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
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