Training Log Archive: kgeisen

Fast hike along Lake Glendale from race start to bike drop, collecting passport (and chatting with the 361 Adventures guys about March's LBL Challenge) along the way.

CPs 1-3 (Bridge, crevice - failed spillway, cave)

Smooth nav on first leg. Gravel/dirt roads in varying conditions. Crevice CP took us a little time to find but was really cool. Had intended to take direct River to River Trail to get to CP3, but after one look at it said F that and took roads around.

Felt a million times better than bike leg at TR. Took the Superfly instead of the Xcaliber mostly because I haven't exorcised the hardtail since that disastrous performance, but I was pretty happy with full suspension and don't think the inability to lock out (well, stiffen up) my rear shock for some reason cost me much if anything.

Guessing on mileage. Race directors called it 13. We missed 3/10 CPs but attacked (and missed one) and probably managed to tack on extra distance with some wandering.

CP9 "Rock shelter - tip of spur": followed trail around, overshot it (turns out control was actually under the trail), by the time we realized we'd for sure missed it we were so far past it that we made the call to not double back.

CP10 "natural bridge" - attacked from top, getting swarmed by what someone called ground hornets along the way (no stings, so who knows what they really are). Thought we'd gotten to the right place and no CP so assumed it was located under the bridge, retraced our steps to trail split and went below, can't find the bridge in the dark, keep following trail until it's heading back up, finally find it on top probably just past where we turned around.

CP13 "overlook" - crossed creek too early and ended up on the wrong cliffline. Retraced steps, found right crossing and right cliffline, cool staircase built into a crack in the bluffs, found the CP.

CP4 "stream junction" - super cool spot, first time on the trek we pinged one without issue.

CP5 "saddle - road" - one of the only not really cool CPs we saw, went right to it.

CP6 "waterfall - bottom" - had some trouble getting to the trailhead. Good thing Chuck knows what he's doing because when we went the correct way eventually I'd have sworn we were going the wrong way. Too bad I didn't have the clue sheet easy accessible so we'd know the control was at the bottom. We asked some guys swimming in the pool at the bottom how to get down. They told us how we could climb down this tree with spikes along the cliff face. Um, no. We proceeded to CP7, the rappel, from which we easily hiked back around the bottom back to the waterfall CP.

CP8 "crevice in rock face" - another really cool spot, flag/tube was up in a fat man's squeeze spot. Had to take off my pack to get to it.

Lots of mud and rocks, rat's nest of semi-marked and semi-mapped trails. Our Bermuda Triangle. Even with a supplemental trail map (or overlay...I'm not looking at the maps right now) it was super confusing.We got CP14 and 15 without incident, then accidentally found CP16.

Really struggled with CP18, going on further and further just in case, then returning to CP16 to reattack. Not sure and with sunset imminent, we decided to bail up the cemetery "road" (up being the operative word, and road being a very loose term) to take roads around to TA2. Good decision, even if it cost us 3CPs. We knew from the start of the race we wouldn't clear the course and opted to bank our time for potentially getting more CPs on the trek back near the start finish rather than being caught out 24 miles from the finish and losing points for being late.

*guessing on time based on fitbit data, will update once splits are out.

After the bike 2 disaster, we really only had time to ride from TA to TA, so we skipped the 3 trekking CPs at TA2, finished the route planning we couldn't do while dealing with our broken down vehicle at the pre-race, and got back on the bikes.

Having been warned that this bike leg took Alpine Shop 3 hours (in the daylight!) we knew we were in for a long ride. Despite being really conservative with my bike lights early, they were already low, so I mostly stuck with my headlamp and saved the good lights for when I really needed them (which was mostly for this ride, as it turns out). Very rocky early, which was ok once I got used to it, transitioning to mud bog after huge puddle after mud bog. The frequent walking made it hard to judge distance covered, but the upside was that walking was way less painful with a near-terminal case of swamp ass than biking.

Hit all 3 CPs on this leg, including (somewhat unintentionally) the "War Bluff" one. Very cool even if I was very unhappy about pushing my bike/hiking up that far. After reading a little about it, though, now I want to go back and explore more.

http://shawneehillsoutdoors.com/notes-from-the-tra...

http://illinoistimes.com/article-1380-shawnee%C2%9...

My red blinky quit blinking early on in the race, so I substituted a glow stick zip-tied to my saddle.

Event: No Sleep Adventure 30-Hour
 

Finishing off the rest of my time before I needed to go home. 15% incline

Breaking in the new shoes!

So. many. spiderwebs.

C • woohoo! 2

At Jeff's family reunion. VERY ugly but fun.

Meant to hit the SIUE trails and try our my new trail shoes (thanks @sami11) but stalled too long and didn't want to get caught in the dark alone. Ran easy and it mostly felt easy.