Training Log Archive: ndobbs

Downloaded QR. Tack Mats!
This shows some local training possibilities:


Thanks Eddie :)

C • Wow! 4

Easy run by Silver Lake.

Nice day, but it still took effort to get out of bed. Zzz.

Stupid macbook pro has crashed four times this evening.

C • Windows 7 3

Since September 1st, I have done just over 34 hours of orienteering and 467 controls. Fourteen controls per hour doesn't seem like many.

A little short of the average needed to make 2000 for the academic year.

Thanks to all those who participated in one shape or another in the last couple of days of training. Company is great!

Tiorati Circle to the start with Ali and Wojtek; Jeremy had gone ahead. Gloves would have been nice.

Beautiful.

Foot still isn't healed, but with the padding it appears manageable.

Orienteering on Surebridge, a modified version of an A-meet course from a few years back. Top class map, course, terrain.

Slowed down a lot in the second half, and made one biggish mistake --- I knew where I was to within a hundred metres or less, but it was hard to read exactly where I was on the slope.

Fun fun fun.

Lewis Morris modified red course from the week before (same time as BHT).

Ran around with Boris, one leg fast, many legs slow :)
Very different style of orienteering from the morning. Broader hills and features, contours could no longer be used as linear or point features. Good stuff, even if the map was sketchy in places.

Said farewell to the Dwojaks afterwards. The rest of us retired to Sergei and Kseniya's where a wondrous feast awaited.

Ali and Dan kindly dropped me home afterwards, thanks!

At some point I'd like to rest for a weekend, but the people and the orienteering make not resting way too enticing. Happy days.

to the start with Stephie C!

WOC 1993 Short Course!!!!
Pole Brook Mtn.

1) Petter Thoresen NOR 22.34,

Wojtek 32:19

Although TG raced it last year and took close to 25 I think... but I don't think it can have gotten much slower. The course is pretty runnable (if you have ankles and feet of steel).
Not having controls/tape out definitely slowed me down a bit on a couple of controls, and I made a little over two minutes of mistakes I guess.

Bring on the Classic :)


Afterwards we stopped off my surrogate Polish family's place in Fort Montgomery, en route to night training in Blue Mtn. By the time the soup, the cake, the lunch and the music had come out, Wojtek and Marta had got too comfortable in front of the fire and inertia took over. Which was probably a good thing.

With M&M on lovely trails near the house in Old Saybrook.

Lovely weather. I had v little energy. Maybe I didn't eat properly after the night before. Thankfully M wasn't as tough as M and we took the shorter route home :)

Thanksgiving dinner was amaaaaaazing. Big thanks to the Galler family!

We made (a little) room for dessert by going on a good old-fashioned svensk tipspromenad.

I was best at sucking and at something else which I have now forgotten.

to the water and back after work... forgot my headlamp but there was just enough light.

Event: Blue Hills Traverse
 

Control 16. Courtesy of Eddie, right-hand map has 2.5m Lidar contours.

BHT
Entertainment:
http://www.newenglandorienteering.org/rg/cgi-bin/r...

This was a funny race.

From the start, Sam raced off up the first hill she could find. Ross went up too to check on her. Boris and I were a bit confused by their behaviour, but they came back down and joined us in search of the first, but none of us managed to climb enough to get back on line. I punched fifth, 5 seconds behind Clem.

To two, I went up to the road, avoiding the green, until I went back into the supposedly white forest. The visibility was low, and after a bit I decided I needed to drop down to cross the re-entrant. I was in the lead in the middle of this leg, but then went too far left and had to correct. Three was fine, I was in third, 15 seconds down on Ross and Z. Four I lost five seconds maybe not cutting a contour-corner, no big deal. Five was fine, went slowly through the green-white. Six and seven I ran well. I think on the way to 7 I checked the HR a couple of times and it was up around 197. Oops.

To eight, I got well confused by the map, a couple of re-entrants and cliffs and whatnot that I would have expected to see were not there. The map was generalised 1:15.

