Training Log Archive: DWildfogel

Don't seem to be that sore from Bon Tempe yesterday.

Note: I was sore on Tues, and still sore on Wed.

Bon Tempe. Volunteer appreciate event. First on Brown 3.4/160 in 43:25, 6 mins ahead of the next finisher (Lori Huberman). Bob Cooley ran 52, no one else was under an hour (Chris Brew 65, Trevor Pering 67). (My usual M70 rivals, Chuck, Steve Haas, Gary C, all ran Green, and did it in about 1.5 hours.)

Chilly with a little sun. Ground wet in places. Pretty good conditions. Thought I'd wear the Speedcrosses, but Marie-Josee and George convinced me to wear the metal tipped O-shoes. I think either pair would have done fine. Next time I'll choose the Speedcrosses, if for no other reason than I already have a brand new pair waiting in the wings. I wore them last year at Bon Tempe, and no complaints in my log.

Ran in just a short sleeve O-shirt, despite having worn a down jacket when I first got to the park. The short sleeve was perfect. Afterwards, in down jacket, gloves and hat, I still got very chilly.

Did reasonably well through out. In the first half of the race, walked the big hills; later, tried pushing up them.

Lost half a minute on 10 when I checked for the control in a patch of forest that I knew was too soon, but I was tired and didn't want to run past the control and have to come back.

1. Follow a bearing up the little trail. Start triangle and line to #1 obscured the contour line, so I was puzzled about why I was coming over a spur. Nevertheless, stayed on the bearing, and once over the spur, spotted the flag way up on the opposite hillside. Ran down and across the little gully at the bottom, but walked up the big hill, saving energy for later in the run. Studied the next three legs during the walk up.

2. Straight. Had expected the mapped dark green to keep me from going to far up the spur, but there was no such dark green in the terrain. Wound up descending quite a bit to the control, so maybe contouring a bit would've been better. Also, there was no evident end to the gully. From the splits, lost about :20 on this leg; had to be from climbing too much. It was my only leg that WinSplits flagged as an error.

3. This time contoured around because straight looked to trashy. That nearly doubled the distance, so maybe straight would've been faster, but my way was easy, both physically and navigationally.

4. My favorite leg of the day. Had planned it before getting to #3: just run the contour until I get on the W facing spur, then descent into the reentrant. Ran fast on the contour, and it was fun (and didn't think of looking down towards #10, which might have helped me later). Once I was evidently on the spur, went N over the top and there was the control directly below.

5. Had planned to go E up the spur to the trail. But looking up, just didn't feel like going up that steep hill, so stood there for several seconds thinking whether going straighter would be better despite having to descend first (something I'm loathe to do prior to a big climb). Once I realized that going E up the spur would require extra climb, too, chose the straighter, shorter route. NW to the trail, trail until it bent NW, then walked NE up to the W side of the saddle that the trail goes through. This angled ascent wasn't too bad. Arrived just where the trail starts up, so knew where I was. Follow a bearing into the woods, pretty soon see the small redwood grove (not a fairy circle) and then the control.

6. Straight looked trashy, so went straight up for a bit, then angled towards the form-line hill top. Running what I thought was parallel to the trail along the hilltop, wound up a couple of meters from the trail so took that for a while, then cut in to angle towards the boulder. Lots of downed trees here, so it was a little slow and also difficult to pick out the 1m boulder. Thought I saw it, then thought it was a stump, went a little past it and then looked back and saw the bag, 5 m away, so lost less than ten seconds.

7. Had planned this one in advanced, while climbing to 5. On the trail for a few meters, then saw through the trees the open area I wanted to take downhill, so cut through the woods to that open area and then straight down to the road. Crossed, then on up to the saddle, mostly walking. Planned to contour until I saw the line of trees on the hillside, but at the first reentrant saw a good opportunity to cut across rather than contour around, and I was going to have to lose a couple of contour lines eventually anyway, so did that. Then around the hillside until I saw the tops of the trees, and even though I couldn't see the reentrant across the way, could tell where it must be, so angled down and then nailed the control. Saw Trevor coming in from my left; he didn't seem interested in the control, figured he was on a different course, but turns out he wasn't; he was going from 8 to 9.

8. Really hustled on this leg, figuring I'd work out the details once I got closer. Used the power pole in the saddle to guide me to the correct tree.

