Training Log Archive: Ben Cooper

WU

2024 JWOC Trials - Hueston Woods Classic - M Red
Distance: 7.3km Climb: 320m Pace: We don't talk about it

Navigation 5/10 Physically 3/10
If I'm going to be honest, this race felt like one of the overall poorest performances I've had in years. Based on the simple mistakes I made, and the overall feeling of depletion and lack of mental acuity I had throughout the race; it is clear I had not fully recovered from the flu. This race certainly is not a good representation of who I am as an orienteer. My past races in much tougher terrain, both navigationally and physically, speak much more to my orienteering abilities. Anyway, on to my mistakes:

Checkpoint #1 - #2: No mistake, but I tried to punch through some green in the disc golf area and the trees weren't having it so I ran around through the white.

Checkpoint #3 - #4: One of my two really big mistakes. While running along the trail to 4, I ran past the first major intersection, and when I got to the second intersection, I turned left, thinking I was at the first intersection. While running, I was checking my compass but because the two trails were close to parallel, I didn't initially think anything was wrong. However, my sense of time told me I was running for too long and too far until I hit the power lines, and my fears were realized. How I didn't realize that sooner I don't know as I was running uphill and straighter than I was supposed to. Unfortunately, it was also on this leg that my lack of flu recovery was becoming clear, and my fatigue was starting to make an impact on my race. Anyway, after I had fully realized what happened, I chose to run straight from where I was toward the checkpoint instead of running along the trail. Fortunately, this portion of the leg went perfectly, and I hit the checkpoint right on.

Checkpoint #8 - #9: My second large mistake. I planned to run down the spur from 8, hit the trail system just east of 11, and use the intersection just south of 11 as my stepping stone to cross the reentrant, hitting a spur directly east of 9. From there I would take a compass bearing to 9. As I was approaching the bottom of the spur 8 was on, my compass showed me facing directly east so I continued straight, and I hit a trail. Because I thought I had hit the lower trail, I started running north. While the trail did start curving east, it wasn't going up a hill like it was supposed to. Because of this, I thought I ended up north and needed to run south. However, as I was slowly heading south, I realized what had actually happened. From the spur, I ended up going south and hit the southern trail complex. I then started running back north toward the powerlines, but I ran past the intersection to head towards where I wanted to be. Because of this, I curved back around to the south and I ended up where I crossed the powerlines at 4. I quickly realized where I was and ran back towards the north. I then finally ended up in the northern trial complex where I initially wanted to be and I was able to execute the rest of the route perfectly and I was able to recover well going to #10.

Checkpoint #10 - #11: I was sluggish on this leg, and I ended up slightly farther south on the trail than I expected so I got a little turned around when I ran past two intersections when I expected to only run past one.

Checkpoint #12 - #13: On attack point, it has this leg highlighted in red but I was just running slow

Checkpoint #14 - #15: My plan for this leg was to run east and intersect the trail by #1. From there I would run south until I crossed a bridge and then run up the reentrant and get #15. By this point, I was exhausted, so when I crossed a bridge, I thought I was at my attack point and I jumped off the trail into a reentrant. The bridge I had crossed was an unmapped one in the reentrant before so I ended up in the reentrant north of 15. Because I was confused, I bailed out to the trail running parallel to the road and back south toward the start as 15 was next to the start. I soon realized what happened and I was able to jump off and get #15.

In conclusion: My mistakes were lesser in number than my other days but the mistakes I did make were larger in their impact.

Post race stretching

OCIN_FP2024_Sunday_Classic_8 Red - Splits

WU

2024 JWOC trials - Hueston Woods Classic - M Red
Distance: 8.0 km Climb: 140m Pace: 9:08

Navigation 8/10 Physically 6.5/10
Overall, today felt better than yesterday. I felt more confident in my routes and speed. I only had one major mistake and a couple of smaller ones. I also felt a lot faster running off trail today, but I couldn't push myself as hard when on trail. it felt like I was still fighting off the aftereffects of the flu which also explains why yesterday was so physically tough for me. Racing right after being sick isn't great. Anyways, onto my couple of mistakes:

Start - Checkpoint #1: I was running slower on this checkpoint as I was trying to take the opportunity to plan ahead which me out later but made this checkpoint a little sluggish as most people took the opportunity to go all out.

Checkpoint #2 - #3: When planning out my route, I saw two routes. One was to go pink line and jump trails or run along the creek to the main trail running north to 3. I chose the latter option because the first route had more room for error, I thought jumping trail and slowing down to keep track of where I was would be sluggish when I could sprint along the creek and main trail. Additionally, the second route would have the benefit of giving me time to look ahead to the very long leg from #3 - #4. In the end, the longer route was slower than going pink line, but the extra time to look ahead allowed me to create a good route for #4.

Checkpoint #3 - #4: For this checkpoint, I chose to take a riskier route which paid off except for one small mistake. From 3, I ran south back to the main trail before crossing the creek into the open space. From there, I ran south along a main trail until it turned off and I ran down the creek. I hoped to jump out of the creek and hit a smaller trail that intersected with the powerline trail and then run up the powerlines to 4. My one small mistake was that when I ran past where I was hoping to jump out of the creek and ended up in some not-so-fun green instead of a trail. I then got hung up in this green for a short while. Even though I got stuck in brambles, I ran similar times to the other people competing for JWOC.

Checkpoint #5 - #6: I was trying to go pink line for this checkpoint but I ended up getting pushed downhill. Luckily, I was keeping track of my bearing so I knew to turn up the hill once I had gotten to the spur 6 was on. However, the greenery on the spur was very tough to get through, which added a lot of time to my split.

