Bridges Galore!

Posted Fri, April 17, 2009 - 9:16 PM
orienteering

This week's training, courtesy of Mike, down in Bloomington. He set a "Bridges of Hennepin County" course in the Moir (Central) Park - Nine Mile Creek Area. We started at the park, just off 104th St, and had to visit nine bridges (a numerical coincidence), subject to the constraint of having to visit at least one marked control point (any one) in between bridges. By their very nature, all the bridges were at the bottom of the valley, and Mike set most of the interim controls near the top of the valley, making this a great hill workout.

Map and route after the jump.

Map of April 14, 2009 OTNT course - Click to enlarge

Mike decided to split up the field by assigning "first bridge" numbers to each of the 15 participants. He also clarified that we would all probably be able to get the nine bridges in under an hour, so we were free after that to continue to score points by visiting bridges in the remaining time, subject to the same rules about interim controls. The whole course had an hour limit, though, making it similar to a Score-O (after the initial nine were managed.)

I was assigned #4 as the first bridge, so I ran SE from the start together with Ian, Tom, and Peter, and entered the park near control G to drop down to #4. I had a little trouble getting into the map scale at first, not realizing it was 1:10,000 and underestimating distances at first. But it still wasn't hard to hit #4. On the way down, I checked the map and decided to go north around the hook in the creek, than come up from #1 and run the road to #5 for the rest of the bridges. This would leave me on the far south side at #9 by the time I got them all, so I could run back (either on the road or the creek valley) scoring extra bridges as time permitted. Plan in hand, I hit bridge #4 in short order.

After that, I had to choose a control to hit - and decided on F to avoid a serious hill climb. The woods in between proved to be wide open, so I hit F and backtracked over bridge 4 and ran up to #3, then to H, then to #2, up the stairs to I (poorly executed), and back down to #1. Then I ran up stairs and through the middle of a disc golf hole (greatly concerning the teenagers involved) and back onto Morgan Ave to 106th St. Down the hill on 106th and cutting off onto the trail quickly led me to control D, which opened me up for a steep hill descent to bridge #5. Then an ascent to E and dropping back into the valley for #6. There was really no easy way to hit these - Mike was a experienced enough setter to force a hill climb no matter how you cut it.

I climbed uphill to hit C on the way from 6-7 - but at this point the oxygen deprivation seemed to capture me, and I stupidly fiddled around on the ridge top next to the road too far north. It took a good portion of a minute before I figured to look at the road intersections to my east and realized I was too far north - but I immediately focused on the road junction as an attackpoint, got off the ridge, attacked and nailed C, where I saw Ian running north. Still, I wasted some time here.

The run down to #7 was quick, and then the hill up to B forced a walking pace. The slope to the south of B was nice and open, so I cut cross country to the trail junction and hit 8, A, 9 in rapid succession. As soon as I touched bridge #9, my initial pass was complete, so the rest of it was all cake. I checked my cell phone (I forgot my watch) and saw a time of 34 minutes, leaving 26 more to pick up extra bridges.

The layout on the south side didn't give any advantage to backtrack strategies like 4-F-3, so I just ran back through 8-7-6, pacing myself on the hills and performing pretty well. Control C was a lot easier to hit from the south! I ran down to 6, then took the steep slope to D, where my legs started to twinge as if they were going to cramp. I powered through and ran the D-5 leg the same as before, then north intending to go over the saddle to F. Unfortunately, I misread the map here and ended up going all the way over the ridge on the trails. I was starting to check the phone more often as the minutes ticked down. I hit F and ran a direct route back to #4 on the west side of the gully. At this point I had 13 minutes left and decided to skip #3, going G-2-I-1 and then going into the finish. It occurred to me that the rules didn't prevent going I-1-I-1-I-1 as many times as I wanted, but somehow I suspected it wasn't in the spirit of the event. Besides, there wasn't much time left and I didn't want to risk it. So I went from #4 up to G and took the easy trail over to bridge #2, then repeated the section of the course I'd done earlier. Ian was coming in on my tail going to #1, but I still slacked off up the stairs and dog-trotted across to the finish at the parking lot in about 55:30.

My complete course route was Start-4-F-3-H-2-I-1-D-5-E-6-C-7-B-8-A-9-A-8-B-7-C-6-D-5-F-4-G-2-I-1-Finish for a total of 16 bridges.

Again, we had a great turnout. The waether was gorgeous, 60+ degrees and sunny with almost no wind.