Training Log Archive: DWildfogel

Stanford. Orienteering training. Very warm. O-tervals, that is, several very short courses with some rest in between. The courses were forked; started each at the same time as Marie-Josee and Tapio.

Starts 1B: (41-109) 150

Some jogging, waiting for MJ: 827

Starts 2B: (108-50) 158

Rest: 406

1b: (101-56-113-49-118-114-107-57) 837
Note: didn't recognize upper level passage way to #5 and went around.

Rest: 517

2b: (35-31-56-55-40-101-124-100-50) 651

Rest: 752

Had enough at that point, plus right calf was aching. Jogged back in 700.

Excellent exercise, but mitigate a great deal by the fact that the campus is so familiar. Also, would be great if the new parts could be mapped and the whole thing brought up to ISSOM.

Warm up with Marie-Josee.

The usual weekly accumulation of morning stretching and strength exercises.

This afternoon, four or five patches of poison oak broke out in various places. Never had that happen before, and never so long after the exposure. Fortunately, the itching was never that bad, and the worst of it was over within an hour.

Two sets of all theraband and weight exercises, interleaved with some core. Started with some stretching. Legs are still sore and both knees ache.

Birthday. Alas, no new age category to move into ;-)

C • Happy 5

Had one bump of poison oak this morning between two knuckles on my right hand. In the afternoon, I had a small patch near my knee. In both cases, it itched for about an hour. People who are really sensitive to PO must be really suffering from Sunday.

Trail behind house. Gorgeous morning.

Lake Ranch Reservoir. Warm (even though it's only 64 degrees). Legs generally tired, climbing muscles are particularly shot. Take it very easy.

---------------518(550)1108(522)1630(512)2143
4359(546)3813(633)3140(448)2653(510)

Cool down

Trail in back of the house. Beautiful sunny morning up here while the valley is completely blanketed in fog.

Took the scenic route home from work and stopped for a stroll in Long Ridge. Gorgeous day, green hills, fog massed over the ocean.

Joe Grant 2-Day Classic, Day 2. Brown X, 3.6 km, 175m climb (I calculated 190), 12 c.

Today was as unsatisfying as yesterday was satisfying. There were 6 different places where I lost more time than I had on the entire course yesterday. Didn't have any fun out there at all. Tired from yesterday, warm temps, and tall grass that grabbed your feet, plus a 14 contour climb to #2, combined to make me feel exhausted by the time I got to #2. I then chose a longer route to 3 just to stay in the shade, and really screwed it up for a 7 min. error. Another substantial climb to 4, and a bag that was really hard to find (some people never found it) resulted in a 3 min error, and I had little left after that. Reasonably steady the rest of the way, but still made 2 more mistakes of about a minute each (and had already made a :45 error on #1). Plus spent half a minute tying my shoe, ripped my pants scrooching under a fence, and lost :05 punching the GO control 3 times because I didn't hear it beep the first two times - it was that kind of day.

3rd on the course for the day (Chuck 52:25, Steve Haas 58:15), held on to first in M65 for the two day combined (though Chuck, in M70, was 2:49 minutes better).

I was one of the first people out on Brown - and the first one to reach the Finish from either Brown course - so there wasn't much in the way of elephant trails when I was out there. The grass felt like vines, making it really hard to run through. My understanding is that later, pathways had been trampled in many places, which must've made it rather easier though also not fun. The time to have meets at Joe Grant is February.


1. First thought was to run around the S side of the French broom patch, but from the hillside it looked like there were pathways through, so I tried to go straight. But kept getting blocked and finally found a way through and came out on the NW side. From there, tried to follow the edge of vegetation, but on that side it was very indistinct, and had to go behind some bushes before I could see the bag. Lost about :45.

2. Up through the saddle, through the gate, then decided to follow the trail to the left instead of going straight (to the right) because I was concerned about crossing the creek. Probably not a good choice. Once across the creek, angled up towards the control. No problem seeing where the control would be, but a lot of problems getting there: steep, hot, and really thick grass. Steve H and Gary C were more than :40 faster on this leg.

3. Going between the two hills was clearly the best route, but I did not want to go out in that field again, because of the thick grass, the climb, and the sun, so decided to contour around in the forest. Felt like I was making a wrong decision, but was desperate to avoid those three things, so off I went. Recognized that the trick to doing this right was to make sure that I got around to where I was directly W of the second hill. But I think what happened is that I saw the first hill from two different vantage points, and even though my pace count told me I shouldn't be there yet, started looking around for the bag. Very pig-headedly, kept doing this for 5 minutes, even checking the hill above and the creek below, before convincing myself that I had fallen prey to exactly what I had been worried about: I was below and west of the first hill rather than the second. Angled up into the field and saw the second hill ahead, then cut down through where the clearing pushed into the forest a bit. No bag, so realized I was S of the circle, so contoured N and finally found it, losing another 2 mins, for 7 minutes all together.

