Training Log Archive: Mr Wonderful

Event: SMOC Peach Mountain Spring
 

Forgot my Garmin. On trail bag hanging was easy. Igor was right to stage the water on the previous day, rather than day of. Lesson learned!

Winning times were all whack on Orange, but considering I picked up the flags on nearly the orange course, including water stop tear down, and did it in an hour, it seems more fair. Orange had to be taken as a whole since three teams were still not back at 4 pm. It started as a control pickup and search and rescue sweep! Thankfully text messages arrived two controls or so in that everyone was off the course. One guy was a little upset that the final orange control was gone by 4, but the club site does mention courses closing at 3 pm, so I'll forgive myself. My only real beef is that he also complained to my assistant, who had no say, and was only there out of the kindness of his heart. I should be clear that any complaints go to me, not my volunteers.

C • Great courses and organizat... 2

Hung the off trail flags. I hit "start/stop" instead of lap between a couple flags so there's really another half a click in there or so.

I need better streamer material, better tying methods, or fewer storms preceding my meet. A couple were rough, sad, or missing.

The red course seems super easy. Of course I have been to these locations a couple times now, and always at 2.5 mph. I theorize an hour flat is possible - the red doesn't have all that much climb and with the latest tweaks, the worst vegetation is largely omitted. Still just a little for the AR guys. :P

Maps are printed, snacks are purchased.

What will I forget?! This is my big anguish.

I converted the balance of the new e punch flags to numbers instead of letters last night, and selected non e punch flags for white and yellow.

I have one reentrant I wanted vetted, but I'm not sure anyone's going to get to it, so I will do a bearing+pace from at least one other boulder in the area. If that crosses the original, then I have more confidence. I think it's right, but there is another reentrant that barely registers a squiggle. Of course with 5 m contours that's going to happen.

And I will revisit the one Cooper questioned the circle placement. I adjusted the circle per his comments and he approved, but this will double check fairness. And probably streamer the one added orange point. Even if I'm going back in two days and it should be obvious.

I drew up "courses" for flag hanging. ~8 km to do the off trail ones on Friday, and then ~3.7 km on Saturday morning. But those ones are pretty close to the trail. I'll budget two hours, but I hope it's not that long. That leaves one flag handled by car, but it's a water stop, so intentional. Jeff will pre run white to make sure those are right.

I have learned so much - so many things to do differently next time.

I'm very curious to see how the winning times will shake out. With Halfmoon won at just over 10:00/km, this should put first place right on top of an hour, since there's some insanely fast open woods section.

C • I usually put the water out... 4

Confirming a couple points before flag hanging. The only unvetted vague one? I paced it off a different boulder and stopped 2 meters from the streamer. Book it!

The other one...it's tricky. I tweaked the circle again. You can see it everywhere in the reentrant, but it's harder to key off the objects than I thought. Might be off a millimeter or three. The pros will hit it. I won't bury it.

My new orange point should be good. Skilled orange participants will save some climb; others will do a bit of it.

The hardest white point is visible 30 meters away from the spot you'd jump off trail. Should be fine.

Hooray

Course setting is a helluva lot more nerve-wracking than competing.

Easy walk around the sub w/ dear wife. I carried ~6 kg of kitty litter in my 24 hr pack. Time to start getting used to the weight.

My DVR hard drive is too full. Time to start morning exercises again. Plus the Rage will be easier if I'm somewhat fit.

Event: SMOC Halfmoon Lake Spring
 

Orienteering race, spiked 13 of 18, some really stupid mistakes. I thought I would be more immune with the Pig and course setting to get better. More running to keep brain working? More map walking? OR....maybe some off trail running with a map.....

Orienteering control pickup, spiked 1 of 1 for CP1.

Orienteering control pickup, spiked 3 of 4 (missed one on the way out).

Orienteering control pickup, spiked 6 of 6, which is good because they were yellow & orange.

Quite tired by the end. Spotted Igor who picked up his last six much faster, but lacked the heart and drive to reel him in. Definitely need to work on getting into 10k-half marathon shape.