CU Boulder-O 2011

 Results October 23, 2011

Casual Orienteering at CU-Boulder

Orienteer race 1:05:01 [3] 5.26 mi (12:22 / mi) 15/25 oa,

shoes: Saucony Mirage 

Back to the land of gigantastic mistakes :-)
Legs felt pretty good.

The big doozy was between 10 and 11. I was at 11 but it was really stuck in my head that I was at 10, so I went running off in the wrong direction even though nothing looked right, backtracked, and then did it again before I realized what was going on.

RMOC Chatfield 2011

Results May 7, 2011

Orienteer race 2:03:13 [3] 7.1 mi (17:21 / mi) +1215ft 14:56 / mi
shoes: 1st Pair - Saucony Guide 2
Red, completely boggled the 1st control by attacking from the wrong bend in the trail. Nothing else quite as bad but there were a distractions and bad route choices in there especially in the last part when I was tired. This time I picked straighter routes and ran less extra distance to stick to trails than I would have last year.

Start-1: My worst control, attacked from the wrong trail bend and went all the way up to the bridge to recover.

1-2: I was a bit thrown after #1 and was slow. I had a few moments of panic wandering through the pricker bushes when I didn't immediately see it.

2-3: I'm happy with it. Fitness was the limiter here. Looks like I was drifting left in my bearing though.

3-4: Happy with navigation, not fitness.

4-5: I had to back track a little after crossing the creek.

5-6: Grumpy at myself for wandering into the fight too far north and without a careful bearing. Had to backtrack and then key off the nick in the opposite side of the streambed. I feel like I did the same thing last year.

6-7: Happy with it. Maybe I could have run faster and cut some climb out by going around rather than over the large knoll but I could see it from the top of the knoll, so I'll stand by my route.

7-8: Happy with it. I tried to sneak around the people searching in the wrong reentrant but they all saw me and followed me to it.

8-9: ok...

9-10: Happy with it.

10-11: Found the control easily enough but my route choice left something to be desired. Followed the indistinct barely there trail along the lake that took me up and down and up and down. I should have stayed farther from the lake. I really started to get tired after this one.

11-12: I was sooooo close to it. I was in the right depression but I didn't go quite far enough south and then I got distracted by people searching too far north. Arg! I have to get better at ignoring other people out there even if I think they are better than me.

12-13: I was tired. Crossed the stream, missed the southern streamlet that I was planning to follow so I continued up the stream for a bit to confirm where I was along the stream and then waded into the fight right to it.

13-14: Route choice... Crossed the stream at a too deep place and swam and got my map all wet (borrowed Tom's to scan since mine is not very legible). Got stuck in some fight on the other side and tried but failed to get across to the trail closer to the lake. Ended up running north on the trail all the way to the road. And I over shot the control. I'm not sure quite what the ideal route choice would have been here. Probably cutting across the marsh...

14-15: I was really feeling tired but I went straight to the control

15-16: Straight to it.

16-finish: Straight to it.

I'm kind of embarrassed by my last place. At least I finished and wasn't last by a lot. I'll like ski-o better until I gain some sort of sense of direction and distance.

I think my strategy of backtracking when I screw up works better than my last year strategy of wandering in circles. 5 and 6 would have turned into nightmares if I hadn't backtracked as soon as I realized I wasn't sure I was going in exactly the right direction.

RMOC Buena Vista 2011

Cold snowy fun weekend orienteering in Buena Vista. 

Photo: Michael Rounds
Huddled around the campfire waiting for it to get dark enough to start.

 

Results May 14, 2011 Night - Green

Results May 15, 2011 Day - Red

Orienteer race 2:24:10 [1] 4.4 mi (32:46 / mi) +1630ft 24:15 / mi  

Green Night-O at Buena Vista. Finished!!! Shamelessly followed footprints in the snow and noticed other people around. I did find some completely on my own without major navigational errors.

#9 was really my only panicky one, but I saw people... I was being led by people at 11 and it messed me up I think. I should have ignored them, I was pretty sure we hadn't gone far enough while they all thought they had gone too far up the spur. Confidence would have helped here. I was especially happy with my 5 and 6 where that were my relative fastest splits except the finish and I didn't see people going in or out of them. In fact, I think I led people to them. I just think its hilarious that I had the least "lost" time on this course. Consistently very slow and careful and I had the brightest light. 

Orienteer race 1:53:45 [3] 5.72 mi (19:53 / mi) +1838ft 15:15 / mi
shoes: 2nd pair - Saucony Guide 3
Red. I walked most of it. It turns out I can actually follow a bearing when I'm walking. I felt pretty much spot on through 7, made a pretty big mistake on my way to 8, a smaller mistake on the way to 9, and I took a "longer than necessary but I knew where I was the whole time" way to 10. I'm pretty happy with it. That's definitely the best my navigation has been. I wish I could run and navigate at the same time, but that will take more practice. I really like the map.

