Training Log Archive: iansmith

"It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one's own body." - 1984

After some deliberation, I have concluded that I am unhappy.

C • delegate 10

Quickroute

Jagge very kindly designed an exercise on Blue Mountain with contours only - form lines and dot knolls had been deleted - and an area in front of each control blanked out. The idea was to navigate with contours alone and then pinpoint the feature based on the terrain behind it. It was an extension of an exercise I have seem where you broaden the control (like Thierry's simplification) to make it easier to find at full speed.

Apparently I rely heavily on the information in front of the control, because I was off by a reentrant at 1, had some difficulty at 5 (largely due to the big hill south of the line from 5-6 not existing on the map), and self-destructed at 12. It was an interesting exercise - I certainly enjoyed the contour only part, but I found the control broadening very challenging. I will have to attempt similar exercises another time, preferably with streamers.

Dissatisfied with my performance at 12, I ran out past 1 to reattack and figured out what I had done wrong.

Quickroute. We reran the 2002 Billygoat. I skipped control 16. Course distance: 11.2 km.

One area of my orienteering I want to particularly develop is long races. I had been looking forward to the rerun of the Billygoat for over a week, and I rested my legs on Wednesday and Thursday, both because I was concerned I had injured myself and to be fresh for the Billygoat. Sergei and Greg graciously hung streamers in the morning, which substantially improved our experience. We left Neil's sluggishly after our morning training, and Neil, Anna, Ali, Brendan and I mass-started at about 3 PM. I decided early to run aggressively and exploded out of the start to the front of the pack. I decided to get creative, and didn't execute my route to 1 very well. I saw Brendan approaching as I tagged the streamer.

I was in the lead for the entire race; Brendan and Ali were perhaps 0:15 - 1:00 behind me for the first three controls, then Brendan fell back. I was intermittently in sight of Ali for four and five, and I lost her busting up the hill to six. I took a somewhat suboptimal route to 7 and was sluggish climbing the hill, and we caught sight of each other converging on the control. I was perhaps 0:20-0:30 ahead of her at 7, and I ran hard on the downhill into 8 and exited quickly to try to lose her. I made a 1 minute error to 10, and she apparently saw me at the circle, but we didn't see each after that until the end of the course.

The race was exhilarating. My heart rate was above 180 for the first thirty minutes, and didn't start to fall off substantially until 54 minutes in. I reached 11 at about 4:00, and the sun was setting. Since I felt confident I could navigate back even in the dark, I pressed on, and finishing before it grew completely dark was my main motivation. I didn't realize Ali was still running behind me, though I didn't have much stamina left in reserve. The last loop had about 4.7 km of running, but with the skip at 16, 15 to the finish was essentially all trail running.

While I started faster than I probably should have, I strong physically for most of the run. It would have been helpful to have water during the course and more light, but the forest was very runnable. I'm disappointed I didn't have more stamina to sustain an hr of 180 for longer, and that my performance climbing hills was so deplorable. My legs felt fantastic despite my concerns, and I'm optimistic that I will be able to build on my performance. The mass start was great fun, and having Ali appear at various times on the course was tremendously motivating. Had I run this time in 2002, I would have finished in sixth, eight minutes behind ken.

C • Nice 4

- Splits

Recorded a HR of 51 min^-1 while sitting at my desk. I don't usually have a heart rate that low; perhaps my fitness is improving. My body feels surprisingly good right now, though I am well aware of how quickly that can change. I have resumed my calcium + vitamin D3 supplements.

Plan for the week:
- Tuesday: 50-60 minute easy run with some 85-90 sec 400 meter track laps for speed calibration
- Wednesday: rest or 25-30 minute easy run
- Thursday: 3k. My old mile PR is 5:20; 3k PR is 11:13. I'm hoping to run sub 10:45, but no speedwork recently suggests 11:00 would be good.
- Friday: Billygoat and Blue Mountain Training
- Saturday: Harriman training
- Sunday: Harold Parker local meet

C • nice looking week. 2

C • Happy Thanksgiving! 2

Easy run around the streets of Cambridge. It was cold and windy, so I avoided the river. In a break with my typical pattern, motivated by hunger, I stopped for a burrito immediately before my run. My lower legs started hurting near the end of the run, and I stopped to stretch my calves. Based on the sensations in my leg, I eschewed running 400s tonight. My right achilles (?) in particular is tight and discomforted.

I will take a rest day tomorrow in anticipation of a tough few days ahead.

