AS 1
cardrona
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Adidas Climacool Cardrona replaced by AS 1
Looks like the Adidas ClimaCool Cardrona are officialy retired by Adidas. There is another shoe, however, that picks up many of the design features of the Cardrona. It is called AS 1, and it is sold as a lightweight hiking shoe. Notice the sole and the grooves that are along the longest axis of the sole. That is a distinctive feature of the Cardrona sole, allowing to run on slopes, staying at same altitute, the grooves and ridges making sure that the shoe doesn't slip downslope.
AS 1
cardrona
AS 1
cardrona
Friday, November 14, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Orienteering at Pine Ridge Park, Blairsville, Pennsylvnania
The Western Pennsylvania Orienteering Club had its last meet of the year at Pine Ridge county park, near Blairsville, Pennsylvania. Directed by Dave Battista, it offered a White and Yellow course, and a 90-minute Score course. At the end of the event, the members of the club had a social pot-luck dinner.
Terrain is a bit more rocky than the usual alluvional soft-terrain found on western pennsylvania. The Chestnut Ridge, where the park is located, is indeed more rocky. The leaves on the ground covered many small rocks and one had to thread a bit more carefully while running. Also, marked on the map where striped areas to denote very difficult areas to pass through. These were slopes on a hillside with lots of Greenbriar.
On planning for the Score course, decided it was best to go first to the controls downhill and do the controls uphill last, so that if I ran out of time, I could always decide to do a fast run to the finish, all downhill, without risking running out of breath (which could have happened if my last stretch had been uphill).
My first mistake was on closing in on control 8 on the western edge of the park. Mistook a trail intersection for another, and ended up NE of the control, saw some large boulders on the northern side of the creek, and then realized where I was. Then, returning to my steps, went too much south of the control, and once I hit a reentrant with intermittent stream, saw it on the map as being on the West of the control. Now, that is two consecutive mistakes on the same control.
The control on 36, the edge of a small pond, on the Western side there were some really thick greenbriar bushes. Followed the creek bed, which didn't have any bushes ground on it, but above it.
My second mistake was on the approach to 40, on the Eastern side of the park. Must have not seen the trail covered in leaves, and stayed on the slope south of the control, and followed a creek side for a while, until I realized I must have gone too far. Returned downhill following the creek, and 200 meters later found the control (2 minute loss).
On the approach from 40 to 37, miraculously I found a path along the greenbriar, probably set by deers, and was able to puncture through without too many scratches.
On the approach from 38, to 39, went a bit too East, saw the farm clearing, and once there, saw where the trail was and followed it.
On the final leg from the last control to finish, I wondered if I could push myself through the greenbriar, hesitated for a few seconds, then said "why not", you only live once, and took the plunge. My shoe got tangled a couple of times, and another time had to crawl on the ground under a thick bush, but eventually made the lower wooded ground, and made the last run to the cabin at the finish.
Had the route followed here been a cross-country event, it would have been 7.65 km long with 400 m elevation.
leg 1: 500 m
leg 2: 320 m
leg 3: 370 m
leg 4: 240 m
leg 5: 370 m
leg 6: 320 m
leg 7: 420 m
leg 8: 390 m
leg 9: 360 m 33 minutes
leg 10: 370 m
leg 11: 310 m
leg 12: 280 m
leg 13: 360 m
leg 14: 430 m 60 minutes
leg 15: 580 m
leg 16: 510 m 77 minutes
leg 17: 350 m
leg 18: 630 m
leg 19: 290 m 86 minutes
finish: 250 m 88 minutes
Terrain is a bit more rocky than the usual alluvional soft-terrain found on western pennsylvania. The Chestnut Ridge, where the park is located, is indeed more rocky. The leaves on the ground covered many small rocks and one had to thread a bit more carefully while running. Also, marked on the map where striped areas to denote very difficult areas to pass through. These were slopes on a hillside with lots of Greenbriar.
On planning for the Score course, decided it was best to go first to the controls downhill and do the controls uphill last, so that if I ran out of time, I could always decide to do a fast run to the finish, all downhill, without risking running out of breath (which could have happened if my last stretch had been uphill).
