US orienteering;navigation Champs - Day 2

Posted Wed, October 28, 2009 - 11:20 PM
orienteering, navigation, wisconsin

Sunday's courses started from the same location at the group camp, but went south and west on the Cat's Agenda map instead. This was a simple one-day A-meet, and without a "championship" course at stake, I ran up to the Blue course to get more time in the terrain. Charlie had set the courses, and when I turned over the map at the start, I saw there was a little less penalty for navigation mistakes - not a lot less, but there were certainly more good catching features.

Day 2 Blue course. Click to enlarge.

You all know what happens if you click the link.

My Routegadget for the Sunday Blue course.

Like all the other competitors, I started out by running down the trail and then west down the road. I dived into the woods at the road bend, heading NW to the northern side of the ridge and crossing down into the circular depression to avoid the side-hill. The vegetation was notably green, but not too hard to get through, and the really slow portions were quite narrow. I came out right at the bend in the nearer trail and continued to follow the top of a perfectly defined ridge directly to the bend in the farther trail. Then it was a short trip to the far side of the marsh, which was easily visible. I didn't bother to read the small stuff on the way, just looked for the medium-sized hill WSW of the marsh and spiked the control on the opposite side.

I corrected the previous day's mistake by buying a thumb compass from Gale, and used it as a quick sanity check on the way to #2. I headed for the hilltop to the SW and crossed over the ridge, dropping a little into the complex depression. However, the ridge swept around from my right and curved in front of me, and it was obvious where to go back up to spike #2, again on the opposite side. #3 was a more complex leg; here I headed south and a little east, crossed through the south-pointing reentrant, up its east side and through the light green area to catch the south-pointing spur. This, in turn, led me between two deep depressions, and I stayed on the ridge as it curved to the east and pointed me directly towards #4. Hey, I think I like this ridge-following approach! I was a little slow in the circle, and I seem to remember it was because the visibility wasn't great through this area, and thinking that there should be some green on the map.

On my way to #4, I almost veered off on the NW-pointing spur about halfway down the line, but the thumb compass verified my boo-boo and I turned to go around the east edge of the large, obvious depression and over a gentle spur into a small, elongated valley with the control at the lowest spot. For #5, I wanted to avoid the big hill with the green on it, so I headed south around the depression and west to the open area, which was filled with linear rows of non-crop plants - perhaps a prairie restoration? I didn't have time to look more closely, and re-entered the woods from the SW corner and up the left side of the valley to a small dimple in the eastern slope of the hill. On #6 I started veering right again, heading almost due north, and had to stop and correct well to the west to hit it. Splits analysis show about a minute lost here.

The next leg was a little different than what I'd been doing all weekend. The ridge run out to the southern end of the tree band was beautifully open, and I only had to thrash through a tiny bit of fight to get into the open field and run an animal trail down the east side of the trees. I headed due north, ducked into the woods and walked steeply uphill, then trotted again across the top and checked the thumb compass again as I picked up speed into the depression. I took a curving, east-then-south route over to #8, crossing the upper part of the large reentrant and going up over the highest part of the large spur.

#9 was another long leg, but again I was able to simplify the map effectively. I used a compass bearing to get within sight of the large depression halfway down the line, then followed the ridges and saddles on its west side in an almost arrow-straight route just left of the line. By the time I got to within 150 meters, I could see people up ahead climbing out of the depression and reentrant that held #9, so I simply ran hard to where they were. For my route to #10, I noticed that the first E-W trail was easy to relocate on, so I aimed off east and ran hard to the trail. At this point I had caught up with one of the elite female runners (I don't know which one, though), and she had roughly the same strategy out of #9 and roughly the same foot speed, maybe a little more than me. That was a good thing for now, since I let her speed motivate me to go a little faster, too. Of course, I had no way of knowing if she was going to the same control as me, but as long as she was on my route, why not? We both came out onto the first trail and ran to the 90-degree kink, then cut across to the next trail, around the east edge of the depression, along the small trail to the kink, then south, bearing a little up the hill to yet another trail, south to the bend and along the eastern edge of a large, complex depression. I didn't gain any time on my erstwhile pacer, and she ran out of the control a lot faster than I could. It turned out to be OK since the next Red course control was different than mine.