I started very cautiously since I've been blowing the first control pretty consistently lately. Last place on 1 and 2 but not after that. I got caught picking my way through a bunch of downed trees before 5. I gradually started moving faster and was running for 6 and 7. I *really* felt awesome after 7.

I of course go on to butcher 8, but there are no circles in my route. There was plenty of slow going up the reentrant when it seemed like I had gone too far, there were too many rocks on the right, and then there was a bend in the reentrant that caused me to finally figure out my actual location. I figured out where I was and moved on. I made a route choice error on 9. I should have taken the trail down rather than the reentrant which was steep on the sides and filled with tumbleweed. I'm not sure why I started looking at the wrong pile of rocks, that was just stupid, but I realized where I was quickly and didn't walk all the way around the wrong pile of rocks first.

After those two blunders I did some careful navigating on a safe route to 10. I came out of 10 in the wrong direction. It cost me time, but I knew where I was and recovered. I'm very happy with that overall. I'm especially pleased that there are no aimless circles on my track. Now I need to be able to navigate and run at the same time like I did at 6 and 7. That was my best red course ever but it had the most walking time ever too... In theory I should be faster if I run more, not less.

RMOC Peaceful Valley 2011

Results May 29, 2011
Red; 1:47:25 12/15

Photo: Brooke Mann

At the finish.

Red Course at Peaceful Valley. Lots of relatively minor mistakes. Navigational bobbles on 1,5,11,13,18. Larger than necessary pauses to carefully consider my location on 3, 4, 12,17 plus the ones with navigation mistakes. Ran more than Buena Vista but less than Chatfield.

RMOC Observatory 2011

Results June 18, 2011
2:26:09 8/12

Spent Thursday in the ER with a kidney stone, and it came out the morning of this race, so took it very easy. Walked the Orange course with a friend and taught her orienteering.

Three Race Weekend #2

Results July 9, 2011 RMOC Frisco Night Orienteering - Green Course 3/5 1:21:29
Results July 10, 2011 Summer Roundup 12k 1:08:01 193/693 OA 31/255 F
Results July 10, 2011 RMOC Frisco Orienteering - Red Course 12/13 2:16:35

Completely exhausting weekend. Spent Saturday whitewater rafting in Vail. Then 9:30pm Saturday start for night orienteering at Frisco Peninsula. I was very slow at the beginning and totally messed up control #2, but after that I realized it wasn't a particularly hard course and I could run a lot of it. So I ran and didn't mess up after that. A very good race for me.1:21:19 4.19mi +1195ft


Left Frisco at 11:30pm and made it home in less than 2 hours. There was no traffic at all.

Raced the Summer Roundup 12k at 7am. 1:08:01, about 20 seconds faster than last year. Still no good races in Bear Creek Park. 193/693 OA 31/255 F. On my Garmin 7.33mi w/ 2220ft of ascent.

Summer Roundup 12k in Colo Spgs. Was sore before that start since I ran hard for a fair amount of the night-o and my right hip stiff from holding myself in the raft. 25sec faster than last year but that isn't saying much. I've never had a good race at bear creek and I really dread races there for some reason. Everyone who beat me at the Garden 10mi beat me at the roundup and lots of women who I beat by up to 10min at the Garden 10-miler beat me today. Same thing happened last year. I wasn't particularly motivated, but I got it done.

Embarrassed to say I walked a bit on the up. But there was a lot of up and I just couldn't conjure up the motivation to suffer. Results suggest that I am a better downhill road runner than uphill trail runner. Trail races are more fun and uphills are better for me though.

Photo: Brian McCarrie

Drove back to Frisco in time to start by 11. Red Course during the day. 2:16:35 6.29mi +1716ft. Man was I tired. I took off from the start running and got to the first hill and walked the rest of the way until it started raining near the end (and then I ran in the wrong direction, twice). I made a lot of stupid navigational mistakes too. Biggest was on 3 when I blew by a trail intersection (which I did NOT miss at night-o when I was running...). There was some nearly aimless wandering in there and way too much second guessing myself when I was right. More just plain sloppy than anything else. I think I could do very well on that map in better conditions. 4h sleep + 5h driving + 7.5mi running race with lots and lots of climb + very little food in between night-o and day-o = walking and sloppy navigation.

Night-O had both faster pace and better navigation. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to say that again :-)

RMOC Manitou Lake NIGHT 2011

Results July 23, 2011
2:19:33; 4.67mi; +1529ft; 3/3 OA
Night-O at Manitou Lake - Dropped to the Green Course in the dark

Night Orienteering is really hard!

This is a wooded area with lots of contour detail which makes daytime orienteering difficult.

Completely messed up #4 which should have been a very easy control since it was 50m from a bend in a trail. +22-5ish minutes there aimlessly wandering around in the wrong reentrant and haphazardly relocating on the road off the wrong bend back to the same reentrant.