My first mistake was on closing in on control 8 on the western edge of the park. Mistook a trail intersection for another, and ended up NE of the control, saw some large boulders on the northern side of the creek, and then realized where I was. Then, returning to my steps, went too much south of the control, and once I hit a reentrant with intermittent stream, saw it on the map as being on the West of the control. Now, that is two consecutive mistakes on the same control.
The control on 36, the edge of a small pond, on the Western side there were some really thick greenbriar bushes. Followed the creek bed, which didn't have any bushes ground on it, but above it.
My second mistake was on the approach to 40, on the Eastern side of the park. Must have not seen the trail covered in leaves, and stayed on the slope south of the control, and followed a creek side for a while, until I realized I must have gone too far. Returned downhill following the creek, and 200 meters later found the control (2 minute loss).
On the approach from 40 to 37, miraculously I found a path along the greenbriar, probably set by deers, and was able to puncture through without too many scratches.
On the approach from 38, to 39, went a bit too East, saw the farm clearing, and once there, saw where the trail was and followed it.
On the final leg from the last control to finish, I wondered if I could push myself through the greenbriar, hesitated for a few seconds, then said "why not", you only live once, and took the plunge. My shoe got tangled a couple of times, and another time had to crawl on the ground under a thick bush, but eventually made the lower wooded ground, and made the last run to the cabin at the finish.
Had the route followed here been a cross-country event, it would have been 7.65 km long with 400 m elevation.
leg 1: 500 m
leg 2: 320 m
leg 3: 370 m
leg 4: 240 m
leg 5: 370 m
leg 6: 320 m
leg 7: 420 m
leg 8: 390 m
leg 9: 360 m 33 minutes
leg 10: 370 m
leg 11: 310 m
leg 12: 280 m
leg 13: 360 m
leg 14: 430 m 60 minutes
leg 15: 580 m
leg 16: 510 m 77 minutes
leg 17: 350 m
leg 18: 630 m
leg 19: 290 m 86 minutes
finish: 250 m 88 minutes
Monday, November 3, 2008
SVO Susquehanna Stumble XI
On Saturday November 1, Dave Battista and I drove 195 miles to King's Gap State Park, near Mount Holly Springs, Pennsylvania, to attend a long orienteering event prepared by SVO. It is an annual fall calendar event, called the Susquehanna Stumble. There were two offered courses, a Short and a Long stumble. There were about 30 participants, mostly from DVOA and QOC, with a few visitors from HVO, Ottawa, and Seattle.
The weather was fantastic. The park has mostly deciduous trees with some young conifers in the lower elevations. Something that was really felt by everyone were the short blueberry bushes, as they really seemed to create friction and drag and tire down the run.
Peculiar thing happened: on the first half of the run, found a control that was of the second half (228) and punched the box in the control card that was meant for another control nearby (208). Then, on the visible horizon inside the woods, saw a darting red and white DVOA shirt of another participants, followed that, and found another control (208) and punched box 9 without thinking much about it (box 9 should have been for control E, found much later...). Then, a minute or two later, as I was looking at the map, I noticed there was no circled control 9, and at that time, I thought that maybe the drawer forgot to draw a circle for it, and kept going. After I got into the EFGHI box, and did it in sequence FGIHE, once I got to control E, I noticed it was already punched (box 9). That really took me on a spin, not sure what happened, how it happened, did I mess up, did I miss a control, where did I mispunch. Punched again on the side of box 9 with the punch of control E. Must have pondered it for about two minutes, before I decided it was OK to keep going and get to the finish for the map exchange. It would be only a couple of days later that I would evenutally solve this mistery, after verifying the punch holes on my control card (they let us keep the cards, they trusted us on our word when we said we visited all controls) and noticing that box 8 and 28 had the same hole punch. And to add to it all, these two controls that were near each other, have also similar control numbers, "208", "228". Nice.
