Training Log Archive: cedarcreek

Sprint 1 at Miami-University Western Campus. The first three controls were in the woods, a fairly nice open woods. The fourth control was the first "urban" control, and I ran the line until I popped out of the woods and realized I was on the wrong side of a building. Lost about 25 seconds, I'd guess. The next couple controls were a little boring; flat, pick a route and just run clean. I started to relax, and then, boom, it got really interesting.

I had decided to run with a baseplate, in the hope that it would help me thumb and fold the map a little better, and the one thing that I don't do as well with a baseplate is point myself in right direction as I'm leaving a control. Tom Svobodny and I had an interesting discussion about this. He ran without a compass, and said he much prefers that. He follows the features and navigates off them. My approach is completely different. As I'm leaving a control (typically), I use my thumb compass to point my body toward the control, and then I start looking for features.

Where the baseplate got me today was as I left 6. I rotated right completely by eye, and looked for a bridge. I was expecting a big, substantial pedestrian bridge with a span of 50m or so. I didn't see it. I saw a little 4m crossing point, and I stopped to look. I simply didn't see the bridge. I was losing time, so I committed to the crossing, and almost immediately saw the bridge off to my right. At that point I changed course and went under the bridge and up a contour or so to the control through honeysuckle. 1:41 was my split. I'm guessing I lost at least 15 seconds. I'm not really blaming the baseplate, just my use of it. I should have been more aware and realized I needed to rotate toward that bridge walkway.

The next control was a similar awesome leg, with another bridge, and some complicated vegetation boundaries. I reverted into 1:10000 mode, and ran the line in honeysuckle when I should have popped out into the lawn area and saved maybe 20-30 seconds.

I really enjoyed this sprint. It had a few boring legs, but the good ones made up for it.

This was my first race on a 1:4000 map, and I now love 1:4000 maps. After I commented about the 1:5000 scale of the NAOC Sprint at McMaster University, that 1:4000 was the IOF-preferred scale, I went back and read the then current ISSOM 2005, and was surprised that the preference for 1:4000 was removed. I believe the last 3 WOCs used 1:4000, so I do sense an international preference for that scale.

Sprint 2 at Miami University Peffer Woods. I think this is a new map.

Mike Minium set one of the best sprints I've ever run. This course was really cool. The first 5 controls reminded me of Sprint 1 at the 2006 Sprint Series Finals---Open lawn-type grass with the controls on trees and bushes with some controls in the woods a little. Then control 6 was a nice long leg (I'm guessing 500m?). Controls 6-13 were in a network of wide trails (rides) in an otherwise nasty green forest. One little control picking area 6-7-8-9 was this really crazy section in this complicated area of vegetation boundaries.

Again, the 1:4000 map is amazing, and I think I like these natural curvy rides and trails more than I like complicated areas of universities. (On the other hand, running around complicated urban areas is just so much fun.) I think someone needs to take another try at Bear Creek Scout Camp with the intent to make the courses more complicated. (That's because of the complicated vegetation boundaries and rides.)

I had three issues. At 9, I couldn't find an indistinct trail junction, and lost maybe 30 seconds. I lost maybe 10 seconds going into 12 (?), and about 20 leaving 12 to go to 13 (?). I ran most of the way, but I was beat.

If you missed this sprint2, you missed a good one. This is one of the best three sprints I've run. The other two are the 2006 Sprint Series Final (I ran the short one), and the NAOC McMaster University Sprint.

After the 5.1km Green yesterday, and these two 3+km sprints today, I skipped the night-O, and I'm hoping to not wimp out tomorrow for the Billy Pig (12.5km). I'm beat, though.

Three things:

1. Turnout today was so light. It might be a record for the least attendence at an A-Meet. There were more people yesterday, and we're hoping the BillyPig is well-attended Monday. I just don't understand it. It was an awesome day of Sprints.

2. My ribs did hurt a little today. I think I just injured the muscles a little. I'm hoping that's all there is to it.

3. Up until now, the sprints I've set had pretty strict limits on the number of controls I could use, and I think that is something the course setter needs to avoid. Sprints need a lot of controls, or, as John Fredrickson says, they're just short regular courses. The 1:4000 map lets you set control picking sections with really intense changes of tempo and direction. If you use 6mm circles, and just let them touch, you can put controls 24m apart. Today's Sprint2 had a leg like that (with bigger circles, just touching) with an 11 second split. My gut says 18 controls is "normal" for a big sprint, just based on my recollection of looking at big sprint maps. I've never set a sprint with more than 14 controls, I think, and I'm planning to change that.