Took #5 (long distance) extremely cautiously after that. fence to fence to fence corner to bearing when it would have been safe to cut off a lot of corner. walked too after nearly faceplanting

I just walked on careful bearings and payed attention to the map and went pretty much right to 1-3, 6-13.

RMOC Rainbow Falls 2011

Results July 24, 2011
RMOC Rainbow Falls - Red Course
1:31:15; 5.64mi; +1243ft; 13/16 OA

Rainbow Falls Red. A good race for me. Mistakes on #8 (8-10min, stupid), #4 (3-4min, went past it, saw 2 controls that weren't mine), bad route to #6 (1-2min). I walked a lot more than I would have liked to since it was hot and I was getting a blister on my right big toe and just feeling generally wimpy about tripping on stuff. I probably would have just made more navigation mistakes if I ran more anyway since when I run hard I make more mistakes near the end and I didn't today.

Yep, looking at the results/graph 4,6,8 killed me and I had the most lost time. Rest was great by my standards. According to the graph, for the whole cluster of people within ~10min ahead of me, 4,6,8 were the only ones they beat me on by anything more than seconds (1,2 and 12 were not spectacular either). I'm still standing by my route for 12 and blaming my blister, heat, laziness for why that was so slow.

Scapegoat at Blue Mountain 2011

Results
August 14, 2011

Long Distance Orienteering in challenging terrain with a malicious course setter.

4:01:20; 12.24mi; +3328ft; 12/13 OA

I had a very interesting race... got kind a lost a few times, but that's the fun of it.

1-3 stuck with group so those were good. Fell behind in a patch of cut wood and was on my own for the rest. I need to work at picking my way through rough terrain since it appears I'm not very fast at it.

5... oops! I took the road route and actually beat some of the group I was following to (what I thought was) my attack point, but then I took my bearing from the wrong ditch! Then I got confused by a trail that wasn't on the map with a very similar bend to one that is on the map.

Got caught in an evil logging area on the way to 7. I thought I came down the middle reentrant, but I guess not...

Between 8 and 9 I caught a tree branch / pine needles directly in my left eye. Contact got caught up between my eyelid and eye and I rubbed it until I could somewhat see out of it but it hurt the rest of the way so after this point I walked with my left eye closed the whole time. Not much running after that incident. After the finish, I pulled out the rest of the contact (it seems like the branch took 1/3 of it). Not comfortable.

Came down the wrong reentrant on the way to 11 but that was a quick recovery. Was very surprised that I caught up to Nic at this point.

12 was a horrible disaster. It looks like I was good until about halfway through my bearing when I veered off 90 degrees, and then another 90 degrees. What did I do that for? I think that was when I saw Katie relocating and panicked that I must me going in the wrong direction too. The second turn was to go to the road to relocate but then I found 15.... Not at all where I thought I was! Ugh!

Started off on a bad bearing to 14. Way too low.

I thought it would be easier to find 15 again since I had already been there, but it was a bit nerve wracking.

Colorado Orienteering Championships 2011

Results
October 8, 2011
1:21:50; 4.97mi; +1273ft; 6/15OA 1/5F

Photo: Randy Peel


Red Course at Peaceful Valley Scout Ranch in Elbert, CO. Basically just followed footprints in the 6-8" of snow the whole way. I had a lot fun playing in the snow. Two good races in a row. Both of them had easier navigation than usual. Cherry Creek was wide open. Peaceful Valley I could follow footprints and I did a decent job of following the right ones.

This might be a first. I wasn't the slowest on any of the controls. Nearly went past the proper reentrant for 1, but caught it before it was a disaster. Confused myself on 3 and had to stop and look around to make sure I was where I hoped I was. Caught up to Goril at 9. Deviated from footprints to 10- was very confused by a set of car tracks that weren't on the map and stopped. Made my own route again on 12, not the best choice since I got caught in some weeds. Caught back up to Goril at 14. A few other pauses to make sure I knew where I was in case the footprints diverged so I could stay on the right track.

RMOC Cherry Creek 2011

Results September 24, 2011

Cherry Creek State Park - Red Course; 1:16:35; 5.46 mi;  +768ft;  7/13 OA

Cherry Creek Red Course. A few bobbles with a ~7min wander on 14. Aside from 14, I found all of the controls easily. Sometimes my route wasn't ideal. Pauses on the way to 4. Veered off my inaccurate bearing from 5-6 and then was one knoll north. Too close to the marsh 6-7. Another sloppy bearing 7-8. Got hot and walked part of 8-9. Stopped to chug water between 9 and 10. 14 was bad- I was so close I probably would have seen it if I just turned around; Apparently someone had basically punched it in front of me and I still didn't see it so I wandered around for a while. Slightly overshot 15. Pretty solid day. Highly runnable open course that suited me.