Training Log Archive: rcro

Another enjoyable run, and Adam put on a very good course that was both interesting (as I'd never been there before) and offered good route choice opportunities, also running through various corridors and building entrances was a novelty!

Took the opportunity to taunt Mark Burley about me beating him no less than three times out of three occasions at the JK, but as he insisted on starting about three minutes behind me I was under pressure to keep going and not have him overtake me. Succeeded in getting back before him but he was 90s or so faster.

Looking forward to seeing the new Stoke Bishop halls map next week.

http://connect.garmin.com/player/81980803

Bit of a recovery break before the Frenchay urban run tomorrow. Results on BOF currently give my two 1000+ ranking point scores from the weekend and the third being in the upper 900s. Maybe I'm now up to the "average" level of orienteering ability?

That said, the rankings are still geared up to the shorter courses - on Saturday, Jenny Peel did 1km less distance than the M21S course, in three minutes longer than Tim Longley, yet they both got pretty much exactly the same ranking score...

Course C

Don't like relays, don't like mass starts - great frame of mind for being on first leg!

Long way to control 1. Did lose contact with the map, but then found myself in familiar terrain close to the control. 2-3-4 done on rough bearings, 5 route taken to avoid steep climbs where possible.

The firing range-town was quite fun, but it seems that I had the least exciting combination of controls through it.

Was mostly straight line except for 4-5 and 11-12 so quite pleased that I did so short a distance. Was running/jogging/crawling/pushing as hard as I could for most of way round but I just don't have the speed for mass starts - best I could do was 27th of 39 in class C. On the other hand, I did manage to beat most of the parallel class F runners.

The team ended up coming 35th out of 36 to not mispunch.

http://connect.garmin.com/player/81591610

M21S again. Bit steep for me but at least the sun wasn't out.

Struggling with tufts of grass and marsh to 1 - had to walk most of it. Then ran out of energy and walked most of 3, and then 4... Nav ok, but slightly off at 5. 6,7,8 ok but climb exhausting.

Then the 7 controls I messed up...
9 - poor route choice - knew it was below the little hill outcrop but went up and down anyway...
10 - pulled off by seeing a control on a similar feature nearby, assuming my bearing was wrong. But I was right, relocated very easily.
11 - was fine until after the marsh but slightly missed the control - thought I'd seen it on the way, but was too low down the hill at the critical point and overshot. The area beyond the control was not how I had expected from the map and lost time trying to relocating. Then ran and tripped over a 6in wide, 3ft deep cut across a marsh and pulled my ankle a bit. Got going again slowly, was about to head back in to marsh to go at it again when I thought to go up the one hill I hadn't already...
12 - not convinced that all the crags/rocks here were mapped. Lost a little bit of time, but not much as I'd guessed where the feature should be in relation to me.
13/14 - caught out by the extra unmapped crossing point that looked very much as though it should have been on the map...
15 - working on hedges at the bottom of the hill. Was good but then I realised I was looking at the wrong hedge and found No. 201 instead of 203

Rest of it ok.

20th/30 - doesn't sound too bad but I'm still disappointed at the amount of balls ups out there. On the plus side, I did the hat-trick in beating Mark Burley, so I must have been doing something right this weekend.

http://connect.garmin.com/player/81591619

M21S course.

Sun came out just before my start. Messed up 1 by being a little bit off, trying to relocate from a big hill. Problem - big hill was not visible on map because of number of a later control had completely covered it... In the end decided that hill had to be behind number so went off on a bearing and got it - 7:40.

2 through to 11 all fine, just taking it very carefully and saving energy. Had no idea of contour features approaching 12, but got there ok. Almost messed up 13, but remembered that the big hill was behind the control number...

Leaving 14, misread contours so went along a hill instead of a depression, then got lost - 5 mins for 200 yards! 15-16 had no idea where I was going but carried on regardless and got to the control in 4 mins.

17-20 all fine - just head east - but was a bit of a boring slog. Had some CorkO M21s for company though. Small miss on 21, had no idea on how to get to 22 but managed to stumble on it.

16th/30 - pretty good given the mistakes - much better than my performance at Cookworthy this time last year...

http://connect.garmin.com/player/81591627

Event: JK 2011
 

MOpen course. Lots of thinking required - made sure I read the control descriptions before heading to the controls. Think I only changed my mind on 3-4. Clean run though.

