Training Log Archive: iansmith

While my performance at this meet was my best at an A-meet, my long race featured a catastrophic error from which I didn't recover. I was tired from the previous races, and my muscles were very sore, which may have contributed to my bad decision. I wasn't moving that quickly, and I had a few bobbles on early controls - a few minutes at 4, for instance. However, I was satisfied with my run given the wear on my body and the difficult footing and swamps to negotiate.

I fundamentally misunderstood the large swamp crossed by the major trail in the middle of the map. There was a parallel, narrower stream a few hundred meters to the south, and for whatever reason, when looking at the map, I treated them as the same feature. En route to 10, I meant to attack after I ran south of the narrow stream, but completely repositioned myself in my head and attacked early - after passing the swamp band. This really confused me, but I did eventually find the control after some confusion. However, I didn't take the time to figure out what was the source of my problem.

Controls 11 through 13 went very well, but on the way to 14, I made the same error, meaning to attack after the narrow stream but instead attacking after wide swamp band. This was completely wrong; I had planned to follow the water feature to 14, but following the edge of the lake north of the wide swamp band lead me back to the major trail. This was my opportunity to correct my error, but I figured I had accidentally turned around and charged into the vegetation on the northeast edge of the lake. I then idiotically followed the edge of the lake for several hundred meters - about a kilometer away from my control. I realized I was in trouble some time later when I saw a house - which was not on the map. I was increasingly frustrated with this problem; I saw a field on a ridge to the north which I thought could be the field to the west of 14. I ran to it and eventually realized I was not where I thought I was. Moving east to relocate on the trail, I saw Joseph Huberman walking Presto near the fire station to the northeast of the start - where the parking was.

I can't describe the shock at seeing Joseph effectively, but I realized that I was both off the map and over 2 kilometers from my control. I decided to go to the control anyway (even though I had wasted about an hour in total) to more accurately figure out my error. I would have finished the course, but I knew the Hubermans were waiting for me before the could start the long drive back to Boston, so I skipped controls 17-20, which were in the same area as controls 11-13.

I'm glad I understand my mistake, but this is easily the largest navigational error I have ever made. It seems appropriate that I would attain so many superlatives at a single meet - my personal best sprint, personal best middle, and personal best catastrophic error.

Blue - Splits

The 2008 North American Orienteering Championships middle distance course. I have a very poor historical record of Middle Distance races at A-meets, with runs at the 2008 US Middle Distance Champs, 2008 West Point meet, 2008 US Team Trials, and the 2008 Canadian Championships.

My first observation of today's race is that this was the best Middle distance course I have ever run. I navigated well to all but one of the controls, and I ran well - though sluggishly - throughout the course. The map was very good, but the control placement was not as good as I had expected for a middle distance and a championship meet. Many of the controls had strong catching features, and there were a few controls where some trail running was the optimal route.

Historically, I have not done very well on middle distance; each of my five previous middles has had at least one major error (> 10 minutes) with the exception of West Point. On this course, I made a very conservative route choice - running to the road on control 2 rather than attacking directly. It was reasonable in the sense that I expect difficult navigation on middle distance, but given that the road was a close catching feature, I should have attacked up the reentrant.

I ran conservatively for the next few controls, but stayed in strong contact through control 12. I overshot control 6 by about twenty meters after going over the hill; I just didn't see the control. I had an unfortunate encounter with a field of stinging nettles en route to control 12.

Another great weakness of mine is encountering other orienteers - especially extremely good orienteers. While I was running on the trail toward 12, I saw Eddie Bergeron approach from the south. I was ahead of him, had great contact, and had chosen a good attack to the control, so I pushed my pace and beat him to 12. I saw it about 20 meters before the flag, even though it apparently was in the wrong place. However, because I was trying not to think about Eddie, I hadn't considered my route to 13, which was one of the more complex legs. Eddie took off, and I considered it unethical to follow him. So, I ran in the same direction, but slower than Eddie; I lost sight of him after perhaps 90 seconds and had no idea where I was. I relocated off the plateau south of the control and probably only lost 2-3 minutes.

