Saturday, 7. November 2009, 18:29:41
orienteering
Today's race at Nachal Alexander, on a great re-map of the old Park HaSharon map (4th time?) by Daniel Griff, was a perfect run. Almost. I lost time on only three controls:
10-11 - veered to the right to say hello to a little girl who was doing the family course with her grandfather. Very unprofessional, but I was enjoying myself and she's my daughter. 20 seconds gone.
14 - the control description was "Knoll, west side". I passed the knoll, glanced at it, saw no control, and went looking. Then I came back and saw the control way below that same knoll, under the form line which can't be seen on the map because it's under my track. The control was definitely placed incorrectly according to the description, though very close. 50 seconds.
15 - I hit the clearing well, saw no control (vague description - "Thicket, bend"), and searched to the right (south-west). It was 20m to the east, and I'm almost sure it was in the wrong place. The clearing was much narrower there and there was no bend in the thicket line.
The blue arrow is where the control should have been, and the red one where I think it was (the GPS track is deviating about 10m to the east). Unluckily, I was alone and chose the wrong direction. 70 seconds.
So basically I had a perfect run, hit all the control locations spot on, enjoyed myself, and lost to Omer (as usual) anyway. I would have lost even without these three time losses, but by less than a minute. He's running faster than me at the moment, but I'm not at full strength yet and I'm working on it. Apart from that, the perfect run probably means I was running too slowly.
My full course is below - 6.3 km, 53:49:
Tuesday, 3. November 2009, 18:05:36
orienteering
A week of work in the USA finished on Friday, and I had time for orienteering on Saturday before catching my 16:00 flight back home. Therefore, I set out in the dark in order to be ready for training at Surebridge Mountain with first light.
This area was used for WOC 1993, and is as good as I had expected - certainly one of the best that I've ever seen. Add to all that a steady drizzle, some mist, the autumn leaves (which meant that all the small paths were invisible), countless deer, and the most dangerous thing in the forest: falling acorns (big ones). I ran a 5 km course that I planned for myself in about 55 minutes, losing some time on validating controls (there were no markings, of course) but managing not to make any serious mistakes:
A note on the acorns: the oak trees there are really tall, so they fall from a great height. When the first one hit my car I thought I'd been shot at.
After the training I ran back to the car, dressed quickly, and drove to a local event held by HVO at Tourne County Park. I liked the informality of the event - get your map at registration and start whenever you want, with cookies waiting at the end.
I was really tired by the middle of the course (Red - 6.26 km, 60:22), so the slow progress (in red) is mostly due to fatigue. The terrain was nice (deer, leaves, and acorn bombs, but no rain), and my only mistake was a parallel error from 10 to 11, running to the right of the wrong marsh:
On the plane, I fell asleep before we even took off. And thanks to Daniel Schaublin for the Surebridge map, and HVO club for the event.
Wednesday, 28. October 2009, 06:51:34
orienteering
On Saturday we officially opened our season with a national event at Akbara. I planned the courses, so I wasn't participating, and one of my GPS units was on Daniel Griff, who's route is below.
Daniel used to be our best orienteer by far, and almost qualified for the WOC middle finals in 2003 and 2004, but a few years ago he left for the USA to try and make a living from his other passion, which is flying, and now he's back (mostly because of the recession, I think). He's not fully fit yet, but still orienteering as well as ever (except for missing the last control), and it's great to see him back in action. For lack of another job, he's also doing a lot of mapping, and knowing his attention to detail and accuracy I look forward to orienteering on some great new and updated maps this season.
I'm writing this from the USA, where I'm on a business trip again. This time I'm just north of New York, and I'll be able to go for training at Harriman State Park (famous for WOC 1993) and to a local event held by HVO on Saturday. Meanwhile I'm enjoying running in the mornings (I get back from work in the dark) on the North County Trailway, which is simply beautiful. It's nice and cold in the early morning, so I feel as if I can run fast forever...
Friday, 23. October 2009, 19:15:16
orienteering
Today I went to mark controls for an event we're planning at Har Shaul in December, with 120 controls. I got the idea from the various 100+ control events held around the world a few years ago (I think the record is 205 ??), and I prepared the first 100-control event in Israel 3 years ago, in Lavi forest, together with Oded Verbin (map sample below). This season we decided to do it together again, with a 20% increase.
The course back then was 10.4 km, with 390m climb, and there was also a shorter course with 50 controls. This time we're aiming for under 13 km, but the climb will probably be much more, because the terrain is steeper. My part (the first 60 controls) is 5.9 km. There will also be a 60-control course (for the majority of the participants), and maybe a regular short course.
The punching will be manual, of course, but we'll use the same system as last time - each competitor got a regular card with 30 squares, but had to mark only those controls which had a yellow sticker on the punch. It worked very well, but we heard that some orienteers saw that the one in front of them wasn't punching, and "cut the corner" without going to the control. So this time there may be stickers in several colours, and each orienteer will have to punch according to a specific colour. And, of course, there will be the usual nutcases who prepare a set of 4 cards in advance, in order to punch everything!
Sunday, 18. October 2009, 05:28:31
orienteering
Today's event was held in a typical autumn heatwave, on a nice new map called Givat Kipod ("Hedgehog Hill" - I don't know why, but the internet says that the hill is volcanic in origin). On the way home the car recorded 38°C, but I think we had only about 34°C in the forest...
