Training Log Archive: David_Waller

Event: OCIN Sebald Park
 

Control pickup at Sebald

The Sebald event went quite well. By far, the greatest moment was Orunner falling prey to mikeminium's diabolical course design, coming straight from #11 to the finish -- completely missing #12! An even more impressive element of the course design was that it enabled many of us to witness the entire spectacular mistake from the comfort of the start/finish shelter. Lebreton and I got a lot of perverse pleasure out of watching Pat's contorted face as he put every last bit of effort into "finishing." We did our best to delay him from downloading and discovering his mistake. Of course, Pat smelled something fishy and downloaded quickly, realized his mistake, and cleared #12 and the finish properly. But the whole incident was completley hilarious.

I saved Pat's mp printout and hope to post it soon.

Setting-out SI at Sebald

Setting controls for Mike's courses at Sebald.

I will not be running for the next two weeks, in order to give my calf a rest.

C • Calf 2

Event: MVOC Germantown "Pumpkin Hunt"
 

A very physical red course at Germantown Metropark. I hit the first 3 controls pretty solidly and was determined to avoid dark green as much as possible on leg 3/4. My plan was to run south through white to the trail, then toward 4 through the open/scattered tree area just East of 4. No such luck. A small veer to the right made me miss the trail, and I ended up fighting through very dense vegetation south of the control. I ended up wasting about 15 minutes and was completely exhausted when I finally punched #4. If I had paid better attention to the contours, this would not have happened. The mistake really killed the rest of my race, both physically and mentally.

The only other real navigation mistake came from 11 to 12, where again I drifted right and went stupidly far up the east-to-west reentrant north of the control. I was happy with my route choice from 12 to 13, although I'll wager that my split looks horrible. I was completely exhausted by this time, and seemed barely ambulatory. I was also dissapointed to see the "rough open land" north of #13 so impassable. I got badly gashed by thorns on the way to 14 and finished very slowly, but with no navigation mistakes.

I probably made 5 or 6 small directional errors, veering off my intended line slightly. When I look at each of these errors, every single one involved veering to the right -- never to the left.

C • All you had to do... 5

Red - Splits

Event: ICO Halloween-O
 

ICO Night-O. A very fun meet and a nice Score-O setup from ICO. My calf slowed me down a bit, the map was not perfect, and the controls were not reflective; however, I navigated pretty well, and hit most of the controls pretty well. I punched 18 out of 21 controls and came back in something like 1:50 -- pretty safely within the two-hour limit. If I hadn't crossed over the indistinct trail in the South without seeing it on the way to #20, I probably could have cleared the course (although I'm not sure I _would_ have). The mistake cost me at least 8 minutes and took me away from several of my to-be-punched controls. Even if I had cleared it, though, there is no question that Mike would have still won the event.

Score-O's seem like especially good opportunities to think about what might have been.

My route: 7, 9, 8, 14, 12, 13, 11, 10, 15, 16, 21, 17, 19 [long mistake and recovery], 1, 6, 2, 4, 5. I would have done 20 after 19 and 3 and 18 after 2.

O-practice with my rogaine parner, Jacob. I printed a couple maps of the 2005 BillyPig at the Mounds, and we hit the course in the cold morning air. It was a fantastic day to be out, but the white areas were much thornier than anticipated, and my knees got cut up pretty badly. We were slow, and only made it through 14 of the 20 controls, but had quite a bit of fun.

We put streamers at control locations 1 - 14 (but not #2) in case anyone wants to get out and run (or re-run) that old course. I expect to get streamers out for #15-20 in the next couple of weeks. A couple of our streamers' locations are questionable -- I'm pretty sure we marked #11 on a parallel spur. Oops.

Very slow; calf still sore

US Champs, Day 2, RedX. Leg 5/6 was about 1 mile long and took me over 73 minutes. The rest was slow, but relatively steady. The terrain was interesting, but few legs seemed to offer any real choices. Basically, I just stuck to the lines and went around the swamps.

