Training Log Archive: tdgood

The race was too crowded to run. I was first leg seeded 1110 out of 1300 teams. Only a few rows of people behind me. The cannon goes off at the start which scares the begeebees out of me. I grab my map and wait in line to run. It is so crowded all you can do is jog along and move up whenever the opportunity presents. Finally get to the start triangle and it spread out enough that I can open up my stride. It is a long race for me and I didn't want to burn out early so wasn't pushing it. First control was long leg. Map reading was trivial, just like in the model. Of course that didn't stop me from spazzing. I wanted to go over a longish ridge and punch the control. Instead I went over a hill, saw a control with hundreds of people going to it so of course I ran over to it. It wasn't mine. I looked up and went to the other control with hundreds of people at it. It wasn't mine either. DOAAHH!. Ok, this time I looked at my map and continued to my control, the farthest of the three forks. Ok, settled down and ran my own race for the next two controls in the woods. Moved up several hundred places. Then we hit the marsh section. It was to croweded to run. Basically, you stood in line waiting to go in the correct direction. Just followed the train until you get to a control. You couldn't read the map, couldn't see the terrain. All you can do is look to see where the next foot was going to go. Not my style of orienteering. Did next few controls this way. Finally made a major unlucky screwed up. The train split and I went the wrong way. My control should have been right there but I didn't see it so kept going. The control was there but blocked by the train. I ran to another control not mine. I then cut the corner back to the first control but was now on the other side of it. Since I still didn't see it I went farther with the train. Hit the road which was way to far and had to fight my way back through the train to get the control which I had missed twice before. I had the 2nd slowest split on this leg and it put me way back in the back with slower people. The train was now moving slow and it was near impossible to get by people. I slowly edge up whenever I could. One other screw up of two minutes where I pulled up short of my control. Actually I hit the three other controls just in front of mine and it took me awhile to figure out what was what. Looking at the map, I almost always had the farthest controls of the fork ones and never the first one.
I never turned on my lamp and really wish other people hadn't. It was plenty light enought to see where to run. I had difficulty seeing the map because of losing my night vision to other peoples lights. Since I didn't look that much at my map it wasn't to bad.
Final damage, I was up to 764th place early in race before my screw up which dropped me to over 1050. I climbed back up to 971 finish.

Model event was all open wooded area. All you had to do was steer via the small hills. Took the course at a comformtable jog. Went out of the way a few times to check out specific features and see how they were mapped. Based on this terrain, the jukola would be very fast.

Forssa Games. Ran easy to get feel for terrain. Had a little trouble at the start as I was running around the marsh that I couldn't see. finally I cut across it and remember Tom Carr saying something about marshes just being damp/wetter areas and not marshes as we are used to.

Easy run to loosen up after soccer yesterday.
Last training day before leaving for Jukola.
7:39 1:31 7:47 8:02 1:36 7:25

First time we actually finished with a full team.
It made a big difference. We tied 0-0.

Warmdown after getting back from Soccer. Ran two loops in the woods behind my house.

Good race. Mass start and the one time I drink beer. Leaders made one boo-boo early. Ran
fairly clean. Just behind Nadim and Jon Torrance
but couldn't catch them on the final loop running around the fields.

Picking up controls after Beer chase.

Long - Splits