C • It's not orienteering season a... 4

I've been saving this rant for way too long.

Some time ago, Spike had some sprint design comments. Basically, it appears that the European thinking of sprints is that the problems need to be solved at full speed. I think that's bullshit.

Sprints, because they're shorter, allow the runner to run much faster than in middles or classics. That gives the setter the ability to force even more extreme tempo changes. To me, that's interesting. Problems that can be solved at full speed are boring, except as a part of a high-speed section that's setting you up for a problem that stops you in your tracks.

Sprint 1 - Western Campus - Splits

Sprint 2 - Peffer Woods - Splits

Event: OCIN New Year's Orienteering Festival
 

Green course at Miami University Natural Areas, set by Bill Swift. Climb approximate---I'll count it later.

A really fun course. Somewhat complicated. No long leg, but good variety in leg lengths and difficulty. I did better than I usually do against some people. I attribute this to the difficulty of the course. I might be improving in fitness, but this happened the last time I was on this map (and Bill set the courses). Some of the difficulty was traveling along the flatter bottom areas with vague location features.

I had a few hesitations, and I took the right trail route to 5 more to check out the map---the left route through the field looked faster, but boring. The biggest error of the day was about 30 or 60 seconds at 13---the clearing. I overran the attackpoint and misread the map a little. I caught it pretty fast, but it still bugged me.

I also took the hardest fall I've ever taken at walking speed---I was leaving 15 (the go control), and I knew there was a fence, so I looked down at the map, and I could feel the fence hit my legs. I hit the ground hard, and my ribs landed on top of my forearm---deforming the ribs inward. It really knocked the wind out of me. For about 10 seconds, I was pretty sure I was going to the hospital. I stumbled to my feet, started walking, and felt better. After about a minute, I was able to run to the finish. I was shocked when I saw my split was just a little over 2 minutes. It felt like at least 4.

I was amazed how much this course took out of me. I was forgetful and couldn't put words together normally for a few hours afterwards. I hope I didn't hurt my chances for the sprints Sunday. I really want to do the Night-O Sunday, and that means my original plans to do the BillyPig might have to be changed to the Piglet.

Now, about 11 hours later, my ribs have no visible swelling or bruising, but they hurt in places when I push on them.

Spent about 3 hours massaging the entry spreadsheet, setting up the three SI events in the SportIdent software (OE2003), and importing the .csv files. Now it's 3am on the 31st, and I've got to get up in 4.5 hours. The Piglet is looking more and more likely.

Green - Splits

Spent 2 hours today making numbers for the PVC stands. I also made clear, check, start, and finish labels.
I picked up SI gear from Bob F., and took the stands to Mike's. I also spent another hour making 14 more assemblies to hold the SI e-controls onto the stands.

Spent maybe 3 or 4 hours making 21 more PVC pipe stands. This has been one of the smaller reasons OCIN hasn't had more local events using SportIdent, and hopefully, now that we have more stands than we have e-controls, we're one step closer to that. (I took photos, and I will eventually post an article about how I made them.)

(And just to be clear---OCIN has a lot of stands. It's just that they're inconvenient to use with SI. These make it a lot easier.)

One-hill route with a loop around the rec center. Slow, but steady. Stopped twice for intestinal issues. I've been eating way too much good-tasting food. I suppose that blackberry pie with ice cream *and* cool whip is technically considered food.

This has turned into another break where I've squandered beautiful weather. I've pushed the limits of slugdom this last week.

Partial movie list:
Babí léto (Autumn Spring) (Czech)
Strangers With Candy
Cast Away*
Talledega Nights*
On A Clear Day (Laid-off Shipbuilder tries to put his life back together and decides to swim the English Channel.)
Something the Lord Made (About heart surgery pioneers Dr. Alfred Blalock and (Mr.) Vivien Thomas. Stars Mos Def.)
The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000)
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)*
The Good Shepherd
V for Vendetta
Hopscotch*

* means I had already seen it, and was rewatching it for some reason.

I also finished the book "Warning to the West" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

I guess I'm neglecting my training and being diligent on my movie watching and book reading. Classic slug-like behavior...

About 2 months ago, I finished an amazing book. It's called "Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics". It was written by Ruth Lewin Sime, a chemistry professor who lives in Sacramento.

I resisted reading the whole book. My best friend in college would get mad at me when I read a book out-of-order, or worse, recommend to someone else that they read a book out of order.

