Have Dental Floss, Will Travel

Mapping the world, one waxy strand at a time…

Tag Archives: DVOA

I Coulda Been a Contender

14 Comments Posted by on January 22, 2012

After a week of dreary weather, stuffy noses, and lots of indoor workouts, Brent and I took to the woods this morning for the running of the 2012 President’s Cup.  Each year, the Delaware Valley Orienteering Association holds a special winter meet to shake out the rust and keep the compasses moving.

Though I’ve never participated in the event before, I woke up this morning eager to run around in the snow and excited to see if my navigational luck would hold.  After a delayed start (icy conditions kept the park gates closed), the course designer counted down to zero and a crowd of people took off for the treeline.

Generally, our orienteering meets have staggered starts – courses open at 10 AM and participants can begin anytime before 1:00 – so today’s mass start was a bit frenzied as I tried to stay oriented and remain focused on the map.

After the first couple flags, though, the group running the intermediate course began to thin, and I found myself smoothly making my way from point to point.

True, there were footprints in the snow, and I could always count on someone being nearby if I started to question my route choice, but even with the extra aids, I did my best to keep my eyes on the map and select my own route, ignoring the tracks and crowds.

And you know what?

It was working.

I cruised through the points, never questioning my navigation, always certain where I was.  By checkpoint 12, I was running with a small cluster of racers, but I still felt confident with the maps and enjoyed the long stretches through snow-covered cornfields, where I could run with relative abandon.

Since there were three courses running simultaneously, each flag was marked with a unique number so participants could be sure they were punching the correct one.

And for the first 17 of them, I checked and double-checked at each point.

Then came checkpoint 18, just twenty meters from the end.  I saw that the point was right on the outside of a treeline, so when I ran into a point just a few meters before the terrain change, I thought that must have been it.  Without looking at the number, I quickly punched before sprinting down the last hill into the finish.

I clocked in at 1:01:32.

Fast forward eight hours…

After a near-heart attack during the Patriots game, Brent signed on to the DVOA website to see if the results were posted.

“I finished fifth,” he relayed about his performance on the advanced course.

“What about me?  How did I do?”

Brent scrolled down and his face fell.

“You mispunched, Ab.”

“What do you mean I mispunched?  I got every single point and I check and rechecked all the numbers.”

“You must have messed one up,” he responded.  ”It says MP… But on the plus side, it looks like you would have come in third.”

I looked at the screen.  First place finished in 1:02:26.  Second was ten seconds after that.

“I would have won!” I told him.  ”I finished in 1:01!”

The website broke down the events by splits, and when we clicked over to my route, it listed the mispunch at CP 18 – the very last one before the finish.

It seems that the advanced and intermediate courses both had flags in the same area – the intermediate just outside the treeline and the advanced just inside – and in my excitement, I punched the wrong one.

“Think of it this way,” Brent said.  ”You did better than you’ve ever done at DVOA.  You had a great meet.”

“I guess,” I responded, feeling more defeated than I had been after my DNF back in November.

“But you still had fun, right?”

“Yeah… but it would have been pretty fun to win, too.”

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Breaking Even

15 Comments Posted by on December 16, 2011

After my dismal compass showing two weeks ago, I was determined to end the year on a high note.

Last weekend, Laurie, Brent, and I traveled down to Delaware for the final orienteering meet of the season (well, really, Bill dropped Laurie off in Delaware on their way back from Maryland and then she spent an hour on the trails making her way to the registration area, but eventually we all found each other).

The initial plan was for Laurie and me to run the intermediate course individually and then, if we were feeling inspired, to team up to take on the shortest advanced course.

Brent brought a book.

When we arrived, though, I’d been sick for 48 hours (with the cold that won’t die) and Brent and I had spent the previous day running and biking around in the woods in preparation for the 24-hour race we’re planning.  I didn’t think I had two runs in me.

