Training Log Archive: cedarcreek

Rode the entire length of a small bikepath off of 129 east of Hamilton. It is three sort of linear parks connected by a fairly short bikepath, with a few extra spurs. The three parks (west to east) are Reserves Park, Fort Liberty Playland, and Wetlands Park. There are two entrances to Wetlands, East and West.

Neat little ride. Would make a decent run, and in Wetlands park there are a few wide dirt paths (that I did not ride) that loop from the paved bikepath.

These might be worth mapping for small orienteering events.

Butler Co Bike Paths (pdf) Click Liberty Township, then look at the existing section near the words "Van Gordon Rd".

{Edit:} It looks to me that the easiest access to this bike path is off of the 747 exit. Go north to the first road that goes east from 747: Grandin Ridge Drive. About 1/2 way down that road on the right there is an extra driveway with a tiny green "Reserves Park" sign. If you're going east on 129, it's about 2 minutes off the road. The website calls it a "pocket park".

ARDF at the Turkey Ridge area of East Fork SP.

Partial track. GPS had trouble finding satellites, plus I was kinda low on battery.

More distance later. Probably did 8 or 9 km for the day, mostly walking, but I'm exhausted.

Event: OCIN - Miami University East Quad
 

Miami University East Quad, Sprint 3 set by Mike Minium.

A lot of fun. Really nice use of the map.

Started slow and got faster.

Quck ARDF at MU East Quad. We each set different transmitters, so there is no need to find the one(s) you set; so everyone ran a different course. (Hey, it's practice).

A lot of fun, although 2 Ts got placed very close together. It was a little surprising.

OCIN_MUEQ_Course 3 - Splits

Event: 2011 Laramie Daze
 

Event: Mitchell Memorial Forest Trail Run
 

Event: ICO Canoe Orienteering
 

Event: WMTBOC 2011 - Vicenza, ITALY
 

2m ARDF at Mt Airy, set by k4bri. He promised long. I told him I really didn't want to do a long course, but I felt like I needed a coach to say, "Matt, you need to do a long course." Time an estimate. No watch.

Today was more-or-less a disaster. Woke up without watch. Knew where it was---charging next to the laptop. Walked out the door without it.

I arrived at the park at the wrong location. I called Brian, started my car, drove 300m, and my car stopped. Smell of burning rubber. I called Brian, he picked me up. Grabbed my stuff. Crap. No shoes. Search car. Find steel-toed shoes with metatarsal protection. Wear them. Leave car. Forgot a map. Brian loaned me his. Forgot compass (which I had in the car, I just didn't grab it). Couldn't find my O'pants when I left the house. Wore shorts. Got kinda scratched up.

Okay. Start course.The first 700m (inside the exclusion circle) are all on a trail that obscures bearings from the rest of the park. I probably should have bailed to the road (on the ridge crest), but I didn't. Got to the end of the exclusion zone thinking 3 is gonna be right outside the circle. But it wasn't. Bailed to road. Wow. 5 is pretty strong---better grab it, and head into woods. Not on this spur, go down-up to next. Wait for it, since I've gone far enough based on the strength. Nope, not far enough. Keep going. Down, little up. Wait. Nope, not far enough. Little down, big up. Look around. Wait. Oh, there it is.

Next 4. Finally start to get some bearings for the other transmitters. Looks like 54132. Get 4. Get 1. Head out sunset ridge for 3. Go about half way. Signal not nearly strong enough. Must be on the other side of the finish exclusion zone (it's a long course, right?). Go big down big up to frisbee golf area, up towards 2. Hmmm. 3 is not obviously out where I expected. I hope it's there. Get 2. Head toward (wrong) side of exclusion circle where I figure/hope/expect 3 to be. 3 is getting stronger. Good sign. Stronger still. Looking good. Wait at the quarry area. Nope, not far enough, must be on the knife-edge spur. Nope. It's back on Sunset Ridge. I'm too tired to get it---too much climb. Crap. Head in to finish. Over 9km, measured by OCAD.