The reason I read this book goes back to 1990, when I started reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", by Richard Rhodes. I started it, read maybe 150 pages, then set it aside for about 10 years. When I finally got back to it, the book had not only water damage, but also had soaked up some gasoline from a gas leak in my old car. I finished it smelling hints of gasoline fumes. (I just smelled it again, and that is all gone now.)

The second time around, I could not put it down---It's an amazing, big story. One of my favorite parts of that book is when Lise Meitner and her nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, are puzzling over confusing experimental results. Lise was on Christmas holiday in Kungälv, Norway, taking daily walks in the snow near an ancient rock fortress. She, Lise Meitner, put together two existing ideas and explained the experimental results---Certain atoms, like uranium, could be broken apart and large amounts of energy released. She discovered nuclear fission.

The details, to me anyway, are high drama. When I found this book about Lise Meitner, I got ahold of it, and against the advice of my friend from college, turned right to the good part. Hindsight being 20/20, I made a mistake. After reading the good part, I ended up starting at the beginning, and reading this book through, front to back, including the part I'd already read. What I missed by reading it out-of-order was the build-up of how much a force in physics she was. She was a few months older than Einstein, and she was as hardcore a physicist as any of her contemporaries.

When I finished it, I was on a high for days. It was so good. It's got everything: Her getting accepted to university when such a thing just wasn't done; her sacrificing her personal and family life for her profession; Famous physicists from Boltzmann to Planck to Einstein to Bohr; Her job as an X-ray technician during World War I; The years between the wars when the Nazis came to power and started systematically passing laws agaist Jews; Betrayal, having people you work with turn their back to you; Escape from Germany, barely; Exile in Sweden; Spies and Resistance; dealing with hatred; putting your life back together.

What got me thinking about it a few days ago was the recent Iranian conference to deny the holocaust, and then on Sunday the piece on 60 Minutes that interviewed concentration camp survivors.

When I read Rhodes' book, the single most amazing thing to me was that Einstein left Germany before the Nazis came to power; that he apparently saw what was coming. As he left his house in December 1932 with his wife Elsa, he said to her, "Turn around. You will never see it again."

What would it take for you to leave your home and your country, and to know that you would never be back? How bad must that have been? I don't think I would have done what Einstein did. I think I'm so stubborn that I would have stayed.

Lise Meitner is the diametrical opposite of Einstein in this regard. She basically never saw it coming. Even when it was right there, she didn't want to accept it.

Because I had read the Einstein story, I suspected the Nazi "takeover" was like a light switch---Click, then, "Well, that's it. I'm outta here." This book surprised me by showing that it was a gradual intensification of laws. It was exactly like turning up the heat on a frog---By the time you realize the water is too hot, you are cooked.

A few days ago I reread the prologue to Romeo and Juliet. It's interesting how the words are the same every time, but they change meaning when you read them again. This time, two lines caught my eye:

"From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean."

The legal "cleanliness" of the Nazi's laws and enforcement was the single most shocking part of this book. I kept asking myself if Lise was deluding herself, and I just couldn't say she was. She acted reasonably to unreasonable people. She gave them the benefit of the doubt.

What jumped out at me a few days ago was the "civil hands". I'm pretty sure Shakespeare didn't mean "government" when he wrote that, but that's what I read. When civil hands are unclean, what can you do? Do you give them the benefit of the doubt? Do you act reasonably? Do you ever begin to act unreasonably? Exactly how long do you delude yourself before you are forced to take action?

Having thought about it for two months, I can't think of a better book that I've read. It's a roller coaster ride of emotions. It's about how people act when there is conflict. It's about how civil hands set back Germany's leadership in science by denying inconvenient truths. It's about people who were tested, how some of them failed, and how some of them excelled. I'll say it again---It's the best book I've ever read.

I saw Steve Barnhart at the Night-O and asked him if he'd read my comments about his course at Germantown. He hadn't, so I apologized in advance. I might go back and reconsider some of them.

Since I've been doing this, I figure now is not the time to stop:

What did I think about the MVOC Night-O as a quality meet?

I've been thinking about this for two days, and I've had trouble thinking of stuff to complain about. I really enjoyed this event.

1. The maps were preprinted, with a preprinted clue sheet on the back.

2. All the controls were in the right places. The map isn't the best, but the course setting partly accounted for that by being largely on linear features. They had done recent map updates for some recently finished construction.

3. I stared at the course (a score course) for over 5 minutes before I settled on my order. There were several controls in a row that almost everyone took clockwise or counterclockwise. A little bit more "confounding" might have made the orienteering more interesting. I like courses that reward complicated navigation over the easy route. A lot of this was just running on linear features. This is really a nitpick, because finding a good order made this interesting, and I did take a few longer trail routes rather than run-the-line on a few of the more difficult legs.