I didn't feel the heat too much while running, because it was very dry, but I felt that the first water control (6) was too late - after more than half of the 6.2km course. My running ability is improving, though I still walk too much on the steep hills, and I had a few minor hesitations and misses, but nothing significant, and mostly in places where I also felt that the map was slightly inaccurate.
I think that I've managed to get back into a good training rythmn, and from next week I'll add an anaerobic session each week. That means that my typical weekly schedule should look like this:
- Sunday - rest
- Monday - anaerobic (hills, intervals or fartlek)
- Tuesday - light run (7-11km)
- Wednesday - rest
- Thursday - light run
- Friday - mapping or orienteering
- Saturday - orienteering or light run
Sunday and Wednesday are the days I'm in charge of Ayala (my daughter). Every two weeks I'll try to get in a longer run on Thursday - more than 12km.
Friday, 16. October 2009, 15:47:57
orienteering, mapping
One of the bonuses of moving house is finding various historical objects. While cleaning up my orienteering files I came across a bunch of old mapping papers, including my first map. This was drawn by hand before we had Ocad, in 1991, and because there was no point in going to the printers for a local training map, I drew it in colour and photocopied about 10 copies for the youths I was training:
In 1993 I drew an updated version in Ocad and got it printed properly, and later on the area became part of the larger Kfar Vradim map, printed in 2002.
I did the fieldwork just after finishing my army duty, before I started studying. I didn't have a car yet, so I had a 1.5km walk from home to the edge of the map. My base map was taken from the 1:50,000 topographical map, with no aerial photograph. And my only previous mapping experience was when I accompanied the Czech mapper Zdenek Lenhart during his work here in Israel.
Friday, 9. October 2009, 19:36:57
orienteering
I've just finished drawing the courses for our first national event of the season, which will be held in two weeks at Akbara, the site of last year's Israeli Championships, which I mapped and organised.
Planning the championships there was a major effort, given the small size of the map (about 1.6 km2), and I used a large number of controls while trying to create the best possible courses. This time I'm using less controls and less distance, and the courses won't be of the same quality - all the best legs were "burnt" by the previous event - but they should still be technically and physically demanding.
One of the challenges last year was planning the start and the finish for six competitive courses. All of them started onto a hilltop at the northern end of the map, from which they had to descend westwards due to a large cliff to the south-east. The first few controls for all the courses can be seen below:
The finish held a similar challenge - plan a final loop for all six courses from the spectator control (south-east of the finish), with only one possible direction to go: west and then back east. This is what it looked like:
I have to use the same assembly area and finish again, because there's no other option, but I don't have a spectator control this time, and the start is in a different direction. And, by coincidence, I'm flying out again on business on the night after the event.
Sunday, 4. October 2009, 14:16:10
orienteering
Yesterday we had a local event at Zecharia, which is steep, green, and (at this time of year) hot. I finished the 5.9km course in 68:26, which is quite good in my opinion, taking into account my physical condition. The second (and interesting) part of the course is below:
I didn't make any significant mistakes, probably because I'm still running slower than usual, but the terrain is so detailed and bushy that there was no way to avoid small hesitations and misses. It was good physical training, especially at keeping running in tough terrain, and I still have a way to go before I'm in what I call "competitive shape".
I didn't like the way that the course crossed the finish twice (19-20, 22-23) before actually finishing. I actually used 23 as my attack point for 20, and then found it again using the finish streamers. I also saw some people approaching the finish from the north, meaning that they punched 23 out of order (we used manual punching).
Sunday, 27. September 2009, 10:40:14
orienteering
Below is my route from yesterday's local event at Ein Dor. It was my first competitive run for almost 4 months, coming after an enforced break from training (moving house), so I was moving very slowly uphill (note - 90% of the climb was in the first 2 km!) and trying to run steadily for the rest of the course. My time was 48:42 for 5.16km, but results haven't been published yet, so I don't know how good it is - I think that some of our top elites ran in the low 40's. 
I hope to get back to training and orienteering now. Tomorrow is the Day of Atonement, so I'm fasting for 25 hours, but after that I'll be training properly and getting to more races. Next week I have an enforced vacation from work (Sukkot), so I'll be out mapping and marking controls for a couple of upcoming events. The season is starting...
Tuesday, 22. September 2009, 19:23:10
orienteering
I've been very busy over the past few weeks moving house, and now, just past our new year, we have a new home. I moved from Ma'alot to Carmiel, which is exactly 13 km south in a straight line, but I've been carrying boxes around (and not running) for 10 days. Roni moved in as well, so now we are together and life can settle down a bit.
From an orienteering point of view it looks like this (the circles represent maps - I made the blue ones):
The season has also started here, and we managed to find time to orienteer a bit. A couple of weeks ago Roni made an attempt at MTBO (after getting turned on by the MTB WOC), and says she enjoyed it, so we're thinking of buying a bike. Then we had a weekend training camp for the women's team, at the Wingate National Sports Institute. The camp was organised by the association of non-olympic sports ("Ayelet"), for teams from a number of sports, and included lectures, sport-specific training, and common sessions for all the participants: we did Kick-boxing, Pilates, and Rugby!! It was great fun, but very tiring.
Our team trying some Pilates, with the Karate team in the background
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