Before the start, Brent gave me a quick refresher on compass bearings.  ”The problem,” he told me, “is that you’re combining map orientation, which on its own is really important, and compass orientation, also really important on its own.  But they don’t work so well when you mix them up.”

Five minutes and a few practice plots later, I was pretty sure I had it down.

Laurie and I each signed up for intermediate Orange course and walked over to the start, but at the last minute, as we waited in line behind the piles of boyscouts getting ready to set out on Orange, we made a snap decision.  We were going for broke.  Forget about intermediate.  We were going to tackle the advanced Brown course – together.

We got two maps and one punch and when the ding sounded, we beelined into the woods.  (Or walked very carefully until we figured out where we were and where we wanted to go).

Unlike last week, from the minute I looked at the course, I could see the lines and contours and features.  I could read the terrain and visualize the route from Point A to Point B.  I folded my map into a small square as Brent had suggested, focusing just on our immediate section, and set off.

Laurie and I didn’t come up with a plan ahead of time, but after I took the lead on the first point, she picked up the scent for the second, and we leapfrogged each other for the rest of the morning, always checking to make sure we agreed with the other’s sense of direction.

The first two compass bearings we needed to take were due north, so we didn’t realize until the third that I had forgotten the final step of the process: turn the dial so that the north arrows line up and then follow the bigger arrow on the top of the compass.  Oops.

I knew that the third one couldn’t be right because it didn’t line up at all with where we were on the map.  When Laurie asked me for the degree number and I, for the third time that morning, told her zero, she looked over and realized what was up.

It turned out that I was a master at the maps and Laurie was a wiz on the compass.  We made a great team.

We worked our way smoothly from one point to the next with striking ease.  I never questioned where we were going or how we’d chosen to get there.

“Next time we should run a course with Brent,” Laurie said somewhere between CPs 5 and 6.  ”But where he lets us do all the nav and then offers feedback at the end.”

“The thing is,” I said, “I’ve done that a couple times and it’s always gone well.  I seem to be just fine when I’m talking myself through it.”

“Problem solved,” Laurie responded.  ”Just talk your way through it when you’re out on your own, too.”

“And I bet that would solve my other biggest problem, too – getting distracted by other people.  One look at the crazy girl talking to herself in the woods and they’d steer clear!”

We found the towpath en route to CP 7 and it was all I could do to restrain myself from doing a little dance.  Instead, I ran down the trail yelling in triumph,

“We’re doing so well!  I’m so proud of us!  We’re doing so well!”

Clearly I’m great at stealth.

Four points later, Laurie and I sprinted into the finish, both still trying to figure out how we managed to stay un-lost the entire time.

All in all, I think we more than redeemed ourselves from the previous week – now if we can only replicate it next season!

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Bearing Down

17 Comments Posted by on December 5, 2011

Did you know that there’s a right way and a wrong way to use a compass?

And that I’ve been using it the wrong way for the past three years?

Um, yeah.

Yesterday morning, Laurie, Bill, Brent, and I piled into the car to head down to Ridley Creek State Park for the penultimate (I love that word) orienteering meet of the season.

Laurie and I settled on the intermediate course, and the boys set off on two different versions of the advanced.

When it was my turn to begin, I checked my trusty compass to figure out which way was north, turned my map accordingly, and took off down a trail toward checkpoint #1.

I ran to the first intersection, and then the second, my eyes carefully trained on the map.

Suddenly, I heard someone thundering down the trail behind me.  I looked back and there was Brent, in fast pursuit of the first flag.

Without thinking, I followed him for 100 meters or more, but where he went straight, I decided to turn right – only to realize that in my excitement, I’d lost complete track of my place on the map.

This was not the first time that had happened to me.  In my limited experience with orienteering, I would hazard to say that roughly 75% of my races have gotten derailed because I’ve paid more attention to another person than to my own map and route choice.

Slowly, I pieced together a general sense of where I was and then proceeded to wander aimlessly through the woods until I saw a woman emerge from a small depression not five feet away from me.

