Orienteering 1:00:00 [4] 10.0 km (6:00 / km)
shoes: Inov-8 X-Talon 212
Okay, big Saturday! I'm going to lump these into doubles because I don't have the wherewithal to make six different sessions.
The first one was a race at a dog park. I HATE dog parks. But I'm not going to go into why, just pick a random week of logging and I'm sure you'll see it. A bit of open parkland, and a bit of forest, and some extremely frozen hands.
I lost quite a bit of time on the way to 3, since I didn't really read enough to know I could just jump straight across the creek. I went around, and lost a good 10-15 seconds. I feel that I probably left the start a little too fast, which is not my way any more. I like [need] to stay at an easy pace until I get settled and sort out my first minute or so. In this case I didn't do that. Afterwards, though, it was definitely better, I took some gambles where I hadn't read enough which were fortunate enough to work out okay.
But, again, my dexterity was extremely lacking since I couldn't feel my fingers. At some points I was running with one hand down my pants.
I apologize to Vancouver for making already weird-looking orienteering also kind of creepy.
The second session was an easier jog around a dogbones exercise, which simply suffered from not strong planning at the start. I think to do it really effectively I needed to plan where I was going to be about 15 minutes in the future, which obviously I don't do too, too often. I didn't use a compass so I missed out on a small gap that would have saved a bit of double-backing. I think it would be better if I could still spot those things without a magnifier, so that makes me feel a little like I'm relying on it too heavily. Its just so handy to swing it in and swing it out again. So handy!
Hamstring update: still sore. Calf update: Also still tight.
Orienteering 1:00:00 [3] 10.0 km (6:00 / km)
shoes: Brooks Cadence 2
As you can see, I'm lumping these sessions into about an hour and 10k. That's fairly reasonable given each race is about 15 minutes and 3k, plus a little bit of warm up and cool down.
Next up was the sprint relay at Blue Mountain. I told Gra-eme that I was going to take this easy. Ha HA! Its a race. Are you kidding? Nev went lead on my team and put us in the thick of things, and I took off and kept the legs turning over as much as they'd let me. No major difficulties except for the little cave control. Again with no compass I saw it'd be somewhere weird but I'll be darned if I knew what it was going to be on/in. It was a cute control location though, but it may have smelled funny....
Ultimately Nevin and I placed 4th, which was good! Sprint relays are fun. I want to do more of them. And against those hotshot Euros.
Next was a o-terval session. Its a shame we couldn't race around this map! I can figure some reasons why, but, still, cool and kind of difficult, with lots of sidewalks, buildings, stairs, change in altitude, etc. But no one wanted to go in a group with me! YOU'RE ALL JERKS. Eventually Adam and Gerald went with me, and that was good. I made a dumb mistake on number 3 when I stopped paying attention to my compass and was pretty much running at a 90 degre angle from the way I wanted to go. I've been really lax with using my compass as anything more than a platform to rest my map on, so that was another rude reminder.
Hamstring update: getting better! Calf update: getting way worse!
Orienteering 20:00 [4] 3.5 km (5:43 / km)
shoes: Inov-8 X-Talon 190
"Farstas are fun. Thank goodness we don't do them more often."
So, this started off a bit stupidly for me, when I picked up my map and started doing course 2 first before doing course 1. I got to number 1 when I realized this and had to turn around, and immediately get in line while I waited for the masses to punch the real number 1. I apologize for all the people I may have mildly elbowed and jumped in front of. For most of the people I just used my naturally intimidating stature and personality to get them to move. You know how I am, all gruff and whatnot.
There was still quite a few mistakes after that, most especially figuring out which spur I was on and which trail I Wanted to get on. Definitely some wasted time there. But, I also saved some times by skipping stairs every now and then, as well as picking up where the wall to the sidewalk on the last loop was crossable and jumping over it, rather than going down to the trail. And then there was all the running around the playground, which I felt I stayed on top of, punched quickly, and always knew my exit direction. Good job, me!
Hamstrings: Charly Horse. Calf: Get me a foam roller, stat.