At the finish of the first half, grabbed the map of the second half, ate an apple on the downhill run, and went to control K first. After that, went to control M where I saw Vadim and Nadim (hey, their names rhyme...) punching, but after that they were off to conrol 18, having finished visiting all the controls in that window. After M, I went to J and L (what I should have done, after K, is follow trail to J, the trail has a nice catching feature by ending in a T instersection with a bigger trail nearby, then follow that bigger trail to get to L, and then to M).
On the approach from 20 to the NOPQRS window I made a stupid mistake of following a NW trail instead of the other NNW trail. Once i got to the stream and trail intersection, I realized I was nowhere were I wanted to be, and eventually corrected, but it costed me valuable minutes.
Navigationally, control 27 was the hardest. A terrace with not much other references nearby. Control 19 was also difficult, but at least there was a open clearing not too far to provide some reference.
Another mistake was when looking for control I, I searched too much on the North-East area of the control and eventually hit the trail. There was a hunter on a parked ATV, with some orange clothing on it, and went for it thinking it was the control. The hunter saw me running towards him at full speed, I bet he wondered what the heck I was doing. Eventually I used the trail bend to directionalize me towards the correct location of where control I was.
After the event, we ate bananas, cookies, pretzels. The weather was still very nice. We looked at a pond nearby, a nice control location I could have photographed if I remembered to bring my camera was control Q, on the eastern side of a boulder. It would have made a nice control and mapping feature photo.
We stopped at the King's Gap General Store on Pine Street, talked to a couple of old timers, explored their antique display in the shop's basement. Definitely a treasure trove of old Americana.
maps borrowed from Sandy
The weather was fantastic. The park has mostly deciduous trees with some young conifers in the lower elevations. Something that was really felt by everyone were the short blueberry bushes, as they really seemed to create friction and drag and tire down the run.
Peculiar thing happened: on the first half of the run, found a control that was of the second half (228) and punched the box in the control card that was meant for another control nearby (208). Then, on the visible horizon inside the woods, saw a darting red and white DVOA shirt of another participants, followed that, and found another control (208) and punched box 9 without thinking much about it (box 9 should have been for control E, found much later...). Then, a minute or two later, as I was looking at the map, I noticed there was no circled control 9, and at that time, I thought that maybe the drawer forgot to draw a circle for it, and kept going. After I got into the EFGHI box, and did it in sequence FGIHE, once I got to control E, I noticed it was already punched (box 9). That really took me on a spin, not sure what happened, how it happened, did I mess up, did I miss a control, where did I mispunch. Punched again on the side of box 9 with the punch of control E. Must have pondered it for about two minutes, before I decided it was OK to keep going and get to the finish for the map exchange. It would be only a couple of days later that I would evenutally solve this mistery, after verifying the punch holes on my control card (they let us keep the cards, they trusted us on our word when we said we visited all controls) and noticing that box 8 and 28 had the same hole punch. And to add to it all, these two controls that were near each other, have also similar control numbers, "208", "228". Nice.
At the finish of the first half, grabbed the map of the second half, ate an apple on the downhill run, and went to control K first. After that, went to control M where I saw Vadim and Nadim (hey, their names rhyme...) punching, but after that they were off to conrol 18, having finished visiting all the controls in that window. After M, I went to J and L (what I should have done, after K, is follow trail to J, the trail has a nice catching feature by ending in a T instersection with a bigger trail nearby, then follow that bigger trail to get to L, and then to M).
On the approach from 20 to the NOPQRS window I made a stupid mistake of following a NW trail instead of the other NNW trail. Once i got to the stream and trail intersection, I realized I was nowhere were I wanted to be, and eventually corrected, but it costed me valuable minutes.
Navigationally, control 27 was the hardest. A terrace with not much other references nearby. Control 19 was also difficult, but at least there was a open clearing not too far to provide some reference.
Another mistake was when looking for control I, I searched too much on the North-East area of the control and eventually hit the trail. There was a hunter on a parked ATV, with some orange clothing on it, and went for it thinking it was the control. The hunter saw me running towards him at full speed, I bet he wondered what the heck I was doing. Eventually I used the trail bend to directionalize me towards the correct location of where control I was.
After the event, we ate bananas, cookies, pretzels. The weather was still very nice. We looked at a pond nearby, a nice control location I could have photographed if I remembered to bring my camera was control Q, on the eastern side of a boulder. It would have made a nice control and mapping feature photo.
