Training Log Archive: cedarcreekIn the 7 days ending Dec 8, 2006:
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Saturday Dec 2, 2006 #
Event: Mt Airy Forest
Course set-check-pick 20:00 [1]
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.
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.
Orienteering race 1:30:39 [5] *** 6.1 km (14:52 / km) +280m 12:05 / km
shoes: Adidas $42 Cleats
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.
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.
Course set-check-pick 25:00 [1]
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...
Note
slept:4.5
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.