Training Log Archive: Spike

No exercise, but I did take one small step to prevent Kobach from becoming governor.

C • Exercise 5

Shuffled around on West Campus. My legs didn't feel very good.

After dinner I watched an SVT interview with Jenny Risveds that was pretty interesting:

https://www.svtplay.se/video/19810596/jenny-rissve...

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Jogging at Rockhaven. Nice day in the traditional sense (meaning a little warmer than I'd prefer, but otherwise really nice).

I also got around to entering the Possum Trot and the Castlewood Adventure Race in St Louis.

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Bike ride on a warm day. I was a bit tired but glad I got out. It was tempting to take a nap instead.

We co-hosted an event at Fort Leavenworth today with Ft Lev Adventures. Fritz was the course setter for the main courses. I set the "cookie" course. Gene helped with start and control pick up. And, of course, Connie handled a lot of the stuff.

The cookie course is a short course (900 meters with 8 controls). The map is a sprint map at 1:2500. I planned the course so that it would be visible from the start/finish area, figuring that would be good for the younger kids. It seemed to work pretty well. The cookie prizes were well received.

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I went out and shuffled around on West Campus. I felt ok, better the last 15 minutes than the first. Very pleasant conditions for running - light rain and 50F.

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I figured my legs could use a day off, so I rolled around on my bike.

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A few notes about the weekend:

This was a lot of fun. The organizers did a great job. The terrain the first couple of days wasn't especially interesting, but it was still a blast.

I stepped on a rock or something on the first sprint and a spot on my left foot was uncomfortable all weekend. It wasn't too bad, but kind of annoying.

It was good to catch up a little bit with Frank. He flew his little airplane to the events. I was surprised he made it to the third day because I'd guessed the weather (lots of wind/rain/some snow) would have kept him on the ground. But he told me they made it with no problem and were able to fly around the bad weather.

I spotted Tom be-the-map, but never got a chance to talk to him. I wanted to.

This was "Nationals." That seems like a strange name for an event, but whatever.

I was chatting with someone about how lots of people gripe about formats (SML, two day, relays, 2 sprints, etc). I wish more people lust liked orienteering and didn't stress about formats.

The southern Michigan terrain is really nice. I hope they host some more events in the near future.

We had a nice visit in South Bend. The N.D. art museum had some interesting stuff. The Meso-American collection seemed quite good. They had a good exhibit of contemporary artists of African descent and a video exhibit by Alana Olsen: http://zweifelundzweifel.org/

We also had a good meal at a place called Chicory Cafe.

Super interesting terrain and a fun course. I slogged around as best I could. I had one rough leg where my mind wandered and I lost contact and didn't react very well. That probably cost a good 2 minutes.

Early in my course I was running together with Cristina. That was fun. We were slogging along at a similar pace. At one point I was behind Cristina in her Nydalens SK (or is it OK?) suit and thought, "hey, this is just like watching one of Anders Nordberg's headcam videos." Then I realized I'd better look at the map.

5

Sunday_Long_Bishop_Lake_Oct_2018_7 Green B - Splits

Fun race. I'm not fast enough to do really well. But, I enjoyed it. My mind wandered a little bit once or twice, but never enough that I lost any time. Still, that counts as a couple of mistakes even if it didn't mean I lost any time.

5

I wasn't really ready for the afternoon race. I missed the second control. Then on the route to 7-8-9 I decided to look at the descriptions and check the control codes. When I went to 7, the vegetation pushed me off line and I saw a control a bit to my right. I noticed the code and thought, "that's it," and punched, then went off to the next control. Things looked odd and didn't seem to fit, but there was a control in more-or-less the right direction and the code was a code I'd memorized. I punched and looked up and things looked wrong. I looked back at the map and realized that when I was on my way to 7, I got pushed off line and bumped in to 8 and - since I'd checked the codes in advance recognized the number - punched at 8 thinking I was at 7. Then went to what I thought was 8 (but was actually 9). Only after that control did I realize what was up and turned around and went back to 7, then took 8, and then 9. It cost a good 3-4 minutes (so a good 20 percent of my time on the course...yuck).

The lesson I learned is to not read codes, just read the map and navigate to the feature. I think if I'd done that, I'd have lost a little time, but more like 20 seconds.

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Saturday_Sprint1_Plymouth_Oct_2018_7 Green B 1 - Splits

Saturday_Sprint2_Plymouth_Oct_2018_7 Green B 2 - Splits

A strange race. I was running and then reading. I should have been reading and then running. I had a couple of sloppy legs.

I also went into the deep mud - well over my waste. That mud was strange. My map got coated and I had trouble getting it clean enough to read throughout the rest of the course. Cutting through the stream also was on the straight line and that was the wrong choice because of the big fence that was on the straight line. I hadn't seen the fence until I got out of the stream.

I saw Frank Skorina on the course. That was fun. I haven't seen him in a few years.

5

Friday_Middle_St_Patricks_CP_Oct_2018_7 Green B - Splits

I jogged around on West Campus for a bit. I felt ok. On the way home Mary passed me in her car. That was kind of fun.

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Trail run at Rockhaven. I carried the map and read it quite a bit - actually getting some O' practice. But, I also spent about half of the run on the trails that are west of the map. That stuff is all on a basemap, but not on the Rockhaven map I was carrying.

I fell down after about half an hour and did something to my left shoulder. It was uncomfortable for the first few minutes after falling, then felt fine. But then when I stopped at the end, the should was uncomfortable again.

