Training Log Archive: bgallup

Event: Western Mass 5-Day
 

trying my actual age class, rather than letting time bring it to me. a good race would've been 45 minutes, a great one maybe 40

turns out it was Clem and Andy Strat with the tow rope out through 7, and Ken who I failed to follow out of 14.


1) easy enough
2) apparently screwed the bearing, and was trying to navigate by the terrain, unsuccessfully. got there just in time to get a tow though 7 by ken walker and balter
8) meh. ugly, two hesitations, but no catastrophe
9) crushed it. fifth best split, even with the big boys
10) pretty decent, could've been a little better at the ends, though.
11) got confused by a trail i wasn't expecting
12) slow and wandery
13) felt good about this one, kept moving up the hill and slicing off switchbacks, homed right into it
14) should've gone direct, instead of the trail
15) and boom. tried staying in contact with a faster runner and paid for it by losing contact with the map. thought i was in the wrong trail junction and what do you know, i couldn't make it work. found a spring eventually and put the leg to bed. surprised i only dropped two places.
16) with a 10 minute rest for my legs, i killed this one
17) and this one

My original plan was to do red for the first event, and green for the second - I was pretty tired after the first upgrade, so I stuck with the second half of the plan. Probably the best race I've had, and a solid sign to move up to red if I can keep it up. 56s behind tp and 34s behind BP - no wonder he left for MN.

1) second worst leg. left the final trail too early, and on a bad heading. luckily, two wrongs made a right, and eventually i got close enough to successfully match the terrain (1:00)
2) went tank-mode on the underbrush and aced this leg by 7s. going straight at it paid off with an early reveal 100m out.
3) clean
4) clean
5) clean
6) chose the brute-force-and-ignorance route over the top. seems to have been roughly equivalent to contouring.
7) decent - coulda been more precise on the initial approach
8) worst leg. still like the initial plan to take the trail around, but came off the trail waaaay too early. didn't realize how far i hadn't gone and looked north into a reentrant before turning south. when taking the bearing to 9 my intuition was off by 45 degrees, which was unusually high. (1:30
9) i thought i had done decently on this one, but AP says I lost 30s. must've had a case of the slows
10) nailed it
11) decent.
12) murdered this split. probably my best single split ever. aced it by 47s on some very competent competition. focus was anger-powered after the fustercluck on the analogous leg on blue. had a good plan, stayed in contact and kept the hammer down the entire time
13) kept it up for one more leg. then fumbled the punch. bah
14) and trotting on in.

control pickin'. orienteering's way easier when the controls are <100m and you're walking. except for trying to move with a bouquet of 10 controls and a bag of water station trash. especially on that last one that i pooched. at a walk. got good at rotating the compass bezel with my teeth

umass sprint - a little bit of a trundle for the longer ones, but consistent. first time i've felt like i've looked far enough ahead and moved through controls. one or two hiccups, though. indicated splits lag reality by 9-10s

1) sprint maps are small! 50s. seriously.
2) getting the hang of it
3) stairs and walls are tricky
4) and it takes some willpower to go down stairs before you're certain (20s)
5) easy enough
6) likewise
7) yup
8) read it as the wrong corner, but didn't commit to anything stupid before correcting. 15s
9) bam
10) bam
11) maybe shoulda come from the north?
12) yup
13) right next to the dumpster. on a hot day. thanks!
14) honestly, i forgot what white meant on the map. there were solid trails in there, though, which was nice. went way left, shooting at the wrong corner. (10s)
15) mmhmm
16) fun scooting down the alleyways. enough people went CCW around the building - i don't understand why. slightly more gradual elevation change, perhaps.
17) easy
18) into a wee pit
F) and home

i wonder if that lag accounts for the timing discrepancies. where's that thinking hat..
14)

Event 1 - Middle Blue - Splits

Event 2 - Middle Green X - Splits

Event 3 - UMass Long - Splits

Event: CSU Park-O 6: Cat Rock Park
 

some laid back yoga with alicia. nice and stretchy. and caaaalm. rather the opposite of this

couldn't make park-o this evening, so i got a morning-ish run in instead. went out with the fresh pond map from last week's park-o, too. got a little carried away pacewise while reading. also, was up stupid-late welding last night and wasn't looking forward to the run, but a few minutes in and i felt fine.

