Training Log Archive: David_Waller

Event: OCIN / TROL Governor Bebb
 

Setting a few last controls in the morning, and picking up the last batch at Bebb just before dusk. Picked up the last 7 as a Memory-O, only looking at the map once. It was nice to see footprints diverging in all of the directions I anticipated providing route choices. I was also heartened to see that at least one person went up the large Eastern gully instead of the small Western one for #12 on the red course. My plan to lure careless map/control description readers into that gully seemed to work -- at least for one person.

Course setting at Bebb. Had fun coming to the controls from crazy angles and laying a bunch of false tracks. I'm pretty confident that if anyone follows my tracks at the meet, they will probably not get to their control efficiently.

No fabuluous bird sightings, but did come within a couple feet of perhaps the cutest bird out there: the Carolina Wren.

Same HW run as Tuesday, felt much better, but was still pretty slow.

Really slow, lethargic run at HW. At least it beat prepping for class.

C • prepping 1

Event: OCIN / TROL Harbin Park
 

Helping Orunner with setting a few controls and getting SI units out. Easy work; nice to be moving when it's so cold.

A fun red course, set by Orunner and Kacey Schweinfest at Harbin park. The park is pretty feature-rich, so navigation was pretty straightforward. I made a couple of stupid mistakes at the very end, though, perhaps because I was really quite tired. Conditions were not easy, but the course was fun.

Relatively easy control pickup at Harbin, but I did try to run some of the hills.

Red - Splits

Slow, difficult conditions at HW. I figured that no one would be around, so I took my crazy dog, Cadence, and we had a pretty good time. Saw a lot of streamers along one trail, as if there might be an important meet sometime soon in the area?

C • Streamers 6

Putting finishing touches on the courses at Bebb.

A very nice, harder-than-usual run at Hueston Woods. (I won't be competing there for the Pig, and expect to help with some course vetting anyway, so I didn't worry about the embargo.)

Western & Peffer, about 10% off-trail

Run through Western and Peffer.

Event: OCIN / TROL Stanbery Park
 

ICO Score-O. A really excellent map, and a great park. This event is worth the drive. I met a couple of friends who had never orienteered before and we map hiked the northern section of the course.

Very light

Hocking Hills: Conkle's Hollow, gorge and valley hikes; Old Man's Cave, etc.

Hocking Hills: Cedar falls to Rose lake, around Rose lake, around Ash Cave

I just watched Matt Bond's Rentschler route on RG and no longer feel any regret at all for having lost to him. Matt always took the direct through-the-woods routes when I took the wimpy along-the-trail route. I'm glad that Mike's course design enabled someone who chose to navigate to beat someone who chose to run.

Control pickup at Rentschler

A pretty good run at Rentschler, with only a couple of moderate-sized mistakes. There were a lot of good route choice options throughout the entire course. After analyzing some of my mistakes from previous events (e.g., #8 the night before) I decided to try to default more often to the trail-based options. With only a couple of exceptions, I'm pretty happy with most of these decisions.

There were a lot of people running the red course, and I intersected them at #1, #5 (here, a group was standing at the control, planning their next leg), #7, #9, and #10. I saw Matt Bond at #7, and thought that I was ahead of him. Unbeknownst to me, he passed me from 8 to 9, though, and only gained on me from there.

My biggest mistake was my route choice and execution from 8 to 9. I took the road all the way to the trail in the south, but overshot the trail and lost 1.5 minutes having to double back. I also had to stop to tie my shoes at a trail junction. I also botched #16, and probably lost 30 seconds there. Everything else was relatively clean, and whatever time I lost was due to either poor route choices or generally slow speed.

Red - Splits