My Weird World

In the past few weeks I've been hosting my totally informal, guerilla Orienteering training sessions. The first was in Fox Run, and today's was at Devils Thumb in Boulder. I'm going to host at least two more in the coming months. Here's the Courses, you can see the full size versions in the Albums section!

End of year report!
My second full year on Attackpoint and a whole year of recording all the distances I've completed under Trail Running, Orienteering, Mountain Biking, Bike/Trail Run/Bike, Road Ride, Rogaining X Country Skiing and Adventure Racing. All the disciplines I've determined to be beneficial to fitness and aerobic performance.

As a subset of these main disciplines, but much harder/impossible to measure distance would be Cycling Rollers, Ultimate Frisbee and Miscellaneous Orienteering. The Strength and Stretching and RMRDs aid in keeping me injury free while all the rest is the icing on the cake.

Meeting Goals from last year
I had mixed results in meeting my goals from last year.

First was to up my trail running which I was able to accomplish resoundingly! Last year I was at 93 hours, this year at 121 hours at an annual pace of 9:09/mile, a gain of 30% in training time (check my math on this one...)

Next was to double the amount of Orienteering training from 30 hours to 60. Not so successfull with this one even though my number of Orienteering sessions increased from 24 to 38 and my hours were up to 39, making up only 15% of my total training, including Miscellaneous Orienteering. I don't have per km times to compare but last year Orienteering was only 10% of my training total (incld. Misc O).

My other Orienteering goals were just as mixed. I ran fairly well at the team trials. Not so well in the US Middle, and Individual Championships. Very well at the US Night O Champs! Kept my accuracy at/over 90% which I'm quite proud of. Didn't add to my World Ranking Points, putting me at 1438 in the World and 33 in the US. I did have a lot of fun though...!

Goals for '08
Continue to build on my Trail Running but also bring my annual pace time to below 9:00/mile, 8:30/mile would be awesome. Also a bit more consistency in my running training from week to week and month to month. '07 was a bit all over the place.

In Orienteering, similar goals to last year. Race well at the Team Trials with the ultimate goal of being compeditive for a spot on the World Championship team. Race well at all the A and Championship meets I'm able to travel to. Increase my World and US ranking. Up my Orienteering training to at least 20% combined. Keep my accuracy at/above 90%. Above all have fun while taking this seriously.

I'm also participating in the US Teams' Coaching program and will do my best to keep up with the assignments and training schedules provided by the coach, Tom Hollowell. Thanks to him for taking on this position! As part of this my goal will be to do a full race analysis for all Orienteering races using the race analysis tool available here on Attackpoint (Thanks Ken!!!) I currently do a basic analysis on the map itself but to add this additional, separate analysis will reveal trends in my Orienteering and help me determine where in my technical and physical skills I need improvement. This will also enable me to do a big-race by race analysis at the end of '08.

Overall '07 was a bit of a rollercoaster so for '08 I'd like to be a bit more consistent and focused, and stay as injury free as possible. Secret goals to be revealed forthwith...

RMOC hosted the USOF convention for Orienteering this year. What a huge event! I agreed to set courses for one of the days but otherwise steered well clear of the organizing, which worked out really well. The fact that I took the entire week off from work, and met up with a very good new friend definitely helped make this a much needed pseudo vacation away from m usual life even though I never left Colorado.


Day 1.
Ran the Blue course and had a great run. I caught up to Darius, a Canadian Oer, at the 2nd control and he latched on to me the whole rest of the way around the course. I made a small error at the 3rd control, didn't measure properly ond overshot the re-entrant I was looking for. Quick analysis of the huge re-entrant I was in revealed my mistake and I lost maybe 1.5 minutes. The rest of the course Darius and I would take slightly different routes and since we were both about the same speed I knew I'd need a bit of strategy to beat him to the finish.

At the second to last control he dropped back for some unknown reason. I spiked the control perfectly but I didn't reveal to him that I'd seen it, so after checking in I took off at the highest speed I could still muster and since I'd already memorized how to get to the last control I wasn't slowed down by un-necessarry navigation. As I'm checking in to the Go control I hear him thundering down the slope behind me. I bolt for the finish and out sprint him to the line by twenty paces. I had a good race!




Day 2.
My day to set courses. Other than a bit of Start Line panic because the maps were MIA for a few minutes, and the fact that I didn't have enough water on the Red course everything went really well. I heard more complimnets than complaints, saw a lot of smiles, and no-one got totally lost. One person did run off the map but quickly corrected their mistake when they hit the highway. I even had enough volunteers to pick up controls that I didn't have to go out again. Thanks to all of them.

Here's my Blue and Red courses:
(coming soon...)


Coaching Clinic.
Bob Turbyfill (Not sure if that's spelled right) taught a three day coaching clinic that would earn us a USOF, and USOC, Level 1 coaching certificate. The class was good as long as you could keep up with Bob's military style. It definied a lot of the concepts that I'd already learned and been using in my Orienteering, brought them together into a coherent system that can then be applied to further your Orienteering training. It's definitely one possible system that has produced results for Bob in the past. Is it the best system, I don't know but I'm definitely going to try to apply some of it to my own training and racing.

