Training Log Archive: iansmith

Event: Hudson Highlander
 

Hudson Lowlander. Analysis to come; not a good run.

Lowlander - Splits

The final event of the training camp on Saturday afternoon was the 1993 WOC Short final, which was won by Petter Thoresen of Norway in 2234.

I had a good race; while the course was less technical than the modern Middle Distance, it still had some formidable challenges. I had excellent flow and moved faster than usual; the top North Americans finished in the 32-34 minute range, and I had an improbable 5 minute error at the Go control largely due to map discrepancies. The biggest difficulty I have is consistency; at virtually all the courses we ran at Harriman, I had a few controls that I massively erred on. I think my technical orienteering is weak enough that I make ten to twenty second errors easily and five minute errors with unacceptable frequency.

On the short course, I blew up at controls 4 and 14. On control four, I intended to attack via a saddle just right of the line, but I got pushed around the right hill and went right of some cliffs. I got confused and lost contact as I passed the cliffs, and while I had a general idea of where the control was relative to my position, it was essentially lucky that I stumbled upon the control while moving in that direction. On control 14, discrepancies in the vegetation and trails confused me; what should had been a 1 minute run became a six minute search. I should have inferred from the green vegetation that I was in the wrong spot, but Sam made the same error which assuages my grief.

Had I not erred at the go control, I would have had a very respectable 41 minute run. Ross, who started 4 minutes after me, came into sight just as I punched control 4, and I managed to stay ahead of him until control 7.

Splits:
1. 152
2. 251
3. 556 (right of the swamp, attack from the reentrant with the big boulder)
4. 512
5. 48
6. 223
7. 111
8. 421
9. 407
10. 146
11. 152
12. 350
13. 319
14. 553
F 112

The morning exercise was a two person relay designed by Tero (the idea of which I hope to replicate). There existed three short 1-2 km legs, and each relay team ran some permutation of those three legs. The second runner would run exactly the same leg as the first runner, and they would alternate through the three legs. The fourth and final leg was a short, 4 control 800 meter course that again both runners on a team would run successively. I was teamed with Alex, who continued making friends with Harriman.

Peter posted the results here.

Map. We had a solid warm up, and I was really pumped for the relays. I stayed warm before my first leg, but I had reservations about stamina, so I was largely stationary in the subsequent gaps. My first leg was leg B - controls 5-9. I attacked controls 5 and 6 solidly. On control 7, I attacked right of the line via a set of small hills, then got confused after I went over a saddle into the green. I stumbled on control 7 somewhat luckily. Control 8 was fine, but I was too high and left on control 9, where I lost about a minute.

My second leg, controls 10-14, was the most disastrous; I lost about three minutes looking in the circle for control 10. I attacked via the big boulder just inside the circle, but I didn't see the flag on the cliff I expected. I wandered around a bit looking; Andrew Childs arrived and started his own search, and eventually led me to the flag. I was very sluggish moving to control 14.

My third leg was ok; I didn't have a great route to control 3. I went right of the line to the south of the spur with the cliffs, over the hill east of 7, and up the reentrant to the control. My route past the cliffs at the start of the leg left much to be desired. I also lost about twenty seconds on control 4.

I ran the final leg without a break, and I did reasonably well. My biggest problem was on control 2, where I hit the elongated knoll just south of the control and decided to push through the green rather than backing out and going around.

Splits:
(First leg: 1338)
5. 131
6. 103
7. 421
8. 31
9. 146
F. 426

(Second leg: 1553)
10. 556
11. 256
12. 120
13. 145
14. 300
F. 100

(Third leg: 1605)
1. 135
2. 115
3. 727
4. 152
F. 355

(Final leg: reported as 705, but my splits read 634)
1. 107
2. 254
3. 101
4. 111
F. 21

Harriman 2-man relay - Splits

On the afternoon of the second day of the Harriman training camp, we ran the Middle Distance course from the 2003 US Team Trials; the winning time was Brian May's 31:30. I was fatigued from an exhausting morning, rainy weather, and insufficient sleep during the week. I was not moving very fast in general, but I did have good flow in the second half of the race.