I lost a bit of confidence as well as 30s. Going to 9, too, I didn't feel the contours. This was perhaps more my fault, I didn't really know what I was using. Lost another 30s, having followed Carl U a bit to the right. Down in 6th now.

To 10, I think I should have gone straight. Despite the map. I cut some corners anyway. I was frustrated with the map. I had to slow down more in the white re-entrant by the wall then up in the "thick undergrowth".

To 11 I lost the plot. Was aiming for the big re-entrant, but went too far to the left, realised I was skirting the left end of the small hilltop with the undergrowth. Then proceeded not to climb enough to get back online. Passed by Clem, Ali, Sam...

To 12: Most of the pack went left/straight, I'm not sure, Sam went right, I hesitated, then tried going straight. Perhaps I should have taken a compass. I veered right, didn't correct properly. Took a while to start running towards the control again. Passed by Marie.

To 13, plan was to go up above the marsh, maybe bounce off the trail, but decided after not heading in the planned direction that reading the contours and going straight would be a good idea. Lost 20s in the circle because I thought I only had to aim for the hilltop, took a moment to realise where the re-entrant I should have been aiming for was.

To 14, overtook Marie, ran a bit further, then got totally stuck in a brambly thing. I felt like I was Paddy in the Irish Ski-O Champs as Marie trotted on by and I couldn't move. Eventually I extricated myself. Marie must have been flustered as she went way right, I met her as I emerged from the control.

15 was sweet, 2nd, 5s behind Ross on this leg.

16 I couldn't understand. Found the big re-entrant and could see a marsh in it. I just had to run down the spur to the left to the control. There was a mountain in front of me. No contour on the map. Aggghhhh. Can't find anything else on the map which would correspond to the re-entrant. Continue on. Find a flag. Punch. Weird. Allows Marie and Peter to catch up some again.

17, ok, got one trail a little wrong.

18 I was flying (at least until the hill), then lost at least a minute I think after hitting the trail, didn't find the rock first time going past. Marie and Peter passed me unbeknownst to me.
19 was a slog, somewhat demoralised.
Hit 20 fine, Marie and Peter came to it from a funny direction.

To 21, I think the straight line then right of line route might be fastest. I went left, Marie and Peter followed. Hit the hilltop on the little trail, was expecting to turn left, didn't (seem to), started going down, saw a hairpin bend, somehow decided the trail I was following which was the trail I want to be following was not the trail I was following (yep!), so I doubled back, realised I was perhaps wrong when I got back to the hilltop, then decided to go into the forest and use contours. Again, lack of compass and rationality hurt.

I tried speeding up to maybe have half a chance of catching the elopers, but my foot started to hurt some. I realised that the padding had slipped.
Dancho passed me too. I was beyond caring.

After leaving 21, I took a while to decided whether to sit on a trunk or a rock, and then which rock to sit on. Then I removed my shoe, put the padding back in place, and considered whether to stand up again or to do a JAM.

Pottered along to 22, 23, 24, barely jogging, only the thought of Boris catching me keeping me moving :)

Punched 25, still pottering, and saw Peter and Marie, which unfortunately meant I had to do a bit less pottering and a bit more running.

Broke into a fast jog to 26, and was nearly running to the finish. Marie was only 4s behind, could have got me no bother if the rugby tacklers at the finish were anyway competent.

Fun to be back in the woods after two weeks. In some ways a lot of the map is good, just more generalised contour detail than usual here (or most places outside of Norway, or outside of the 20th century).

With more than three hours sleep and a bit more diligence, I might have had a clean race. Second place was doable. Oops.

On the plus side, my foot survived. It's still sore, but didn't get much worse, and is much better than a week ago.

C • Interesting choices 2

Traverse - Splits

Jog to the water station (I guess) at the reservoir and back, with a little adhesive pad stuck to the arch of my foot pushing up the 3rd metaT. Seemed to work, didn't hurt much, although felt a bit funny at times. Sunday will be a different kettle of fish.

guh

X-ray didn't show signs of a fracture. The third metatarsal is a bit longer than usual, and substantially longer than the fourth, which could be part of the reason it (the third) hurts.