We stopped at the King's Gap General Store on Pine Street, talked to a couple of old timers, explored their antique display in the shop's basement. Definitely a treasure trove of old Americana.
maps borrowed from Sandy
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Garbatella Orienteering
In the "Lotti Popolari della Garbatella", this nice and interesting public housing project build in the 1930's during the Fascist Era, on Sunday Nov 2, morning hours, there will be a Orienteering event, an outdoor competitive sport involving land navigation using map and compass.
The map cost is one Euro. You can purchase the map and walk about and try to locate the white-and-red flags ("lanterna", "control") marked on the map with a small red circle.
To actually participate, I believe one must be a member of FISO (Federazione Italiana Sport Orientamento), and they don't actually allow ad-hoc registrations for people that aren't members of FISO. My understanding is membership with FISO (at around 70 Euro/year covers participants with insurance from accidents) and that is why they don't allow non-members to participate. For this event, there will be a large number of school children, also non-members of FISO, but for them, they are pre-registered and are already covered by their own insurance and doctor's note saying that "si attesta che il partecipante e' idoneo all'attivita' della corsa di orientamento".
The map is really good. Worth going to get it and walk around the neighborhood. Besides, no tourist map of Rome has the Garbatella included in their tour books, so this is a great chance to see this neighborhood. Plus, you wouldn't feel to nosy, because the local residents will be already be disturbed with all the commotion of 400 kids running around in their interior courtyard, with white sheets and other laundry hanging on laundry lines and flapping on the wind.
Last year's event
Pictures of last year's event
To participate you need to pay 7 Euro for membership to FISO. Here is the explanation:
da non tesserati, per motivi legali di assicurazione, non ci
è consentito far partecipare alla gara (leggi: considerare
ai fini della classifica) non tesserati alla FISO.
l'unica via per i non tesserati è l'acquisto della carta e
la libera conduzione del percorso oppure presentare in
segreteria di gara un certificato di sana e robusta
costituzione valido, procedere al tesseramento (vista la sua
scadenza il 30 novembre invece dei 15€ previsti scendiamo a
10€ che includono però già i 3€ di iscrizione alla gara,
quindi di fatto sono 7 per il solo tesseramento).
Monday, October 27, 2008
Billy Goat run in Brecksville Metropark near Cleveland
The North East Ohio Orienteering Club hosted an orienteering meet, offering a Long Goat course, a Medium Goat course, and a White course. About 40 participants showed up in a sunny day. The White course was 3.5 km long, and the Long Goat was 5.9 km long. Terrain was alluvional, deeply forested, with deep muddy ravines and cuts in the terrain. The slopes of the ravines had often "false summits", or mini-hills and knobs.
Photo album with high resolution images: website
The Middle Goaters left at around 12:40, while the Long Goaters left at 1 PM.
Zac and Mom on a spur, upper part, control #18 on Long Goat
Marked as a ruin map feature
This was marked as a special next to the ruin
This was not marked as Special, but as ruin. Did not find a ruin.
