Training Log Archive: iansmith

Event: NEOC: Norwottuck
 

On the Norwottuck Meet
I greatly overextended myself setting the NEOC local meet at Norwottuck this weekend. A combination of oversight and poor planning resulted in several critical errors, and the worst episode of my brief orienteering organizational career. The fault is my own, and I am sorry to everyone who suffered from my errors. It is fortunate that some of you were able to escape unscathed and have a pleasant session.

The Plan
Particularly since my injuries, I have focused more of my efforts on setting meets. Norwottuck marked the fifth meet of 2011 at which I designed all the courses. I have a vision for what NEOC can become and grand ambitions as the Events VP, and I am willing to shoulder considerable burden to achieve those objectives. Norwottuck offered an opportunity to experiment with route choice - a problem I have not studied in great detail, and to set a blue course. Blue isn't necessary for local meets - a point Alex emphasized to me in September when I asked for her feedback on drafts. I am disappointed that more meets don't have a blue course, but a red course is often sufficient. I found all the advanced courses very hard to make interesting without making them too long; Norwottuck's odd start location is sufficiently remote that much distance is consumed even getting to the nearest feasible control sites.

Setting all controls the morning of the event is a monumental task, especially given the need to set up registration, put out signs, set water, and so on. I learned at Rocky Woods that it is crucial to check control sites before finalizing courses; on many maps in New England, features which might seem obvious at first glance are untenable in practice. I like to retain creative control of course design, which necessitates visiting all sites personally. In practice, this isn't possible, especially at a site as remote as Norwottuck, which is difficult to visit far in advance of the meet. While I did secure considerable volunteer assistance (a big improvement over past events), I was reluctant to ask someone to join me for four or more hours of course setting and revising, and that irrevocably handicapped me.

What went well

• A dedicated and merry bunch of meet-day volunteers ran the meet smoothly. Pete Lane and Jim Paschetto worked the entire day at registration and results. Michelle Faucher, her son Garrett and friend Nolan, Ali Crocker, Richard Powers, and Pete worked registration. Dean Sturtevant and Phil Bricker offered instruction to beginners. Peter Gagarin and Alex Jospe corrected a disastrous error on the white course, set beginner and intermediate controls, and put out signs. Bill Binnette picked up the white course.
• Apart from a lack of a sign displaying course lengths, I procured all the equipment I needed. Unfortunately, it required three separate trips in Boston to get it all, and delayed my arrival in Amherst on Friday.
• The weather was great, and all the attendees, including a platoon of marauding girl scouts, were pleasant and enthusiastic. They were also tolerant when I erred.

Errors

• My approach to event directing failed miserably. I should have asked for help from the eager and willing Amherst crowd, either to vet sites far in advance of the meet or to assist me with control setting and course updates on Saturday. Even a single person to vet and revise white, yellow, and orange would have fixed many of the problems I created.
• I pulled off a solid set of courses at Mt. Tom single-handedly on June 12 in an effort made Herculean by unnecessary oversights. Norwottuck is a much larger problem than Mt. Tom, especially with its size, climb, lower map quality, and a blue course. In short, I set a much greater hurdle to overcome at Norwottuck than at Mt. Tom.
• Exacerbated by delays due to my poor course/control planning, I had an adventure Saturday night getting maps printed that required driving to Hartford. While I had written the correct description down for control 139 on brown, green, and red (north foot of southern cliff), I transcribed it into purple pen as north foot of north cliff.
• Because I didn't have enough time to visit the orange, yellow, and white courses, the white and yellow were of notably inferior quality, with poor sites. I narrowly avoided sending white and orange runners through a shooting range, with PG correcting me about an hour before the event. I changed two orange control sites, and was only able to get acceptable maps because NEOC brings a printer to events for just that purpose.
• Worst of all, I made the most egregious error that can be made at an orienteering event: I set a control in the wrong place. Green #9 and Blue #10, control 128, was set on an unmapped cliff about 30-40m southwest of the true location. The correct location was already bingo-y, because there were many unmapped cliffs in that neighborhood. I fixed the control at around 12:30 PM, after many people had already been affected and wasted countless minutes hunting for the control. To runners who were affected: I am very sorry for the ordeal I put you through.
• I failed to recruit enough help for control pickup, and had another epic adventure retrieving all the controls with Ali.

Lessons
I am devastated by the magnitude of my failure today. The errant control is an irrevocable problem of the highest degree, and casts the entire event in the worst light. I was exacting verifying the locations of many of the control sites, as my track will attest, but I was in a hurry by the time I set 128, and I was less thorough. An additional 2-3 man hours in course planning and control checking were necessary before map printing, and I squandered too much time on remote blue controls that only a handful of people visited while failing to devote enough attention to WYO (and at least one green control). I failed to recruit sufficient help for the magnitude of the course setting and control pickup projects, and Ali had to bear an excessive burden.

In the future, I will:

• Obtain the assistance of at least one other person for control setting, and advance control site vetting if needed
• Recruit enough volunteers for setting and pickup.
• Avoid a blue course unless I have a second person to help set advanced courses. In general, it is unnecessary, as my courses tend to be demanding, and red is sufficient.
• Be sufficiently well organized to identify any problems well in advance of the meet, and communicate more regularly with my event volunteers.
• Avoid knuckleheaded excessive self-reliance.

C • Dude 15

C • Here's my take on what you ... 15

C • Hubmann Hills 2

After waking up at 6 AM and stopping to buy water for the courses, I set out ten orange and advanced controls.