The 2011 Blue Hills Traverse is done, and the event was largely a success. The weather was fantastic - even warm, with a high temperature of 66 F and an average of 58; the average wind speed was 15 mph.

I designed the course with the intent of making it differ from last year's course. My objective last year was to minimize time spent on trails; I wanted the optimal route to be through the woods. The density of trails in the Blue Hills puts a soft upper bound on the length of a leg given the trail minimization criterion, so the distribution of leg lengths was very narrow. While I was happy with my design, I was disappointed to find that there was very little route choice on the course; the route gadget data and glancing at people's gps tracks revealed that everyone generally took the same routes. (E.g. Neil's route; basically straight on every leg. Boring.)

So, I decided to expand the leg length distribution and incorporate more route choice, even at the expense of trail running. My assessment is that the result is a much more interesting course, with considerably more variety. While there is more unavoidable trail running than I would have liked (especially on the competitors' loop, which I think is silly), there are many more possibilities. Controls 8, 10 and 15 were the most interesting choices, with minor decisions at 2, 9, 22, and 24. While there exist possible Traverses that are more interesting, I'm satisfied with my effort. I interspersed control pick-esque technical sections with the longer legs, and I experimented with loops.

Leg length distributions (lengths are convolved with a gaussian)
2010 vs 2011 - note the cluster of legs from 2010 with mean 450 meters
Comparison of 2010-2011 (Ian) with 2008-2009 (set by Ross)

Year	Avg Leg Length	Stdev of Leg Lengths
2011	513 m	368 m
2010	483	201
2009	723	478
2008	571	315

I began planning the course in earnest in October - later than I had intended, primarily due to the stresses of the CSU A-meet. I designed three drafts for each map (west and east). While the west drafts used similar areas of the map, the east designs were widely varied. I spent a few days vetting in November, and based on that discarded some of my drafts and refined the legs and control locations further. Alex Jospe kindly agreed to design the recreational courses, so I was able to focus entirely on the Traverse. I solicited Ross and Neil for course critiques, and Jeff made some changes (including the addition of the 'competitors loop' - controls 12 and 13).

The course was basically completed on Friday 11 Nov - later than I had hoped, but with some margin for error. Jeff and I discussed a few other modifications, and I sent the final courses to Ed on Tuesday. He sent the data to the printers the next day, and we picked up the maps on Friday.

My familiarity with the Blue Hills after setting the event last year greatly simplified the work this year. While I would have preferred to be done at least two weeks in advance, everything was prepared with time to spare. Jeff and I set the Traverse controls on Saturday afternoon, which had all been streamered in the preceding weeks. I had hoped to run the Traverse early on Sunday to wake up controls and experience the course, but I needed to set a few rec controls and be at Houghton's Pond at 9 AM to deliver the cache of equipment I was carrying. With a little more foresight, it would have been achievable.

I haven't been very consistent about logging this, but I suppose inconsistent measurements are more informative than none at all. Read about cases - accusative and dative in particular. Currently on Level 1, Unit 2, Lesson 2.

While I had planned to take a rest day, I felt restless, so I went out on an easy recovery run this evening. Something in my lower right calf - possibly the Achilles tendon - hurt yesterday, though I don't recall any trauma. It still feels tight as I rotate my ankle, but it felt fine while I was running. The temperature was 5 C, and I ran in long sleeves and shorts.

I pondered social contracts as I ran in silence, as I have completed all the audiobooks I was reading. I considered the problem of social contracts that interact - instances of three or more people entering into a contract. My proposition is that all interactions can be modeled as contracts between two parties - two individuals, or an individual and a group entity (e.g. an individual and society). Conflicting social contracts resolve almost trivially; one contract must supercede another, and that hierarchy must be codified. Coupled social contracts are somewhat more complicated, but I still think pairwise modeling is possible - sort of an Ising model of society.

Event: NEOC: Blue Hills Traverse
 

Setting the remaining 8 recreational course controls from the set I allocated to myself on Saturday.

Waking and verifying Traverse controls 12-14.

After streamering the walk to the start, I woke and verified Traverse controls 1-3. It is delightful to run without carrying a bunch of stands.

Hauling four gallons of water and cups to Traverse control 8.

Setting five rec white controls.

After starting the Traverse runners, I drove to a road crossing and ran into coach, who was doing the same. We saw Ali run by in the lead, with Dancho about a minute behind and Andrew in third. Dancho shouted to us as he passed that "Ali was too fast!"