19th/45 - much improved on last year! Couldn't read the map though...

http://connect.garmin.com/player/81591630

Warm-up for JK. Nice area, course required some thinking, particularly the leg 13-14. Controls got a bit repetitive after 6 - always seemed to be down the bottom of a staircase to a cellar door.

53rd/137 - quite happy as my shins started hurting on the way to the airport so I really wasn't pushing it. Very hot too.

http://connect.garmin.com/player/81591635

The first of the new BOK urban series. Surprised how fast I was going - did a couple of sub 5 minutes ks at the start!

Picked right route to 1 - was obscured by control descriptions; didn't see the option of going NE, cut to the bottom of Canford Park and down until after I'd finished. Were some kids playing with control 2 - they looked hurt and upset when I told them to stop!. Almost missed the path to 5, had same feature at night-o last year, but I don't remember the metal pipe.

Went along what turns into Parrys Lane to get to 9, cutting over the gate (signed "do not cross") and the playing fields towards the end. From 10, went over the earth bank rather than around the fence as I thought I was heading to 12. Looked at control description of 14 just in time to not go the wrong way.

Overall, really enjoyable race - courses well planned for the running aspect, with little bits of fine navigation needed. Suspect it is also the fastest pace at which I've ever orienteered.

http://connect.garmin.com/player/80241208

WJS/Mark Saunders training session at Pembrey.

Mass start race with gaffles. Was only person to run directly to my first control - everybody else seemed to go off in one direction, with them realising their mistake quite late on. A novelty to be first into a control... Found the area a little bit dull compared to previous 2 days and map vague - lost time on one control finding a mapped depression that I'm not convinced was on the ground. My bearings were good on the most vague bits, as was my relatively random walking in the general direction of where I'd expect the control to be.

No-stopping. Control flow exercise. Was tired, but jogged around and didn't stop on principle. Planned routes in advance well, but think climbing W out of 6 (was going backward to numbers) was a mistake. Otherwise quite happy.

Control pick. Because of suffering with heat and sun, shortened it to avoid the worst of the prickly stuff. Walked most of the way and didn't make any mistakes other than route choice through prickles/stinging nettles.

Control placing. Was told to walk out but did a slow jog out and then back. Was then told to draw a map of where control was for somebody else to go out and collect - was a case of simplifying the leg, which I reduced to just "second tunnel on right of path". The map I had to go out and collect with had the control drawn in the wrong place relative to the nearby pond, but in fairness to him, the O-map had it in the same place as he did.

Harris relay. Seems that I ended up having to do all the further away controls. Think I picked the best route choice to get them but had trouble finding one of the extras - went in from three different places but was getting waist/chest high in thick brambles and thought it wasn't worth the effort to try and go in further. GPS however does confirm that I was in the same place as I thought I was.

Sun was very strong today but surprised that I haven't had the dehydration/migraine troubles that I would have expected on a day like this. Face and neck quite sunburned though.

Western Night League dates for next season currently:

12th November - Ashton Court
21st January - Moseley Green
10th March - Silkwood

Volunteers for organising (Ifor?) welcomed.

C • WNL 1

WJS/Mark Saunders training session on Whiteford Burrows.

Leg splitting exercise - breaking legs by setting intermediate points. Did ok, went wrong just once, but found I was just yards away from the control all the time - were a few wind blow outs that weren't on the map.

Micro-O. OK, I think, caught Duncan up around 2 and 3 - we both felt that the wrong knolls were taped at 3.

Corridors exercise. At various points could see Charles and Duncan stopped and looking lost, so kept a very close eye on the map so that I wouldn't follow them. Almost made a huge bearing error after 2 but realised before any damage was done. Was able to line up contour features with the ground well. Went wrong trying to avoid a big patch of undergrowth and attacked from a different thicket to what I had planned. Still ok.

Conductor-O. Went round with Tim L - one person with the map, telling the other person where to go. Think we were quite successful - did have trouble locating one tape among the rubbish around it.

Didn't do the exercise on extending the control feature to make it easier to find - I'd been doing it with all the previous exercises anyway. Opted out of the peg relay as I was tired and wanted to ensure I'd be fit to drive back.

