Training Log Archive: W

I'm back. Time to catch up on a month of back-logging and ranting about this and that. And ho boy do I have a lot to rant about.

I'll get there eventually.

C • Ranting... 3

So, in the effort of catching up, I've decided to work backwards for a while! Less.... introspection? Anyway, as usual in my NZ solo life, the first thing I do is hunt for a place to run. And, found a relatively pleasant place, at Lake McLaren just south and west of Tauranga. A perfectly pleasant jog along a lake and a little bit of trail running.

And guess what was afterwards? More swimming holes!

Morning run! This one was on the hostel wall, and it advertised as having a swimming hole afterwards! The trail was actually kind of overgrown, clearly not a lot of people go here all that often. At times it wasn't entirely clear where it went next, and I was covered in all sorts of flora debris when I finished. And then unfortunately, when I got back, there was this very, very large group of school kids heading to the swimming hole. I kind of stalked them for a while, and then the majority of them appeared to disappear and I was all by myself! Score!

WRE event! Sprint the Bay! Everyone who was staying was pretty excited for this, as was I. In short, I really did not have a good race, I probably wasn't really running as hard as I should be, nor was I focused very well, so I didn't get the kind of points I really would have liked.

However...

*INCOMING RANT!*

http://www.sprintthebay.org/results/2013/maps/Stag...

There was two, no, three things that irritated me about this race. One, I did not make good plans. I was hurrying, and quite frequently made bad choices because I thought I could plan on the fly. I also stopped focusing at times which made me either lose contact or really just forget the control site.

Two, I, and other people, kind of felt like there was a few tricky tricks that were kind of bad form. If this were not a world ranking event, perhaps I'd be less annoyed. Between 12-13, there was an uncrossable fence. Except for one tiny sliver right beside the control which was deemed crossable. It was the same height as the fence around it, but there were three stairs that made the inside part slightly less high. If you saw that little tiny bit, you could go there and attempt to climb the fence (which was probably about double the height of Carol), or you'd go around, because you assume the whole thing is uncrossable.

I don't know, the Kiwis had their national championships on this map last year so I assume they expected that on that map, but it totally burned me, and burned me on the first map between 3 and 4, where right at the end of the fence there is a small sliver between olive green and uncrossable fence where you could cross. I went and looked at it and.... yeah. I don't really have a solution to this except for making the whole thing uncrossable, or making the symbol more visible? Maybe its just not a WRE appropriate map, then? Maybe I should just focus better and notice these things.

And that brings me to third. As I was botching 3-4 because I didn't see the passable fence, I was getting reeled in by the guy who started behind me. He eventually caught me at 5 and we were together at 6. Admittedly my navigation was more hurried and less attentive as I wanted to hang with him. We went through the courtyard, down some stairs, and then... where were we? All that was in front of us was a hedge. I was confused. Apparently he was not, because he paused, and then went straight through a small gap between the hedges.

I kind of felt like I wanted to figure out where I was first. I relocated, looked up, and realized that the hedges he went through, which, albeit provided a perfect and short line to the control, was totally olive green. There was no way directly through, you had to go around. In short, he cheated. I'm not going to say it was intentional or not, since I was very close to going straight through it without realizing it afterwards. I know I shouldn't let other people affect me, but I admit I kind of had it on my mind the rest of the race.

Afterwards, I was a little conflicted. I didn't know the guy, so I couldn't really just confront him. Again, if it were any other stage, or non world-level-ish event, I wouldn't care too much. But this is still a WRE, and I thought maybe in this case he'd look over his course, realize he cheated, and maybe bring it up. I am certain he must, must know where he went, show me an elite orienteer that doesn't quickly go through their course and analyze where they went? He had to know afterwards what he did. But what should he do? Admit it? DSQ himself? Keep his mouth shout? If you don't get caught by an official, are you obligated to admit it? It wouldn't happen in any other sport I am aware of. Perhaps I'm stuck in that "oh well, orienteers are different from other athletes and always play fair" mentality. Should I have done something? Protesting would make me look jerk sore loser.

