Training Log Archive: iansmith

Bike to and from Menotomy Rocks.

I woke up at 12 PM after twelve hours of sleep in the aftermath of my White Mountains expedition. I felt pretty good, so I rolled out of bed, ate some food, drank some water, and set off on my bike to get to Menotomy before the NEOC starts closed (1 PM).

I arrived and discovered the three courses were WY and an Orange Sprint with two maps. The postage stamp sized map really can only be used for a 3k course without a map exchange. I noted that Ross finished in 1650 on the sprint, so I set off at a hard pace.

I ran the first sprint in 927, then picked up a map from the Sprint B box. I noted that the map said "white" when I grabbed it and I did a double take, but I confirmed that I had grabbed a map from the "Sprint B" box. So, I ran the white course in 606, then discovered that my worst fears were realized and the white course was not the same as the Sprint B map. I exclaimed my woes, then grabbed a Sprint B map and took off.

I had pushed really hard on the white course, so I didn't have as much energy left for the Sprint B, which I ran in 1100. Had I not run the white course, I might have been able to shave one or two minutes off, but I highly doubt I could have caught Ross. Dancho Hristov, who is of comparable speed to me, finished in eighteen minutes and change, so that might have been a reasonable estimate.

Meg Parson, who was manning the finish, conferred with Tim Parson and decided that it was fair to deduct my white course time (6 minutes) from my run, so officially I ran in 2033 or something. It's a fun, local meet, so I didn't care that much about the result. My run was generally good; I had good flow (despite the frustrations of pin punching), stayed in contact, and made no meaningful errors. I did attack control five on Sprint B expecting that it would be on the top of the hill, only to discover that it was in fact at the bottom on the east side. That probably cost 15 seconds that could have been saved had I more diligently checked the codes (though I think the map and the control placement did not agree).

C • I wanted to go 4

Picking up controls at the Menotomy Rocks NEOC meet.

Lori, Presto and I traveled to the Presidential range to attempt some 5,000 footers. Our plan was to climb Mt. Madison (5367 feet), Mt. Adams (5774 feet) and Mt. Jefferson (5712 feet) starting from the trailhead near Randolph, NH (1320 feet).

The result: we summitted Madison and Adams, but decided that we lacked time to hit Jefferson. We departed the parking lot at about 7 AM and returned around 6:30 PM, with a total time of 11:38.

The route we planned and read online was 13.7 miles with 5850 feet of climb. I felt confident that we could handle the distance, climb and weather; what turned out to be an unexpected obstacle was the rockiness. Above 4800 feet, the summits of Adams and Madison were essentially rockslides - the ground was entirely composed of boulders 1 - 10 feet across. It was difficult to find footing, stressful on the joints, and Presto initially was very slow moving up the mountain. He started to learn, and soon only had some difficulty keeping up.

Had we rested less (e.g. we hung out at Adams' summit for 45 minutes), we probably could have hit Jefferson. We were thoroughly prepared; I was carrying 5 liters of water and gatorade, 2000 calories of trail mix, about 1500 of bars (Snickers, powerbar), 2 turkey sandwiches, an extra windbreaker, extra pair of ski pants, gloves, hat, goggles, matches, flashlights, poncho, first aid kit, rope, knife, compass, map, extra socks, and a camera tripod. My pack weighed probably about 25 pounds, and my gear was compact enough that I wore my usual backpack (as opposed to my 4800 cubic inch hiking backpack).

The two pieces of gear which would have been useful to bring were sunscreen (I burned my neck, face, and ankles) and water purification tablets. Lori didn't bring quite as much fluid, so we had essentially exhausted our water by the time we reached the parking lot. I think five liters per person would have given us enough to make it through a night if we got stuck on the mountain.

Overall, it was a glorious trip (if difficult on the joints), had good strength training, and was lots of fun. We climbed the second tallest mountain in NH and collected two 5000 foot peaks (my first on the East Coast).

I drank 40 oz of coke on the way up and back staying awake. I drove the full way up at 3:30 AM while Lori snoozed, and I assessed that I could not drive safely on the way back, so I slept for about 80 minutes while Lori drove. We then switched and I finished the journey. The total expedition took about 20 hours (3 AM to 11 PM).

C • Impressive. 2

For lack of an obviously better forum for these comments, I will here post my responses to an ongoing discussion about the US Team Training Camp in Harriman, NY the weekend before the Hudson Highlander.

