Training Log Archive: PG

Mar from yesterday (day 5) --



Looks very easy. No reason to have any problems, but I think it was a little less so. Often there were young beech and other stuff, a bit more than the green showed on the map, that obscured things, and the features (boulders especially) very small. So #2 could be easily missed, ditto 3 (lots more vegetation than shown). There just seemed to be a lot of good orienteers running not particularly good times.

My only problem was #3, going right at it, stopped about 10-20 meters short, hadn't seen it, back to the east just enough to see the rock, then back just past where I'd been.

And the good thing about the run -- managed to run up the hill from 8 to the last control at a pretty good pace. Don't know where the energy came from as it had certainly been missing until then.

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Article from the paper after stage 4, about Thierry, quote from Jonas Leandersson, who ran with him towards the end -- I could see how he held the same speed no matter if it was stony, thick vegetation, or difficult orienteering. The whole time her ran fast and accurately. That gave me a lot to think about.

And Thierry on hearing that, smiled and said -- This is the result of 20 years of hard training.

Also something to think about.

Interesting, took a look at the splits. Seems the guy who went off first botched the first two, and then the guy who passed me at 2 caught him by 4, and they were together the rest of the way. And roughly just a minute ahead of me. If my eyes were better I might have seen them.

Of course my legs wouldn't have been able to keep up.

I'll post the map when I get some decent internet service.

Good run, third overall, probably second on day. No complaints.

Guy who started just behind me, and eventually won, passed me at 2, different routes, he had 50 meters on me. Never saw him or anyone else again.

Totally delighted. :-)

C • Podium at ORingen 5

Not today. Tried hard, but missed at 4 controls. Not my favorite terrain, point features in bland and often very stony terrain, but should have done better. 6th on the day, but the times were tightly grouped, a minute slower would have dropped a bunch of places.

But very successful socially. Talked to the guy who should have won day three, he said he hada really good run until a massive brain fart going to the last control. Actually happened to lots of people. Should have been simple. You never know. Anyway, very nice guy, we had a long talk about O' and other things at age 70.

Will go out second tomorrow, 4 minutes back, with third guy right behind me.

C • Good Luck tomorrow! 10

Today's map --



Missed #1 just a touch, past it 20 meters and looked back. Missed #2 a bit more, not good at dealing with such stuff (lots of fly shit, who knows what is mapped, no contours to help). Missed #3, just bad orienteering, fine to the group of big boulders and then took a while. Not a good start, maybe a minute to a minute and a half gone. Plus really stony, not fun.

Main trail partway to 4, then just angling towards it, no trouble finding it but the forest was much less pleasant than advertised. I think staying on the main trail longer (through the bends) would have been quicker.

#5 ok. #6 not good at all, by the black X on the line as intended but then too far up and left, control in a V, and then corrected badly.

Reasonably pissed by now, so ran the last bit hard and well.

Funny thing, felt like a terrible run. I guess others had trouble too. Or, maybe more the case, I'm not the only one getting old, and most are just moving slower, so what feels like slow and ugly to me is maybe just the norm.

So we will see tomorrow. I had a good attitude today, definitely into it, nervous before the start, just didn't bring the right tactics for the situation.

Hopefully better tomorrow. Or at least no worse.

Went to the awards ceremony, of course. :-)

A massive but not total fail. :-)

Fail #1 -- no garland. Neither my support crew nor I seemed to think it was needed. And no Stud team around to do the job.

Fail #2 -- unbelievable, they were right there in the tent where we line up before going up on the stage, Thierry and Tove that is, and I failed to chat them up. And I thought I was good at that. Lost my nerve. Though there may be a photo when our internet service is restored.

And fail #3, though temporary, no pictures yet. Maybe later.

Nevertheless, it was still pretty cool. :-)

C • Tove 1

A day off today from O'. Just what was needed. Even skipping the O'Ringen golf tournament, why ruin my good mood?

