Training Log Archive: iansmith

It turns out that even without furniture, I have stuff. And stuff weighs a lot. On the other hand, apartment is empty, and virtually all the movement was downhill! Woo! I will procure assistance for moving my innumerable belongings upstairs. I find myself contemplating an ascetic lifestyle.

Event: Mike's Maze, volume 2
 

Easy morning run around the river. I fell asleep last night before running, so I'm a day behind. Running in the cool morning sunlight was pleasant. My Garmin committed hari kiri about halfway through.

C • DIY, yo 9

I set out on an easy run in the evening to clear my head amidst packing. I ran into some colleagues from CRA, which was a bit odd given the hour. I felt loose and speedy, but tried to hold the pace back. I kept my breathing to 4/4.

I followed up with the usual set of stretching. Need to learn how to have a low variance running schedule distribution from Sensei ken.

C • low variance 10

Moving my furniture out of apartment into storage. Compared to my epic adventure moving my belongings up four flights of stairs, moving them down with Ali was trivial. Having help makes life so much easier; even couch of power fell to our combined might. I considered for not the first time of selling all my possessions and becoming an itinerant ascetic.

C • padding your log 7

After a somewhat arduous morning moving my furniture into storage, Ali and I went for an easy cruise around some trails in the Fells. I had actually never run on the trails adjacent to the reservoir, since they are out of bounds on the O-map. The woods were pristine, and we encountered many other walkers and runners on a beautiful day. The GPS track is Ali's, as my 305 still fails at running for more than 30 minutes. I rolled my left ankle hard near the beginning of the run, but there was no noticeable damage beyond the instantaneous pain.

I find myself wondering if I have been insufficiently ambitious in some of my orienteering organizational objectives. There are others who have led the way and paved new ground; while there still is much progress to be made, much has been achieved. I am convening a small group of NEOCers to discuss our prospect for A-meets and make a plan for the coming years. Let me know if you are would like to help out with that endeavor.

C • Moving 4

Event: NEOC: Menotomy Rocks
 

Setting controls for the Menotomy Rocks meet, the first of NEOC's fall calendar. The NEOC season can start earlier than its traditional National O-Day Great Brook Farm meet, and it is my view that beginning the season with some low-key sprint events will help attract beginners and prepare everyone for the more serious orienteering to come in the months ahead. The courses can also be challenging sprints for veterans. Menotomy may not quite meet the veteran criterion, but it's a great park for a low key event.

Attendance was acceptable though unremarkable, with something like 40-50 people showing up. Ali was very helpful throughout the event, and the only major logistical oversight was only bringing one table, which made for cramped registration. Many thanks to Joel Gould, Magnus and Sarah Bjorkman, Alex and Ed, and Jim Crawford for all their help.

After the crowd died down, I decided to run the sprint 1 course before we picked up controls. Even though I knew where everything was, I hadn't really analyzed the legs and routes, so some of the experience was novel. I made one major bobble, missing north by perhaps 40m and losing 10s. Dancho reran the course after cooling down and smoked me by about 30s.

Checking control sites around Menotomy. I know the park quite well, and I have generally found the map to be good. All the locations I had selected were fine, as I expected. Some of the mapped boulders are on the small side, but they're distinctive enough. In a perfect world, having a fresh set of LIDAR contours would be nice, but the map is quite usable in its current form for the usual purposes, especially after Andy and Kristin Hall's updates a few years ago.

Event: USA Corn Maze Champs, Classic, Sprint, and Relay
 

I'm woefully behind on my no-longer-relevant pictures from WOC, including the set of a few hundred by guest photographer Andrew Childs. However, I still plan to upload the pictures, which include both my touristy adventures in Switzerland and WOC itself.

A sneak peak:
Behold the majesty
Best picture ever

C • Zowie! 5

After some waffling, I decided to make the trek out to Sunderland for the third annual sanctioned CMOUSA Classic and Sprint champs at Mike's Maze, and I am very glad that I did. The event quality was great, the challenge was stimulating, and the socializing - the best part of CMO - was magnificent. Bgallup, Ed, a Swiss newcomer named Claudia, and I carpooled out - and on the return journey made conversational ventures into how to deal with the impending self-annihilation of the human race. I forgot my X-talons at my office, so I ran in sneakers.

My only previous corn maze experience was at the CMOUSA Middle Champs in St. Louis in October 2011. That corn maze was a different technical challenge because with a few exceptions, there was exactly one route to each control, and the optimal route was blindingly obvious if you could spot it. Mike's maze involved much more route choice and many, many more decisions.

