Training Log Archive: cedarcreek

Team Trials Middle Red Course. Fabulous course. I had a few bobbles; the biggest maybe 2 minutes. I felt very consistent, and I felt a lot faster than the Sprint. Dragged a little at the end.

It's hard to explain just how fun the terrain was. This is orienteering as it was meant to be. A few times I felt like the legs required too much compass, but looking back now, I think the course is extremely well balanced, with a wide variety of different skills and a lot of tempo change.

I hope SMOC plans to have annual A-Meets. These maps are great.

Quality issues: Wow. This is a tough one---The event was very good.

I liked the Sprint, although legs 3 and 5 were extremely trivial---I'm not sure how to feel about this. I think trivial legs are an essential part of a sprint course, but I didn't like that these were so long, and at a part of the course where later starters could use the people ahead to follow.

Speaking to the early competitors, it was clear that the last part of each sprint used the same controls, and the elephant tracks I used made the last few legs trivial. I think they should have used different last sections to create multiple elephant tracks (of lesser size) and made us as least think a little.

I also though having Red and Blue the same sprint made Red too long or maybe Blue too short, although Sam really pushed the women's time downward.

One thing I noticed for the Middle was that the distance from the last line to the maps was a little too long. I even ran a little, and I had less than 10 seconds to write my data on the map and go.

One thing I'm still mulling over is not the small spacing between the controls, but the fact that reasonable approaches to my control took me past another really close control. I noticed this during Tiomila this year, and then it happened to me. I noticed it before I punched, but my brain shut off and I took off in exactly the wrong direction. Again at 10, I found another control on the way to mine. I think it's unfair, and that having reasonable approaches clear of other controls is a step in the direction of fairness.

I don't understand why the Team requires their own start window. One of the high points of any event for me is seeing our best orienteers in the woods. This makes the Team Trials less of a must-attend-event to me. If the Team is serious about making the course sterile, then they should set the courses so that spectators can see things. (Sunday might have had spectator controls---I wasn't there Sunday.) I think the Team should allow some non-Trials competitors to start and finish early so they can be on the course taking photos during the event---within limits and in places agreeable to the setter and WRE advisor (if applicable).

I'd like to know if the results indicate the presence of trains, and if they do, for the Team to ask or require some sort of butterfly in the courses (except the sprint). My thought is---If WOCs use them, we should too.

Day 2: Red/Brown - Splits

Event: US Team Trials
 

Team Trials Sprint. Had no legs. Maybe allergies or something. Dragged along.

One hill route with a lap of the rec center. A really beautiful night to run---a few drops of rain, but the temperature was just wonderful. Terrible Headache most of the day. I'm thinking allergies, but maybe not. Feeling better now.

Car news: My first tank was 44mpg (5.35L/100km), but I "might have been a little over the speed limit" "occasionally". I'm really happy with that. Apparently the whole country is switching to Ultra-Low Sulfur Diesel fuel, to allow new cars to have incredibly good emissions, but it's playing havoc with some older cars. I've read a few not-quite-horror stories about ULSD and about biodiesel blends, and decided to find a station with ULSD with some biodiesel blended in anyway. The place I found sells 10% biodiesel, and I put in about 1/2 tank, so my car is now on about a 5% blend. Who knew biodiesel is available (as a blend) in pumps. Amazing. Cold weather might be a problem. www.nearbio.com/ Click on the map, then enter a zip or city or state.

Soldier of Orange (Soldaat van Oranje (1977) Dutch) (1) I'd seen this movie probably in the early nineties, and it's one of my very favorite movies ever. It follows six (?) university students through the invasion of Holland and through World War II. It has some rated-R violence that is brutally realistic, but the movie is so good you should see it anyway. It's very difficult to categorize this movie, but my favorite parts depict Dutch resistance attempting to spy on Nazi activities, and the Nazi counter-intellegence efforts. I bought the DVD over a year ago, and the time was right to watch it. Coincidently, I just heard about a new WWII movie by the same director, Black Book, that I now must see.

Hot Fuzz (1) I loved Shaun of the Dead. It was just so clever and so well put together. Although this movie bothered me because it starts so very slowly and then builds to an excruciatingly long action ending, sort of like 1941, I absolutely loved this movie. Part of it was my complaint about King Kong---too many loose ends. This movie seemingly has no loose ends. Everything is resolved. Everything means something. Some episodes on Seinfeld were interwoven in really interestng ways, but Hot Fuzz is interwoven to a whole other order of magnitude. And I just liked it.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (0) I really wanted to like this, but I'm just not enough of an ATHF fan to get it, I guess. The funniest part of the whole experience was a heavy-metal short about theatre ettiquette at the beginning in place of the normal piece that we've all seen---"Please turn cell phones to 'off'." To give you an idea, it has the lyric "Cut You Up With A Linoleum Knife", and it's so funny I almost blew soda out my nose.

MVOC Club Meeting at the Bonds...