4. Another nitpick would be that they didn't have map bags. Bags probably weren't necessary, but I prefer a map bag. At other MVOC events, the bags are very thin (maybe 2mils?). I much prefer the kind OCIN uses, which I think are 4mil. (I actually borrowed a map bag from Bob Frey for this event. I need to keep a few with my gear, which I still need to organize...)

Although there were only four competitors, I'm still surprised that I won this little event.

I know I'm rusty on 80m, which is the easier of the two radio orienteering events (the harder is 2m), but I have to get my head into events better.

We've been at McFarlan so much that I have trouble taking the navigation difficulty seriously. In radio-O, there is so much to do that you can't keep track of where you are as much as you'd like. I was too cavalier about navigation today. Twice it cost me a few minutes when I wasn't sure where I was.

Regular Orienteers are sometimes surprised that the penalty for not keeping contact in Radio-O is usually not as bad as in Regular O. The map helps you to avoid hazards like fight, and climb, but since you can usually just keep following the signal, you'll eventually find the transmitter. It can be pretty disconcerting when you first lose contact for an extended period. At my first ARDF (Radio-O) event, I spent about 15 minutes traveling along a stream before I found something I could use to relocate. I knew what stream, I just didn't know where I was along it. The process of relocation is completely different---You just keep moving toward the transmitter until you pass something you can recognize.

But today, though, I was trying to gain a little advantage by moving faster and trying to maintain a looser contact, and it didn't work for me.

And that wasn't the worst problem. I need to do more 80m events, and I need to set up some transmitters and walk around a park checking my ability to take bearings. Once out of 4 times today, Bob F. beat me to a control because I make a newbie mistake---I got in a hurry and took off at 90 degrees to the control. This is a problem with 80m receivers---it's easy to mess up if you're trying to beat the other guy.

The other 3 times (out of 4), Bob went straight toward the control, and I veered off an an angle. I can't explain this except that I was in a hurry (again, trying to gain an advantage), and I didn't take my time to get the job done right.

I was good out of controls---I always knew where to go next, and I did get the order right. It was just a fun day to be in the park. 60 degrees, sunny. Cold weather is back in 2 days...

Results: I was first by about 1 minute over Bob Frey, then about 9 minutes back was Brian. Emily got three of four Ts.

MVOC Night-O at Cricket Holler Scout Camp. 4.0km is my GPS measured distance.

A few mistakes. It took me a few controls to get on the 1:5000 scale map. I don't know how I screwed up right out of the start, but control 14 appeared so quickly, I had to double-check the code to make sure I was really there. I made a bad route to 7 (from 8) because I was in 1:15000 mode (for some reason). I took a few seconds to figure out where I was when I popped out of the woods at 13 (coming from 5). I hesitated on the way to 2 from 4, and I took a safer route to 1 (from 2) without really considering the (apparently) better straight route along the fence.

I think I was fourth (forgot about Tom *and* Gabe) of maybe 10 groups, which really surprised me. In the Kart-Bosse language, I had a really clean run. I started out very cautiously, collecting a lot of features along the way. I had a really good order. I'd be surprised if any other order is significantly shorter or easier than my route.

I did 14, 15, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 13, 4, 2, 1, 3.

"Search and Destroy" component of the Night-O event. This is a neat way to take the course down. You get points for bringing in controls. I got 2 (of 15), which was pretty good. Only 1 or 2 people got more.

Event: ICO Robb Hill
 

Event: Mt Airy Forest
 

Set out a few controls for the event at Mt Airy. (Only one of them saved me some time on my course, maybe a minute, but the real advantage was having seen the courses already and having considered all the route choices.)

I was *amazed* by the weather. After the 60mph wind gusts, rain, and no sun all day on Friday, it could not have been a better day.

Red course at Mt. Airy, set by hkleaf. I had no intention of running Red, until I saw Brian DeYoung heading north for Red 1 instead of south for Green 1. There was no psyching myself up for Red. I knew it was too much climb. Green had a little too much at 230, but Red at 280 meant I was going to finish mostly walking.

It was a weird experience to run a course I'd studied very closely beforehand. I was moving faster, and with less contact than I'm comfortable with. I spent very little time studying the map to plan my route, and mostly just adjusted my route to where my loose contact put me.

I had trouble with 4, because it looks like a yellow-ish leg, up a trail in the open, and then a short attack. The problem was the map is from 1993, and it's changed enough that the attackpoint wasn't obvious to me. I think a pacecount might have helped me. Lost maybe 2 minutes.