Interesting Special map feature
Time for a bath with soap and bubbles
This ruin has only one wall, 40 cm height
Long Goat clue sheet
Just before starting on the Long Goat, we are informed that we are allowed to skip two non-consecutive controls. Kostansek, Stanislav, Randy, Olga, Bob and possibly others started running in group, not going too fast, and arriving at the first set of controls relatively at the same time, so much that we each other passed the punch to the next in line after punching the control card. After control 3, my first mistake. I ran down the ravine and went on the other side of the creek, but must have not seen or overshot control 4, located on one of these mini-hills or knobs located on the steep slopes of the ravines. I realized that I must have missed it because I lost the pack and then, looking behind be, I saw the entire pack running towards me at about 50 meters distance. Decided it was not worth going back looking for 4 and stayed with the pack. Control 4 became, unintentionally, my first skipped control. Running from 5 to 6 was easy open woodland, and the meandering creek was easy to spot. From 6 to 7 used the hiking trail as guide, and at the spur, left the trail and went looking for the ditch. From 7 to 8, once on the spur where the control was located, everyone in the pack went uphill, but the clue sheet suggested "foot of" and went to the bottom of the spur along with a Middle Goater that had the same idea. From 8 to 9, alone, reached the stream intersection nearby, then the clearing on the otherside, and then climbed up the hill knob to reach the control. From 9 to 10, alone again, reached the clearing above the control, then sided next to a pond, ran to the East of a building, followed a road, and at the road bend, went looking for the control, and saw Kostansek running below in the woods, and from his directionality, got the hint were the control was positioned. From 10 to 11, followed Kostansek around a spur and on through lightly wooded forest to the terrace where the control was located. Then the obvious skip of control 12 (something everyone seemed to agree...) and off to 13. On the proximity of 13, I got a bit confused, seeing Kostansek climb up the very steep slope on a spur, but I was convinced the control was on the other side of the reentrant, and stopped to look at the map, at which point Randy caught up with me, and also went up the spur, so I figured it must be right, and telescoping the slope rim above, could see faintly the control, so, there it was! and charged uphill as well, reached the top, and punched. Well.... at this point, this was going to be the last time I saw the lead pack, for a TOTALLY LOST mental fog that stunned me for the next 30 minutes. What happened is that as I visualized my approach to 14, my idea was to run on a flat terrain until reaching the upper part of a reentrant, and then turn around the reentrant and coast the edge of the reentrrant. Somewhere later, my mental image of the control switched from being control 14 to control 16, which had a similar approach: "flat terrain, find the upper level of a reentrant, and turn around it". So, once on the spur above control 14, I was looking at the map and I was looking/thinking at control 16. On the clue sheet, control 16 was defined to be on the upper part of a spur. Searched for it on the spur located 300 meters East of control 14, and obviously could not find it. Very Lost. VERY VERY Lost. So, kind of desperate, ran down the spur to the creek below. I thought maybe I was on the wrong spur, and that there was another spur. Scanned the woods for other runners, but didn't see anyone. Ran parallel to the creek for ages without seeing anyone, not a soul, then, seeing a very evident and sharp spur, took that up, and at the knife edge above, could see the red nylon jacket of Bob Boltz down below on the stream, going in the same direction as I was, him below, me above. Figured that my only hope was to figure out where control 13 was and start from there. Identified the spur on the map, and went for 14, again, in mental mode of looking for 16. Then, realized that my control card had no punches for 14 and 15, I thought, Oh My God, I forgot to punch 14 and 15, I must return back. So I am running back, and at about 100 meters later, in a rare moment of rational cool, I finally realize that my destination was 14 ALL THIS TIME. What a screw up !
the similar approach is what made me focus on 16 instead of 14
OK, I am back in now, at least in my mind. [and from this moment all everything went pretty smoothly]. Retraced the path to the reentrant top, the flat terrain, the spur, the descent down to the creek, the cluster of rootstocks, and finally punched 14. Found Bob before me at control 21. Saw Olga at the last control. And finally finished. A very varied terrain, beautiful morphology.
This billy goat thing is fun because it's a mass start, and you are with the pack, sometimes shortcutting, sometimes not.. but you get a "feel" for where everyone is going/thinking. Fun to watch from a running perspective, kind of cross country, but very varying with the terrain . Like, I am ABOVE the ridge looking down, and another runner is BELOW the ridge looking up. We are all headed towards the same objective, but simultaneously taking different routes.
Photo album with high resolution images: website
The Middle Goaters left at around 12:40, while the Long Goaters left at 1 PM.
Zac and Mom on a spur, upper part, control #18 on Long Goat
Marked as a ruin map feature
This was marked as a special next to the ruin
This was not marked as Special, but as ruin. Did not find a ruin.