I started out by completely flubbing control 1; it took me about fifteen seconds to get into the map and make sense of what I was seeing, and then I ran off in the wrong direction before dead ending. Fueled by my frustration, I turned on the afterburners for the next few controls and started running well. I had a moment of fear when I hit 7 to find no e-punch, but it was just on the ground. I caught sight of Ali going to 9 on my way to 8, and focused on trying to catch her. I took a wrong turn to 9 and doubled back, apparently costing 15 seconds. I had another hesitation going into 9 and 10, and another short double back at 12. These small mistakes are essentially inevitable in CMO; it's very hard to have a perfectly clean run at speed. At no point did I lose contact, and my routes were generally good. Very happy to pull off the win.

The sprint was a great challenge - lots of blindingly quick decisions. I had a cleanish run that wasn't spectacularly fast. I lost 2-3s from a bobble at 3, 5-10s from being confused on my route to 4 (which was fine), and maybe 5s from a wrong turn leading into 6. I'm happy that I chose to go right to 4, though Giovanni picked a more optimal route than mine. Happy to hold off Giacomo for the win. Special kudos to bgallup, who had 6/7 of a fantastic race.

Peter designed a slightly handicapped relay; there was a mass start of second-leg runners two minutes after the first first-leg finish. My partner for the relay was Harriet Small, a Cambridge high school friend of Izzy's. The mass start actually was a queue'd start, since we all had to punch a start box. Peter prescribed the order for that, and I started dead last out of seven in the mass start. Ed had a 3-4s error in which he kept missing the start box; I suspect he was paid, as I was the only one behind him. :)

The cluster of people running off to the first control was an easy bunch to follow ("Hey Mats, is this the lead?"), and when most of the group made a small mistake, I scooched past everyone except Giacomo. I was intent on my map leaving 1, and glanced up to see Alex coming directly at me. We avoided a head-on collision, but the aftermath was that she went flying off into the corn while my path was essentially unperturbed. After verifying that she was ok (she was laughing), I began chasing down Giacomo. I led a group in an unnecessary circuit of the roundabout around 2 before finding the entrance; Giacomo was out of sight. At this point, I started reading my map more deliberately, and cleanly led a group to 3-5. I had a 5-10s hesitation on the way to 6 and surrendered the group lead to cmorse and bgallup.

I punched just ahead of Ed at 6; I didn't realize it at the time, but we were actually in the lead. I lost 25s at 7 by attempting a route, aborting and choosing the correct route. Unfortunately, Giacomo was only 10m behind me at 7; I don't think I could have held him off for the win. While he followed me for the first part of the long leg to 8, he could read ahead, settle on the optimal route, and crush me on the finish kick. I actually chose a dumb route - costing another 20-30s, and Giovanni slipped past both of us for the win. I'm a bit disappointed; the last two controls decided the race, and I made two big errors. Still, the race was tremendous fun, and I highly recommend corn maze mass starts. Thanks a bunch to PG for making this entire event possible.

Warmup, including some pre-race chatter with Ali.

Classic - Splits

Sprint - Splits

leg 2 - Splits

Easy river loop - including the JFK-Eliot-Arsenal bridges. I felt good, and was moving at not a miserably slow pace. I don't intend to run any faster for quite some time while I keep building up my base, but my body seems to be responding well. I need to get out of the habit of running late at night, but that should be easier in the coming weeks. I also should increase cross training time.

Easy run around the river. My Garmin died midway through the session, so the time is an extrapolation of my pace. I had much to think about; tonight was a reflective evening. My legs felt a bit tired, but the pace was comfortable. I look forward to the biggest race of the year: the Corn Maze A-meet on Thursday.

I took a planned rest day - my body felt a little battered after last week. While I only ran 4 sessions, the distance of 22 miles was more than I have run in the past two or three weeks. I felt a little sore in places from moving objects this weekend, so a rest day seemed appropriate. I can still run 5 or 6 times this week for a target of 25 miles + cross training.

I donated platelets tonight, which did eat up considerable time.

Ali and I got up at the insane hour of 8 AM to go for a trail run in Blue Mountain. Her ankle is delicate and is still recovering from the WOC Relay incident, so we ran gingerly to avoid landing on it hard. While I was slightly grouchy given the hour, I rose in short order. Blue Mountain is a beautiful place - even a ginger trail run was sublime. While it was tempting to go orienteering, my training plan now is focused on base, and my decisions can reinforce Ali's and keep her from boldly going where no ankle should go. GPS track and HR data are Ali's.

While at Neil's, we hung out with some of the usual suspects and met a few new people, including Giacomo's girlfriend, Camilla. Apparently he is a better cook than she is.