But, what about if he also won the race?

Statute of limitations.

After the suffer fest of yesterday, it was definitely day off. At the beach! Big waves! Cold ocean! Wind!

Okay! Time for the prologue! This is actually my first go at this, so despite my earlier suckage, I was pretty raring to go for this one. You knew it was going to be relatively easy, and physically very difficult.

It was pair starts, and I was with a Finn, who absolutely blasted off the start. In every sport, I'm still somewhat baffled by the 'go really really hard' off the start mentality. Anyway, he put 10 metres on me, which I immediately switched on him by the common number 1, since he took route stupid and I took route planning. After that, I was fully alone on the first loop, which was the longer one. I generally took strong, though somewhat safe routes for the first part. No major problems, though several pauses as I was unsure which of the 3,000 rentrants it was going to be on. Even here, I was really starting to appreciate the use of the magnifier.

The other loop, was a bit disappointing as I missed the one after the hub, when I was a bit too high and overshot to the next re-entrant. That was a 45 second loss, which would have jumped me another 5 places. Then it was time for the climb, where the last 5-6 controls were almost exclusively uphill. At this point there was enough people around and you knew there was no forking that you just needed to spot a guy ahead, make sure you agreed with where he was going, and hammer (but not too much). I was caught by Rost, who start 2 minutes behind, and I did my darndest to hang with him, which worked out for a while, but then he managed to put another 50 seconds in those last few controls.

Maybe I was mentally holding back because I knew there was another race? I would have really liked to try to accelerate right on to his tail, but it definitely was not happening.

Finished 45th, 4:52 back, which was a disappointing sight given how well I thought I performed.

Okay, now its time for the chase. As I mentioned, I was not overly enchanted with my prologue result, but I was pleased to be in the mix with someone.

The start went off like a rocket, everyone was hammering to get in with other people, which resulted in a lot of people running aimlessly. I tried very hard to keep focus and run my own route, which totally paid off to 1, and I gained about 5 spots right away. #2 was downhill, so I aimed to attack it with some overspeed, which brought me back down to earth as I stupidly tried to read the contours when I should've stuck to identifying the yellow and white. At this point Julian was starting to pull up to a group of probably 10 that had formed, as we were all likely running out of our comfort zone.

Julian being superior to us all, was the pace setter and basically the only navigating for quite sometime, as the rest of struggled to hang with him.

I think in the long run of the entire course, had I let them all go, I would have ultimately beaten half of them at the finish, but I wanted to test myself again Julian, so I hung right on his tail for almost.... 10 minutes? Weak. After that the climbing really set in and the wheels came off in a big way. The group completely strung out into uniform distances apart, and unless you were a faster runner there was really no gaining because the route choices were obvious and navigation easy. The only upside came at the long uphill leg to the water station where I decided that chasing the group in front wasn't doing anything and tried to go a route that looked like slightly less climb. I suspect it was and I gained two more places.

I'm told as I ran past the spectator area I was looking pretty.... awful. And I felt awful, really awful. But I actually kept it together and pulled a few kiwis around the last few controls of the course, only to have be in a group coming up to the second to last control, and then the last control. It might've been a sprint for like... 46th place, but I missed the punch, then punched again and it didn't beep, so I had to come to a stop and backpedal a little, and at that point my energy was not going to pull me back 15 strides to make the pass, so it was a pathetic jog to the line.

I really would have liked it if the race was a bit more technical or I was a bit fitter so I could actually battle it out with a least I slightly higher level of guys. I started ahead of Julian, and less than a minute behind Murray, Simon, Yannick, many legit guys. If I have a good race and they have an average race, I can be in there, I just need that fitness.

Or 10 less pounds.

'twas the day before the World Cup Pursuit. There was a model to do, but there was also an Oceania festival race to do, and I wanted to do both. So we did. First was the Oceania race, which was all sorts of variable stuff, some basic forest, some open, and some weird and surprisingly green riverbed that was oddly tricky. Those creeks that zig and zag in every direction are really tough to figure out sometimes.