9. Don't think I noticed this during the race, but the route around to the left, back near #7 and then through the saddle I'd passed through to get to #7, would have had less climb, but I'm here for practice, so wouldn't have want to retrace my steps even if I had seen it. Anyway, aimed for the indistinct trail through the green, had to do some bashing to get it to it, then followed it downhill, running pretty fast. Had been thinking I'd go along the lake edge a bit before climbing, but when the trail crossed the ditch near the bottom, looked to me like I could save some distance by climbing right there, which is what I did. Reached the ridge right at the power pole, so knew exactly where I was and that I was on the correct contour. So, contoured around, saw part of the 3m rootstock sticking up in the distance making the last part even easier.

10. Hurried E down the hill, looking for good places to run. Hit the trail perfectly, right before it crossed the ditch. Out to the road, ran along the W margin. Had to stop to tie my shoe, costing me 20 - 30 seconds. Switched to the E side of the run, wondering how I was going to get up the tall embankment, and then a little connector trail appeared (hadn't noticed it on the map, but it's there, so went up to the trail paralleling the road. As planned, once the land opened up on my left, turned off the trail on bearing to #10. Passed some thick copses on my right, knew I hadn't gone far enough, but I was getting tired and didn't want to pass these up only to have to come back, so took half a minute to check to see if the flag was there. It wasn't, so returned to the path I was following, just as Trevor was running by. Immediately saw the correct copses ahead (they'd looked like lone trees to me before I veered off to check the wrong copses) so zoomed over there well ahead of Trevor.

11. Wasting no time, ran downhill and crossed to the road, rough compassing towards the out of bounds area, looking for good places to run. Tried to keep up the speed. Eventually hit the trail just to the right of the out of bounds area. Took that, went across the bridge, followed the dirt road along the edge of the lake, and only then looked at the map for details about the location of the flag, as I headed for the creek. There was a trickle next to me, also heading for the creek, but I couldn't that on the map (and still can't), so I just kept going until I reached the creek. Rocks, but no flag. Looked both ways, saw the flag maybe 25m to my left, but had to go up through some woods to get there. Seems like the map could use a little fixing up here.

12. Couldn't really match the details in the terrain to the map here, but didn't try to hard: just followed a rough bearing, heading for the top of the hill, figuring with the parking lot on both sides it would be easy to correct if necessary. Wasn't necessary: nailed it.

F. Didn't like my spikes on the pavement, so veered out of the way a few meters so as to be able to run on the dirt along side the paved lot, giving up a couple of seconds.

A fine run, especially given that I hadn't orienteered in the woods for more than a couple of months. Beforehand (having seen Saturday's results), thought I'd be pleased if I could get down around 50. When I finished, my watch said 39, so I was really pleased. When I downloaded, though, my time was 43, so I was a bit less pleased, but still happy about it. (Turned out my watch didn't have a split for #11, though can't really see which buttons I might have hit to make that happen.)

Results

RouteGadget

[Orienteering race]

Warm up.

Cool down

Event: BAOC: Bon Tempe
 

At home. Glute exercises, short session with yellow band. Just one rep each leg of clam shell and fire hydrant, but held it for nearly a minute, longer than I've been.

The usual weekly accumulation of morning stretching.

Jeep trail next door. Sunny but windy and chilly. Just loosening up. Body is pretty tired and a bit achy from yesterday's hard weight workout. Actually got going pretty fast with little effort.

Splits are for 2 laps at a time, 0.4 miles:
450, 418, 351

Last lap was a surprisingly fast 149.

[Easy distance]

Cool down

JCCLG. Nice warm up. Couple of 12 ft swishes.

JCCLG. Really pushed the upper body exercises, only about half the core.

[Strength exercises]

JCCLG. Glute exercises with yellow (weaker) thera-ring. Legs were tired, so reduced the holds by about 35%.

Actually did these in the middle of the strength exercises.

Local terrain. Drizzle, cold; wet ground. In full orienteering regalia, plus golf gloves.

Run with the map from Long Qual 2 from the 2016 WMOC in Estonia (one of my least favorite orienteering days ever, due to the swamps). Very challenging to read it on the move, especially once my magnifier got wet.

Warm up on jeep trail loop (splits for 2 laps at a time, 0.4 miles): 448, 437, 433 Tot: 1359. Ran most of it behind L, who had done a couple of laps before I got out there. Read the map starting with the second lap.

To woods loop start: 32

Forest running:
3 x [1 x house + [2 x woods loop]]: 505, 506, 450 Tot: 1503

Comparing to recent forest runs, this was a little too fast, which may have contributed to have difficult it was for me to read the map once I started the woods loops.

[Orienteering Forest running w/map]

Cool down:

300 recovery jog in front yard
130 walk/stretch
900 half mile (double horseshoe) cool down jog on the jeep trail.

At home. Upper body only, 2 sets instead of 3.

[Strength exercises]