Checkpoint #6 - #7: On this checkpoint, I managed to completely run past the checkpoint. I don't know how as I was running up the trench the checkpoint was in. Luckily, my backstop was right behind the checkpoint, so it wasn't that bad. It was just some buffoonery. Also, while my route choice felt good, going around on the road might have been faster even though it was less direct but either way I was able to plan very far ahead on my course.

Checkpoint #7 - #8: No mistake, I just ran farther down the trail, past the bend which was my attack point, trying to find a decent path through the wall of green. There was no path through the wall of green, so I just had to fight through it.

Checkpoint #10 - #11: Once again no mistake, it was just that the greenery at the bottom of the hillside was very dense and not very fun, or fast, to run through.

Checkpoint #12 - #13: This was when I really started to feel the aftereffects of the flu as it was mostly trail and I was trying to push hard but my body wasn't having it. Normally, I would have been able to pick up the pace and push harder.

checkpoint #14 - #15: This was my only large mistake of the course. When I got to the large drainage pond, I went right when I should have gone left. I was thinking I would be able to jump down onto the lower trail and then cross onto the road, but I didn't realize there was a large, very brushy, hillside and creek in the way. When I realized my route wasn't the best, I ran back around to the other side of the lake and then ran along a trail when a much faster road was right next to me. The reason why I didn't take the road is because I hadn't planned on running that way and when I had to change route choice I just didn't consider it. All in all, very dumb mistake as I should have gone left in the first place.

To conclude, my navigation felt decent today, but I was held back as the race progressed as my body didn't feel ready to race after coming off of a flu.

Post race stretching

OCIN_FP2024_Saturday_Classic_8 Red - Splits

Event: Flying Pig XXVI - Total Eclipse of the Pig - 2024 Masters Nationals
 

WU

2024 JWOC trails - Camp Friedlander Middle - M Red
Distance: 4.7 Climb: 175 Pace: 10:32 per K

Navigation 8/10 Physically 5/10
Overall, I was unhappy with how this race went because it was a runner's race, and I was not as fast as the people I was racing against. Knowing this, my strategy for most of the race was to take the hillier yet shorter routes knowing the longer roundabout routes would take a while. Most of the time I felt confident in my route choice but looking back some routes could have been better. Still, the run ability was really bad for most legs so moving at any rate of speed was hard. In addition, I only made 1 true mistake, but it was a doozy. So, to summarize, navigation was good, running was not so good, and it felt like a runner's course. Anyways, onto the mistakes:

Start - Checkpoint #2: No mistakes, I was just being a bit too conservative on the downhills trying to not snap my ankles. I hadn’t realized the power of the but slide either so it was very slow moving.

Checkpoint #2 - #3: This was one of the only times I took the more conservative route. The route choice was either pink line down and up a couple of not-so-shallow reentrants or around on a trail by a drainage pond. My logic was that because the reentrants I had just gone through sucked, I should go around. I felt good about my route but in post, I feel like the more direct route would have been faster as the reentrants weren’t that deep or green.

Checkpoint #3 - #4: This mistake was mostly me trying to think outside the box and it ended up not working out. There were two route choices again. The first one was to, from 3, run out of the entrant to the trail and then use a building next to the trail as an attack point to get into the reentrant, fighting through medium green. What I tried to do was run past the building and then run into the reentrant when the trail crossed it because the reentrant was mapped as white, but it was not white, it was very much green. Seeing this, I chose to run past the reentrant and run along the spur which was mapped as white, and attack from the top of the spur. The spur was also not white. Additionally, because of the checkpoints in the reentrant, I had to run all the way down the very muddy and very slippery spur. It wasn’t too bad in the end, but the simpler route through the darker green would have been better than my very roundabout way.

Checkpoint #8 - #9: This mistake was entirely a route choice error, and it was one of two bad ones I made. For this checkpoint, I saw 3 viable routes. Route 1 was to run all the way around the reentrants and green on the trails and open areas. Route 2 was to run part way up the trails, cross where the retreats were shallower, and run through the open space to 9. Route 3 was to accept the climb and bushwacking by going pink line. Because I was getting tired and my running had slowed, I thought running around would take too long, and running part way up and cutting across was unnecessary as I was still eating elevation, just with more running around. Therefore, I went pink line. This route worked great except that the climb out of the first reentrant had some of the steepest and muddiest climbing I had done to that point which slowed me down drastically. I should have done route 2 as the climbing was far easier up the reentrant.

Checkpoint #10 - #11: This was the second really bad route choice. Similar to the last one, I could either run all the way around, pink line, or run up part way and cut across where it’s shallower. Because I hadn’t learned from 8-9, I went pink line. The hill out of the entrant topped the last one in both muddiness and greenery. However, it was worsened by me losing my epunch and it slid all the way down to the bottom of the hill. If you look at livelox, you can see this when my GPS tracks completely stopped as I wildly searched for it. Eventually, I found it and finished the route just fine, but all of that could have been avoided if I hadn’t run up the steepest part of the reentrant.

Checkpoint #11 - #14: Slow, I was running very very slow

Checkpoint #14 - #15: I knew that it was the inside corner, however, I wasn’t to the wrong inside corner not realizing there was a different inside corner. I then searched around for way too long trying to figure out which inside corner it was at before realizing I was looking in the completely wrong area. The lesson I learned from this was to not assume a checkpoint is at one particular feature when there are other of the same feature near it. If I had looked at the map for other inside corners, I would have realized it was not where I thought it was.

In conclusion, my navigation was great except for 15, my route choice could have been better when navigating the reentrants, and I really need to push harder in the middle of races

C • Sorry you lost your epunch :( 1

Post race stretching

OCIN_FP2024_Friday_Middle_8 Red - Splits