Areas to improve: reading the map quickly and efficiently, running endurance and speed, encountering other orienteers (hopefully pursuing them), and route simplification.

Blue - Splits

Event: North American Championships
 

The NAOC Red/Blue Sprint Final. The technical difficulty of this sprint was low - somewhere between yellow and orange level for most of the sprint. From the preliminary sprint, I gleaned that the fastest route typically was taking roads and trails rather than pushing through green or even open woods, but I did make at least one route "error" where I traveled directly rather than taking the road (from 14 to 15).

In general, my only criticism of my run was that I was too slow. Sprints thus far have been my forte; of the courses, my sprints have the smallest percentage difference between my performance and that of elite runners. Unfortunately, my training was not up to the day's 5.6 km of all out sprinting.

I believe that with a bit more running over the past 10 days, I could have pushed my time to 21 minutes or less, but that's all fruitless conjecture. In general, I was pleased with my run given the difficulty of the course.

My biggest errors were a slow route choice from 5 to 6 (I ran south along the green to the trail, but I think pushing through the green would have been faster), choosing to travel directly from 14 to 15 rather than going north to the road, and overshooting control 24 by about twenty meters.

Warmup before the sprint final. I felt a bit tight after the preliminary round and the long cool period, so I ran considerably more than earlier in the day at a very gentle pace. Brendan and some other runners were also warming up about this time.

The 2008 NAOC Sprint preliminary course. I think I have a more liberal definition of "spiking" a control than most based on comparative statistics of other orienteers near my level. I define a spike as approaching a control and finding it exactly where I expect it to be. I suppose I often include errors of order 20 meters within a spike - say for instance I came over a hill expecting to see a control in front of me and it was to my left. There isn't a large space of approaches between my definition of a spike and an error, which I suppose I should amend in future logs.

Anyway, this was my best sprints to date relative to the field. I had one significant, 30-second error approaching 4 because I hadn't really planned for it. The first three controls were so easy that I was not planning ahead as aggressively as I should have. That noted, there were really only two faster routes - I charged directly at 4 through the green and hit the larger clearing about thirty meters east of the control. I spent about fifteen seconds hunting through the green for the smaller clearing and found I had moved too far to the north.

Apart from that mistake, a few seconds lost looking for 5 and a moderately poor route choice at 8, the run went about as well as it could have. I started to fatigue, but my average speed was acceptable. With the exception of Erik Nystrom's 10:30, the leaders finished at just over 11 minutes. The navigational difficulty of this course was very low, but a delta of 20% is acceptable at present.

This was also the first time I have ever beaten Brendan (by 3 seconds), who went into this course expecting more navigational difficulty and didn't push his speed as much as he could have. I need to focus on running faster and on making quick route choice decisions in sprint conditions, especially with more challenging navigation than what this course and location presented.

Warmup before the preliminary sprint. Legs felt stiff.

Sprint Red/Blue Final - Splits

Sprint Red/Blue Preliminary - Splits

I started my workout with a 15 minute warm up on a stationary bike at my gym. It was relatively uneventful, primarily because stationary bikes are incredibly boring. I started at what felt like a comfortable pace, though it seems to have been faster than I intended for a warm up. I suspect the bike may have been miscalibrated.

I continued my workout with a weight training sequence, with the following (not necessarily orthogonal) components:

- curling
- squatting
- quadriceps machines
- lateral raises
- abdominal and core exercises
- pullups
- lunges

Yeah. One of my favorite exercises is an abdominal contraption where your upper body stays stationary while your legs swing up during exertion. The exercise is demanding, but not as strenuous or painful (for me) as crunches or leg lifts, so I can repeat 50 times in a set readily. Abdominal exercise is not one of my fortes, though I think this is more due to my weight than to weak abs.

A hike up Upper Rattlesnake Mountain with elements of my undergrad dorm on our annual New Hampshire camping trip. I brought up the rear, helping the kids who weren't really ready for such a hike along. The hike wasn't as long, hard, or fast as I would have preferred - Franconia notch would have been preferrable - but it wasn't totally trivial. The time and distance are estimates.

