Sunday, 6. December 2009, 19:59:52
orienteering
I don't know who is more insane - the two organisers of this event (Oded Verbin and myself), or the 27 nutcases who actually finished a 14.2 km course with 750m climb and 120 controls (including one woman - my courageous but slightly crazy girlfriend, who isn't even training properly). The winner's time was just over 2 hours, on steep, stony and slippery terrain, and I think all of them enjoyed the experience.
I think we may have got the most control visits ever in an Israeli orienteering event: 27 x 120, of course, plus over 60 people who did the 60-control version and 100 on the 30-control "short" course - that makes nearly 10,000 "punches". Even the weather was fantastic, despite a rather grim forecast.
Click here to see the full course.
I'm not doing this again for a few years, and I hope that next time someone else will pick up the gauntlet and organise such a course (150?), so that Oded and I can participate at last. Meanwhile, we'll think up some sort of new crazy event, which involves less physical effort.
Saturday, 28. November 2009, 19:08:12
orienteering
I won today's national event at Beit Jamal (H40, 6.3 km, 51:34), because I changed tactics in my orienteering. I knew that I needed to orienteer faster, so I raised the level of effort I was putting into my running, and basically ran as fast as possible (not in the "zone", but at a level where it hurts) throughout the course. Obviously this was risky from the orienteering point of view, but it paid off and I beat my friend and rival Omer, though only by half a minute.
This was made possible by my training. After a summer of low intensity running, I started doing more interval sessions last month, so my body was ready for faster running and more time over the anaerobic threshold - which wasn't true yet at the last race, 3 weeks ago. The next national event is the Winter Championship (2 days) in another 3 weeks time, and I hope to be even better prepared by then.
The race today was on a new (and very good) map by Daniel Griff and Ziv Noiman, and the course (set by Ronen Shurer) was good and technical, though I would have liked more route choice legs. My worst mistake was at 14, where I missed the control and lost a minute or more. My route is below:
Sunday, 15. November 2009, 20:39:40
orienteering
A few days ago I came upon another post in Attackpoint from a couple of months ago, with an interesting tool by Jarkko Ryyppo (the creator of RouteGadget) for analysis of time within the control circle. It displays a GPS track as a series of coloured dots (by speed), but more importantly gives the time, in seconds, within a 20m and 75m radius of the control, on the way in and out.
I used the tool on my GPS track from last week's race, and got the following results (for the 20m radius):
All my times are in the 9-15 second range, which is good if you take into account the fact that 9.6 seconds equates to 8 min/km (my average orienteering speed) for 20 meters. The exceptions are controls 16 (a steep slope just before the control) and 18 (just behind a tree, so I lost a few seconds looking around).
It will be nice using this for analysis of other orienteers, in training and competition - you can easily see how much time they stop at the control, and use the tool to set targets for improvement.
Thanks, Jarkko!
Thursday, 12. November 2009, 21:41:53
orienteering
There's a discussion going on in Attackpoint about ankle supports - pros, cons and types. I've been using them for a very long time - I started turning my ankles early in my orienteering career, so I ran for years with elastic socks on both ankles. Then I sprained my right ankle in 1999 (and quit only 3 km later, like any typical orienteer...), and since then I've been using heavier supports on that side. My current set was bought in the USA (McDavid), but there are various similar brands around:
I use the supports only in terrain, and only when running (not mapping or hiking) - they're very comfortable, but I need a wider style of orienteering shoes (VJ Falcon). I've never managed to turn my right ankle while wearing the heavier support, and though I've turned my left ankle a few times with the elastic sock, there have never been any serious effects or swelling. I'm sure my right ankle is weaker than it should be, and I have no intention of taking any chances with it in the future.
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.
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