Did 5412(3) (missed 3, too tired to get it). Best order was probably 31542, with way, way less climb than I did. Looks like the best order would give you a minimum of 5km, probably more like 6. So---messed it up pretty bad. Basically, I missed 3 at the end of the start exclusion, then again when I was there after 1. The biggest difference between a short ARDF and long ARDF course is that order really really matters on the long courses. I knew that Sunset Ridge is a nightmare ARDF location, and I should have checked it thoroughly when I was close by the first time. And the second time.

Some good news. Felt really good on the early climbs. Seems like I'm much better aerobically.

Car will be okay. Alternator seized. Should be a few hundred bucks and 2 or 3 hours of wrench-turning.

C • Fun stuf 1

A nice ride along the Dayton bike path system from Eastwood metropark to just north of the (former) Cooper Tire plant---A smidge over 20 miles. It was a really interesting bike ride through some very nice areas and some that were a little sketchy, but having worked in Dayton for about 22 years, I'm amazed I've never been on the downtown bike path. I've been from UD south, and from Eastwood east toward Xenia. I'm kinda mad Cincinnati doesn't have bike paths like this. Obviously we're hillier, but come on. We've got so many unused linear abandoned railroads, canals, and power line right-of-ways. We need to start using them.

My third meaningful ride with the folding bike. I managed to adjust the 3-speed hub and get 1 gear lower than before, so that's good.

As I was riding I stopped over and over to check out little items. I noticed a one-noise-per-crank-revolution sound and noticed the main frame hinge was opening slightly on each crank revolution. It didn't look too bad, but it didn't look too good, either. I was thinking, "But that latch has no adjustment, so there is no way to tighten it." And then I thought, "But have I really looked at that latch?" So I stopped and looked, and sure enough, there was an adjustment. It had a hole in which to stick a screwdriver to turn it, but I didn't have a screwdriver. Crap. Luckily, though, it turned with finger pressure and after ten minutes and at least 20 tries, I got it just right. The sound went away and the bike is a lot less flexible.

It's not as fast as a bike with bigger tires, but it really does work.

Most of the bicyclists gave it a little glance, but as I was riding along Patterson near UD on the way back, I was hammering in 3rd with a little tailwind, and the cars going by were like, "WTF is that?!?", because it does look like a clown bike.

At the south end of the ride, I saw a group of people working on one of these: A SonTek RiverSurveyor, which looks like a little surfboard---it's as thick as a sailboard, but has the plan size of a boogie board. It has a sonar device that measures water flow rate using Acoustic Doppler Velocimetry. The company's devices have been used on the Mississippi River during flooding.

Finally, this morning I got passed by a Matrix/Vibe type vehicle with an Apple sticker, a BSKEPTCL license plate and a FSM badge, the first ever that I have seen "in the wild."

Another checkout ride of the folding bike. A nice ride cut short by an approaching thunderstorm. At about the 40 minute point, I was making plans to dive under cover at a moment's notice. But the rain held off until I was back to my car.

Desperately need to spend time adjusting the shifting cable. I hope the current adjustment is just giving me 3rd and 2nd, because if I'm actually in 1st gear when the shift lever points to "1", I'm going to have to find a new rear cog to get a 1st gear low enough to climb hills. It's pretty tough right now. The problem is that the internally-geared Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub has 3 fixed gears. If I change the cog or chainring, I move all three gears. Fingers crossed I can find something I like. It's probably okay to have a lower 3rd gear---I can just spin out on the downhills---The problem with a too-high first gear is that I have to get off and push, and it's sooooooo slow. So it's reasonable to lower all three to get a good hill-climbing first gear.

Event: OCIN-FAST-O-Ft. St. Clair
 

Course 3 at Ft. St. Clair, near Eaton, OH; courses set by Jon Rauschenbach.

It was overcast and had rained the night before, but it was basically perfect weather. It wasn't too hot, it actually was a bit humid, but you only noticed it intellectually---it just felt like a perfect day.