The weather was nice and it has been getting colder and wetter since we finished. When we ran the temp was about 52F Right now it is about 40F and a bit windy and a bit wet. Perfect conditions for baking bullar. So I'm baking bullar. When that's done I'll go get ingredients for dinner and might go over to the Baker Wetlands for a bit of a walk.

Running felt good. I was expecting to feel a bit tired from yesterday and actually felt better than yesterday. I guess that means I was going even easier than I thought.

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I jogged around on the trails at Slough Creek. Nice day. I saw a tortoise on the trail.

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Slough Creek update: I jogged the trails I hadn't been on and got GPS tracks. The tracks combined with the vegetation made it pretty easy to add the trail. The trail that heads east-west across the map doesn't get much use. I mapped it as an indistinct trail. My basic rule of thumb was if I was looking for the blazes to figure out where the trail went, rather than looking at the trail itself, then it was an indistinct trail. Where the trail crossed fields, I didn't draw it on the map.

I saw a few other features, like some ditches and a couple of hunter stands. I added those based on my memory and the lidar ground slope image.

Overall, the lidar-based vegetation is really good. It isn't perfect, but it is quite good.

And some non-Slough Creek notes....I figured out how to get the Microsoft building footprint data for Missouri. The geojson file is big. It didn't work through mapshaper.org. I tried using ogr2ogr in QGIS. That worked fine for small files (like Washington DC). I set the Missouri data to run overnight. When I woke up this morning QGIS had crashed at 4:22 a.m. and I got no results. I think it must be memory on my PC. So I read a bit online and decided to try mapshaper.org but using Firefox as my browser. And that worked!

I'm not really sure what I'll do with the building footprint data. It would be good for something like a big street O' map. It looks like the data is pretty good within Yellowstone, so I might make a couple of Yellowstone skiing maps.

Very short and easy jog on West Campus.

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Easy bike ride on the bike paths with Mary. She was tired from yesterday and we took it extra easy. Fun.

Almost cold! I wore long pants a jacket and gloves.

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Slough Creek update: Still distracted by the building footprint data. I figured the thing to do was open the data in QGIS and then add a polygon layer and clip out a smaller area. But, opening the data in QGIS for Kansas seems to run my PC out of memory or something. I can open a small file, like D.C. without much trouble. I was able to open Kansas and added a polygon. But as soon as I moved the mouse to the menu to clip the vector layer my PC froze.

I tried something else and this worked. I put the data in mapshaper.org. The raw data is geojson. The mapshaper.org page lets you export the data as a shapefile. That worked pretty well. I used Kevin Shipley's old copy of Global Mapper to clip out a bit of the shapefile and then can easily open it in Open Orienteering Mapper. Success!

Like a real Fall day! Low 50s and some color on the trees. It was nice. I shuffled around a bit.

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Slough Creek update: I was going to spend some time adding vegetation boundaries. But I got distracted by the building footprints data:

https://www.attackpoint.org/discussionthread.jsp/m...

I started with Kansas and had some problems. Maybe the data is just too large for my PC to handle? I downloaded Washington DC and the state of Wyoming. I was able to open both of those. The Microsoft data is ok, but not as detailed as good data on OSM. On the other hand, it is a lot better than places where nobody has added any buildings on OSM.

Rolled around on the bike paths and made it to the store and home before the rain.

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Trail run from the east side of Rockhaven. I carried a map and looked at it quite a bit. I gave some thought to the January 1 event at Rockhaven. There are a few little changes to trails where a tree fell and the horse riders have re-routed the trail a bit.

Weather was mid-50s and steady rain. It felt pleasant. The trails were in good shape, but rocks were slippery and on some of the uphills the mud was slippery.

This was my first run of the season on the south shore trails at Clinton. I usually do my first run of the season a little too early (when there's still too much vegetation), but this seemed just right. It probably helped to start at Rockhaven rather than Rockcrusher. The trails get more consistent use at Rockhaven.

2

I'm watching the IOF mapping conference videos and see some discussion of Map Magic:

https://mapmagic.dk/

Very cool stuff.

I think I'll run Ulirk's Hill later today.

I shuffled around on West Campus, including a trip up Ulrik's Hill.

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Slough Creek update: I added some of the rocky areas. I used the 1983 map as the base. I scanned the map in and adjusted it to fit as best I could, then added the rocky ground. I suspect it'll need some tweaking in the field.

And while I was doing that, I was also running some lidar through KP for the national forest near Halsey, Nebraska. The area is sand hills with grass and planted forest. I've never visited, but always been interested in it. From the photos I find online, it looks like some of the forest is pleasant.

http://monkeywrenchcycles.com/halsey-nf-overnight/

Some of the grass looks deep. And the sand might make running a chore. And the roar of motorcycles might not be so pleasant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB3Z07Rhk_0

I rolled around on the bike paths to/from Baker Wetlands. It was nice out and felt good to move around a bit.

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I jogged on the trails at Clinton. It was nice. Yesterday when I ran the temp was 91F. Today the temp was 61F. That makes things nice.

I didn't see anyone on the trails.

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Jogging on West Campus. It is hot - 91F in Lawrence when I got home. Yuck.

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Spent the day at a cybersecurity conference at KU Edwards. Quite good, but made for a long and tiring day. I probably would have gone for a jog if it weren't hot out.