Interesting Special map feature
Time for a bath with soap and bubbles
This ruin has only one wall, 40 cm height
Long Goat clue sheet
Just before starting on the Long Goat, we are informed that we are allowed to skip two non-consecutive controls. Kostansek, Stanislav, Randy, Olga, Bob and possibly others started running in group, not going too fast, and arriving at the first set of controls relatively at the same time, so much that we each other passed the punch to the next in line after punching the control card. After control 3, my first mistake. I ran down the ravine and went on the other side of the creek, but must have not seen or overshot control 4, located on one of these mini-hills or knobs located on the steep slopes of the ravines. I realized that I must have missed it because I lost the pack and then, looking behind be, I saw the entire pack running towards me at about 50 meters distance. Decided it was not worth going back looking for 4 and stayed with the pack. Control 4 became, unintentionally, my first skipped control. Running from 5 to 6 was easy open woodland, and the meandering creek was easy to spot. From 6 to 7 used the hiking trail as guide, and at the spur, left the trail and went looking for the ditch. From 7 to 8, once on the spur where the control was located, everyone in the pack went uphill, but the clue sheet suggested "foot of" and went to the bottom of the spur along with a Middle Goater that had the same idea. From 8 to 9, alone, reached the stream intersection nearby, then the clearing on the otherside, and then climbed up the hill knob to reach the control. From 9 to 10, alone again, reached the clearing above the control, then sided next to a pond, ran to the East of a building, followed a road, and at the road bend, went looking for the control, and saw Kostansek running below in the woods, and from his directionality, got the hint were the control was positioned. From 10 to 11, followed Kostansek around a spur and on through lightly wooded forest to the terrace where the control was located. Then the obvious skip of control 12 (something everyone seemed to agree...) and off to 13. On the proximity of 13, I got a bit confused, seeing Kostansek climb up the very steep slope on a spur, but I was convinced the control was on the other side of the reentrant, and stopped to look at the map, at which point Randy caught up with me, and also went up the spur, so I figured it must be right, and telescoping the slope rim above, could see faintly the control, so, there it was! and charged uphill as well, reached the top, and punched. Well.... at this point, this was going to be the last time I saw the lead pack, for a TOTALLY LOST mental fog that stunned me for the next 30 minutes. What happened is that as I visualized my approach to 14, my idea was to run on a flat terrain until reaching the upper part of a reentrant, and then turn around the reentrant and coast the edge of the reentrrant. Somewhere later, my mental image of the control switched from being control 14 to control 16, which had a similar approach: "flat terrain, find the upper level of a reentrant, and turn around it". So, once on the spur above control 14, I was looking at the map and I was looking/thinking at control 16. On the clue sheet, control 16 was defined to be on the upper part of a spur. Searched for it on the spur located 300 meters East of control 14, and obviously could not find it. Very Lost. VERY VERY Lost. So, kind of desperate, ran down the spur to the creek below. I thought maybe I was on the wrong spur, and that there was another spur. Scanned the woods for other runners, but didn't see anyone. Ran parallel to the creek for ages without seeing anyone, not a soul, then, seeing a very evident and sharp spur, took that up, and at the knife edge above, could see the red nylon jacket of Bob Boltz down below on the stream, going in the same direction as I was, him below, me above. Figured that my only hope was to figure out where control 13 was and start from there. Identified the spur on the map, and went for 14, again, in mental mode of looking for 16. Then, realized that my control card had no punches for 14 and 15, I thought, Oh My God, I forgot to punch 14 and 15, I must return back. So I am running back, and at about 100 meters later, in a rare moment of rational cool, I finally realize that my destination was 14 ALL THIS TIME. What a screw up !
the similar approach is what made me focus on 16 instead of 14
OK, I am back in now, at least in my mind. [and from this moment all everything went pretty smoothly]. Retraced the path to the reentrant top, the flat terrain, the spur, the descent down to the creek, the cluster of rootstocks, and finally punched 14. Found Bob before me at control 21. Saw Olga at the last control. And finally finished. A very varied terrain, beautiful morphology.
This billy goat thing is fun because it's a mass start, and you are with the pack, sometimes shortcutting, sometimes not.. but you get a "feel" for where everyone is going/thinking. Fun to watch from a running perspective, kind of cross country, but very varying with the terrain . Like, I am ABOVE the ridge looking down, and another runner is BELOW the ridge looking up. We are all headed towards the same objective, but simultaneously taking different routes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)