We self started; I started a few minutes ahead of Andrew Childs and Emily Kemp, both of whom are both faster and more technically sound than I. I got into the map fairly well, and had only minor difficulties on controls 1-5. On control 6, I had a major error and lost about five minutes when I made a nontrivial parallel error; Alex Jospe ran past me and told me I was in the wrong spot just as I was moving to relocate. I then had a very solid race on the last 8 controls with good route choice and flow; I was especially proud of how I handled control 11 by attacking through a prominent reentrant system to the left of the line.

I talked with French team member Francois Gonon on the way back from the finish. He some interesting commentary; foremost, he noted that contours are by far the most important and reliable feature on a map, particularly with the advent of Lidar. With n mappers on a region, you will get ten different maps, but the brown lines should be invariant. The complexity of maps is growing with time, making it all the more difficult to read the contours.

I really enjoyed interacting with the French team in general, and François in particular; despite the vast disparity in our abilities, he was amicable and instructive.

Splits:
1. 254 overshot the control (30 seconds)
2. 239
3. 143
4. 604
5. 256
6. 944 overshot, parallel error (5 minutes)
7. 946 route to the right along the stream, up the reentrant, over the hill
8. 159
9. 505 slow through the green
10. 134 attacked too high (20 seconds)
11. 837
12. 203
13. 319 too high; hit the narrow cliff corridor and had to backtrack (1 minute)
14. 233
F. 39

C • Contours invariant? 4

Harriman morning exercises, including a partner drill and a middle distance course. I ran the partner exercise with Emily, which was a lot of fun. She is extremely fast, and it's informative to get a sense of how good people more skilled than I are.

The Middle Distance course was not particularly successful for me, though I took it as a training exercise and tried to focus on reading the map.

Afternoon exercises at the Harriman training camp, set by Eddie Bergeron. The first exercise was a window-O, requiring precise compass work. I was passed by Thierry Gueorgiou during this exercise, which was really cool. His kinetics look effortless, but he covers ground really quickly.

The second exercise was a control picking course, at which I did better comparatively. My compass skills are lacking.

On the evening of the first day, motivated by a spontaneous suggestion by John Fredrickson, a large contingent of our posse went bowling, including Linda Kohn, Peter Gagarin, John Fredrickson, the four French guys, Andrew Childs, Emily Kemp, Hannah Burgess, Brendan Shields, Alex Jospe, and myself.

There was generally good cheer all around; we nominally divided into three teams (since we were assigned three lanes) and played two games. François Ganon turns out to lack proficiency in bowling. Emily is too sweet to attack the pins with the requisite force. Andrew Childs posted the high score of the nine with a 187 and only two open frames.

My scores were:
70 4/ 70 72 33 7/ 80 81 90 81 = 99
90 90 13 70 X X 70 90 X X8/ = 137

I was using a 14 lb ball for the first 14 frames; I switched to a 16 lb ball for the last six remarkably successful frames. The weight was near the maximum I could control; any more, and I would have slid around during my release. Counterintuitively, I bowled far better.

For what it's worth, I have finally found something at which I am better than Emily. Tero's scores were 99 and 85.

CSU Training Group Street-O in Newton, MA by Alex Jospe.

While waiting around in my office, I did some strength training. I was not clad appropriately or well equipped, so I kept it brief.

32 pushups
1 minute wall sit
20 v-sits
20 jumpies
45 seconds front plank
5 burpies (total pansy)
25 calf raises (both legs simultaneously)

Review of 2009 Boulderdash:

I have only run one other 2-day classic meet - the NEOC 2008 October Mt. Tom A-meet. I have been improving, as the results will show. Unfortunately, it's difficult to strictly compare the Mt. Tom meet because the conditions were different. In particular, Mt. Tom has much more climb and had fewer linear features (and legs along linear features). Both Eddie and Ross are top runners who are fairly consistent in their results who were at both meets. I think Ross has measurably improved in the past year, but the assumption that their results are constant is approximately good.

The ratio of my time to the average of Ross's and Eddie's times for the four races:

Heart and Troll Day One	1.619
Heart and Troll Day Two	1.527
Boulderdash Day One	1.284
Boulderdash Day Two	1.327