Training Log Archive: mikeminium

Event: OCIN - New Year's Races - Camp Timberhill
 

Control setting at Rentschler / Timberhill. Mostly walking but some jogging / running as darkness approached; ended up doing the last few controls with a headlamp.

Setting and checking controls at Rentschler / Timberhill. Did a couple minor update.

walked around Indian Creek in light rain and snow flurries. Did a few map updates.

In terrain at dusk, listening for owls. Got Great Horned Owl in one more priority block where they had been recorded in 82-87 but not in the current 06-11 atlas. A nice addition, with just a few days remaining in the OBBA project. Also heard some sandhill cranes (migrants). Woodland Trails Wildlife Area.

C • I saw an owl. . . 2

short easy run.

misc. yard and garden. Still feeling pretty stiff from the Billy Pig.

Event: OCIN Billy Pig XI / TROL #4
 

OCIN Billy Pig set by Dave Waller. A challenging course with insanely steep hills, calf-deep shoe-sucking mud, and loads of thick and thorny underbrush.

C • Results. pics? 5

OCIN EF Billy Pig XI Billy Pig - Splits

Event: Midwest Course Setting Clinic (OCIN)
 

Event: MVOC - Night Score O
 

Putting out Trail-O controls for course setting clinic. Photographing participants during Trail-O and Control Site Evaluation activities.

Night Score Orienteering at Cricket Holler.

Matt Bond and I were the only ones to get all 20 controls. He beat me by several minutes (of course he had home field advantage and he had visited all controls by daylight helping Benjamin set them out.) Benjamin designed the course, and it was fun.

This was an interesting night. Have you heard the saying that if you set something free, it will come back to you? Well, I did not intend to release my Moscow thumb compass into the wild, but somewhere between the first and second control, the band came loose and it found its freedom. Leaving my second control (#3), I noticed its absence, but decided against turning back. Desperately checking pockets, I lost the faint trail toward my 3rd control (#4) and decided on timber-bashing instead. Without the compass, my aiming off was WAY off, and I probably spent an extra minute flailing through thick vegetation, before bouncing off a fence and using that as a handrail.

Leaving this control was little better - I should have backtracked to the faint path along the fence, but going 180 degrees away from my next control (and back through the pack of JROTC cadets that had latched onto my tail) just seemed WRONG. The result was that I led some intrepid cadets through some of the thickest, nastiest, thorniest vegetation at Cricket Holler. At one point, branches swept off my headlight, and as I reached for it, the strap of my handheld light caught on another branch and I was temporarily stuck. I finally managed to free myself and get everything fixed back up, but it cost a minute. Amazingly, the cadets were faring no better and were still behind me, grunting with exertion and thorny punctures.

Bashed through a little more brush, I hit a trail a few steps before the cadets, and quickly picked up speed and ditched them. Only to catch up with others. One of them outsprinted me to a control but slid past it and I got the punch first. Ha!

A couple controls later on, I caught up to the Klipstine clan (Adam, Chance, a teenage friend and their dad Todd). Todd made some comment about how they ought to follow me. But leaving the control, they managed to outdistance me through the woods as my light snagged again and glasses fogged while I fixed it. Grrr. But, I made a better route choice and we arrived at the next control simultaneously.

As we punched, Todd made another remark about following, and I replied with a lament about losing my compass. He said "we have 2, would you like to borrow one?" "Sure, thanks." One look, and the lensatic non-liquid filled sighting compass went in my pocket, not to emerge again for the duration of the race. But at least I knew I had it if I really needed it.

From there on, I did not make any real mistakes, but there were JROTC kids everywhere, being a constant distraction. Ahead of me something crashed off the trail into dense third green bushes. A deer? Nope, 2 kids in head-to-toe cammies crouched in the bushes hiding from me. Dudes, what is the point? I sprint past. A couple controls later, after punching a control, I realize that I am being chased by a red laser dot, bouncing around at my feet. I'm sure its a toy and not a gun, but I am still happy that I can see it dancing around the forest floor, since as long as I can see it, it hasn't found me as a target. Kids!