ran the CCW loop to have more time to look at the map, and reran the course in my head. it was course 3, and for the life of me, i couldn't pick which way to get from 1 to 2 (brendan v everybody else on that animation). 5-6 was the other tricky one - I hadn't noticed that all five of the people i could find tracks for did it differently.

anyway, it was surprisingly tough to plan a random detour into the trails while on the run. and i didn't even run what sketch of a plan I did have - figured the traintracks would be more fun. maybe it had something to do with not having a control to shoot at. definitely worthwhile, and i'll definitely do it again




2L20 recovery

up and down a few bouldering problems, then a 10-fest on toprope with keja. an unlabeled 9ish 5.10 (1 cheat), 5.10b (clean), 5.10c (clean), 5.10d (one hang), and then an unspecified 10 that was the hardest of the night (one hang). feelin' good. need a rematch with that 10 lead in the supercave before it gets cleaned, though.

i just want to say that i ballparked my 8:10 total error before i saw what AP thought. Coincidence, sure, but I'm still taking credit.

Now I just need to find that goddamn receipt with my stick number

C • Stick 2

i'm not entirely comfortable with saying this, but i'm happy i went slow? shooting for 152 ahr - 80% of a theoretical max of 190. - in hopes of figuring out an appropriate training pace. looks like i nailed it, but being water-cooled helped (any motorcyclists in the house? no? no? fine.)

for funsies, if 5:45/k is the right easy-long pace for me, then that's a vdot of 45.14 and a 5k timeof 21:45. i feel like doing it that way is a bit backhanded, but that 5k time feels right - i was going slightly slower while pushing pretty hard on the first runs i did, but definitely could've given more.

and a marathon time of 3:27:42 - so now i don't have to actually run one to find out, which is nice. of course, that estimate would only be anywhere near reasonable if i were actually a runner, and not some bizarre hybrid/transistional/pupae-form "athlete"

C • Distance 3

another attempt to take cooper running. emphasis on attempt

The third of 3 motala courses.
First leg for Ian, Bill, and Alex, second for Brendan, and third for me.



Definitely my worst leg, in large part because Ed wasn't driving anymore. Dropped in too early for 3, and then not only made a bad route choice to 6, but executed poorly on that bad route choice. turns out the effects didn't cancel. this time.

Event: NEOC: Breakheart Reservation - US Team Fundraiser
 

red at breakheart. by ben standards, pretty clean. no epic mistakes come to mind, only one major mistake one (10), and two minor ones (4,9), i think
woo

1) clean. felt good to start clean
2) took a few steps to the west, then reevaluated quickly. a little overly direct on the approach, but okay (5s)
3) decent. (30s) bobble in the middle, but it was from thinking and saving myself from a bigger mistake
4) should've taken the eastern route along the road. more importantly, i shouldn't've overrun my target. (2:00)
5) idiotic exit from 4 (30s), and going high over the cliffs was stupid (45s)
6) good clean fun
7) cleanish, but came out futher down the road than i intended to (15s) bitchin' 20ft log run for style points, though.
8) easy contol, bit of a gimme
9) confusing trail network out of 8, but i think i did a decent job of it. overall poor decision to stay down near the lake, pretty steep exit to the road. (30s?) should've gone right at the control, coming from the hilltop just to the north was a great way to find some impressively healthy greenbriar (15s)
10) the big screwup of the day. totally at the wrong turn in the road, then totally went the wrong way on a brand-new trail (in progress, work team and all. arguably there was no 'right' way) (2:00) started on the direct route, found a huuuge bog, and backed out along the trail. had a bit of a ponder (30s) where the other end of the new trail met with what i was looking for. made an unnecessary lap of the cliff (15s)
11) happy with this one. steamrolled some plants, but they should've moved.
12) cut in early to the wrong boulder, but otherwise good (15s)
13) clean
14) had a brief case of the stupids coming out of 13. a little overconfident at recognizing trails (20s)
15) good, could've taken a more direct exit out of 14, thought
F) and the trundle home!

8:10 total mistakes. original guess was 5 minutes, but it's damn well better than usual, and on a harder, longer course.

Red - Splits