The central question in the discussion is who should be allowed to train. Clearly many US team resources (USOF money allocated to the US team) are being spent putting on this camp, like the coach's salary and acquisition of maps (I think that actually might be free).

There is much merit in a team-exclusive training camp (consider what a fiasco a US Olympic Swimming open training camp would be, where any kid who could float could show up). It allows the team to focus, possibly discuss things amongst each other, receive individual attention from Mike Waddington and the French guests, and generally concentrate on preparing for WOC. There also may be limited resources - like the housing the HVO families have graciously offered, maps, the number of people we can allot without requiring a permit, and so on (though it seems we could apply for a permit... dunno).

However, it seems that the orienteering community (and especially that component willing to overcome the energy barrier to traveling to this event) is fairly small. Most of the events of the training camp do not have obvious limitations - if you set a course or an exercise, other people visiting those controls don't detract from the US Team's use of that exercise. If Mike and the French guys want to focus on the US team, non-team members can stay out of their way or listen to the discussion without receiving explicit individual attention. Moreover, since many aspiring US team members (who are neither on the team now nor juniors) may be on the US team in the future, it seems that there is a reasonable interest in improving their skills now.

I think there are three reasonable size constraints:
- Only US Team members and US Junior team members are allowed to attend. While constraining, I think this is reasonable - there are certain privileges that come with being a US Team member, and first access to training resources seems logical. It does seem to have some holes (imagine if a Junior team member last year turned 21 but had not yet made the C Standing team).

- US Team/Junior team members may attend and some small number of non-team members. This could be decided on first come, first serve basis, by invite (e.g. invite the top k elites), or by some combination (some threshold of skill + first come).

- Open to the orienteering community.

A train of discussion I vehemently oppose is that non-US team members have to pay some sort of fee ($20 per day and $50 per day were discussed) and to make the camp a US team fundraiser. I applaud the zeal of those trying to raise funds for the US Team, but improving the quality of the elites and raising funds are orthogonal goals here. Consider that many aspiring members are students, and even a nominal fee is burdensome. Consider that even traveling to the camp can be prohibitively expensive. Finally, (and in my mind, most damning of all) the implied exclusion of non team members (or more precisely, inclusion if and only if you give money to the US team apparatus) is destructive to the community of elite members in the US (elite := those members trying to improve to be able to compete on the world level) and counterproductive to the goal of raising the competitive level in the US.

As Boris said in his response on the e-mail thread to this line of thinking:

If this is the kind of event that draws people who are off the team, but improving, and gets them to train harder and better, than the benefit to the team is much greater than the 50 bucks a day we would get off some of them. I am thinking here of people such as Alex Jospe or Brendan Shields, who are motivated and are steadily improving as orienteers and starting to push those who are on the team.

Disclaimer: I don't have a problem with non-team members having to pay some fee for materials (maps, etc). I presume there exists some USOF funding from the "US Team" category, which logically should be used explicitly for the US Team. There exists a semantic difference for cost of attendance and mandatory donation to the US Team fund.

It may be that I cannot attend (since apparently because of a lack of permit, they are constraining the camp to six non-team members), but were they to implement the required US Team donation, I think I would eschew attending and start organizing a training camp for the spring done in the manner I felt best embodied the goals of the US elite training program (or even more broadly - to anyone who wanted to get better at orienteering). I have to suppose that the US Team Training Camp with its vast resources and coaching would be superior to a camp run by one or two of the participants in the US Team Training Camp, but I'm happy learning from Ross and Boris at club training camps if the US Team is unwilling to be inclusive a priori.

C • Good thoughts 6

Need to do training besides commuting... slow week.

CSU Street-O in Cambridge set by Lori. I was trying to push hard throughout the run, though my legs felt a bit tired and achy from the weekend. I'm disappointed that my pace was as slow as it was; I will have to push harder in the future. I imagine that I had a few minutes of hesitation and sluggishness, but 7 minutes per mile seems like the slowest reasonable target for a good effort (Nate Lyons practically walks at 7 min/mile).

Andy Donaldson and Lori were in attendance; Brendan apparently ran the course earlier than the rest of us. I passed Lori twice; she skipped ahead. Andy, Lori and I hung out a bit afterward.

I'm not displeased with this run, but I hope to do better in the future.