Training Log Archive: Linear Ice

Snowshoe loop and then inside of park, w Alice.
Quit when I realized after achilles starting twinging up again and walked back.

Last race of the MSMM serires.
There were a couple of ways for me to "win the Pig", including beating or coming within 2 minutes of Chiori..who was in close second place (she skipped one race and needed a score that beat mine by about 25 points)
or...
Kathleen could beat Chiori and keep her below 975 or so. Kathleen was out of contention for first, due to a very bad control on day one (#2, which also gave me trouble). Because she skipped a race on day 2, she was stuck with that bad score.

OR another way to win the event..... and this is what happened and I found out before my race even started...... Chiori could MP. Whew. I won before I even started. Got a cute piggy medal to prove it. =)

And it was a good thing because I ran a fairly dismal race. Had a hard time finding Control 2... and then at 6 (I think) also, where I had to bail out almost off the map to make sure I knew where I was.
Why so bad? A bit of tiredness, maybe mental laziness, but I also think a big factor was the late start time (with last handful of orienteers.) Woods were empty and while I claim (even to myself) that I don't follow, it's a lot easier to find controls when there are people running to and from them.
I did have a number of elephant tracks for company but mostly the woods were empty... other than a friendly face here or there near a few of the controls. The day was very muddy due to rain and I hear Big Bone Lick is a generally muddy area anyway.
After first couple of botches I was a little discouraged.... just when I was thinking I was getting good! Hahahahahhhaaa. ARGH

Sprint was at England-Idlewild park; lots of dark green and trails, especially in the Frisbee golf area.... but even the dark green had lots of little pathways. So the biggest challenge was just remembering general bearing while moving left and right to avoid bad vegetation.
AND... I was very careful to look at the control numbers so as not to mispunch now that the Sprint rules allow for closer controls (THANK YOU IAN!!)

I had a hard time seeing the trails on the map (made an error on contact lens choice in the morning), so there were a couple of "hmm" moments but mostly I felt really good about the course and was just on the edge of "skilled" and "darn lucky" so I couldn't have gone faster. But then I learned that Kathleen beat me by two minutes! How did she do it? I will have to wait for splits to find out. (Results just came out... Kathleen beat me by about 30 seconds, not so unreachable I guess). But since she had a horrible control on Day 1, I was still in #1 spot coming out of the Sprint.
Here's how I think this Pig event is scored although I'm not sure: 1000 points to top runner in each category in each race, then % of 1000 for everyone else based on % of time. Top 3 scores count towards final placements. So after the Sprint, I still needed to run at least one more strong event.

This map was on mountain bike trail hills, with lots and lots of trails but mostly to distract rather than to run on, almost all green/dark green on the map. It was very hard to see any contour lines because of all the colors. I made some bad errors, especially on 10 and 12. On the rest, I was average.
10: I was looking for a pit in an area surrounded by various patches of vegetation, and totally missed that there was a great catching feature (the two trails) not that far beyond it. So instead of going to the trails, I swung back to open space to try to figure out what was what. I saw disorienteer off and on between controls maybe 7-13? and she was just keeping up a nice steady pace and I was scrambling around..... so I knew I wasn't making much speed progress between one control to the next.
On 12, I completely misled myself to think I was in the wrong area when in fact I wasn't too far off, so I took an exercusion over to another hill and its raspberry or other scratchy bushes, then told myself I was an idiot and battled them backward. Remarkably, I am getting so much faster at making big errors and then recovering. That one only took 9 minutes.

Finish time was 2 minutes behind leaders (3rd place); Sandy seemed pleased which makes me happy to think that maybe I'm getting to be someone that people like to beat. =)
(Oh, i just realized that maybe other F50s came in afterwards. They seemed to start all of us at the end. So who knows how far I am behind leaders! Guess I'll have to wait for results.)

Middle - Saturday5 Green - Splits

Sprint Brown/Green - Splits

Event: OCIN Flying Pig XVI
 

Sunnny HOT day at Flying Pig, Middle Creek Park Course, a medium course, 4.3 km and most of it going uphill. Only 210 m of climb, but the downhills were often too steep to run too.
First few controls were pretty bad. On 1, I actually forgot how to work my map and compass for a bit on a trail crossing.. somehow everything I knew just had quietly slipped out of my head. But at least I just stood until I figured it out again. Whew.
And this was before the 40m climb. The Climb felt like the "up" on a rollercoaster... clink Chink, clink Chink. I was hoping we could come screaming down down down for the rest of the course. But there were plenty more BIG hills.
2 More climb, thought I'd try to contour as much as possible, knew where I was when I crossed the ditch but then had a very hard time finding the stump. Lots of stump. Lots more stuff going on than I was expecting. Should have expected this w 6 m contours, but an awful lot of fallen junk too. Stood again for a minute or two, figuring it out and slowly walking. Zing. Got it, found it.
3. Wanted to run straight down (walk slowly) then bear off to the right, run back to the left and see clearing on trail. Missed and was too far left. Lost minutes because there was an indistinct trail where I wasn't expecting it (on the left).
After that.... rest of the controls were pretty good.

Model map and up and down hill a few times slowly. I knew there would be a lot of climb and I wanted to warm up those big hill climbing muscles.

5 Green - Splits

Trail run w Kenneth, joe, Dana, new guy Dan. After 40 min let them go ahead and walked due to tender Achilles. =\

Limited time between meetings
0.6 at 8:30 pace then I thought I'd do a 6 min mile, but as soon as the treadmill sped up I realized it's not in my legs anymore (and too much in other places) so immediately backed down
0.5 at 7:00 pace.... okay maybe I can split the difference
0.5 at 6:20 pace
0.4 at 8:30 pace

Another run with a conference call.. I had a couple of miles of fast walking and fast talking but kept up nice little jog the rest of the way.