With reports of a mishung control, I scampered off to investigate. I discovered 128 was hung incorrectly, about 30 meters to the southwest on an unmapped cliff next to a bike trail. I corrected it, though the correct site had some other unmapped cliffs in the vicinity. Epic, irredeemable fail.

Ali and I divided up the northwestern controls; I picked up six orange and advanced controls, all of which I had set in the morning. The garmin gave up; its battery was exhausted.

The final leg of the death march; I picked up the 7 most remote red and blue controls. The course length of the de facto course I ran was 7.5 km, and had a taxing amount of climb.

I cannot say enough about how helpful Ali was today. Apart from trying to chase down a pair of orange runners to prevent them from meeting their doom at the shooting range, she worked registration, won the blue race, and went on three excursions to pick up yellow, orange, and br/gr/red controls. She spent over 8 hours at the meet site, and assisted me with control pickup until about 6 PM. Despite considerable justification, she did not complain once. She even brought me pumpkin bread from breakfast (which was fortunate, as I had only eaten a pop tart up until then).

When we set out to pick up controls, I decided to pack everything up so Jim and Pete could leave. This required I lock Ali's belongings in my car so they weren't stolen, since she had already left. I left a note with my phone number, and carried my phone with me, but I realized shortly after leaving that her phone, keys, and jacket were in my car, and she had no means of calling me or staying warm (temp ~ 50F). The fear that Ali was freezing to death motivated me to haste on my control pick up leg, but she did end up lingering at my car for about fifteen minutes before I returned. Without Ali's help, I would have failed even more catastrophically than I did.

Of course, I should note that she did instigate my participation in a torturous ten minute abs session.

I underestimated how fatigued and dehydrated I was today during the sessions. A short time after leaving the park at around 6:30, I stopped for dinner at a subway, and took a 30 minute nap. After a full dinner and over three liters of fluids, I weighed 180 lbs, 7 lbs below my current steady state weight.

After Ali lulled me into a false sense of security with a hot cup of tea, I was drawn into 10 minute abs + 2 minute side plank + 2 minute back session. That is, Ali did her usual abs session while I desperately flailed along trying to keep up.

The exercises were V-ups, plank, cherry pickers, leg lifts, tuck-ups, kayakers, sit-ups, bicycle kicks, and 2x some exotic oblique situp. We finished with side plank and supermans. Many thanks to Ali for prodding me into the exercise, as I was unlikely to do it on my own. I preceded the session with 25 tuck-ups, and concluded it with 32 pushups.

Control setting session #1; I set the most remote advanced controls, as I figured they were the most difficult. I wasted the first thirty minutes on a control site I eventually scrapped. I lugged a bag of stands around, and made a number of modifications to the courses. At one point, I set the bag down to examine the vicinity of a control unencumbered, and failed to find the bag when I returned. I had forgotten which feature I set it next to, but after a few minutes of confusion, I came upon it.

Setting the southwestern six advanced controls, including (mis-setting) the infamous 128.

Easy run around the Charles River. I ran 4x45s reps in the middle of the run and generally felt good. The temperature, 15C, was equal to the dew point, and my glasses fogged up quickly. I had forgotten my mp3 player in a Zipcar I used recently, so I ran in silence and reflected.

As I neared the Weeks Bridge, I encountered a group of 7-8 people who appeared to be wearing formal wear and were probably inebriated to varying degrees. It's odd enough to find a runner at midnight (though I saw at least one other), but a party on the Charles seemed more bizarre. As I passed, one of the women asked why I was running, and one of the men heckled me, exhorting me to "sprint; run faster or I would lose the race." Both spoke in derisive tones, and I was taken aback. I have encountered cliche remarks like "Run, Forest, Run," but seldom have I met such hostility. I suspect they were simply surprised, and given their state, belligerent only to an identity-less apparition. I figured that replying would not accomplish anything, so I stayed silent. I think the best answer I could have given the woman was that I enjoy running, and that since there was no answer that I could give that would satisfy her, it would suffice to note that I run because I choose to. There was no valid response to the man, perhaps who was trying to impress the woman with his machismo.

Such people only make me want to train harder.

Listen people, wherever you are,
please attend to these words:
Will your youth last forever?
Will your white hair turn black again?
Life speeds by like a dream,
why not fill each minute with joy?

me: So, when will you announce your candidacy for the OUSA board?
Ken: after hell freezes over

Trail running in Lynn Woods and taking pictures of a few control sites to send to Boris. Time and distance a bit of a guess, since I stopped periodically.

Three more courses. Someone from Canada with user name "the purity plum" is crushing me. Nemesis acquired.

Easy run around the river accompanied by The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I am listening to the section around May-June 1941 and the start of operation Barbarossa. It's interesting to think that a sudden coup d'etat in Yugoslavia may have won the war by delaying the start of operations against the USSR. Also, the T-34 rules. I knew much about Barbarossa already; what I had not known before was the breakdown and apparent defection of Rudolph Hess.

Legs felt good, apart from some minor soreness. I felt discomfort in my left knee near the end of the run, but it was sporadic. Heart rate data spikes in the middle appear to be anomalies; I do not recall such obvious heart trouble.

Finished with the usual stretching and 2x25 tuckups.

Orocs arrived in the mail today. DVOA be warned: I have been armed by the Lady of the Lake.

I have also learned that it is unwise to wax existential when hungry, tired, weary from activity, and unshowered.

C • How does one 'wax existentially'? 16

I ran three courses, one of which was extremely technical. I do poorly in poor visibility environments, where there is significantly less data to corroborate your route. I will practice this; Night-O is an excellent way of simulating this on any terrain.