Training Log Archive: Spike

Morning jog. For a change I did a bit at a harder effort. It felt ok.

I saw a few interesting things today.

I was able to follow today's WOC sprint. Fun to watch.

2

Morning jog. I didn't see anything interesting.

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C • didn't see 2

Morning jog. Pleasant conditions (maybe low 60s).

I managed to follow much of the knock out sprint races from Denmark. Great TV coverage.

I poked around some of the various orienteering discussions. It makes me a bit sad about the ways people think.

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I saw a video (on Instagram?) of the Norwegian team doing some sprint training today. It looked like the route choice training Simon talked about a few years ago. The idea is to draw your route without picking up the pen (so if you "run" down a dead end, for example, you have to back out). With a group you do this as race to force quick decisions.

It is fun to see the different ways to train for sprints.

Easy jogging. Temp was low 70s. It felt very nice.

Easy jogging through an orienteering course I drew on the KU campus 1:10K map. Prep for watching the WOC coverage later this morning.

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I didn't sleep so well and then got started later than I'd hoped. It was steamy until the clouds showed up after about half of the ride.

I saw Mary leaving the neighborhood as I returned. I waved. She waved.

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Morning jog. Near the end I noticed a line of small airplanes flying over Lawrence. I think they must have been part of the Air Race Classic:

https://www2.ljworld.com/news/general-news/2022/ju...

And this is cool. A web-based way to convert vector and raster geographic data:

https://gdal3.js.org/

I did a small test and it worked fine. I don't imagine I'll use it very often (since it doesn't really seem to do anything I can't already do with QGIS). But it is neat.

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Lighting and storms in the morning kept me from jogging before work. I decided to get out the MTB after work. I did an easy ride while Mary met with her World Games crew.

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Morning jog. My legs felt pretty good. That's nice. The weather was warm and humid. That's pants.

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C • Well done.... 1

An easy jog. Legs felt so-so.

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MTB on pavement. I stopped at Mom and Ron's to make sure the back yard fountain was working. With the hot weather, the water was very low. I refilled it.

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Running...well, shuffling slowly and sweating heavily.

I shuffled through a course on the KU campus with the 1:10K map.

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Mowed Mom and Ron's lawn. Hot but not as terrible as I expected.

Morning jog. Sweaty.

There seemed to be more people out and about than usual.

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Morning jog. Another day with unpleasant temps (81F at 6 a.m.). I saw several others out running, including a woman running hill intervals. She seemed to be moving quickly (but as I was moving down the hill she was heading up, maybe it was just an illusion and I was, in fact, the one moving fast).

We're getting smoky skies from fires in the south west. So far, it seems to be making the sky look funny, but not affecting how I feel. Fires in the Flint Hills usually make me feel bad. Maybe the smoke is so much higher now?

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Morning job. Temp was 82F at 6 a.m. Not so nice. But with a dew point of 69F, not nearly as miserable as it was yesterday.

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I thought I got out early enough that the weather wouldn't feel too terrible. But I was wrong. I took it very easy, but already after 30 minutes I felt drained. I'd planned to jog for an easy 90 minutes, but turned around early and came home.

I was puzzled to see a bunch of cars parked near Hilltop (which is at the bottom of a hill). Then I spotted a clock and finish sign and figured it must be a run. I look to see if I could spot Meangene. I thought he might have brought the clock. I didn't see him. Then I spotted him running the race. That was kind of fun.

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PTOC summer park sprint orienteering. Kind of hot and muggy.

The map was field checked by Joe Barrett (and Angie). Fun.

The park is at Kearney and is "Jesse James Park." I don't get how a town names a park after someone like Jesse James. It seems like something that would only happen in Missouri.

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C • Jesse James 5

Missoula Notes:

When I worked for the City of Lawrence, I considered Missoula a similar city. I used similar cities to create benchmarks for financial analysis. I’d defined similar using urban area population, portion of population under 18, per capita income, and median age of housing. The measures pick out similar college towns. At the time, the urban area populations were similar - 82K for Missoula and 88K for Lawrence.

When we were in Missoula, I looked for similarities and differences compared to Lawrence.

One big difference – Missoula has suburbs. There are built up urban areas next to the City of Missoula but not in the city limits. That’s not the case with Lawrence.

Missoula is a regional center. It has an airport with passenger service, a regional hospital, a minor league baseball team and a Costco. Lawrence has a little municipal airport and a community hospital. We have to drive to KCK to see minor league baseball. The nearest Costco’s are in Topeka or the KC metro.

Missoula is a college town, but the university is less dominant than in Lawrence. The university in Missoula has fewer students than KU. UM has just over 10,000 students while KU has almost 28,000.