Bingo!

I punched the CP and continued on my way.

The next flag was several hundred meters away, and there was no obvious route that jumped out at me.

So, it was back to the compass.

I looked down, found north, rotated my map, and picked my way through the thorns, jumped across the stream, and ran up the road on the other side.

I was looking for a trail that shot off from a parking lot on the left side of the road.  I found the parking lot with ease, but the trail was less distinct.  No problem, I thought.  I’ll just return to my tried-and-true compass skills.  I figured out which way was north, made sure it lined up with the north arrow on the map, and went.

Except I didn’t get very far.

In fact, I spent the next 30 minutes wandering around in circles, unable to figure out exactly where I was, let alone how to pinpoint the flag.

Ultimately, I found my way out to a road, asked a fellow racer to point to my location on my map, and utterly demoralized, moped back to the start line.

I’d been out for nearly an hour and had collected exactly one checkpoint.  At that rate, I figured, I’d be out on the course for three hours or more, and I didn’t want to make my friends wait all that time.

By the time I made it back to the start, I was ready to abandon all navigational pursuits.  Some people are visual, and some are not, I told myself.  It’s all genetic.  I have no control over the fact that every other orienteering race I attempt ends in failure.  I have other good qualities, I reasoned.  We can’t all be Santa Claus.

And with that, I went to the car to sulk.

Bill arrived a short time later, and Brent not long after that.

We all looked at the maps to try to figure out what I’d done wrong.

“So, what did you do here?” Brent asked, pointing to the ill-fated parking lot.

“I tried to bushwhack up to this trail,” I said, pointing to a dark line less than an inch from the road.  ”But I must have ended up on a different one, and then I got all turned around.”

“Well, did you take a bearing?” he continued.

“No,” I responded, confidently.  ”I don’t do that.  I have another way of reading the maps.”

“Another way?”

“Yeah.  I just figure out which way is north, turn the map that way, and then go toward the next landmark.”

Brent and Bill looked at each other and promptly dissolved into laughter.

“And that’s what you’ve been doing at every o-meet?”

I nodded.

“Wow… that explains so much…”

Brent spent the next several minutes reminding (um, showing) me how to take a compass bearing.  This involves lining up the blue grid on the map with the lines on your compass, turning various dials, coordinating an arrow or two, and doing a little jig before setting off in the direction of your goal.

“So you do all that every time you use your compass?” I asked incredulously, turning to Bill.

“Every time.”

Interesting.

“And you, too?” I prompted Brent.

“Yep.”

I remained unconvinced as the conversation moved on to other things.

Laurie returned half an hour later, having successfully fought her way through a tough intermediate course.

As we threw our gear in the car and got ready to head back to Philly, I turned to her.

“So, when you use a compass during a race, do you take a bearing and everything?

“Of course,” she said automatically.

“Of course…” I thought.

Taking a compass bearing from Dan Goodwin on Vimeo.

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The Comeback Run

16 Comments Posted by on October 22, 2011

Since returning from Nationals, I’ve been feeling ambivalent about the Philadelphia Marathon.

This is the third year in a row that I’ve signed up for the race and felt burnt out by mid-October.  This is my sixth or seventh marathon in the last two years that I’ve ended up sort of dreading (why do I keep signing up for them, you might ask…).

I thought this time it would be different – because I knew so many people running, because the bulk of my races this year were in the spring and summer, because I only had one event planned between July and October and figured I’d have plenty of time to train.

But that one event was Nationals, and it was intense.  And pretty all-consuming.  And fantastic.

When we crossed the finish line in Kentucky, I thought, “this is the perfect end to the season.”

And then I remembered that I still had Philly.

I took the eight days after the race off from running and when I jumped back into training this week, I felt terrible.

30 hours of racing and 2 weeks of traveling had taken a toll, and I didn’t feel like I was recovering well.

