Training Log Archive: cedarcreek

My ankles are killing me after running three days on rocky, uneven surfaces. The worst ankle roll was during the farsta, when I stepped in a hole and heard my ankle snap. I had to limp for 100m or so, but it started feeling okay and I finished. No swelling today.

Wine-O Farsta at Mount Nemo near Hamilton, Ontario.

I did the first two loops and skipped the 4km final loop.

Just a great fun course. Intricate terrain, fast to semi-fast running, lots of people.

I was again slow, but after the workout at the Long, I didn't have a lot left. I ran most of the way, though, and a lot of it was pretty physical running.

I made the same mistake on my second loop as I did during the final loop of the Sprint Finals: As I was leaving a control, my eye went to the wrong control, and I planned and executed the wrong leg, starting from the wrong place.

It's almost funny, because my first control on the second leg was a "U" small depression, and as I left it, my eye went to the second control a black "V" rocky pit, and I thought, "That rocky pit wasn't very rocky." The two legs were in the same direction, and I just didn't notice it right away.

I haven't checked the splits, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a 10 minute error. I'd guess 7. I finally got it figured out.

As I did the last three controls, I heard footsteps behind me, and imagined one of the older male runners passing me. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a 12 year old girl with about 7 years of orienteering experience. (I found out later.) We did the last three controls with Nate Lyons and a few other people. I think that means she did the two laps five minutes faster than me. Then I collected my third map and punched finish.

I had two "O moments". The first was seeing Louise Oram rocket by left-to-right on a trail as I was navigating along, and the second was being passed by Mike Smith (in first place) as he finished his second loop just before I finished my first.

NAOC Long, 7B, Rocky Ridge (Milton, Ontario).

My map in Routegadget (opens in new window)

I didn't notice a decent left route on 1, so I just ran the trail to an open area and attacked up the hill. I have no idea how I messed this up. I crossed two areas of limestone pavement, a short mild descent (and even noticed a flag 20m behind me "that wasn't far enough to be mine"), and then I noticed the marsh ahead, and took a look around, and then hurried back to the control I saw, which was mine, and which I missed by 10m or less the first time by.

That pretty much set the stage for the first half of my Long Course. I was still gun shy from the middle, and I was checking off features right and left, and still screwing up. The map scale seemed schizophrenic---One place it would feel like 1:15000, and another it would feel like 1:7500.

Almost as soon as I left 1, I could see 2, and then I looked at the next leg, and, dang!, it was a long one. My first look was "Meh. --- pretty bland", so I took off south for the trail, pretty fast. About halfway to the trail, I tripped, and planted my face right next to a pillow-sized rock. That shook me up a little, especially since I was traveling with Mike "Smashmouth" Minium. I even imagined some smashed tooth tastes.

When I got to the trail and started looking at the leg, I realized that it was in fact pretty cool. I had already missed a right route leaving 2 that looked like fast running, and I saw a shortcut to take off maybe 200m off the wide trail route. I did see the far left trail, and didn't like it, but my plan was to attack from the north. As I was making the first big trail curve from east to south, I thought about taking the marsh, and I detoured over for a look. It didn't look good, with really high grasses.

I took the shortcut, but I was tentative. The map scale thing (and my aversion to pace counting) kicked in, and I thought I might be on a parallel bend north of where I wanted to be, so I got back on the trail, and before I could figure out exactly where I was, I was at the big trail junction. I got to my attackpoint and took a very conservative route by some features, and I identified them and went on to the next. I said, "There's my hill" and...no control. I lost about 5 minutes checking some areas and working my way to my 3.

4 was awesome, just aimed off a little left for nice running and ran right into it.

5 involved crossing a marsh, and took a clear route (few rocks) to a narrow spot with a little island. I had a strong location, and I took a very careful compass bearing, looked up, saw a distinctive tree, went to it, found a reentrant that matched, climbed up, no control. A little farther, and I hit a trail, but it's not going the right direction. I figure out where I am, way too south, and shoot in. I have no idea how I messed this one up. The marsh was slow, but I don't see how I could have errored. I'm sure it's the nut holding the compass, but it continued the trend of me being more and more careful, and slower and slower.

I ran north to 6, meaning to shoot in from the dot knoll on the left between two small elongated knolls on the right. I saw two knolls that looked good on the right, but I missed the dot knoll, and I ran a little more north looking for the knoll or the trail off to the left. I never saw either one, and I shot in from the trail when it turned east, having missed every opportunity to shorten the leg.

7 was a longish leg east, and I was too chicken to go straight. Everything from the middle to now said, no way---too risky. This is a real problem for me because I usually make up some time using aggressive routes that I'm able to execute because I'm slow.

The attack to 7 was just perfect, and I bailed out to the left on 8 to avoid going through the rocky areas. On 9 I had a short attack (20m from the trail) and I missed it 10m to the left. 10 was my fourth spike (2, 4, 7, 10), and then I looked at the next long leg.

A whopper. I love long legs, and this one was nice. My lack of confidence in my speed over the white forest and in the marshes really messed me up here, though. I took a winding trail, and failed to cut the corners, losing at least a minute, before I just shot to the left side of the green marsh, hitting it perfectly. I missed the indistinct trail junction (east of the big ROST area), and instead of wasting more time, just shot straight at the ROST area. I was amazed that the wide blue stream was 15m of limestone pavement, and easy to cross. I ran across the ROST, zigging a little to miss trees and bushes (much faster than I'd hoped), and got on the big trail.