3. Tried to pull myself together. Headed S - and up - to the path that crossed the stream. After hesitating a bit at a false one, found the mapped one, crossed the stream, fought my way up through some brush to the clearing on top of the spur and turned right. Expected to see the path through the fight but soon realized I was already beyond that, so went around the uphill side of the fight. Saw the power line, went along the uphill side of the next patch of fight, into the forested reentrant, and crossed the bottom right at the gully-ditch boundary. Should have been simple from there, only 70m more, but it wasn't. Dave Petty and Linda Moore were searching around - maybe I got pulled off by them. I'd been having some trouble by momentarily using the parallel fence and power line as N-S lines, so maybe that happened again and pulled me to the right. Also, there were two very large distinct trees that looked like they could have been mapped individually, but they weren't (as we were warned in advance: if their canopies touched, they may be mapped as a patch of white). In any case, my GPS track seems to show that I looped around a bit S of the control. Eventually went out into the field to see if I could spot it from there: seemed that I should since the lone tree was mapped as being on the edge of the forest. Looking back into the forest, I saw Dave and Lind coming towards me, with Dave pointing as if he could see the bag. Went towards them and finally saw the bag, tucked tightly against the bottom of the tree. Lost about 3 minutes on what should have been a half-minute segment. (Given the ambiguity of the mapping here, it might have been better to use another feature or at least place the bag so that it was more visible.) Note: despite the big error, had the second fastest split on this leg, showing that lots of people had trouble.

5. Pretty dispirited at this point, but soldiered on. Went a little right of straight, aiming for the white patch next to the fence between the two big green patches. Got to the fence without a problem (meaning I did hit the white patch), but everything on the other side looked horribly thick, and I couldn't find a good place to cross the fence. Finally picked some place, got caught a bit while trying to get under, scratching my scalp (no blood) and fought my way through the bushes, finally getting up to the fire road right where I expected to be. Went 100m NE on the road then on a bearing (along the red line) under the green patch and ran hard down to the lone trees and nailed it. Probably lost close to a minute at the fence and the bushes beyond. I'm told there was a less dense area on the other side, but I missed it.

6. A real slog up the hill with the grass being so thick. Got to the top of the little hill (and saw Sarah P heading for #7), compass and pace to the thicket, peeking behind one other small thicket on the way. Good split on this leg, but it wasn't any fun.

7. Pretty much followed the straight line to what I thought was the distinct tree just E of the control. Went around the next patch of fight and turned down hill, but no bag. Realized I wasn't yet near the W slope of the hill (apparently what I thought was a distinct tree is mapped as just part of the forest), so went back up, continued until the hill turned, then went down a bit and there it was. Lost a minute.

8. Over the top of the hill, into the saddle, take a bearing and head down. Couldn't be sure I was reading the vegetation correctly (but did see Sarah and then Linda below and heading towards #9), but stayed on the compass and nailed it. My best leg to that point, but still :13 behind Chuck.

9. Contour into the saddle, up the next hill (which seemed like much more climb than one contour), passing George and then Linda. Over the top, stay a little left and start down. See Sarah standing still reading her map, just slightly left of where I was heading, and then see a little piece of wood sticking up through the grass next to her and realize that that must be the rootstock. Only 4 secs from the fastest split on this leg.

10. Thought I should head down left of the big green patch (and I should have), but Sarah was going a bit to the right, and it looked clear, so I followed her. Had to bash through some bushes near the bottom, but it wasn't too bad. Sarah turned right when she hit the road; I started to go straight, but was forced to angle up to the left by thick vegetation. Expected to see the small building when I got to the top, but I didn't. (It was to my right: hadn't taken into account that I had gone quite far left on my way up.) Puzzled, slowly headed towards the road before I finally figured out I needed to go right. Lost about :45. Got to the building and had to stop to tie my shoe, losing another half minute. (Guess this leg caused people a lot of trouble, because despite losing 1:15, was only :06 from the second fastest split.) Took the little trail that heads down, pace counting, then cut right, into the woods, and spotted the bag ahead. Signs of my addled brain: two years ago I set a course in this area, even using today's #9 and #10 as control points, and fixing the map in several places, but none of that helped.

11. Straight downhill to the big road. There was a major highway of trampled grass. (This leg was on all the advanced courses, so even though at this point I was the first Brown runner going this way, clearly several other people had been there already. Wonder if that's what it was like on most of the rest of the course later in the day.) Onto the pavement past the junction, hoping I'd see the mapped sliver of white - but in fact there was a very large gap between the patches of green, so no problem cutting in, going around the nose, right to the bag. My best leg of the day, but too late to feel good about it.

12. Wasn't clear to me if there was a good way out, but found the patch of white to the NE, and scrootched under the fence, ripping my pants in the process. Could see the control from the road.

F. Even problems here. Punched the closer of the two units and took a step towards the finish, but I didn't hear a beep, so stopped and reached back to punch again. Thought I heard a beep, but wasn't sure, so punched the other unit and heard a clear beep. I guess because they were two different units, the first and third punches both showed up on my splits printout, 5 seconds apart. (Didn't seem like that took 5 secs; perhaps the units diffed by a sec or two?)

Figure I lost about 14 minutes all together to mental errors, so run under 50 minutes should have been possible even on this physically challenging day for me. And maybe on a cool day in February, mid to low 40's would have been possible.

Warm up. Jog 500m to start, then jog around near the start a bit. Felt ready to go.