Event: Bye bye Peekskill
 

After loading furniture and driving to Poughkeepsie, Ali and I went on an afternoon run through the hilly New York countryside. Note that the track data is from Ali's Garmin.

Topics of conversation and stuff to look up included:
- Np-hardness
- The number of seats at the shed at Tanglewood

C • tanglewood music school 4

Basic statistics about the 2012 Bridge of Flowers 10k:
Reported finishers: 551
Mean finish time: 56.6 minutes
Stdev: 11.6 minutes
Median: 55.4 minutes
Mode (rounded to minute): 50 minutes

Yesterday was an unplanned rest day. I am wholly disappointed in myself, but the only course is to get up and try again. The path to victory begins with discipline.

Typing Test Results: (wpm, keystrokes, rank/total in past 24 hours)
147, 733, 33/74684
142; 709; 60/74717
139; 693; 87/74716

A one minute typing test is like a 400m. Perhaps I should build up my base before doing intervals lest I invite a hand injury.

C • woah 6

Easy run around the river. My body seems to be less destroyed than it appeared earlier this week - possibly restored by two accidental rest days. I think the neighborhood of 5:20-5:30/km is a great pace for me to be right now. Whatever is tweaked in my bum was more cooperative, though I still don't have full strength and control throughout the range of motion of my leg. It feels like a smallish muscle is hurt - perhaps a strain; it doesn't hurt while I run, but I sense weakness.

It's a busy time for me right now with NEOC logistics; I'm further behind than I planned to be, but I'm trying to delegate and recruit help. I decided to direct the race at Menotomy Rocks in 9 days because it was a bit impromptu; two sprints on a Saturday morning will be about the same amount of work as a Park-O on a more convenient day. Still, I don't plan to direct more than one meet this fall besides the sprint - and if I can get away with it, I won't set any. While I hope to thoroughly use all communication avenues, I want help - if you're interested in directing, co-directing, or volunteering at registration, control pickup, or results, please let me know! Every bit helps a bunch.

My weight has lately been steady in the range 180-185 lbs. I have to wonder if 170 is possible by the end of the year with a nutritious diet given my current training plan. Once I have settled into a steady running schedule, I will add weights to build up my leg and ankle strength.

To future Ian reading this log: current events over the past few weeks have included the London Olympics, the nomination of Paul Ryan for the Republican VP candidate with Mitt Romney, and it was suggested that the 2012 US men's olympic basketball team would beat the Dream Team (lol).

The British built three Invincible class battlecruisers in the early 1900s. They were classic battlecruiser designs - Dreadnought style heavy armament, lightly armored, high speed ships best suited to chasing down smaller ships. Ironically, the Invincible was the only one sunk, annihilated in a magazine explosion under the combined fire from two German battlecruisers at Jutland. One of the Invincibles was the HMS Inflexible, which always struck me as an odd name for a ship, even from the British. One of great weaknesses is excessive flexibility - I can mold and adapt to most perturbations, but in so doing, I lose contact with the various points of regularity that characterize a typical schedule. I can endure shifts of 6 hours in my Circadian rhythm without much noticeable ill effects, but I can't consistently maintain a 24 hour period. This must change. And perhaps, like the Inflexible, I will sink a pair of German armored cruisers along the way.

Training aspirations.

I have posted the NEOC schedule both on the NEOC website and on attackpoint. Show your support for orienteering in New England by indicating whether or not you are coming to the events listed on the AP schedule! The schedule this fall will include three or four sprint events to kick off the season, two Night-Os, at least seven standard local events, and the Blue Hills Traverse. I have included several maps not seen on schedules in the past few years: Turtle Pond, High Rock, Boxford, and Townsend.

Easy peasy really slow run around the river. My life has fallen into some disarray over the past week - insidious chaos has seeped into my schedule with a weak justification or perturbation. I expect myself to be stronger, more resilient, to have the self-control to endure through periods of stress or difficulty. I have not met my expectations, and I hope to remedy that.

Yesterday's inadvertent rest day may have been justified, as a niggle in my butt has become a tight bundle of ouch. After a diagnostic jog, I deemed the discomfort and probable damage sufficiently mild to continue running; time will tell the prudence of that. If I only trained when I felt perfect, I would train even less than I do now, and it would all be for naught.

Wildlife count was unusually high - two raccoons (on Mt. Auburn St of all places) and about twenty or thirty rabbits, almost all of whom had poor strategies for avoiding detection. Fortunately for them, I was a plodding, gimpy runner and not a hungry, unleashed whippet.

