Training Log Archive: maprunner

OK training camp, day 1. Hobbs State Park, Rogers AR

Tom H drives up from AR all winter long to attend our local events, so we thought we would return the favor. Lidar data for AR became available last year, so Mike started making a remote map of Hobbs State Park. We decided to go down there to check it out in person, and invited other OKers to join us if they wished. Sandy, Blair, Fritz, Dick and Nancy came down too. Tom joined us for training exercises. It was a great group!

We left Lawrence very early Sat morning and made it to Rogers by lunchtime. Met D&N and Tom, and decided what we would do for training. Fritz had designed two control picking courses. Blair, Sandy and I went out on one (and hung tapes) while Tom and Fritz hung tapes on the other. The plan was to run the opposite course tomorrow.

Mike went out exploring the map on his own. Dick and Nancy walked and took GPS tracks of some trails in a different part of the map.

Right away we discovered that the reentrants were BIG and the hills were STEEP. It was hard to go down the hills, or contour across, because they were covered with leaves over lots of loose rocks. We often went down on our rears, either on purpose or by accident. This is also a map in progress, so many of the "cliffs" were actually steeper sections of hills that the software thought was a cliff. Ditto for "thickets": they often were not discernible to us on the ground.

There was one big plus however: the woods were generally very open, with little underbrush or thorns. Very nice, especially up on the ridges.

The stream beds were full of downed trees, but sometimes they were dry enough to be the best choice for walking.

Sandy, Blair and I took our time. We alternated leading to the control, and talked about what we saw, how we were approaching, where we thought we should hang the tape. It was good training with lots of good discussion. But it was also very slow due to tough terrain. We got tired and frustrated. At some point we knew we would run out of time, so we started skipping controls. And we also started talking about the fact that we had no desire to repeat this tomorrow (by running the other course).

We caught up with Tom and Fritz towards the end, and we asked Tom if he could come out some other day to pick up the tapes we had put out. He said yes, and we all breathed a sigh of relief that we didn't have to repeat today.

Also, it was nice warm day but cloudy, so the temps were perfect. Sandy gave us several interesting natural history lessons on ferns and mosses while we out there, too. That was nice.

We drove to our Airbnb and then Sandy and I went to pick up a pre-prepared Easter dinner from a supermarket in town. Came back to the house and heated everything up. Tom and Rebecca, and Dick and Nancy, joined us for dinner. Great food and conversation! Followed by the KU/Villanova game, which was sad, but good to have a crowd to share it with.

http://sprintseries.org/doma/show_map.php?user=map...

short walk at work around all the big warehouses (Amazon et al) next door

I thought I would do an easy, relatively flat 5K tonight, instead of my usual (which is hard pace with a big hill). I needed an easy workout. But I felt like crap the whole time and this felt hard. And it was very, very slow. Ugh.

Mike gave me a nice daypack for Christmas. I decided I should give it a test run before we head off to Chile. So I loaded it up and went for a hike at Clinton. Threw in a few hills to give it a good test. Felt good. My back got a bit hot. And tired. Need to work on my core some more.

Bluffwoods, Possum Trot event

Mike, Sandy, Gene and I drove up to Bluffwoods. We hadn't used this area since the 2008 Possum Trot. It was good to be back.

Until the first control, which reminded you right away that these were big hills. And steep. With loose soil. Fortunately it was cool and dry, so footing was not a big issue.

And some of the woods were nice and open. I had fun running downhill from 3 to 4, in particular.

But I made mistakes after the other big climbs (to 6 and 8). I had to work with Blair at 8 to even figure out where we were (Collusion is OK at a local event :). I had made a huge parallel error.

Gene drove back with Blair. We all stopped in Atchison for a nice lunch at a small taqueria. Nice to spend time with the whole group, reviewing the same course. Also nice that there were 5 of us driving together from Lawrence. Yeah for club growth!

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Windy lunchtime ride. I saw animal control driving around, which made me nervous. And later a woman stopped her car to ask if I had seen her dog on the bike path. I had not.

I had planned to run after work. But I came home and had absolutely no desire to run. I mentioned this to Mike and he suggested a walk instead. At least I got out of the house for a little while.

PTOC 3-hour rogaine at Crowder State Park. Mike, Gene and I drove up to enjoy this park, which has bigger hills and nicer vegetation than most of our maps. Although the vegetation is starting to get a bt worse.

We had time to preview the map and plan our routes. When we all started, everyone but me headed north. Told me right away that I had made a tactical mistake. Turns out there were far more 50 pointers in the north (the first digit of the control number told you how many points it was worth X10). I should have planned better.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed navigating by myself. I walked 99% of the time, and tried to keep a steady pace and make no mistakes. I ate some gorp every 30 minutes, and a Larabar later in the course. My legs got really tired, of course. And mentally, I hit the wall about 2 hours, but then got a second wind to finish fairly strong.