Generally found the weather very hot and the terrain a bit too physical for my level of fitness at the moment.

WJS/Mark Saunders training session on Merthyr Mawr.

Started with some exercise with no north arrows, and not very much map beyond where the courses went. Messed up one control by not adjusting to the scale sufficiently, messed up another pretty badly by going off the map extract and being unable to relocate.

2km line-o. Had no troubles.

Control pick exercise. One of my bearings was a bit rough so was slightly off - then didn't see the tape. Later on, forget which control I'd left, so went in the wrong direction and found my foot fall 3ft down into a rabbit hole. Otherwise ok.

Didn't do the relocation exercise - going round in pairs getting eachother lost and then giving them the map to find the way out...

Was a bit too hot and humid for me - felt that my eyes were going a bit funnier for a short while after we finished.

Promised myself I would do some exercise this week so stopped off on Bringsty Common on the way to dropping the car off for servicing. Quite hilly - really too hilly for me in this sort of heat, some of the climbs pretty much killed me.

Would have done a longer route around Brockhampton Woods otherwise. Glad I didn't as coming up the last hill I lacked energy so much that I saw no point in carrying on and stopped.

Lots of untimed pauses to rehydrate. Quite disappointed that my fitness is still so poor.

http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/31171668/

Much better run than yesterday. Only blue as doing results. No major problems, bar the brashings.

1 was a god leg. 2 easy. Went round the top to 3, struggled to find any energy for the climb and lost a couple of minutes in the brambles looking for control. 4 ok but hard to find an easy way through the undergrowth. 5 and 6 ok.

7 went off the road a bit too early, 8 marshy but ok. Off course to 9 due to rough bearing being slightly out. Relocated easily but went right through a patch of stinging nettles... 10 really easy, 11 less so - one of the knolls that was actually a rootstock. Route to 12 was good I thought, and came out of 12 well. Lost time towards the end as went via one of the white course controls since I didn't see any distinctive trees on the map there.

Quite happy with today. Had fun modifying the results on blue, brown and black too. Didn't falsify my result though.

http://connect.garmin.com/player/77005318

Event: BOK 007 weekend
 

Orienteering performances don't get much worse than this... Think my first ever "black" course and at 5.3km it should have taken under an hour.

Overshot 1 due to map scale - lost 1-2 mins. Hit 2 perfectly although I felt pretty sure at the time I shouldn't have. 3 was a case of looking in every depression until I found the control. 4 fine but felt it was on the wrong side of the track marked as NE of it; didn't see any large ride/clearing next to it. 5/6/7 fine.

8 fine getting to the right place but was quite reliant on veg. boundaries as contours didn't seem to help. Lost at least a minute here. 9 didn't really see how contours lined up with ground but saw control quite quickly.

Cut across open to 10 as forgot scale was 1:7500 so distances actually shorter. Went in rough direction of where I though I should have been going, but compass told me I was going due north. Got confused as features then didn't line up. Used knoll to NE to catch me. 12 tried bearing but compass led me back down to 9 - came back up ride. 13 ok.

14 - know the map is dodgy so went by the compass, hit a path that compass said was N-S so turned right (S). Found myself back at 9 again. Not happy. 14-15-16 ok but some unexpected valleys to cross. 17 was another case of mistrusting compass - found the double depressions just NW of control site - worked back from shed. 17-18 followed compass due south (rather than east as map suggests...) and found control ok. 19 ok but felt route choice poor. 20 - came out via nice open route,; if mapped would have gone in that way too!

21 ok, 22 ok, 23 found ok (others around) but felt it was too far S. 24 slightly missed - lost me a minute or so. 25 ok but didn't look at map - there was a photographer there. 26 also blind luck.

So, either the map really is absolutely terrible or my compass is broken (or both...) Compass already in the bin. Held Matt Crane off for 3 mins rather than expected 2.5 - he still got to 1 about a minute before me!

http://connect.garmin.com/player/76720531

Collecting in controls around the SW corner of the map. As with last time I collected controls is Stock Hill, got well and truly lost trying to find one of them - only this time it was one I went to earlier on!

Think the control collecting was more fun than the running today - at least the driving down tracks, removing fallen branches and eating Katy Dyer's chocolates were.