#11 was a fun leg, which I started with a run to the west, then took a short trail segment, followed by some contouring around near the bottom of a large valley. I purposely didn't bother with the trail to the north, as it was two contours higher than I needed to be and the woods were open. I spiked #11 and headed out to cross the bike trail at right angles. I had a little trouble reading the tag lines while moving, and at first I thought I was looking for a hill, but that idea was quickly dispelled once I got to the trail and checked the map a second time. I ran down into the depression and spotted the knoll - actually a fair sized hill - from about 40 meters out. This control might actually have been more interesting if it hadn't been placed "on top" - "northwest side" would have been a better locational choice.

Then it was a steep climb out of the depression and over the saddle to the east where the bike trail loops back on itself. I stayed high to avoid the side-slope into the deep valley my left, but also stayed off trail to avoid the windings of the trail. #13 was easy to spot from afar, and like the last one, probably could have benefited from a less visible location (like the small reentrant just east). #14 was basically a straight shot, ignoring the trails, and on #15, I decided to cut across the green area on the line and ended up too about 35 meters too far south down the trail. But I still ran the trail to the nearby bend and cut in to the control, where I grabbed my first water of the course and said hi to John Crowther.

The 15-16 leg was one that got lots of discussion after the race. It seems every person I talked to decided to run the leg a different way. Tom went well to the west using the trails, and Peter W went well to the east, using the trails. I chose to go straight through, north the the first trail and along the ridge to the second trail, avoiding the dark green. Then I ran out to the loop in the trail and over towards the rock piles (which were impressively large). I don't know whether they were the result of trail work, or a larger clearing effort sometime in the past. The latter theory seemed more likely as I continued along the line and encountered a series of parallel furrows in the large depression. They were about 18 inches in height and spaced about 3 feet apart, and oriented a little west of north, just like the stone wall. The vegetation wasn't too thick, and the furrows made for an interesting gait that was more of a hop from high point to high point. Nevertheless, I kept about a usual pace up across three more trails and around to #16 from the west.

Now came the final long leg of the course, and three controls back over in yesterday's terrain. I just bashed through to the road on a bearing, and came out right at the little clearing on the hilltop. Here I had two trail choices - but the large open area to the SE was surrounded with a band of dark green, so I opted for the northerly trail, which was a large, obvious cut in the trees steeply downhill. I then went over a gentle saddle and counted depressions until I got within sight of the first really deep one. Then it was a gentle curve around the south side and up the ridge on the other side (spotting the east-pointing spur), and staright over to #17. The route to #18 was more easy (by now!) ridge-running and feature-counting. My navigation to #19 was similar, and felt good, but I must have been getting tired since it was fairly slow. I was also pretty bad out of #19, foolishly heading up the ridge to the west instead of going around the north edge of the depression. I had to run a couple hundred meters down the road before hitting the trail into the GO control and finish.

Still, it was a good run by my standards. I posted a time of 81:22, at a faster pace than yesterday and with few mistakes, none wasting more than a minute. In this category (M21+), which included all the members of the US national team, today's run was only good for 13th place. That's because the field was much deeper and more talented than yesterday. It's pretty much a given that I'll never be able to run 6-minute kilometers like some of the stars, but I still prefer running against them, because it's a quicker motivation to the improvements that I am able to make.

Maybe that's an extra 20-30 seconds/km of foot speed in complex terrain.

Maybe that's slightly better micro route choice that saves me 15 seconds per leg (and adds up to 4-5 minutes on a Blue course!)

Maybe that's better efficiency in the circle, or better consistency at reading clues, or faster getting in and out of the punch.

Maybe that's a serious regimen of hill training that will get me closer to running up steep slopes as effortlessly as I've seen Will or Eric do it.

But after this weekend, I feel like I've passed some sort of barrier with respect to the navigation, and can start to focus on some of these smaller things. Only time, and more races, will tell!

(P.S. I'll collect my thoughts on this last topic, but I think there's enough to write a whole 'nother post.)