Training Log Archive: bishop22

Day 2 of the Texas Stampede. The most disappointing result of the day was Nate's MSP. He punched wrong for his penultimate control - it was at a trail / road junction, and so was the control he punched - only 70m away. Since the minimum separation for 2 controls on similar features is 100m, he filed a protest, so that a zero will not be factored into his rating (the Green HS varsity results from Interscholastics will be included in the Red M-20 ratings for JWOC selection). We had to leave before a jury was convened, but it's clear that, at a minimum, he will receive a SPW. After he punched the wrong control, he had to run right past the correct control to get to the go control, so I think the jury has the option of reinstating his result (although the rules are [intentionally?] ambiguous about what precisely can be done). He would have been 3rd on the day, and that would have moved him up to 4th overall.

Zach had a very nice run, finishing 6th for the day in 34 minutes (8 min / km). I think most of the kids that beat him are 9th graders, so he is spotting them 3 years.

My run on Blue was quite awful. I was fine on C1, but I overran C2, once again because I was excited enough that my pace count took me much further than usual. The recovery wasn't too bad. C3 was short and sweet. C4 was a big problem. It was a long leg (~1300m) without any good trail options. I went quite a bit left of the line in the first half, popping out in the ride at the Yellow/White callup line. I then went north (after going to the right to avoid some green) and took the trail way right of the line and back, rather than cutting thru green (which would have been half the distance). I was way too imprecise cutting off the trail for the control and had to come back down and try again.

I tried to follow the indistinct trails that wound towards C5, but I wound up popping back out on the power line, so I took that up to the marsh S of the control at which point I saw feet running out of the woods. Quite disappointing, since he had started 12 minutes behind me. For C6, I was moving slower (depressed) but executed well (picked up indistinct trail at hilltop to fence to stream. C7 was fine and I don't remember C8 at all, so it must have been OK. C9 was a major disaster. I was wearing the Garmin, so I'll have to check the tracks when I get home next week, but my biggest problem was that I had forgotten that the contours were 3m, not 5m, so I was looking for a deeper large depression (and now looking at the map, I can't tell whether those are contours near C9 or just form lines). In any case, I floundered around in the green for awhile. There was a junior at my control, who was so far from his course that I let him see the location of my control (while telling him that I wasn't supposed to help him). Accidentally followed the line (wanted to be left) to C10, so I got a bit hung up in marsh and junk. C11 and 12 went fine, so did most of C13, but I got lost at the last moment and had to retry from the road.

Lost some time drifting right to C14, but then I was quite happy with my C15 execution. Had to stop for a drink on the way to C16. I started to leave for C17 straight, but then decided I should take the trail to the north, but then I lost that, so just angled to the waterside trail. I left it at the junction before 17 and pace-counted carefully, but missed left and somehow didn't see the building (ruined, I guess) that housed the control. C18 was annoying because I climbed to the top, missed my control, saw the other one that couldn't be mine, but climbed down and over to it anyway, then back up to mine. The rest was clean (just slow as I was running out of gas).

Not a good start to the orienteering season. I had to relearn too many lessons that should be ingrained by now. Too often I make bad decisions about how aggressively to go after a control by not taking into account how I would recover from a miss - wandering aimlessly trying to relocate in green areas is a bad idea. I needlessly take precise bearings at times when there are plenty of map features, while I foolishly use rough bearings at other times. Well, there is a few days to get prepared for the Tucson meet, so there is hope that I can be competitive in M45+ (I'm thinking I won't finish dead last next weekend).

minimal w/up