I then drove to Houghton's Pond and visited controls 15-26, waking them up and confirming their presence - that they were in the right spot and had not been disturbed overnight. I moved three flags a short distance (< 3m) to make them more visible, and probably should have moved the deviously hung 26. I had given Ali my garmin for the race, so I ran without data. The leg to 21 was very hard, though I knew this, as I had run it twice before.

C • Great looking course! 3

Calm mornings with a hot mug of tea invite reflection, and I find my thoughts wandering at length this morning.

1. While I haven't made up my mind, I am considering stepping down from the NEOC Board of Directors when my term expires in June. I have accomplished some of my policy goals, but the Board functions as an oversight body. I believe I can accomplish much more personally and as a club member if I focus on the VP Events role. I'm even looking towards stepping down from that after another year or two, but there isn't infrastructure and training in place to compensate for a sudden change in leadership. This deadline will make more acutely aware of my policy goals and what I mean to accomplish before I'm done.
2. What I really need as VP Events is a second person just like me - to whom I could confidently delegate any number of tasks. The problem with delegation is that it rapidly increases communication costs. I think there is a lot of advantage to centralizing much of the responsibility - e.g. for permit applications, scheduling plans, insurance data, and general awareness of the club machine. With a second copy of myself, the workload for each of us would become manageable. It's unlikely that a club member would be amenable to investing fully in the role right now, and I'm not good at recruiting. I will start training a replacement, and figuring out the optimal way to distributing the tasks among many rather than one or two. For the "Events department", I really think a group of three superstars is preferable to decentralizing the responsibility among ten or twenty.
3. It turns out that I have difficulty sleeping past about 8:30 or 9 in my new apartment; the windows let in much sunlight to my bedroom. In general, this is good - it's harder to oversleep, which is a cause of difficulty. Conversely, this requires me to be more disciplined about when I go to bed, because otherwise I will just break down as my sleep deficit increases without the relief valve of oversleeping. This is a good exercise.
4. The military industrial complex is a fascinating system that has existed in this country for more than sixty years. While there has been considerable effort to make the system more efficient - e.g. the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer consolidates five or six warship classes from thirty or forty years ago; the F-35 in principle provides a single solution to the multi-role fighter needs of the armed services - the military system is constrained to a minimum size by a vast set of requirements, including some cyclical requirements. One of the reasons stated in this NPR article for avoiding cutting weapons programs is that it's costly to restart them, and in the absence of a continuous flow of cash and acquisitions, industries like nuclear submarine production will be unsustainable and fail. I find this interesting because other capable navies, like the Royal Navy, have instances of classes of specialized weapons systems, like nuclear submarines, in smaller numbers than the US considers unsustainable. I haven't studied the economy of scale problem, but the claim that the defense industry cannot be sustainably shrunk seems spurious. I have long advocated, e.g., that an eleventh supercarrier is unnecessary. The US's eleven supercarriers are more than half of the twenty in the world, and the most powerful and capable.
5. I refuse to live an ordinary life. "You can settle for a less than ordinary life. Or do you feel like you were meant for something better? Something special?" "I dare you to do better."

After getting some work done this morning, including resetting the NEOC e-punch units, updating the codes on the recreational controls, and typing up course notes, I set out to meet Jeff Saeger to set controls. There are 60 total controls distributed among the Traverse and recreational courses, and I took 26. After finishing the Traverse controls, I started on the recreational controls, but decided to retire after setting four in the dark. I have eight to set tomorrow morning, and I need to put out water at two controls and streamer the walk to the start. If I finish everything in time to my satisfaction and am feeling strong, I will run the Traverse - ostensibly to wake up controls and ensure they are all there, but really just because I want to run the Traverse.

I spent considerable time doing what bgallup refers to as "prospecting" - jamming the stand into the ground hoping to find purchase in dirt and not rocks. I usually had to spent at least a minute finding a stable location for the flag. I brought out my brand new pair of X-talons for this outing, primarily because the severe degradation of the 201006 X-talons coupled with the severe rockiness of the Blue Hills hurts my feet. I want to save my Orocs for races, and the new X-talons felt delightful. My shins hurt at the very start of the outing, but after a few minutes of running in the woods, they improved considerably. I may cut back my road mileage in favor of trail running as I ramp up my base during the winter.

I felt a little lonely at the end, wandering through the dark with my pitiful headlamp in search of recreational streamered locations, but I found solace in the tender and thorough embrace of a stand of green briar at the bottom of a rocky hill.

C • Burnout 5

Eight minute core + supplemental exercises. My emphasis today was on obliques.
Leg lifts, cherry pickers, 2x oblique situps, kayakers, plank, kayakers, tuckups; 2x side plank, 2x supermans.