The first day was all classroom information, the second half classroom and half setting up our own training exercises. I prepared two! The third day we ran our training exercises. We were in a group of four so with my two we each ran five O trainings.

They were: a rough compass exercise with no map and only a sheet of directions and distances; a line O exercise; my own Window O; a rough map reading exercise which I ran at a comfortable tempo pace; and finally my second exercise where two people run the course with one map, the person behind has the map and must tell the person ahead how to navigate to the next control, they switch off at each control.

Who knows, maybe I'll start up my own On-Line Orienteering Coaching Consultation Service...


US Night O Champs
Wow! I seem to really like Night Orienteering. I blame the awesome headlight I recieved from my family for my birthday. Thank you again! I had a good steady race with only a few errors that didn't cost me too much time. Nothing too exciting to write about until I saw the results. I was 6th overall, two Finns, John Fredrickson, another guy from either Sweden or Finland I can't remember, then me, then Mikell Platt!!! This is the first time I've run faster than him and that definitely made me very happy with my run.



US Middle Distance Champs
Held in the intricate ridge and re-entrant terrain of Lake Manitou. The altitude definitely affected me today. I couldn't get my legs to move fast at all. As it turns out I was going fast, it just didn't feel like it. Now if I'd avoided making about 8 minutes worth of errors I would've been within 2 minutes of John Fredrickson, who's at the World Champs in the Ukraine as I write this.

The excitment of the day came later when the Juniors set up a 15 control, 300 meter long String O with E Punching! That was fun and many different variations were tried. Three-legged, Blind-folded, One-Legged and so on.

It got even more exciting when we were driving down from the Crags trailhead, after a beautiful hike, the control arm of the rear left wheel popped out of it's ball and socket joint. Luckilly Marco and Maya were there so we jacked it up, popped the joint back together and Duct taped the joint so that it wouldn't pop open again. We then drove it to Divide where they were able to fix it after a few days to get the part delivered. It was a good thing Marco and Maya were there or we'd've been in more trouble. Thanks again you two!





US Ultra-Long Distance Champs.
I totally bonked on this day. I was tired to begin with and the first three controls didn't help. They were very up and down, totally characteristic of Saylor Park where the race was being held. I made it to just past the 8th, of 22 controls when my legs cramped up and gave out under me. I was able to get up shortly after but they were still tingling and threateniing more cramps, so I walked to the road and to the nearest aid station where I got a ride back to the finish. I ate and drank sport drink and after a bit my legs recovered but I was definitely done for the week! It may have been beter if I'd tried Red instead but who knows if the same thing would've happened on that course too.


Overall an awesome week of Orienteering and other activities with some very good and very bad runs but one thing this week did do is keep my drive to do well in Orienteering strong, and to keep me working towards my goals within this sport.

To round off the weekend I went whitewater rafting with Ioana in Browns Canyon near Buena Vista. (She's a Romanian Orienteereress from Wisconsin...) That was a lot of fun!




Thanks for reading and take a look at the full sized pictures in the Photo Albums section of this page!!! Ciao!

Had an amazing weekend of Orienteering, even though I was slow, then slower, then still slow. The weather was perfect, sunny, warm with not a cloud in the sky.

In contrast, when I drove home from Denver I was driving through a blizzard with whiteout conditions, several inches of slush on the roads and up to 8 inches of snow on the ground down to an elevation of about 7000 feet. Snow in May!!!? I love it...

The sprint on Friday.

My flight was over an hour late leaving Denver and I only had a 2 hour window to get from the airport to the start so naturally I missed my start time and didn't get any points for this run. I had a good run, but nowhere near the speed of the winners so I didn't complain too bitterly.

The run itself when very well, I had good contact with the map, felt like I was fast, turned out I wasn't, and made only one route choice mistake that would have shaved about 10-15 seconds off my time...

The Classic Distance on Saturday.

Again a very clean run with only one error, trying to find a clearing the size of a kitchen table in fight green where even a machete wouldn't've helped...! Everything else I spiked and even had a route choice or two that were faster than the obvious choices. All in all a good day 'till I saw my time. I'm slow, slow, slow... :-(

The Long Distance on Sunday!

After totally blowing up on the first control and loosing 3 minutes before finding the control, I had a perfect run. I didn't let that mistake affect the way I ran the rest of the course and except for one little hiccup that cost me maybe 30 seconds, I hit everything else correctly.

Still slower than snail snot in winter, but I enjoyed myself immensely and my legs arms and face are all shredded from the dense vegetation and thorns.

An awesome weekend of Orienteering!

The maps are available in the Photos section above...

In order to, not only help my own Orienteering skills but to try to get more people in the area to be regular participants I'm once again hosting Orienteering training sessions. They usually require very little up front work on my part, and they generally seem to help my skills, and generate a decent turn out of other people. In my opinion, if even one other person shows up, it's totally worth it for me.

This past Saturday I held one at Fox Run Park, and this Saturday I'm hosting one at the Greenland Ranch Open Space, a new open space between Castle Rock and Monument. You can check out the Fox Run Maps in the Albums section of my site.