Training Log Archive: GlenT

Event: 2014 US Classic Championships
 

US Classic Champs Day 1 on Badger Gulch map near Lake George, CO. Very open and runnable with lots of small rocky point features, some of which were mapped, and a technical rocky area. Good course with several controls in the rocky area and a very fast second half in the flatter area.

Not my day. Big error on the first control, then some GI issues which made it so I had to do quite a bit of walking in the second half of the course (altitude may have also been a factor). Way down in the placings and about 13 minutes behind the fastest M60. 10 minutes of navigational error plus a few minutes lost walking. Straight line distance 7.5km.

Green Y - Splits

Phone-O at Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Interesting exercise.

Model event at Round Mountain. Terrain looks to be a bit quicker than Whistler. :-)

Travel day. SEA - DEN. All the physical activity associated with air travel, walking in and around airports and schlepping luggage around. No issues, just the normal irritations of travel.

Walk from parking to relay arena and back afterward.

Relay Leg 3 on Lost Lake map at Whistler. SL distance 3.0km.

COC Long on Black Magic map at Whistler. SL 5.2km. Ski lift ride followed by 10 minute downhill walk to the start. Spectacular scenery. Very convenient since it was about a three minute walk to the lift from where we were staying. Could see the arena from our room (and went there after running to watch live results on line rather than wait for printouts to be posted). :-)

Physically challenging course with advertised climb of 230m and a net descent of 400m from start to finish, some of it pretty steep. Woods were thickish with many areas of limited visibility, so fairly slow going. There was one untimed stream crossing which involved about 5 contours of descent (rope aided at one point) and 5 contours of climb, with the horizontal distance for the leg at about 70m. We were allowed 5 minutes to cross, which gave me about a minute of recovery time. The course also had about 600m of streamered routes, all through the woods, all of questionable necessity.

My run was OK except for one major error on control #11, which was the last control on the course with challenging navigation (the last five controls transported us across and down the ski area to the finish). About halfway to 11 I misread where I was and ended up descending about 7 steep contours through light green junk only to have to climb 5 contours back up to the control after I relocatedon a trail. That pretty much sapped any energy I had left and cost about 8 minutes. Also lost a couple of minutes on #6 searching a bit for a saddle in an area with several small hills (and therefore several saddles). I think I just didn't see the flag due to vegetation on my first pass. Ended up 6th out of about 25 in M55. 3rd was achievable without the screw-up on 11.

Long M55 - Splits

HPP fundraiser event on Whistler Mountain map. Gondala ride up the mountain to the start (elev about 6000 ft). 1:5000 map in alpine terrain with lots of rock and mostly low vegetation (wore shorts and had no problem). Competition format was predict your time, so no watches allowed on the course (only tapped my wrist once trying to take a split). Seven minutes faster than predicted, so didn't take it as easy as I should have, although I walked quite a bit. Since it was wide open and everyone was doing the same course it was hard not to follow (biggins was ahead of me and he's tough to miss).

COC Sprint on Whistler Village map. Great sprint venue and really fun. Had a very good run with a few small errors, mostly sub-optimal route choices. Tried to be very focused on the navigation. I had a very early start time so there were not a lot of non-orienteers wandering about the Village. Most frustrating time loss was taking about 10 seconds to find the start triangle on the map. Lost time on #9 checking an unmapped boulder across the path from the mapped boulder with the flag on it. Was 5th in M55. Straightline distance 1.9 km.

Before sprint.

After sprint.

Sprint M55 - Splits