US Champs, Day 1, RedX, dnf. Meh.

Event: OCIN - Camp Stonybrook
 

Control pickup, very slow because of a sore calf. Navigated without the compass, which was quite straightforward in this feature-rich environment.

Green course at Camp Stonybrook. I felt pretty good mentally, but pulled my calf badly between #9 and #10 and was seriously slowed down the rest of the way. Although the slower pace made me a more careful navigator, I'm pretty sure that I lost a few minutes because of the injury. The course had several nice route options (e.g., 5/6, 9/10, 11/12), and I was generally happy with most of mine, although I may feel differently if I see others' choices in routegadget. In retrospect, I would have done 9/10 differently. I crossed the river south of #10, then came up the reentrant to it. It probably would have been faster to stay north and use the trail bend as an attackpoint. I'll also be interested to see how much time mikeminium saved by doing 11/12 directly, instead of along the road to the north. All in all, a nice course and a great day to be out.

Green - Splits

Ab-focused

MUNA -- very weak, very sluggish

A fun quickie O-course set up by Mike for a class with Tom Kopp. It's a very nice map, and is great for introducing people to the sport in a relatively easy environment. Mike set up a Score-O, but also linked the 10 controlsl for a regular 2.2 km race. The race offered a few fun route choices, and I am pretty happy with the ones that I made (e.g., on 7/8 getting below the wall next to the library on the East side of the building, rather than going around it) I'm so familiar with the area (and it's so small), that I could pretty much look at the map once per leg. This one was definitely more about running than navigating. As always, I started faster than I could maintain, and gradually slowed throughout the run. If he had put in a few more legs on the course, Mike probably would have overtaken me.

So here is an idea. Most of us have parks for which our prior familiarity gives us an undue advantage. To give a fair and proper challenge to these people, it might be fun to turn their race into a memory-O. (I have never done a memory-O, and don't know how they are typically done.) One model might be to have a course map at every control. Runners could only check-in with the map at a control, and all interim navigation would have to be done from memory.

C • MEM-O 2

My standard MUNA run. It took a lot of effort to keep it under an hour.

C • standard? 4

Event: OCIN - East Fork State Park
 

An excellent Red course set by cedarcreek at East Fork. My run was pretty sloppy here and there, and I regret a few route choices, but there were no major blow-ups. There were some odd parallels to my run at Lapping park a couple of weeks ago, like botching a couple early controls, and standing within 15 meters of control #5 without seeing it, and then taking an extra 5 minutes to find it. These are the lessons to me to take the beginning more slowly.

I really like the East Fork map, and this section of the park is very detailed and interesting. Of course it's hard to keep a map updated with respect to vegetation, but there were several places (e.g., from #2 to #3) where the mapped vegetation probably convinced me to take an unnecessary route. Similarly, I couldn't really detect much difference in runability on the line between #16 and #17. Maybe I'm wrong, but the mapped distinct vegetation boundary seemed mythical. At least by #20, I had learned that the light green was quite runnable and took the direct route to #21.

A few highlights: Control #15, placed in the middle of a 'pond'. NIce! The leg from 18 to 19 was a blast. Maybe it wasn't the most technically challenging, but it was definitely the most fun for me. And although they can sometimes be annoying, there is also some charm in all of the clueless JROTC kids out in the woods asking you if you have seen #65.

Much appreciation to cedarcreek and Mike for putting this on. Sorry I had to bug-out early.

C • East Fork... 6

Participated in the 17th annual Reggae Run -- hands down, the most fun road race I have ever done, ever. It's a hilly course -- definitely not one to set a PR. I was not super speedy, and it's the shortest race I have done in years; but it was quite enjoyable. Of course the real fun comes afterward with all-you-can-eat food of all varieties, free wine and beer, thousands of happy festive people, live reggae music, etc. A total blast, and a great cause. This is definitely one to put on the yearly calendar.

C • Reggae Run 2

Red - Splits