Training Log Archive: kgeisen

Road ride with mickey on my side of the river. Toured supposedly haunted landmarks 7 gates of hell, acid bridge, and a stop by the "hidden in plain sight " Krome Family Cenetery. Fun ride. With flat to rolling roads and him on SS I was usually able to keep up to draft. Hard work though.

Rode through Panera and then to Jacob's baseball game afterwards.

Forest Park with Jacob and some of his friends. Estimated distance.

Morning coffee + dog walk

Rode with Jacob to the park to meet his friend then a loop of MCT Heritage, part of Nickel Plate, and Nature back to home. Threw in some hard 2-4 min efforts.

Surprise! Jacob's 6 pm baseball game was cancelled this afternoon so I got to go to the Thurs night ride and see Derrick and Emma as well as the regulars. Legs hadn't felt awesome earlier today, but I felt strong on the bike tonight. Fun!

Walked with Jacob to go get a coffee.

Rode with Jacob to Daniel's to see their new baby kittens, then home via several Pokemon stops.

Hot and humid out. Hopefully lots of time outside in the heat this summer helps hot weather races be a little less terrible.

Picked up bike from some repairs, stopped at grocery store on the way home. My backpack was heavier than AR pack ever is!

Managed another car-free day, which admittedly is far easier to achieve when I'm not working.

Arrived at TA3 sometime before midnight, left somewhere around or slightly before 3. I'm glad volunteers took splits so I can update times later, since both of my gps trackers failed. :(

Bike 4: Ride (largely HAB) back up the heinous road wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected, maybe because mentally it was easier on me to be HAB uphill than downhill. One brief missed turn but quickly corrected it. Smooth trip into TA4, getting CP32 on the way.

Trek 4: 2 CPs on the way to TA5. You could get them either before or after TA5/paddle, and we didn't see intended attack point for CP34 on the way there so proceeded to check in at TA5. Opted to skip paddle so we could go after final bike CPs. Shot a bearing to CP34 from bridge, got distracted by a clearing along bearing, and looked all over for the CP until Tribe 325 said it was on other side of powerline.

Bike 5: Much nice trails than river to river or the other Shawnee trails we rode earlier. Smooth ride to 40 and 41, then somehow got off track on the way to 42. I really didn't want to retrace our steps (dumb), so when Chuck said we could either return to 41 and reset or keep riding and hope it worked out, I was all for option B. So we rode along for a while with no real idea where the hell we were, but other than it being a poor race move I mostly really enjoyed the trails and the gorgeous scenery, and eventually along came Kuat, who confirmed where we were and then Jeff punched our passport for us when we were all at 44. We went ahead and got 45, then retraced our steps to go get CP43. Up at the top trail we ran into Storm Troopers, who among other things mentioned this leg was supposed to be done IN ORDER. I'd been so good about keeping track of these details all day when CP order didn't matter and then missed it when it counted. :( Since we'd done the work to get there, we still punched 43 but told the RDs not to count it. My screw-up meant there was no point in going after 42, though, so we found 46 and then headed to the finish. Because so many teams had missed the whole "in order" memo, they ended up just counting everyone's bike CPs on that last trek, regardless of the order they were done in. It was very clear...you just had to actually read the directions.

Takeaways:

1. When leaving a CP, confirm together where you're headed next. That would have helped us avoid our screw-up where we almost skipped CP9.

2. Don't get distracted talking to other teams instead of paying close attention to your route.

3. Pay closer attention to the terrain along the trail to track your progress/confirm you are where you think you are.

4. Let Chuck get clear about what we're doing before I start to walk/ride off. I think that's how we missed our turn from the lookout tower to the TA...I started riding where I thought we were supposed to go and he followed me. The road we initially missed wasn't blindingly obvious in the dark -- as in, it wasn't part of the paved intersection -- but it was very obviously there if you were looking for it.

5. Keep following your bearing instead of getting distracted.

6. I really need to learn to pace count so we can start using that as a tool. That would have helped us from stopping too soon on our way to CP34. It may also have helped us narrow down where we sould be looking for the boulder/crevice at CP26.

7. Read the fucking clue sheet, Kate. That's the second race in a row where I've missed an important detail. At mission at least it only cost us time and not CPs, but it's ridiculous to keep making the same kind of mistake.

8. I need to get better at nav on a 1:24000 scale so that when my navigator is struggling or needs a break I can take over for a little bit.

9. I'm super lucky to have such a good teammate. Even when we were really having a rough time of it, we were able to stay positive and supportive of each other and keep moving forward.

10. We're super lucky to be part of such an awesome AR community. I told Chuck that my race report ought to be titled "I get by with a little help from my friends" because we sure got a lot of help from them in this race.

11. No more pink highlighter! That's not the first time it has faded on us.

12. I carried bike shorts the whole race, but since the bike legs were all pretty short I didn't put them on until after TA2, around 12 hours into the race. I have zero chafing or soreness. I'm pretty sold on limiting my chamois time in races that aren't bike heavy.