I signed up for the CMOUSA Classic and Relay championships; I have never run a race of the style of PG and Mike's Maze, with multiple route choices. My fitness is deplorable, but hopefully the event will still be fun, and the company will be brilliant.

Yo' running is so slow, old ladies help you across the street.

Easy recovery run including the Emily Dickinson trail in Amherst; Ali's legs didn't feel great after her 10k effort, so she went out for a rollerski instead. I wasn't energetic, but my legs felt ok. I didn't plan to stay out for 50+ minutes, but my loop turned out to be that length.

Ten minutes of core, followed by two minutes of not core.
One minute each of: V-ups, oblique crunches, cherry pickers, plank, side crunches x2, kayakers, leg lift out-and-ups, tuckups, situps, supermans, sexercises.

Ali and I decided to run the Bridge of Flowers 10k in late June. I had never run a 10k before (apart from on the way to my half marathon finish), and I was eager to test my mettle. I recognized even in June that between the adventures of Gimpyfoot and Lyme Disease that I would not be in great physical condition for the race.

Unfortunately, in the intervening months, I have had two colds - one before and one after O in Swissland - that further reduced my training. This morning, I had a few coughing fits before warming up. After some consultation with my spiritual adviser yesterday (ken), I decided to run this as a tempo effort rather than a race. Even a tempo is a bit antithetical to my current training objective of base, but I didn't want to skip the event entirely.

Conditions were muggy and humid, about 22 C. There were about 500 runners queued up on a two-lane bridge at the start. I started right around the 8 min/mile group expecting to start comfortably, build up my intensity at the hill of death, and take the finish more aggressively. I had no delusions of grandeur; while I am confident I can run sub 40 when healthy, I expected to run around 45 minutes. I think I crossed the start line about 20-30s after the start bell. The first two miles were a comfortable loop with a small hill; I coasted through the 2 mile split at about 15:00.

The third mile had a brutal climb; most people around me started walking, but I stubbornly kept my running gait. I'm not sure if it was optimal for speed. Miles 4 and 6 were downhill, on which I seemed to fare comparatively better than my neighborhood. While the first half of my run was relaxed and easy, I ramped up the intensity considerably at the end. I don't seem to be worse for wear; my breathing didn't seem to be labored during the race, whether due to adrenaline or some other factor. I'm quite disappointed with my time, even with the caveats that I wasn't planning on racing hard and my training has been awful. Hopefully I will channel this chagrin into a diligent and aggressive training regimen in the months ahead.

Garmin died before mile 4; I need to get that fixed.

Ten-ish minute warmup and a five minute cool down after the race. After the warmup, I purchased a half liter cup of coffee from a local shop, added some milk to lower the temperature, and quickly downed it a few minutes before the start. I did not observe any discomfort from the coffee, and I can only assume the caffeine was helpful. I was very groggy this morning, so perhaps I should have taken the coffee earlier.

Easy run around the river. Garmin died after 33 minutes; I will contact the company tomorrow to arrange repairs. I kept the run conversational by reciting the two poems I have memorized and then talking to myself. It felt delightful to get out and run again, though I was painfully slow. I think painfully slow is a good pace for me for now; a month of base running will go a long way before Pawtuckaway.

Free "yo' running" joke: Yo' running is so slow that when you upload the gpx data to attackpoint, it thinks you were orienteering.

Eleven days ago, I joined bgallup and Keja Rowe in the GMARA's Bitter Pill Adventure Race. At the time, I logged the three disciplines and planned to follow up with a more thorough discussion; that is presented here. Bgallup has already provided a solid writeup, analysis, and a speed comparison and a splits comparison to Joe Brautigam's team, Checkpoint Zero.

This was my first Adventure race, and GMARA did a fine job putting it together. Everything was (more or less) where it should be, the logistics and transition areas were well organized, the excursion was challenging. Organizing an adventure race like the Bitter Pill is of comparable effort to many orienteering events - it's about the same effort as an A-meet. You need more staff, but the 19 control points on Bitter Pill did not require as much precision, vetting, or time to set as those on a Traverse or the numerous controls for an A-meet race. Much more effort is expended on logistics - water, checking equipment, tents, photos, staffing, etc. I have two criticisms of the race:

• The map (USGS, apparently bad maps are part of the adventure race game)
• The results weren't posted until over a week after the event

I recognize that the complete results take time, but preliminary results should be easy enough to post the day of the event. A compiled results list has to exist for prizes to be awarded (which they were about an hour after everyone finished in a very well done post-race dinner). I didn't realize that Sink, Trip, Crash finished fourth overall until a week after the event.