I recently saw the movie "Miracle" for the first time; I would greatly appreciate having an orienteering coach as demanding as Herb Brooks was of the US hockey team. I'm not adequately diligent to demand that much of myself alone (though I would very much like to try). "Again!" etc.

CSU track training, put on by Alexei. The exercise consisted of 800 on, 400 off with the added component that during the last 200m of the 800, you had to look at a map and observe the elevation profile of a leg and definitively state whether control (n+1) was higher or lower than control n.

I should have warmed up, but I started on the 800s directly. My legs were:

1st 800: 3:34 1st 400: 2:18
2nd 800: 3:09 2nd 400: 216
3rd 800: 2:59 3rd 400: 2:43
4th 800: 2:52 4th 400: 3:01

My pace on the 800s was monotonically decreasing, which was my goal, but I didn't have a good sense for how hard I should push at the beginning. I need to do a time trial for a mile and some other measures to come up with an appropriate vdot.

I ran 2x100 m strides, completing a 400 at a slow pace each time, and then stretched a bit.

Event: Great Brook Farm
 

The NEOC Great Brook Farm National Orienteering Day meet. It was at the orange course at this event exactly one year ago that my orienteering career really began. Because I have had the opportunity to orienteer at such a wide range of excellent parks, I realize how simple Great Brook Farm is.

The red course today weighed much more heavily on distance than on technical difficulty. One control was far to the south and isolated; the legs to and from it were each over a kilometer. Great Brook Farm is full of linear features, so the courses won't be as difficult by necessity, but I felt that about a third of the legs were completely trivial.

Control placement is challenging in Great Brook Farm (also considering the map quality); there do not exist many good locations for advanced controls. I would characterize the course as about a 3-4 km easy brown course interspersed with 3-4 km of trail running. I ran on trails about 60% of the distance (and I believe in most cases it was the optimal route).

That noted, I did break 10 minutes/km for the first time on an advanced course. Ian Finlayson crushed me (winning time of 60 minutes and some seconds), but he's a superior orienteer and runner (he beat me on all but one split and the finish).

Finally, while I have improved almost monotonically (for sufficiently large time scale), I still am an intermediate orienteer in the frequency of my mistakes. Compared to Ian F.'s or Phil Bricker's relatively immaculate runs, I had 4 controls on which I made errors of a minute or more. I recovered fairly well (not like that's difficult in Great Brook), and I am pleased with my run, but I must make fewer errors if I hope to run under 10 min/km with any degree of consistency.

C • nice runs 2

After running the red, I decided to go out and do another course. The controls on the green course (5ish km) were a proper subset of those on the red course, including the two long, uninteresting legs. The orange course, at first glance, looked more interesting, so I opted for that. However, it turned out that all but one of the orange course's controls were on the red course (though the order was different).

Anyway, I was more fatigued from the red run than I expected (oddly enough, I felt not weak throughout the red course and was able to keep going at a good pace). While I planned to burn through the orange as fast as I could, after the water control (#2... what's up with that?), I took it relatively easily. I ended up winning the course, but not by much (and most of the competitors were boy scouts, etc).

I have a tendency or 'tradition' of running as hard as I can on the finish leg. The argument is two-fold: I can't navigate as quickly as I can book it on in advanced terrain, so while orienteering I seldom get the chance to "kill it;" also, I don't stand much of a chance of finishing first on any legs but the finish leg. It's worked pretty well - I had some best finish legs at the Canadian champs. If memory serves, Ross really likes killing it at the end as well, so while my finish leg is easily my best leg (relative to the field), I rarely win the leg in a broad group.

I dream of being in a situation where I'm on a relay team and I have a chance to sprint in to the finish for victory (a la Jason Lezak). Perhaps the opportunity will come some day.

Red - Splits

Orange - Splits

- Splits

CSU Night-O in Hammond Pond set up by the illustrious Ross Smith. I do not often Night-O, but I really enjoy the format; while Hammond Pond isn't the most difficult orienteering environment (my past experience there to the contrary), I find Night-Oing somewhat more intuitive than day-O because the central problem is acquiring information, not deciding what information to use. On a typical day-O course, there are so many ways to navigate and fix your position and course - compass, contours, features, vegetation, linear features, prominent elevations around you, and so on. During a night-O, you have the local gradient, your compass, any immediately visible features (i.e. if you're looking for them), and any linear features you are traveling along.

