Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Mountain Lakes Park A-meet, Red M35, 7.2 km, 17/39, 3rd M35. It might be a little generous to call some of those controls "spikes", but there's only one where SA says I lost time. Unfortunately, that was a 5-minute doozy. Control #13, and I screwed it up in three different ways. First, I decided to go straight instead of taking the trail route, then second, I exited the control in the wrong direction, so I did sort of a broad sweep right of the line instead of actually going straight. Then third, when I got close to the control, I was low, realized it and climbed up, but failed to read the detail and climbed too far, and had to come back from up top. Fortunately, the view from above was better, so I fiund it without trouble coming back down. Not feeling too energetic, and Balter passed me on the way to #5 like I was standing still. (But then, he actually was standing still when I caught back up at #6, when we were a bit right and maybe even off the edge of the map, which I knew but he didn't.) I was with Linda Kohn for a bit in the latter part of the course -- I got away, but she caught back up due to my error on #13, then I got a bit ahead again, but she went straight to #17, which turned out to be faster than my road route.

(I figured I'd look at my GPS track to determine whether I had drifted off the map between #5 and #6, assuming that the edge of the map was the edge of the park and therefore the state boundary. However, the GPS track shows both of those controls being solidly in Connecticut, 50 m or more over the line. I won't try to guess where the error lies; it might be in my assumption.)

Extremely nice forest, great weather, and my favorite traveling companions (Nancy and Stephen, with the latter in the driver's seat a lot of the time), so a fine day overall.

C • Border 2

I don't do much magazine reading these days, but I did read Bob Reddick's article in the new O/NA about Ken Lew's rescue at the WRC, and I'm quite appalled. I'm not putting (much) blame on the organizers here, it sounds like they did a fine job, but I'm instead blaming the victims. The first point of blame come from the notion of their being out there at all, since the article makes it sounds like they were not at all up to the demands. Yeah, everybody admires doddering old people getting out in the woods, but this again brings up the notion we've discussed about requiring them to have a shadow. Nobody wants to tell old people that they're too feeble to participate, and I don't know how you could get away with even trying, because you'd get accused of age discrimination, but this sort of thing makes you sympathetic to the European events that require medical approval before you can orienteer. But then look at the timeline. Bob says they were planning on being back at the hash house at 8 PM, and they were apparently looking for #70 before it got dark. But then with the bailing out, the crawling, Ken's fall, and the lifting of the log to get him unstuck, somehow it gets to be 1:30 AM by the time they started trying to open the bag to get the cell phone. From the description, it sounds like they were within 500 meters of the road at that point. Too far for Bob to crawl, I guess, though I suspect that Pat wouldn't have let him leave. But somehow, once they got through on the phone, instead of just saying that they were between #20 and #70, he read off (incorrect) GPS coordinates to the rescue crew, which sent them on a wild goose chase, and they didn't get found until 6:45 AM. That's probably 5.5 hours after Ken fell, and nearly 11 hours after they had intended to be at the hash house. With that kind of delay, it's a damn good thing that Ken wasn't actually hurt. One lesson here is that in an emergency, text messages are better than voice calls, though I have no idea if any of these people knows how to do that. It does say something about the terrain (for those who weren't there) that in order to carry Ken out on a stretcher, the SAR people had to use chainsaws to cut a path. Maybe they just had the chainsaws and wanted to use them. That might also explain the fact that Pat got washed with poison ivy soap, despite there being no poison ivy. I am glad to hear, at least, that these three have decided to give up rogaining. I hope I have the sense to quit before I get myself into that kind of mess.

C • They should have given up a... 3

Harris Center, Hancock NH, site of next year's Boulder Dash. This was billed as a "map run", for the meet workers to get a sense of what we're going to be dealing with, but Alar had actually set Brown and Green courses with controls and epunching and everything. I took a Green map, but after two controls realized that I was doing them backwards. At first I figured I'd just do it that way, but then changed my mind and cut across back to #1 and did the course in normal order. This is an interesting place, sort of a pastiche of the various well-known maps in New Hampshire, and certainly with no shortage of large hunks of granite. The map was quite nice, very easy to read, but it was printed at 1:5000. (There are clearly some issues with the GPS track. I'd hate to have to rely on this watch for my cheating.)

C • meet workers 2

Stacked up the remainder of Mom's firewood, next to the driveway instead of behind the house, and did some other lifting like putting up storm windows.