The long leg to 5 was pretty cool. I lucked into a route that saved me some climb, and might have been really good. I made a parallel error by one spur NE, and ended up at the N side of the Loop. I came down one of the yellow areas toward 5 and picked up another control (which I recognized as an Orange control, since I'd seen that course too), then contoured over to my 5.

I wasn't sure how the next section was going to be. One type of course at Mt. Airy is where you go uphill to the road, relocate on the road, and then shoot in to the control---and then do that over and over, usually with huge climb. This section had a few legs like that, but the variety of legs, and the difficulty of these (both easy and harder) made it really interesting to me. That and the fact that these were very kind regarding climb. (Green was identical to Red except for Red 1-4 being unique).

Usually those legs I mentioned are very easy, but at least two of the road legs on this course had the opportunity for parallel errors, especially if you were trying to cut off distance by leaving the road at weak attackpoints (which I did several times).

In general, the old map made this more difficult than I expected from looking at the map. In a few places the old 2-color green really needed to be 3rd green, and I don't know, it was just vague a lot. It wasn't crisply accurate like I'm used to.

The second long leg looked a lot more interesting on the computer screen than it did in the woods. I went to the loop, down the trail on Sunset ridge to the saddle area, cut diagonally downhill past the depressions (with another yellow-orange control), up the spur just left of the reentrant, past the right side of the building, down to the stream and up the exactly correct reentrant to the depression. It was weird to be on a long leg, ostensibly with a lot of route choice, and see elephant tracks, especially in an event this size. I guess other people see gaps in the vegetation similarly.

I wasn't sure how the control picking section was going to go over. It was 7 legs long, and just over 100m per leg. I looked at each leg carefully on the computer, and knew what contours to expect. It was neat to see other people on the course here. What I didn't like was that the second long leg with 2 major climbs just finished me off. I had very little left, and I walked most of this part of the course.

The second to last control (reentrant upper part) I drew the circle wrong (on the depression), and added a little climb and distance---not much.

The last control was on a vegetation feature in a complicated area with a lot of weak vegetation features. I would have wasted at least a minute if I hadn't set that control. As it was I crossed the stream and didn't recognize vegetation features, I had a moment of panic. Where the mapping at 4 (where I also had trouble) was just vague, the map here was so different as to make it probably unfair. I think the frisbee golf course is the reason for the changes. I was surprised when I got this control later to find the three little circles of vegetation. They were much more vague than you'd expect from the map, but they were still there.

One of the control picking area controls was, I think, northern depression. Gerald e-mailed that he couldn't find it. I was shocked that a depression (a karst sinkhole) would disappear, so when there was the opportunity to set that control, I did. I was amazed that it wasn't there. I put the control one depression west (matching the clue of northern-most depression), still in the circle. As I was walking out, I realized our mistake. The depression we picked was right next to a trail, and, get this, wasn't a depression---it was the tip of a tiny reentrant where the trail obscured the contour line on either side. So it looked like a little depression, but it wasn't.

I decided to not tell anyone, and see if anyone noticed. I finished when most people were gone, so I don't know if anyone noticed.

On White, we had trouble finding hanging punches for 1 and 5, so we used 11 and 15 instead. On Saturday morning, I found 1 and 5, and we fixed the White clue sheet, but forgot that yellow and another course (I think) used 11. I hope no one was messed up by that, particularly because 1 wasn't placed exactly as the clue said.

While Gerald was still placing controls, I put out the master maps, and failed to put out the course notes, which would have helped some people new to Mt. Airy. We're so used to it, we forget that the root stocks were mapped in 1993, and they are never there, and that the vegetation mapping is completely unreliable.

Speaking of vegetation, I have never seen Mt. Airy so nice to run through. I was moving pretty well up to the second long leg, and I was having a really good time. We were deluged with entrants at 11am, and I think the 2 person event director/course setter work split really helps.

Pulled out 8 controls, one more than I placed. I was really beat. My back muscles were aching, and my legs were just toast. This is what happens to slugs who don't work out all week...

C • Trouble with number 4 7

Probably my biggest "take away" from this weekend was that I need to do better organizing my gear (stands, punches, etc), as well as the club gear (flags, hanging punches, cash box, etc). We had exactly the right number of flags, and I assumed we had many more than necessary. I'm missing a few punches for my stands (with PVC tubes attached). In short, I need to get my "stuff" together, literally as well as figuratively.

Red - Splits