I left the trail right of the two boulders, saw them, corrected left a lttle, and aimed to just clip the white (?) marsh. This cost me several more minutes. If I hadn't turned to the south, I would have gone through 100m or so of marshy land and small trees (PG suggests alders, I think). The map didn't make any sense to me here.

From here on in, it was just fun. I was able to read the map ahead and not stop at every junction like I did for the middle. I had planned my routes on the trail during the long leg, and it really showed. I think I missed 12 by a little.

In the end I'd say I spiked 2, 4, 7, 10, 13, 14, for 6 out of 14. The first half of the course was just miserable for me, but the leg to 7 and on really felt good. The map scale seemed constant, and I could read the map and see it in the terrain. (It might not be purist to call 7 a spike since I wussed out and took the trail, but the last bit was just perfect, and it helped my confidence.)

All in all, at least 20 minutes of errors and hesitation.

I've thought about the course for a few days, and I think my problems are related to my improved fitness. I'm moving faster, spending less time studying the map. The one 5 minute mistake I made on the middle probably made me too cautious. I "hesitated first, ran later" for the rest of the weekend (until the Wine-O). In the end, I have to think it was just the difficulty of the terrain, and my lack of experience with it. I'm just not used to reading land this flat that's been simplified as much as this has been (in the rocky areas). The non-rocky areas were much easier. I can't wait to go back in a few years and have another shot at it.

NAOC Middle/Long model map.

Boy am I glad I checked out the training map. Mike Minium planned a longer checkout than I did (I really didn't plan to do the model map), so I got dragged along. By a mistake, I had someone else's map (luckily for them, they arrived after I finished, and I returned it).

I wasn't prepared for the level of simplification. The mapping standard ignores lots of small rocks pretty much over the whole map. The rockiness of the terrain makes the contours not want to form land-shapes in my head. I have to struggle to see up and down in many places. The limestone pavement is quite difficult to cross---It's usually slow, and it's a little scary if you go too fast. I found it difficult to follow bearings, even for short distances like 100m. I'd depart a strong attackpoint, *walking*, and miss by 30m.

The 2.5m contours are often very subtle, and it takes a lot of concentration to look at the jagged terrain and line it up to the smoother contours on the map. I kept thinking that 2.5m contours were above the Nyquist distance, and that something smaller would help, but it's really hard to argue that, particularly because it would add more clutter to the map, which is already difficult to see at speed.

Rocks and cliffs were generally easily recognizable, but if you were looking for a cliff, sometimes it was pointing away from you, and it was often difficult to see that with the map.

NAOC Middle Event on the Rocky Ridge Map (Ontario).

A very challenging course. The terrain is very subtle, and it was often difficult to maintain contact with the map. I'm used to having light contact with the map for up to hundreds of meters, and that didn't work here. I eventually figured out to run on a bearing unless I could see the feature I was running toward. There was a lot of light vegetation that made it difficult to see more than 40 or 50m, although some higher land was visible from a distance.

I was using techniques that normally work to keep strong contact, but the difficulty matching map to terrain made it feel like light or no contact. I tried to miss the rocky areas, and that was a lot faster (if the leg let you avoid the rocky areas).

On 5-6, I needed to run basically north for 140m or so, and I just ran on the needle N (with Samantha passing left to right), and I made a 5 minute error. I hope they post a master map so I can see where I went---I know I was too far right. I found 2 water controls on rock features (and I was looking for a water control on a rock feature), but I couldn't sync up the rock formations with anything on my map, but then I found my number 2 and shot right in to my 6. After that I was a lot more careful, even more than I was initially.

Near the end, there was a dense trail network, and I felt like an idiot stopping every junction. I felt like my brain had shut off and I couldn't remember ahead farther than the next junction. Samantha passed me again, running the network at light speed, and then I looked down for a second, and she was gone.

Once as I was walking/tripping/stumbling on the limestone pavement, I thought, "Is this worse than honeysuckle?". At the time, I was pretty disgusted with it. Then I thought, "Is this worse than briars?"

I've thought it over a day, and ran the long, and I've got to say: It's worth it. This terrain is fun. It's difficult, and I feel sorry for people not ready for it, but this weekend was just amazing.

I blew out a seam on my $42 Adidas cleats, so...let's see if I can get a better pair of shoes for rocks. I love these on the mud in Cincinnati, but on rocks, there's not enough padding under the ball of the foot.

7b - Splits

Event: 2006 North American Championships (Golden Leaf Orienteering Fest)
 

NAOC Sprint at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. I had a really good run, but Csaba beat me by a few minutes. I had several hesitations. As I'm getting faster, I need to work on memorizing the leg ahead, especially for sprints. There's just so much going on so fast (even at my pace) that I need to. As much as I prefer thumb compasses for regular courses, I'm going to look at the Spectra wrist-mounted compass or even a baseplate in my non-map hand. The difficulty of finely manipulating the map with the thumb compass is enough to make me consider something else. Another reason is the difficulty to finely thumb the map. Spike mentioned his compass pointer. I need to rethink my sprint processes to make them faster and more precise.

It was a very fun course, and one I really liked. The legs were a mix of easy and hard, with some quite complicated route choices---The biggest mistake was to hesitate. Sometimes it was so intense that I knew where I needed to go from memory, but I wasn't able to read the map---Twice I couldn't even find where I was without stopping, so I kept moving until I got to an easy place to read the map. It was nuts. I have no idea how the elites do this so fast. It's a whole other ballgame.

Sprint 4 - Splits