week.

The woods - and even the open mountain tops - are tough running and I really did mostly walking. I love the terrain though - the ground is nice and soft with hardly any rocks or stuff on the ground so my knees are fine but it's very uneven and hummocky so just physically tough to run in sort of like unpacked sand: easy on the knees, tough on the legs.

My course lengths range from just over 3km to just over 4km and I will be very happy if I manage to do each of the 5 days in under an hour. The walk to the start and the walks back and forth to the bus will add an extra 5 or more km each day so I won't be lacking for exercise!

The trip to Sweden was uneventful and I spent yesterday walking around Stockholm. Today I traveled up to Salen. The good news is I found some wireless; the bad news is it's not in the cabins, it's outside and it's raining! Wonder if they'll have more once Oringen actually starts.
'

C • cool 3

Helping Valerie time an off-road triathalon. Got there extra early and we ran the 5 mile loop before setting up and then working the race. I bailed early on her though since I needed to run a few errands and still have to pack for Sweden.

C • Svierge 5

C • Thank you! 2

Short hilly trail loop.

Some yoga and other stretches afterwards.

There was at least 20 minutes in there of upper body strength work. :)

A shortened core workout.

C • Hi! 1

TNT - with Sandy and Bob. Something suddenly went funny in my knee at the corner and I couldn't walk without major pain, but I could jog very slowly with not much at all, so I jogged down to the drive. Did 3 miles - a slow one, a fast one, then another slow one. Time includes the down and up.

Knee is fine now; who knows what's going on in there.

C • there's a little man in your knee 1

It's getting close to raspberry season around here: the bushes in the Wissahickon are starting to have edible ones, the one in my yard as well although animals seem to be getting to them before I can, and hopefully the ones at Fair Hill will be good on Saturday when I go help hang controls.

C • No raspberries yet? 1

Short hilly trail loop in the Wissahickon. Felt reasonably good, at least a lot better than Tuesday.

C • TNT 5

Stretching afterwards plus the walking to and from the corner.

Not at all motivated to "train"...

C • Go for a walk around the ne... 5

Needed to stretch and this was good.

C • Want this? 1

Ran the short trail loop. Felt like I had lead weights around my legs for the first half.

Guess it was a tnt since it is Tuesday. Clem showed up. Unfortunately, I really thought no one was coming so I went early on my own only to find him sitting in his car when I came back wondering what was going on. Sorry again Clem.