Basically a long sprint, but with a few seriously tricky legs. It felt like I was moving faster than normal, even though I did walk all the steeper uphills.

Toward the end, I was running and talking to Joe R, an experienced orienteer who's been mostly out-of-the-sport for several years. It was really shocking how different we were running at the end. He seemed to know all the right angles in-and-out of the controls, and where he was going next. I'm normally like that, too. But next to Joe, I was a wreck. My brain just wasn't working right---I was doing the right things, but just much slower than normal. I'm chalking it up to oxygen debt.

As I'm writing this half-a-day later, I'm still tired and a bit shaky. I did some yard work about 5-7pm, and it was tough.

Note: It was really tough to line up my GPS track to routegadget. If you look at my track on the Google photo, it's significantly off in a lot of places. It seems to me the original routegadget fit more-or-less matched the google maps fit, so I don't think it's a major map distortion. Maybe it's just a bad day for GPS coverage.

Also---Installed Purple Pen last night. Need more time with it. Condes is so easy for me to use because I use it so much. But I've kinda felt obligated to give it a try. The interface is neat. I haven't done a whole event with it. Ahhhhhhhh! The Inertia!

C • Map distortion 3

OCIN Ft_St_Clair_Course 3 - Splits

Event: WOC 2011 + O'Festival Savoie Grand Revard
 

1hr 7min: Monthly transmitter hunt with several of the ARDFers. In cars. I'm logging it to get the GPS track, as well as checking to see if zero intensity stuff gets logged on the main screen---I'm hoping not.

Kinda fun. I can only take bearings when I stop, so I'm much much slower than the guys with serious hardware, who can actually take bearings as they're driving.

{Edit: It looks like attackpoint sorts by the sum of 1-5 zones, but shows the total time logged including the 0 zone in the training tab list. So I knocked down the 0 time by knocking off the seconds: 1:07:15 becomes 1:07.}

2m ARDF at French Park. Very short event, but still fun. I didn't get 5 because it got taken down while I was hunting for it. I ran past it about 3 times when it wasn't on, and got confused by mistaking 4 and 5. I didn't have a map, and that threw me some, but it was more just the short course having no mercy for short lapses of attention.

If you go to my track (blue globe), and look ESE a few hundred meters, you will see a red driveway. That is supposed to be the driveway of a Frank Lloyd Wright house, one of two in the Cincinnati Area.

Update about the Virginia thing. It appears that this might be a case of a very much less than helpful DMV worker, rather than a major problem with Virginia Law. I'm gonna make some phone calls and see. This actually makes me less likely to write the letter---aren't less-than-helpful DMV employees par-for-the-course?

12 x 25m swimming. The water was just a tiny bit too warm.

My form still falters on the later reps, but I'm getting better.

20 minutes on the indoor bike (because I'm too stupid to pump up the air in my bike and wipe off the dust).

Some guys at work do a monthly 10-mile time trial. I might do it next month. (I'll be slow.) That gives me about 4 weeks.

12 hours in the car. The Commonwealth of Virginia has some {expletive deleted} laws. The primary objective was unfulfilled because of Virginia's {expletive deleted} laws. The state-level equivalent of O' club membership reciprocity was not recognized. Kinda mad about it. I'm trying to decide if it's worth a letter (or series of letters). I can't quite see a path that will either (1) get it fixed, or (2) make me feel better by just writing the letter. The problem is the letters probably need to go to the Secretaries of State and maybe the Governors, so the chance of getting something done is low and the chance of looking like a crank is high. I'm gonna let it stew for a few days. That way, I'll either forget about it or I won't, and if it's the latter, then the letter will almost write itself.

I used to tell myself I was going to write a letter and then not follow through. More and more I wait a full week and am still mad enough to write the letter. I fear I'm turning into a curmudgeon.

A rhetorical argument just occurred to me---I'm off to the google...

Event: Canal Cities Challenge
 

Event: NSF -- Green Corn Moon Rogaine