Training Log Archive: David_Waller

SLOC Relay Champs, 3rd leg of OCIN's 8 pt. team (green). An okay run, with two or three decent-sized mistakes, all involving compass following. This was a really fun event with great spectator controls.

I returned home from St. Louis to find a summons for jury duty. I'm all for jury duty and don't respect the folks who try at all costs to weasel out of it. But my session is right smack on top of the Billy Pig. Crap.

C • Jury duty 2

Relay Green 2 - Splits

Corn maze -O. I was really really bad at this until I realized that it requires a pretty different skillset than orienteering. The compass was worthless. So was my tendancy to refine my route choice plan as I go. Running/jogging was probably not too necessary either.

SLOC A-meet, red course, middle. A pretty lousy effort -- once again, I completely screwed-up the first control, although I really don't know how. I must have been within a few meters of it, but just didn't see it before I went back to the start and ran the leg again. It sucked to completely blow the race so early. I made a bad parallel error at #3, and forgot the bit in the map notes about the mapped powerline being gone, which delayed me another minute or so toward the end. For such fast, open, easily runnable woods, this was a pretty dissapointing performance.

Middle Red - Splits

CMOUSA Middle Champs - Splits

Event: US Night & Relay Champs
 

SLOC red/blue sprint at Sherwood Springs, Cuivre River State Park. I was really not too thrilled with either this course or my performance. Lost a minute on the first control out of sheer stupidity. When I saw Eric Buckley at the start, I stupidly assumed that he had set the course and that his first control would be a complete no-brainer. But it was a half-brainer, and confused me. I lost my SI chip between 6 and 7 and lost another minute going back to look for it.

The official results show me as taking 45 minutes for this course, but that is wrong. There was a problem with the start unit, and it added 23 minutes to my time erroneously. I think my real time was 21:38

SLOC Night-O Championship, Cuivre River, brown course. I ran okay, but made my share of mistakes -- typical for night-O. I enjoyed the course setting, which provided quite a few nice route choices. I'm not sure that I can really say that I had fun, though. Between 4, 5, and 6, there was a lot of dense vegetation to work through -- probably wouldn't have been a problem in the day, but was annoying at night. I figured out the real reason why I don't really like night-O, though: 80% of the time, I get punished for running. It rewards careful navigation, but it's hard to get a good run out of it.

Brown - Splits

Blue/Red Sprint - Splits

very slow run at HW

MVOC Germantown, Red course. A demanding park, with more than one leg that forced me through denser vegetation than I would like. All in all, it was a pretty good course. I made two bad route choice mistakes, but otherwise, my navigation was quite clean. I was pretty tired, though, and felt pretty slow.

ICO's score-O at Eagle Creek. I really enjoy this event. The navigation is relatively easy, although there are always a couple real challenges. But mostly, it's a chance to run hard and get a bit of night-time practice.

I started with the south controls, and by the time I had worked my way north, I knew that I would have to drop a few in order to make it in on time. I thought I could just drop #1 and #2, but I ended up having to skip #11 and #14, too.

My route went: 22, 21, 23, 25, 24 (no bag), 20, 19, 18, 26, 17, 13E, 12 (which I thought was a bit mis-mapped), 9, 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 6, 10, 15, 16, F. By my count, that's 32 points (including the 3 point bridge bonus). I had taped my punch card to my map and when I turned it in, my name ripped-off. So I don't think that the director was able to match my card with my name.

I made two big mistakes: First, I forgot about #25 and started running-off to another control for probably a hundred meters before realizing that I had missed it. Thankfully, another runner clued me into this. I also botched #4 badly. I attacked from the Eagle statue to the East, but thought that the statue was the lone X south of the control rather than the X north of the control. I lost a couple minutes, especially because this 'open area' was anything but.

slow run in the rain down Brown road. First time I've done a run out my front door in quite a while.

Event: OCIN - East Fork State Park
 

Red course at East Fork. A really nice course with tons of route choices. I felt several times en route that I had probably made the wrong decision, but given how tired I was, it was probably okay to play it safe on some of the approaches. My navigation was very clean, with only a few minor mistakes. What time I lost was due either to general slowness or bad route choice.

OCIN East Fork Oct 2011 - 6 Red - Splits

Checking control locations on the north side of the lake at East Fork. I have to re-design a few controls becuase a couple that I had chosen based on the map are WAY too hard in real life. This will be a very challenging race, but I really don't want to kill anyone.

A surprisingty challenging night training event set up by mikeminium. I did really horribly. Despite having been out on this map all day before, I could not gauge distances for the life of me. I kept making parallel errors, turning too early, etc. This was definitely not a good omen for the St. Louis race.

morning run at HW

Event: OCIN Camp Stonybrook
 

OCIN meet at Stonybrook. This is a great event, and one of OCIN's best in terms of getting new people out to experience the sport. I overheard a lot of newcomers to the sport who really seemed to enjoy it. Hopefully, we'll see them again.

Mike set a surprisingly demanding red course, with some characteristic deviousness. Take, for example, the leg from 15 to 16. Trying to follow the red line out of 15 was very difficult, when every step of the way, the slope of the land pushes you left. It's so easy to end up too far left on that leg. 8/9 was also a nice leg, and one that duped me. After making fairly good decisions about going through or around the reentrants, I got fooled by the small reentrant west of the control. With so much dark green right in the center of the map, this has got to be a pretty challenging place to set a course. But Mike did a really superb job.

I ran great until control 8, which I must have run right past before pushing too far west into the thick green. I botched several controls thereafter (9, 11, 12, and 13) and by the time I got my navigational confidence back, I was too tired physcially to do anything about it.

OCIN Stonybrook 2011 Red - Splits

Red course at OLOU's NOD meet at Taylorsville Lake State Park. Ken Kling deserves a huge congratulations for putting this event on. His map was pretty darned good, and his course setting was thoughtful and fun. Even more, he worked registration for over 200 entrants. Very impressive job, Ken.

I navigated pretty cleanly, making a route choice mistake on the long leg, and a couple of small mistakes and hesitancies that might have collectively cost me a minute or two. But the only way to catch up the 5 or 6 minutes that Dan and Mike beat me by would have been to run faster.

Red - Splits

Slow run at Hueston Woods; gorgeous day

Event: Reggae Run
 

Event: Whitetail Trail Half-Marathon
 

White tail trail half marathon: Caesar Creek State Park. Another half marathon this week; this time on the trail. I started very slowly, wary of not being recovered from last weekend. But by mile 7 or so, I felt fantastic, and upped my pace considerably. Perfect running weather on some really excellent trails enabled a massive negative split. This was a really well-organized event, and I would definitely do it again next year.

Walked the Reggae Run with Noga. This event is still the funnest footrace in the region.