And here's hoping for more good results from our juniors today, though I expect it will be tough going in the Long. Great to see progress there.

So for the awards, they do it in groups, all very organized. A tent next to the stage, you show up about 15 minutes early, get checked off, get a number showing what number in line you are (for the record, I was 24th in the 3rd and last group), Thierry was the last, about #40 in the 3rd group). Then you hang out for a while and have a glass of champagne if you wish (I did).

It happened that the winner in M65 was a French guy (Etienne Boussier) I've known for years (and more often than not lost to), he speaks no English, so I did a quick reload on my French skills and chatted with him reasonably competently for a few minutes. Very nice chat.

Until Thierry walked in, at which point he and Etienne got going in French I couldn't hope to keep up with. And Tove arrived, and now it was English between her and Thierry, very good on both sides. And we were getting lined up, and then I remembered I had a camera, so even though the light was bad --



And, hoping this is not impolite to say, she looks better in person than in a picture, quite gorgeous.

And, hard to believe, I kept my mouth shut.

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And then it was time for business, called up in subgroups of 6 or 8, each announced (class, name, and club, sometimes a comment or two). For me the announced gets to my last name, stops, looks at it again, looks at me, asks if I'm Russian. No, I say USA, quite strongly, and that is how it is announced.

M75 was the last of our group (F75 was missing), and then they pass out the prizes, a towel, hey, it's the thought that counts, and then the trumpeter played a short fanfare, more applause, and then off we go.

All both nice and efficient. And certainly OK by me. And I must say, standing there listening to the trumpet, there was very much the feeling that it was something special. That I should, as they say, enjoy the moment.

And I absolutely did.

C • Award 3

Wow, unreal. Won a day at the O'Ringen.

A bit of perspective -- it was 30 years ago this month, I was standing at the finish chute at the 1984 O'Ringen one day, don't remember which, waiting for my dad to finish. He had one of the last starts, always a good thing, and I knew what the best time was at that point.

When he appeared in the chute his time looked good, and I yelled some encouragement. His response was to start a conversation about his run, which I ended immediately by shouting, and I remember the exact words, "Shut up and run." :-)

He won by 6 seconds. Age 70 (in O' years, his birthday was not until December). 69 people in M70 that year, the other 68 were all Swedes, and that day the Swedes placed #'s 2-69.

And as pleased and as proud as I was, there was also buried away a bit and never said, damn, it should have been me.

So it's taken 30 years to catch up, now the same age, same class, and only 3 seconds to spare.

How sweet it is.

And it reminds me of another goal I had for many years, and eventually figured it would never happen, and then unexpectedly on an April day in Boston, when I crossed the finish line, the first number on the big clock was still a 2. And how sweet that was.

Orienteering has given me much joy in life. It can also be very humbling. Tomorrow my O' may suck. But I will always be able to enjoy today.

C • Nicely done, congratulation... 19

Maybe today?



And the splits are here.

Amazing. It seems I was in the lead for only about the last 40 meters. But the only time it matters is at the line.

A very good run, though not without its flaws, first at #2, a little off on my line and to the right, but just 10-15 seconds, and the other at #12, just a little left, stopped at another control that appeared in the terrain to be on a very small knoll, first thought the one contour feature in the area on the map was a depression, not a knoll, so took me longer than it should have to correct. 12 was one of those controls that always scare me, nothing to go on.

Overall, held a pretty good tempo all the way, still trying to make routes as safe as possible but pushing the pace a little more. Starting relatively later (third quarter), the best time when I left was 26:03, so I had a target, but very little confidence that it was within reach. Really just trying to have a decent run, something under 30 at least.

But the first half went well, and even with the mistake at 12, when I checked my time at 13 and 14 I knew I would have a good run, but I thought someplace around 26:30 or 27.

