Training Log Archive: David_Waller

Started drafting the map for a BOK summer sprint at a TBA location. It's a much larger area than I thought, and it looks like I'll have to do it at 1:10 instead of 1:5

C • Doesn't this imply 7

Hard run on the Company Mill trail at Umstead.

I designed a pink course for the west side of CNF, all on trails, but with a lot of route choice and decisions. Very fun; and given my prior familiarity with the map, surprisingly challenging. I still think that something is wrong with the scale of this map, though -- everything seems much longer in real life than it does on the map. Straight line distance for my course was 6.6 km, and I estimated the actual miles run (from Condes) at 5.8. This puts me somewhere around 14 mintues per mile, and I'm very sure that I wasn't that slow. Every time I run on this stinking map, I think that the times are much too slow. Could the high school's football field in the north part of the map really be 150 meters?

C • Wrong scale? 3

I was in Durham for the afternoon, so I took a quick spin on the Al Buehler trail while Noga got her hair cut. I felt great -- perhaps due to the super-lightweight shoes -- until I got to the big hill at mile 1.25, when everything slowed down considerably. Maybe should have done another loop, but I didn't want to chance re-injuring my heel on the flimsy shoes.

C • A nice week 6

Nice run down the Loblolly trail at Umstead, and back on the bridle/bike trail

CNF -- two laps of the Pumpkin loop, separated by a 4-minute break. Negative split, felt pretty good.

Because I wasn't in town over the weekend, I asked Vladimir to send me the red course that he set in Umstead on Sunday. I ran it okay; meh.

Jog at Carolina North

Event: DVOA Fort Washington
 

DVOA meet at Fort Washington SP, Green course. Glad I went because it's always fun getting into a new park on a new map (for me). I especially appreciated (and didn't realize how much I missed) Zherev's distinctive and expert touch with precision vegetation mapping, which kept me pretty clear of some fairly bad thorny areas several times. The park is small, and it's probably impossible to set a challenging technical course. Nothing can be too far from a trail or from an obvious attackpoint. But still, the green course seemed sort of like an afterthought of the design process -- with probably half of its controls visible from 75 m away. Some were approached from directions that made the control really obvious -- as if the green course shared a control with another course, but came to its controls from a sub-optimal direction. I don't know. It's not a complaint, It was a really fun course, but just not so technical. It was mostly a runner's course, and I because feel so sluggish and out of shape, it felt really slow. I don't think that I lost much more than a minute to navigation issues.

C • my long term goal is to exploit that 3

Green - Splits

Getting the last of the controls from Sunday. Very exhausted.

Picked up the northern part of yesterday's course, following the leader's track backwards where I could.

Super successful score-O at Umstead. I got several unsolicited comments about the fantastic print job -- two 13 x 19" sheets with a brilliant red overprint that popped off the page in the sunlight, plus an overview map printed at 1:20000 (that was good enough for a couple of people to navigate from). Also, my first score-O design that someone actually cleared -- many in the past have been impossibly long. Only one person cleared, and with only 9 minutes to spare; and he ran/navigated almost perfectly. For several others, a couple mistakes cost them the opportunity to clear -- just how it should be.

Put out the last controls for the score-O, approaching most of them from a different direction than when I scouted them. Spiked all but one, feeling navigationally pretty sharp. Hope I can maintain that until the GNC.

C • I *ahould* try some different angles earlier 4

Put out 15 of the controls for Sunday's score-O. A great day to be out.

Quick jog out to two of the most remote control locations to set out bags. Also ran out to the big lake to check the crossability of the creek that feeds it.

Last minute check of water fountain status, creek levels, creek crossing spots, and changing one control location before Sunday's score-O.

Jogging between creek checking and control site checking