I saw Angie around 39 and Andrei (doing the 6-hour option) passed me in the corn field going to 56. I was glad he was around, since that marker turned out to be "unexceptional tree in the middle of crappy woods". It was just a hunt for the marker. Luckily, I saw him crossing the field towards 15, so I knew roughly where the marker was.

As I moved into the northern map, I realized that 1) I would not get all the controls in this section and 2) I should skip the low value ones and concentrate on the higher valued controls.

I spent some time looking for 33 (It was way down the hill). And I was with Mark Geldmeier from SLOC from controls 32 to 54. I went to 35 next, he continued down to 13. He was on the 6-hour course, and he had an hour still to go, while I was quickly running out of time. Saw Nathan A at 35 and chatted for a bit (we were both tired). I went more directly back, and finished with just a few minutes to spare. This was a fun day.

Angie had stopped earlier, so I had more points than her. Laura E had more markers than me at first, but she was 30 minutes late, so she lost 300 points!

Thanks to all the PTOC organizers. I know it is hard to put on a meet so far from home.

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http://sprintseries.org/doma/show_map.php?user=map...

Club training in honor of Jenny: sprint followed by dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Gene and Fritz joined Mike, Jenny and I.

I pulled an old course form 2011. The map is outdated in places, so this added a bit of a challenge. Then I also added a handicapping system: we would start 1 minute apart, in reverse order of speed. I started first, then Fritz, Gene, Mike and Jenny. My goal was to hold off Fritz for the whole race, and try to beat Jenny.

So this meant I had to run fairly hard and very clean. And I did. Some slight hesitations with map reading and route choices, but overall I was pleased. Fritz got close to me around 12/13 but I held him off for the rest of the way. Jenny caught me at 16 but I stayed very close through the finish.

Went to El Potro afterwards and we all ate too much.

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Fun orienteering with Jenny B and Mike at Dad Perry Park

Unfortunately, I did this after weight training and my legs were dead. I tried running a few times but my legs said "No". So I walked it and eventually cut the course short. This was a course from 2012 so the map was outdated in places. And twice I had to go around some other folks using the playing fields.

This is such a fun area and we rarely use it. The woods are too thick at any time of the year, and the trails are overgrown in summer. So we can only use it as a winter sprint location, and we don't do winter sprints.

Dinner at Free State Brewery after running.

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Ft Leavenworth adventure race. I drove up with Gene (Mike had to teach today) and we had some nice conversations.

Perfect O conditions: cool and dry. The course went in the woods more than usual which was a nice change of pace.

I remembered (sometimes) to look around for the control, because they can be mis-placed here. I tried to think about the person hanging the marker, and how they would approach (usually from a trail). So I found 14 pretty easily (it was high up the hill, not down in the creek). I saw Fritz looking all around in the bottom of the creek. I tried to make some noise and stood at the control for a bit, but he never saw me. I decided not to call out to him.

That mindset caused me to go deliberately offline to 21, and I took too long looking at all the reentrants along the way (the marker was in the correct spot). Gene passed me soon after I left 21. I was happy that I had gotten this far before he caught me.

Then, as I got tired near the end, I flipped back to O mode and thought the marker would be in the center of the circle. So I went across the stream and up the hill to 5. I should have stayed on the road until I could see the marker. That's what Fritz did, and he accidentally led me into the marker.

I tried to push hard after that on the easy controls, because my goal was to be under 2 hours. But I just couldn't do it.

Overall very pleased with a nice run in some areas I haven't seen in a while.

Connie suggested that Gene and I check out the new Jamaican restaurant in town, which we did. I had delicious curried goat, Gene had the oxtail.

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I didn't want to do this. I was sleepy, I was tired, I was hungry. But this was the best day this week to run my 5k.
I tried to improve my time from last week, so I really pushed hard near the end. I was hurting. But I did it.

C • Sleepy, tired & hungry 3

Putting out markers for today's local event. I had advised Sandy on the course, and put out some advanced course markers, but I still planned to run the advanced course, unofficially. We had a great turn out with lots of newbies needing instruction, then various e punch questions, etc, so I never found the time to go out. I was bummed, I really wanted to do this course. Maybe I'll see if I can find time to do it sometime this week after work.

Still haven't found my Garmin.....

C • Great turnout 3

Another practice 5K run. Heavy winds out of the south helped going up the hill, hindered coming down. Managed to improve by 4 minutes over my time from 2 weeks ago.

Before I started this run, I went to the "spot" where I keep my Garmin watch and it wasn't there. Looked in all the obvious places, and some non-obvious places, with no luck. I had to get this run in during lunchtime, so I fired up Map My Run and went out. While running, I tried to re-trace my steps this week to determine where my watch could be. And when I did that, I realized (gasp!) that I had not yet orienteered this week! I had totally forgotten. Almost blew my multi-year streak. Made mental plans to orienteer after work. Whew, that was a close one!

C • Way to get it done! 2

This had to be a short O practice because we were having dinner at Georgann and Ron's. So I set a short course on West campus that visited stairs and single trees. Not my most challenging O outing, but it counts!

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