Missoula’s infrastructure – curbs, sidewalks, streets, pavement markings, traffic signals, parks, etc. – looked better maintained than Lawrence’s. If you want a very simple indicator of the quality of a local government's management, look at infrastructure you can see. If everything looks shabby and broken, that doesn't speak well for the quality of management. It isn't a perfect indicator, you need to think about wealth and resources, too. But for places that are similar, it is a good measure.

Both places have grown since I worked at Lawrence. But they are very similar sized. I looked up the most recent county population data from 2021. Missoula County had 119,533 people. Douglas County had 119,363

Both places have relatively inexpensive housing, but Missoula is more expensive (median housing in Missoula was $302K compared to $212K in Douglas County).

Per capita income in Douglas County is lower ( $56K versus $61K in Missoula). I think that reflects more college students in Douglas County. If you look at household income, Douglas County has higher income ($61K versus $56K). I think the higher household income in Douglas County comes from people who live here and commute to Topeka and Kansas City.

Commuting also helps explain why Douglas County has fewer jobs than Missoula County. Douglas County has 37,380 jobs, while Missoula County has 51,367)

Neither place is very diverse. But, Missoula is especially un-diverse. The "black or Africa American alone" population of Missoula is just 0.5 percent.

C • Interesting read. 13

A little morning jog. A couple of minutes after starting I saw a lightning flash and heard thunder. I thought about skipping the run, but decided to keep going and turn around if I saw more lightning.

Rain started soon after I finished.

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Mowed. Got sweaty.

Some potential interesting recorded mapping webinars (all in Swedish):

https://www.svenskorientering.se/Nyheter/forbundsn...

These might be good lunch hour viewing over the next few weeks.

Easy bike ride. I still feel a bit worn out. I think that's from the travel rather than the orienteering.

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Tired. We had a bit of a long trip home. We flew Missoula to Denver to KC. But storms closed the Denver airport and we ended up in Scott's Bluff, Nebraska. We sat on the ground for a while as they added fuel. Our KC flight was delayed since everything in Denver was delayed. We didn't miss a flight or get stuck overnight. But we also didn't get home until about 2:30 a.m.

My exercise today was a short walk and mowing my Mom's lawn. That was plenty.

C • Royals 6

Warm up jog, including a little bit in a mix of rain and hail.

Grizzly Orienteering was very accommodating and let Mary and I start a little early. We had a bit of a tight timeline to make it to the airport and get our Turo rental returned.

Sprint on the University of Montana campus. Fun course with plenty of route choice decisions to be made. None of the decisions were especially important, but you did have to make a decision. I had one mistake where I got a bit off my planned line and then decided I'd best just keep going and take a different route. It didn't show up as an error in the splits, but it must have cost me a little time.

I spent a few extra seconds waking up some of the SI units. I also took a short stop when I rounded a corner and met a couple of older people using walkers heading toward the control. I figured it was best to let them pass by as opposed to shove them out of the way and save a few seconds.

As I understand it, the map was made remotely with the help of someone moving around the campus with a video camera (maybe a Gopro or something similar). That's an interesting way to map an urban sprint area.

I felt like I ran pretty hard on the run in. Maybe I could beat Mary? I waiting for her to finish ad she flew from the last control to the finish punch. She beat me by 6 seconds on a leg that was about 100 meters. She also had the fastest split of anyone on any of the courses. She had a better time than any of the men or women who ran. That's pretty cool.

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C • Socks 2

Intermediate - Splits

My brain worked better today and I had a mostly clean run. I walked a lot - basically every up hill.

Super terrain, map and course. From my standpoint the organization went perfectly. Grizzly Orienteering put on a great couple of days. Lots of hard work and got everything right.

Only downside of the two days for me was breaking my old-man rain visor (and big mistake on day 1, so I guess I had two downsides).

I picked up some locally roasted coffee as a prize. Im looking forward to trying it when I get home.

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Green Long - Splits

Event: GrizO Lubrecht Two-Day and Sprint
 

Shuffling around to warm up a bit.

C • Great run. 2

Orienteering at Lubrecht. Fun terrain and course. I struggled a bit to understand the contours. Some of that is because I couldn’t see the difference between contours and form lines until after the race.

I had a 4 minute mistake and a 1 minute mistake. That’s way too much on a middle distance course. I’ll see if I can fix my brain for tomorrow.

Fun to see people I haven’t seen in a while.

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Green NRE - Splits

Morning jog. Pleasant temps.

The first NoLaw 5K was last night. I skipped it.

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Live tracking of the French guys orienteering 3000K across Norway:

https://acrossnorway.routechoices.com/nneo4m

And more about the plans: https://www.across-norway.fr/en/across-norway-en/

Short and easy jog.

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