Got to 15, 24:30 roughly, still two more controls plus the chute, seemed not enough time, but I did 16 the way you do when it matters -- no idea what the clue was, no sense of how the control sat, just it was the same direction as I'd been going on the way in to 15, so just get moving and keep your eyes open. And then it was right in front of me.

On the way to the last control, fairly deep sand now, one last look at the clues -- how long was the chute? 140 meters, damn, a little too much. But as it turned out, I'm sure it was only 100 or so, because partway down it I could see from the big clock that I'd be under 26.

And very glad even then that I kept pushing hard as I could, and for once nailed the finish box on the first try. Because you never know.

And then a couple of hours to wait….

C • I hope so! 31

And then off to the training area that most resembles days 3 and 5, coastal dunes.



And this is #43, photo taken as we were approaching from the SSW. Very fine.

Another good run. :-)

Map was long and narrow, so here is the first part --



And the second --



#1 ok, #2 turned up not quite soon enough so took it a little from behind, not much lost, #3 and #4 ok but a little slow. Round-about routes to 5, 6, and 7 -- 7 I was sure about, other two were last-minute decisions (evaluation of vegetation, presence or not of good beaten tracks), #8 not sure, through the green to pick up the trail, a little slow in the green and fast on the trail. From 8 to 9 was like Venice, too many tourists. :-)

Maybe could have been a minute or two faster with better physical effort, but also might have missed more. You never know. Playing it safe has both its advantages and its disadvantages.

C • Damn Sören 7

Event: O-Ringen 2014
 

I remember going to a Swiss 5-day probably someday around 1990. I'm guessing about that year because it was when there was the first O-net, or whatever it was called, a discussion board on-line for orienteering.

And after the Swiss event I posted something on this forum saying how much I had enjoyed the fact that people over a certain age (I think over 40) got maps at 1:10,000, while all the younger ones got 15K. The 10K maps weren't made any differently, just printed larger. And boy were they a lot easier to read.

A day or two later there was a response, a thank-you for the thank-you, it seemed the extra cost had been financed by a Swiss guy and he was delighted to hear that it had been appreciated.

So 10K was great, just a blown-up 15K.

And then the mappers with young eyes went to work, and before too long you had lots of 10K maps, but all with the same symbol size (or close to it) of the 15K maps. And a lot more small detail stuffed in. And worse than ever to read.

And of course that's been done to sprint maps, the detail on the map is so tiny, they've gotten worse and worse to read.

So today was like a step into the past, and by that I mean a good step. Everyone over 60 got a 1:7,500 map, everything blown up from the 10K map used for everyone else, even the control circles were larger. And it was wonderful. You could read it even when moving. When standing you could read it easily. It's the way an O' map ought to be. How did we get away from it?

It would be nice if this would happen more often.

C • 1:7500 1

You never know who you will run into if you start talking to someone at an O' meet. Today it was a guy in M45, had a decent time on his course, we were chatting, I said we'd just been in Italy, turns out he was doing TV coverage for Swedish television there, except he wasn't there, he was in a studio in Stockholm, doing the announcing off the video feed, the only extra help being better access to the GPS data. Though that wasn't great, often seemed it was the Swede whose signal had been dropped.

Nice guy, his parents there too, also very friendly. If I was more involved in O' matters it would be another name for the Rolex file, or whatever that is called these days.

C • Rickard... 2

O'Ringen day 1. Out relatively early, more thick woods than I expected, but good run, just slow where it was thicker. I expect the forest will get faster.

Took one good round-about route I don't think the average Swede would look at. :-)



Turned out my time was fine. In first when I finished, stayed there for a couple hours more, then a guy came in with 39, and that was that, ended up 2nd out of about 150. Several just behind me. There is an advantage to finding the controls without any circling.

C • Great run 15

Out to one of the training maps for O'Ringen, done with Gail at a walk. Rather nice forest, quite a few rocks in places. The O' was easy if you are going slowly enough.



Otherwise a mellow day.

C • Squigglies 3

C • No, no, no... 1