Tuesday’s 10 miles left me incredibly sore.  Wednesday’s intervals were a joke.  Friday’s easy run was far harder than it should have been.

I was tempted to abandon the marathon altogether, but I’d convinced a good friend to register, and I felt guilty at the thought of dropping out when I knew she’d spent so much time training – and training well.

And then came today.

I’m not sure it was wise to make my first long run back a 20 miler, but with only four weeks until the race, there isn’t time to build back up.  I told Brent I’d meet him later this morning for an orienteering event, so Laurie and I made plans to meet just after dawn.  We’d initially thought about running to the orienteering site, but after some logistical complications, we decided to stick to a local route.

We started off, and I was immediately grumpy.  I wasn’t interested in spending the morning out on the roads.  I was feeling crummy about the race prospects.  I was overwhelmed by the plans in the works for next season and eager for a breather before gearing up again.

Unfortunately, Laurie was feeling similarly disenchanted by road running, and for the first few miles, we fed off each other’s surliness.

Then, consciously or not, we shifted the conversation to our recent adventure racing exploits, and by mile 5, I was definitely in better spirits.  My legs didn’t feel great – a bit heavy, with little twinges here and there – but they were trucking along at a reasonable pace.  The sun was coming out.  The path was crowded with runners in marathon shirts from years past.  It felt good to be out.

At mile 7, we turned uphill, away from the usual loop, to explore the roads around the city’s Memorial Hall and Japanese Gardens.  It was the smartest decision we made all day.

On cue, a blue eyed husky started running alongside us.  When he left, we occupied ourselves with the historic buildings and statues.  Then we wove through a few parks that skirt the Schuylkill.

By the time we made it back down tackle the end of our loop, we were both feeling better than we’d felt all morning.  We crossed back over the river and finished our last few miles together along Forbidden Drive, strewn with leaves and still recovering from the early fall flooding, but shaded and car-free and teeming with runners.

When Laurie turned to head for home (she’d run to our meeting place while I’d driven), I pulled out my headphones and finished out the last 3.5 miles to make it an even 20.  Mile 19, the first half of an out-and-back, was rather miserable since I knew I was running further and further away from my car, but when I turned around and headed for the parking lot, I felt like I was flying.

I paused briefly as I nearly bumped right into an old running friend who recently moved to Chicago but was in Philly looking at wedding venues with his new fiance.  Then I booked it back to the end, finishing out the final mile 25 seconds faster than the average pace to that point.  It felt good to run hard.

From there, I grabbed a quick snack and made my way out to the Willows Park and Mansion, to meet Brent and half a dozen of his students for the orienteering meet.

The event was a Score-O – where racers receive a map with several points plotted on it, and they have a set amount of time to punch as many flags as they can.  In this particular meet, we had 24 flags and an hour out on the course.

When I arrived at the park, my legs had already begun to tighten up and my ankles were tender.  But as soon as I set off, I felt great.  Sure, the downhills hurt a bit, and I was a little less steady on my feet than I may have been 20 miles earlier.  But I ran all the flats and most of the ascents and descents as I navigated along trails, through creeks, and over and under downed trees, dense brush, and thick patches of thorns.

It was relatively easy navigation, and I still had a couple hiccups along the way, but overall it was probably the smoothest orienteering race I’ve ever had.  All my time in the woods this year must be paying off, because I was able to follow the map and read the terrain much better than I had anticipated, especially given that I haven’t had to navigate much further than around the block on more than a year.

I nabbed all but three of the points and sprinted into the finish with four minutes to spare, and when I stopped, my muscles felt loose and my psyche felt strong.

In the end, I ran 23.5 miles this morning, and somewhere along the way, I began to feel just a little bit better about the marathon.

I’m still wavering on time goals, and I’m a little bit worried about the sharp pain on the inside of my right ankle (though I suspect it’s just a little bit of tendonitis).

But after a week of crummy runs, it’s nice to know I can at least manage the distance.

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