Anyway, finishing the course and turning in my punch card, there was my faithful compass right in the middle of the results table. It actually had beat me back to the finish! Thanks to whoever found it and turned it in! I returned the museum artifact to the Klipstines, put my thumb back on, and had not quite enough time to focus myself for the start of Search and Destroy...

MVOC Night Search-and-Destroy O'. I think I had a decent plan, but made a mistaken turn going to the first one and the Klipstine clan sprinted past before I corrected. Knowing they would beat me to my first one, I tried a shortcut to the next, but the indistinct path was tough to follow, had a few fallen trees, and a torn-up footbridge, and when I got to the control, a kid was already grabbing it (Adam Klipstine, I think.). I tired the same trick again, a different route but heard people to my left who would probably reach it sooner. Darn, this is the worst luck I have ever had at Search and Destroy. Kicked in and headed farther out, finally finding an intact control, then another, and finally a third. The third one was tied to a chainlink fence and when I tried to untie it, a knot in the cord caught. It must have taken me two minutes to get the explitive thing untied.

The next two controls I visited were gone, and I raced Klipstines (again!) to a third, which also had already vanished. Since Adam can run a 5 km at about a minute a click faster than I can, that is a losing proposition as long as he knows where he's going. Giving up on that corner of the map, I headed back, checking out one more control site on the way, but it too was gone. Given the number of participants, I figured there was no sense heading for other parts of the map, which proved correct. Anyway, Klipstines returned with 3 controls and I also had 3. But they only had punched 16 in the original one-hour score-O. So it was down to me and my nemesis, Bond. Matt, it turned out, had even more trouble than me, and only got 2 controls, so I ended up winning the event total, 23 to 22. Close one Mr. Bond. We will surely meet again.

setting controls for Course Setting Clinic

checking some control sites for Course Setting clinic at Miami this Saturday.

Worked off some of the post-Possum Trot stiffness shadowing a student (Jacob) and his dad on their first orienteering course. Hueston Woods Lodge permanent course. Ethan impressed me, doing 1-10 in numerical sequence in a little under an hour. Sam and Hunter chased each other around the advanced controls, forgetting to look at their watch until they were at the far end of the course. I was getting a little concerned as they were 25 minutes late and darkness was falling when they finally emerged from the woods. But, they DID find all of their assigned controls.

C • Context... 8

Event: OCIN / TROL #3 - Miami Univ. Middletown Campus
 

Possum Trot, Shawnee Mission Park, Kansas.

Got to watch the just-past-full moon rising in front of me as I headed home on I-70; Saw a really cool meteor blaze acorss the sky just east of Effingham.

Possum Trot - Splits

Event: Possum Trot Weekend
 

Kansas Championships, Kansas University campus, Lawrence, KS.

Driving to the meet after an overnight in St' Louis, watching the full moon setting in the pre-dawn sky; had a full windshield view of the eclipse as it slowly ate into the disc, reaching almost 50% just before the moon set below the horizon. Would have loved to have been able to chase it to the Pacific for the full view the lucky west-coasters got.

checking control locations and minor map updates at Rentschler / Timberhill.

Rained all night and rained all day. Great turnout for Union County O' Club meeting today after school with 8 students making an appearance. A couple of them had to leave early for their basketball game.

C • UCOC 5

Event: OCIN - TROL #2 - Miami Whitewater
 

setting controls and drinking water, taking down controls at Miami Whitewater.

Event: OLOU Billy Goat
 

OLOU Billygoat. There was a wicked gleam in the Old Goat's eye as he sent us off into the unknown. Fun course, Louis. Putting 2 controls on the white portion of the paper, beyond the mapped portion of the park was entertaining. Perhaps not entirely true orienteering, but entertaining.

setting final controls at Miami Whitewater

checking sites and setting controls at Miami Whitewater.