Although I ran more at tempo pace, I was still frustrated with my performance around the circle. I'm getting better with my magnifier, but on one control it didn't even help me flow into the control at all, I still made a mistake. I was very, very pleased with my route choice decision on the long leg from 10-11 though. That was a sweet catch, and I won the leg by a minute or so, I think!

Pipped over to the WC model to just confirm what we all knew. This was going to be effing painful, and pretty easy. Wide open terrain with big hills. You should be able to identify exactly where you're going from way off. Just have to man up and get there, post-haste.

Event 2 1 - Splits

'twas a travel day of Hastings to Hawke's Bay, and we stopped by a training-ish workout at some terrain that is anticipated to be very similar to the World Cup. Carol set me a course and Helen gave me some technical advice to work on, which I really tried to execute. Make a plan, take a bearing, head up. Yes, I know Magnus has been preaching 2/3 of those things for many many many years, but I think I really lacked ever have a coherent part 1. I can think of many times where all the bearings in the world wouldn't help me because I didn't have an idea of what I was going to do with that bearing. Seems obvious, I know, but probably a pertinent thought I need to really, really drill into my head.

Overall, these races are going to be technically quite easy, but physically effing hard.

Oceania Long Distance Championships. And boy howdy would this have been long. Had I done it all. I started intending on doing it all. The first 5 controls were in the nice open forest that I enjoyed. And then it got thicker, and I started making mistakes. I think I was trying to go faster than I should have, once again. I suppose I see Norwegians flow by so smoothly and that's what I try to achieve, to not break stride and slow down and focus on what I'm doing, but I don't. This race also really had a pinnacle of lack of attention and focus, which really came to light at number 6. After doing the long long leg and crashing around in the green at number 7 for what seemed like an eternity, I packed it in.

In retrospect that was definitely for the best, since Tom did it in just under 2 hours, and we did technically have a race the next day. Probably would have been bad for WC performance to do this.

Long Champs - 1 - Splits

Despite not making the final, we still got to run the same course as a WRE after the world cup, which partly meant that we knew where a bunch of the controls were.

I realize that this was a WRE and a real race, but it was really hard to want to work very hard when you know this was the extremely unimportant sidenote to the real race. I think I made some strong route choices (though not int the important long leg), but also made a mistake at number 13 where I got confused with the shapes of the roads and overshot where I was trying to go.

Oddly enough, given my lack of effort and mistakes, I'm mildly surprised I got as many WRE points as a did.

Sprint Champs - C1 - Splits

World Cup sprint qualification time. These darn World Cups are arguably harder than WOC given now I have to content with 8 damn swiss instead of just three. On the other hand, there were far fewer Euros to deal with. No Spaniards, for instance.

Generally was pretty smooth for the first 8 or so controls, which was actually the only time when I was cruising in a place that would've gotten me in the final. After that I slowly plummeted into the non qualifying zone. Partly I think due to lack of speed, and partly due to sub-optimal route choices and the occasional hesitations. My winsplits suggests I made 20 seconds of mistakes, and lo and behold, I was almost 20 seconds out of qualifying, but also about 2 minutes behind, and that's not even remotely close to be good enough over a 15 minute race.

I can think of occasions where I could done a better job in planning my route during dead running times. Instead I left my concentration drift, and I think that was costly. I certainly think there's still some potential for a ton of improvement in my sprint technique.

Still, though, very disappointed.

World Cup Sprint Qualification - Men - Splits

Hoo boy, World Cup Middle in dune terrain. I really did not have any solutions for what was about to come.

The first 6 controls weren't much problem, they were all in white forest and fairly straightfoward, though it was rather difficult to know what white was going to be more passable than others, it kinda varied.

After that, we headed into the dunes. 7 was the really, really tough control, and I really didn't know what to plan. I was making a point of leaving the control with a plan, but I couldn't see any viable plan at all. I thought that maybe if I left the control and got out into the dunes I'd have a better understanding of what they looked like and that would help. It didn't. Instead, eventually Simon Upill caught me and he assisted me into that control, the next, then we sort of traded back and forth for a while until around 16. At that point I followed him into a dumb mistake, even though I personally didn't think it was a good idea. That mean that he ran away from me and I was back to being on my own.