The particular Night-O was best accomplished - in my opinion - by using linear features extensively. I at times strayed from the path because of a silly notion that "good orienteers do not run on trails," when in at least one of those situations, the trail was by far the best route.

I tested my new headlamp (Energizer, from Target) at this Night-O to great effect. It's quite bright, and there were no ergonomic difficulties with its use.

I estimate that at my present proficiency and speed, I could have finished the course about 5-10 minutes faster had I not made several errors. Admittedly, my current level of orienteering is error prone because of lack of experience and suboptimal strategy, but there you have it.

I erred at 1 (60-90 seconds) by sticking to the trail for too long and choosing a poor attack point. Reading my map more carefully would have revealed this error. Alternatively, I could have followed Ross and Brendan - who were immediately ahead of me at the mass start - but I wanted to ignore everyone else as much as possible.

At 7, (90 seconds - 2 minutes) I ignored what were obviously cliffs and my attack while running along a trail, and ran ahead for perhaps 75 meters before realizing my mistake from the contours. I just needed more confidence here.

At 8, (1-2 minutes) I diverted far and wide around on a trail because I wasn't sure the smaller breakoff trail was in fact the one I wanted. I should have just taken a bearing from that point and ran to 8 by contour.

At 9, (2+ minutes) I left the trail because I felt I should. It was a poor strategy, both with poor route and a less than optimal choice of attack. After forcing my way slowly through some green, I diverted back to the trail and attacked from the obvious (and best) attack point.

Overall, I was pleased with my contact and performance, but it's easy to count the seconds (or minutes, in my case) lost. Brendan sprained his ankle, both injuring himself and removing one of my usual benchmarks. I'm reasonably sure Ross finished in under 30 minutes, but he also set the course. Once I learn his time, I will treat that as an "optimal" run.

C • Sounds fun! 1

A road run with a river loop. I started rather late in the evening, and prior to starting, I was less than enthused about running. I probably wasted about ten minutes as a result, but once I started moving, I was content. I ran with my headlamp (to become comfortable with it and experiment with various positions) and the COC Long Course 9 map.

While running along the river, I saw about two dozen small rabbits; they were particularly visible because their eyes reflected the light from my lamp, and as I approached, they scattered.

My goal for this session was to run for 40 minutes at a leisurely pace - about 9 minutes/mile, but no faster than 8 minutes/mile. At the end of the run, including 3x30 strides, I felt sufficiently good that I believed I could have repeated the workout (though I didn't).

While on my run, particularly while running past homeless people sleeping in Harvard Square, I deliberated the social merits of a purely capitalist system (you are rewarded for your work uniquely) and a purely communist system (you are maintained and your needs are met regardless). All practical systems are some sort of compromise between the two, and while I recognize the merits of hard work and the pressing need for impetus to excel. Yet, I was saddened that these, my fellow human beings, had fallen to such dire straits; they have lost their dignity and their ambition.

In such instances, I am reminded of Jesus healing the sick man in front of the Jewish temple in John 5. Specifically in John 5:6, Jesus asks a man who has been sick for many year if he wants to get well. At first glance, this question seems ridiculous; who would not want to get well after such misery? Yet the suitability of this question is evident in our cities, where the homeless subsist off the charity (deliberate and accidental) of others, but they do not seek to improve their lives. They only seek to continue to exist. I do not believe this is an adequate goal; resources should be provided for people to get back on their feet, not for people to subsist indefinitely. Right now, if for whatever reason I were suddenly without means or home (or friends or family, etc), I would have to turn to someone for help, but I would seek that help not to exist but to recover. It is easy for me to think from such a perspective, since I have known a life of relative privilege and safety, but my point is that removing the danger of languishing as a motivation to be responsible, to work hard, and such results in stagnation. I weep for our race.

Cool down.

Including 5 minutes to get dressed and 15 minutes of showering and changing, I spent 1:30 to run for 50 minutes, yielding an efficiency score of 0.56.

Pawtuckaway Camping Weekend Blue classic course.

Blue - Splits