Lessons:
1. Travel light. The AR culture seems to be enthusiastic about equipment. In this admittedly short 12-hour race, the only equipment I used was food and water. I wore typical O-garb - tights, a shirt, and sneakers - and basically hauled the required race equipment around on the course without ever using it. Since we had a swimming component, hand flippers would have been helpful. The advantage over actual flippers is that you don't have to change shoes and you don't exhaust your legs, which you're using for biking and running. I'm unconvinced a dry bag would have been necessary, but it wouldn't have been a bad idea. I don't think bike shoes are necessary, though the ratio of foot:bike time on this AR was quite high.

2. Food: To echo bgallup, for any long-ish AR, some real food goes a long way. Even a sandwich to augment the Gu and Clif bars would have helped. Speed is key; the food and water should be very readily accessible. Lori's 2L platypus drinking pack was invaluable.

3. Navigation: it should go without saying that orienteering proficiency is critical. Some practice on crappy USGS maps is also useful; we made an initial 15-minute mistake that was exacerbated by our unfamiliarity with a shady map.

4. Transitions: We spent 25 minutes in the five transitions; superman only spent 11. Much of that time was getting refreshment - storing your food and water in a very accessible location saves time. Much of the time can be saved by keeping it simple. Design your equipment choices so you don't have to change clothes, rotate out equipment (flippers, etc), or spend any more time stationary than you have to.

5. Run when you're in the woods. For this race, the navigation was generally trivial - long legs along or moving towards very prominent topographical features like hills and reentrants. There were really only two legs where we had to pay close attention to compass. By my estimate, we spent six hours orienteering on foot - the bulk of our 9:50 on the course; more than 2/3 of that time was walking in the woods. A steady jog and 10 min/km should be possible on these long legs.

C • no rollerblades required 4

"A good race doesn’t happen because you want it to, or because “it’s time”. A good race happens because you have trained so hard that even your bad races can be compared with the times of the best orienteers around the world."

I felt surprisingly hammered by my illness and slept through most of the day after taking a sick day. In addition to fatigue, sniffles, and a sore throat, I seem to have some joint pain somewhat uniformly distributed throughout my body. My hands, for instance, feel stiff, as though they were waking up after "falling asleep" due to pressure or sitting on them; however, the sensation does not dissipate. It has not escaped my attention that fragments from spirochetes like Borrelia burgdorferi apparently cause joint pain as they break down. I do not have any headaches or sensitivities to light that were among my symptoms in June, so I shall be patient and seek medical attention if my symptoms do not abate. I don't feel well enough to train, so I must reluctantly postpone running. I hope I recover enough to run the Shelburne Falls 10k this weekend, but between a lack of training and illness, I do not expect a good time.

Easy run with Ali out and about Cambridge, with a quick stop for bakery bread. Today has been a lazy day both due to a cold I seem to have acquired and getting some work done. I noticed that at this joggeroo pace, my natural cadence is considerably slower than Ali's. I varied it for short periods, matching hers; I find it challenging to run a fast cadence and a slow pace. Gimpyfoot felt ok; the discomfort since June has been localized to the right outer edge of the heel and the back edge of the heel.

We watched Murray annihilate Federer in the Men's singles' final; while I support Federer, I was very happy to see Murray win in his home country, especially after the Wimbledon final. Federer was off today, and simply couldn't get his typically dominant game going. We finished the evening with some assorted track and field events, including the men's 100. Bolt won, but the ratio of race time to time spent conversing about the race was absurdly high. Zzzz.

C • no HR? bah. 3

Canoeing with Ali, Stephi and Eric from Charles River Canoe and Kayak at Harvard. The weather was fantastic, with blue, sunny skies and a temperature of about 27 C. After the trio of CRCK newcomers passed their boat etiquette test with flying colors, we set out on a leisurely cruise up the Charles. I don't canoe very often - my boat of choice from CRCK is a K1, preferably a Wilderness systems Tsunami - but it makes for a very comfortable tandem trip. Eric and Stephi wisely brought snacks - predominantly fruit - and we stopped periodically to snack. We kept the boats at conversational distance for most of the trip and had pleasant chats while we moseyed up and down the river. While the workout wasn't strenuous, it was rejuvenating to get out on the water and exert a little. We followed with a scrumptious vegetarian picnic.

Very easy run around Fresh Pond; I wasn't feeling energetic or strong tonight, and my body has clearly forgotten how to run. I ran into Patrick from CSU running who was returning from the Thursday night Fresh Pond race. Apparently the races have been shortened from 5 miles to 2.5 for reasons unknown.

Incentivizing Chores

C • fresh pond races 2