Hot, quite tired, and really not certain with my navigation, I fully overshot 17 and totally over shot 18. 18 was the crossroads because it was the control I allegedly mis-punched. I've gone over it countless times in my head, and although that section is a tad blurry, I'm quite confident I was there. How am I sure, because I remember the mistake i made on the way to 18, and the direction I came into 19, and there's no way I could have gone from where I made the mistake to the way I can into 19 without visiting 18. Maybe the SI didn't work? Maybe I got there and just didn't punch? I'm really not certain. But I'm fairly confident I went there, and something happened. I've read about people punching and it not working properly, so maybe it finally happened to me once.

Nevertheless, my performance was on a steady decline from there. My initial race strategy of having a plan really really went out the window, as I'd leave controls way too out of control to have an semblance of knowing what I was doing. I think I would have been most effective to just slow to a complete walk and get it together. Regardless of the MP, it would have been an absolutely terrible result.

All in all, epic disappointment for my first World Cup.

That afternoon, we headed down to the park in Palmerston North that was the "model" for the sprint. I jogged down from the university and met the ladyfolk. We just did a quick jaunt around part of the map to think about moving fast and smooth.

World Cup 1 - Middle Men - Splits

Model for tomorrow's World Cup in the dunes. The white forest is generally quite delightful, still really open. The dunes are far, far more difficult. Like, really difficult. Not quite sure how I'm going to play this, since I'm 100% unfamiliar to this kind of terrain. I had a lot of trouble figuring out what is up and down.

Another weird aspect was that it was very difficult to get into the white forest. It wasn't identified as such, but it was very thick in the transition from dune to white. Its almost a little bit of a crapshoot as to where you try to enter the forest and whether you can make it through at all. That's not so cool.

Oceania Day 1! This race was really not representative of anything aside from classic NZ forest. It wasn't the least bit relevant for any of the World Cups.

Nevertheless, it was delightful. Really, really nice forest. Its a little sad knowing that its all sort of a false forest, but for orienteering, it was so nice. Wide open white with great runnability and visibility.

My focus for this was having a strong plan leaving every control, and having a good bearing. The plan side of things seemed to work pretty well for the most part, though my concentration still seems leave quite often after 1/2 through the course. Still, when a Swede caught me near the end, he made a mistake and I nailed the control, so that felt good!

This is also the start of my using a magnifier on my compass more regularly, as in, I actually stuck it to my compass.

Event 1 C 1 - Splits

Dwaine took Carol and I with Hayley for a jog around the Auckland Domain (NZ speak for "Park"), which also includes the Auckland museum. We first did a really nice little trail along the outskirts of the park, and then back to the parking lot where Carol and I did a bit of a sprint from an old meet. Tried to go a little bit faster and run smoothly with no changes of pace. Took a bad exit from number two which forced me to double back a bit, which was sub-optimal, but I also caught the "inside corner" on one of the buildings so did a good route there. Still a lovely day, 2 out of 2 on weather so far!

Now on to New Zealand! People have told me that Kiwis are super friendly, so on a lark I decided to make a post on Maptalk.co.nz to see if any Aucklanders would be willing to put up Carol and I for a few days while we waited for Helen. I got 7 e-mails! Wow!

So, we met up with Dwaine at the Auckland airport, and that evening he took me over to One Tree Hill with an old map so I could give a course a go. First thing I notice: They don't like to put fences on their maps. Which is fair, for casual events, fences make everything way, way to easy. But, I was also reminded that this means I really needed to work on my fence jumping technique!

Anyway, did a fairly good job on most of the navigating, I think I hit all my spots pretty smoothly, save for a couple which I really did not interpret the contours very well at all. Like really not at all. A little concerning. Still, a lovely day, great to be in shorts and a t-shirt!!