Training Log Archive: Charlie

M70C long final. Lovely seaside forest. Low blueberries and spongy footing made it slow, so stayed to trails mostly. A strange outing, never really lost but getting in a lot of trouble. Lost time on 1 as I started to climb the hill through the blueberry, but gave up and backed down to a trail around. Hit the control easily, but must have lost a minute. Then lost quite a bit on 2, getting fooled by a parallel unmapped trail, so stopping short and trying to make sense of it. That was worth at least 3 minutes. A good route to 3, a depression in a large reentrant, but when I got there I saw a different control in the reentrant and went to check that first. Then 4 was around the lake to a veg boundary on the opposite side. I went right, but left was probably better. No trouble with executing the leg, except it was really long and tiring. Then I lost a minute on 5 trying to find a pit that was just a little further than I thought, and not visible until you were on it. Then the really bad leg, somehow I made an extra turn heading on trails to 6 and ended up circling back to 4, heading S on compass instead of N. I saw George and another guy going to 4 and realized the horrible thing I had done, so turned around again , losing about 5 minutes in the process. Another choice to get around the lake, went right and tried to find the little trail, but not much to see and I went by it, had to come back and fight my way through. Ran to the circle, but checked a few places before finding it. So maybe a minute or two. 8 was fine, right to it, moving reasonably well. Then to 9 I got the idea to go left around on trail, and I got there, but moving slowly and a bit unsurely. 10 was fine, although I stopped to look around to make sure I had the right finish, as the A finish was a bit left.

Ended up 58th out of 78.

Long Final

C • You belonged there! 3

Nice dinner with Jeff and Judy and Marie-Josée, before I head home and they are all off to Sweden.

Beautiful model map for the long at Carnikava, even flatter than the middle map, subtle features, very open, some marshes, spongy footing there. Walked with Marie-Josée, and we were out almost an hour, but I didn’t start the watch until about the 15 minute mark.

Got a ride out with Sergey Velichko, and Steve and Betsy Tarry we’re along, too. Saw Beatrice for a bit when we were done.

Marie-Josée ran into a Norwegian and a Finn who were interested in next year’s NAs, and was able to hand out some flyers and talk it up.

Then, after we were back it turned out that everybody was too tired to go on the city tour we had planned, so we ate some, watched the Tour some, and then folks drifted off to bed for naps. I sent myself out to walk around a bit, and have Rhonda a virtual tour via Facetime while I was out. And then back in time to meet the Ohlunds (Ingrid, Erik and Iris) for a very fine dinner at Ikos Olivia, just across the street and half a block down.

Talked to Erik a bit about yesterday’s race, and he was saying that you can finish and think you had no mistakes, but lose by 5 minutes because you were not in attacking mode. A very apt description of what happened to me on controls 9-11 yesterday.

And finally a short post prandial stroll over to see their very nice apartment in a meticulously remodeled older building, then home again to rest up for tomorrow. A relatively early start, 10:14, so I’ll need the 7:30 bus.

WMOC middle D final. Really good run, didn’t miss much. Ended up 6th out of about 80 in the D final, which means I will advance to the C final for the long on Friday. Lost a bit of zip for controls 9-11 and the splits show I lost 5 places there, although no significant mistakes, but buckled down and gained three places back over the last three legs. I had relatively good legs today, much better than yesterday when it was a struggle to go faster than a jog.

If I hadn’t had the experience yesterday of getting confused and lost, I don’t think I would have been able to navigate as well as I did today.

This was really a fine orienteering experience. Intricate terrain, soft footing, no impediment to running except for the occasional tracks of open sand.

Middle Final

C • Sixth Place! 7

Forest qualifier, M70-3. Not my best work, although much of the course went really well. A big loss at #2, drifting off to the right and wandering, not really understanding the sandy rides, small errors at 3 and 4, regrettable, but only a couple of minutes, and then clicking right along 5 through 13. Then the real disaster, crossing a ride that was not the one I thought, and just not figuring it out until I went to the finish and worked my way back. About 15 minutes gone, and ended up in the D final, alas.

Beautiful day and a really nice forest. Fun place to orienteer, and I expect to do much better at the middle final tomorrow.


Forest Qual

Forest model event, at a walk. It was raining pretty hard when we left the apartment so we took a cab, cabs being a pretty inexpensive way to get around here. A little roundabout getting to the event, though, as the cabby went a different way than Google seemed to think. Eventually it looked like his way would work but then the road was blocked, so he had to turn around, got back on pavement for a while, and then eventually saw some signs.

Very different terrain from anyplace I’ve been. Sand dunes with pines and spruce and lots of very low and fairly friendly ground cover. Bumpy, lots of small knolls and depressions. Nothing all that big, no rock. Lots of trails of different sizes.

I went to 10 of the 15 controls in order to get back in an hour. Eventually we took the bus back to the event center, and then tram and bus to get home.

C • Terrain 2

Leisurely dinner with Urs and Beatrice at the excellent Casa Nostra restaurant two blocks from the apartment. I had a very fine grilled whole fish, but the shared antipasti were particularly nice, bruschette with baby octopus and a small portion of an excellent eggplant parmigiana.

Since Urs likes to speak Italian and Beatrice is a willing participant, our whole evening was in Italian, and the waitress and the owner also spoke Italian. The owner is Latvian, but lived 20 years in Rome. A very nice evening.

C • thumbs up, era un gran piacere anche per noi! 1

C • 1

Sprint Final, M70B, pretty easy navigation, generally satisfied with my run. Ended up 27th out of approximately 80 in B. Not long after the last starter went out there was a huge thunderstorm, with lots of rain and hail. Glad not to have been caught out in that.

Sprint Final

Party at the apartment, and some women’s soccer watching on the tv. Among the guests: Sharon, Jeff and Judy, Adam and Phil Bricker, Dick and Nancy Neuburger, Beatrice and Urs, Erik Ohlund and his mother Ingrid and daughter Iris. A nice gathering and a fine conclusion to the soccer game.

Sprint Qual, group 70-4. 22nd, which should put me in the B final. Good run, couldn’t have gone much faster.

Couple of route choices might have been better, but not much. Right on 2 would have been maybe a little shorter and have avoided the error I made there, through the middle from 4-5 a little shorter, but a few turns, left on 6 maybe a little shorter. Looking at quickroute, I sure slowed down on the hills leaving 6 and from 7-8. But I guess I knew that.

Sprint Qual

C • Run 2

Event: World Masters Orienteering Championships 2019
 

Felt good, particularly after travel and missing yesterday. Slept off and on, but wide awake a lot. Hope to settle down by tonight.

Around town, ending up at the ferry pier where I met up with MJ and waited for G&L to get off the giant ferry. The wait was long, as many hundreds of Swedish orienteers got off first.

On the way out I heard a guide explaining the monument to liberty in Italian, so stopped to listen for 5 minutes. Quite fun, but I wanted to walk, so didn’t stay longer.

Walking around the model map. Saw MJ and G&L a bunch of times going different ways. After I had a nice visit with Sixten and Anna Westland of OK Tyr.

Travel day to Riga via Helsinki. On M-J’s advice I downloaded the Bolt app, got a very satisfactory ride from the airport for 7,60€. Our apartment is pretty extensive, quite nice, and even more extensive considering Dennis was not able to come.

We took a bus ride to packet pickup and ran into Judy and Jeff, who are staying nearby, then another bus out to the area of the sprint qual to check out the arena. From there back on the bus to Old Riga and dinner, and pretty soon I was deeply tired. Sat on the couch to look at something, woke up an hour or so later and off to bed.