Doc said that ball-planting is not natural and not a good way to run. Interesting.

He gave me some adhesive padding to put before the metatarsal head to raise it up a little. And advised against running for a couple of weeks, but said that if the last game of the season were coming up I could play (at my own risk). BHT?? :)

C • Excellent 17

FF are FFed

I have never seen an IT editorial like this:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/1...

foot still painful

ugh

C • stay positive 2

Event: WCOC Tarrywile Meet
 

boo

Central Park with Kowal

Lots and lots of fun. My foot still hurts, will skip Tarrywile unfortunately.

Silly Americans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_t44siFyb4

Silly Australians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War

wikipedia is a great way to start the day

Insane Germans:
http://wimp.com/bicycleskill/
... not by way of wikipedia

C • Silly Americans 4

testing the foot (which will be sore for a while yet)

Still well sore.

Anybody up for Thanksgiving training weekend in Harriman and maybe a map or two this side of the river?

Wojtek D and Marta will be coming to train on Friday and Saturday.

C • Thanks 1

C • Thanksgiving training 15

ex bike followed by a modicum of strength. yawn

C • psst! 4

Can't run for now. Auto-diagnosis says the bones hurt but there isn't a stress fracture. Hopefully the foot will feel mostly better by the weekend.

rt ft meta-tarsals are still sore from the pounding they took on Sunday (and Saturday). They had been a bit sore in the past. Last week I started using sorbothane insoles again, so the feet felt fine heading into the weekend. Hopefully it's just bruising, but I wouldn't run on the foot the way it is now.

... I only really noticed the badness a few minutes after finishing when I hobbled back to the car, shivering.

gps tracks from the weekend are up on routegadget.

Sunday's run was close to being very good. On the long legs to 17 I stopped for a minute and a half to remove a bit of a branch that came into my shoe via the tongue and ended up under my toes - it was 7 or 8mm thick and over 3cm long! Then I made a balls at the end. Oops.

Among the top five in today's race, the more time you lost, the better you placed. Sad, really.

C • nothing like losing a bunch... 2

Most of this race went well, running faster than usual and no mistakes until one balls of a control at the end.

C • Nice! 5

Blue Long - Splits

Event: Hickory Run
 

Fairly straightforward sprint, straight line was usually the best option. The green was runnable for the most part. No major mistakes, a few hesitations and a weave or two. It was cold and I hadn't warmed up properly.

Not impressed with this. Too many mistakes. For the first time in ages I checked codes of three controls that weren't on my course (and I knew were not on my course). Amateur.

Wore short tights instead of O-pants for fun, like in the sprint, since the sprint had been so runnable. Got whipped for my stupidity, not sure if it slowed me down much.

C • Interesting... 1

Blue Sprint - Splits

Blue Middle - Splits

a few drills, then a jog on the Silver Lake trails and back. Not overly confident downhilling on damp, leafy, rocky trails in the dark.

Out to Croton Dam and back, a lot more water going down the cascades tonight. It's a pretty place. Raining and dark, had the roads to myself.

Nice run, spent a lot of time thinking about convolutions, didn't make much progress. Coming up the hill on the way back, about 1h20 in, I felt a bit dodge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficus_aurea
what a wonderful world

work got interesting again this afternoon which meant I didn't get out before dinner and now I'm exhausted. waster.

C • Whats new 1

brrr

Added gps routes to Routegadget for the Fall Foliage weekend. Control 14 on the long and a few controls in the middle are entertaining. There is a bit of distortion in the middle, eg. 12->13 I ran on the path for a bit and came in over the knoll (I didn't want to do that, and was surprised it happened...
http://www.newenglandorienteering.org/rg/cgi-bin/r...

C • Ah! 1

Controls in the US since September 1st: 305 in two months... not quite on course for 2000 in a year...