Training Log Archive: Ari-o

Doing another deck and feeling marginally better and going marginally faster. It's good to know from experience that these get easier after a week.

C • what is a deck? 3

C • what is a deck? 1

Biking to and from O. Faster there than back. Avoided the Rotary of Death, mostly.

I was lollygagging around and they started saying "Ari, you're next, go, go go!" and I was changing shirts and needed some help pulling on my CSU shirt and went running off in to the woods, mostly the right way.

I was doing well at first, seeing Alex ahead of me, and she made a big mistake on 8 and I was almost caught up to her. Ran well to 9, 10, 11 and then buggered up 12, not going in to the woods, losing contact, and having to stop and reorient; not good in a sprint. Ed came running towards me saying "Ari's lost" and I wanted to say "yeah, on your map" but figured out where I was and went running in to the woods.

Lost about 6 places on 12. Oh, well. Then there was pizza.

Sprint Edmands Park - Splits

Second deck is always the hardest. This one wasn't that bad. Sore from yesterday, but not too, too bad. Might this be the start of a beautiful #deckaday?

Okay, knee still hurts when hauling a bike up and down stairs. So I guess it's not all better yet.

C • Foam roll? 4

Deck in 22 minutes this morning. Still letting the knee rest some, but it feels much, much better today than yesterday (i.e. basically no pain). Deck was going well until about 8000 push-ups in a row; I'm still weak so that was hard. Amazing to think in the fall of '13 I got up to knocking these out sub-14. Well, something to aspire towards!

I woke up sore, and my foot hurt and my right IT band (I think, basically, knee and everything around it) was not happy. We both had bikes and decided to ride bikes. Didn't leave the OH until after 10, and started off from Glen for the ride.

Two minutes in I declared that I needed to stop and stretch. Jess went back to get a goo. After 10 minutes of stretching, I felt good enough to continue, but not at any high rate of speed. We pedaled out to Bartlett and I wasn't getting worse, so we began a slow climb spinning up Bear Notch.

I was okay at the top, so we went on rather than turning back. Wheeee down, and then whee down the Kanc and on to Passaconaway Road (a very nice ride with little traffic, to West Side Road, to then get a bagel. Mmm, bagels.

Relatively spent, we tooled up Route 16 and pulled in to the parking lot for a relatively early ride home. My leg was still hurting a bit, but actually felt better than the morning, it may have been nicely stretched by cycling easily. Oh, and then I ate some advil, too.

I drove up to the OH on Friday night, thinking of participating in the "Adams Vertical" day on Saturday. (Long story very short: in '58 Chris Goetze ran up and down Adams 4 times in 12ish hours, for 18k of vert and then set the FKT on the Mahoosuc Traverse that stuck until last year; also set the Hut Traverse FKT, died of a brain tumor at 38, this was a bit of an homage.) But I got a late start up and didn't get in until 11 and we decided not to go for the start because sleep is good.

So we (me and Jess) are driving through Pinkham at 9:30 and see signs for a trail race calling to us like Mecca. We stop. Black Fly in my Eye race at Great Glen. We discuss for a few minutes, look up last year's results and say "heck, let's do it." So with 25 minutes notice, we jump in to a trail race. It helped that it was cool, cloudy, the mountains were still in the clouds and we could still go hiking after. That might be a record, even for me. All I knew is there was a river crossing late in the race and I didn't want wet shoes later for hiking, so I wore my New Balance trail-runners-but-not-really-trail-runners which were probably fine for the mostly ski trail trails.

Tristan (AMCer) was there and he's fast. I probably wasn't going to beat him. Not sure about the rest of the (small) field. I went out with the lead pack and pretty quickly Tristan was head of us and a couple of minutes later, runner #2 went ahead, but after running a 6:23 mile going out (downhill, but still) I decided I didn't have to win the race. Ran the rest of the first loop (mostly ski trail) before coming through the start, 1 & 2 out of sight ahead of me and 4 maybe half a minute back. I dropped my t-shirt and grabbed a beverage and went skittering under the road for the second lap.

The second lap climbs up a more trail-y trail and then comes down Aqueduct Road. This is good, because I know that road really well (start of the hut traverse, secret croo trail in and out of Carter). Knowing I had this fellow behind me, I turned up the pace a bit for the uphill and by the top of the hill he was out of sight. I went down the road fast but not out of control (unfortunately, we were a few minutes early to be passing hut croo coming down with pack boards), took a right up the trail back to the lap, and seemed to have quite a bit of time on fourth place.

I looped the start as instructed, grabbed a cup of water, and ran down the hill in to the third section of the race; 4th place was right ahead of me but had a ¼ loop to go. All of a sudden there was a guy right behind me. I glanced at him. Not a relay bib, and not the guy in red. Wow, he must have really been on a tear. I let him lead through a short singletrack section and then decided that a) he was probably a good downhill runner and b) he was probably tired for chasing me down.

So, we got on to a gradual uphill, and I matched him stride for stride. Slowly I began to pull away, and within a few minutes he was out of sight. Still feeling like I was being run down, I took the last lap relatively quickly, only slowing down when I got to the field and saw a long gap behind me, so I took my time through the river (which was nice and cool) and the steep bank beyond it to the finish.

Blue shirt guy came in about half a minute later, with Jess right on his tail. They were then both instructed to run the start loop—they'd both skipped it. As it turned out, the volunteer had guided them the wrong way, so the reason they wound up right behind me was that they had both skipped a minute or two of running. This made more sense. He actually lost a place during that time, but Jess still won.

I thought I was third, so I was going to get a prize and a picture on a podium in front of the Northern Presidentials. Turns out, they called someone else third. The guy in the blue shirt was actually in second place his first lap split was nearly a minute ahead of mine (Tristan was about 4 minutes faster on each leg!), and at some point must have gotten lost or pulled off in the second lap; I never passed him but he certainly wound up behind me, skipped loop or not. I won a fly swatter, three t-shirts and a couple of tupperwares. Really.

Jess won a pair of free shoes, and apologized to the second place woman (who she knew, sort of) for showing up at the last second. Tristan said he almost didn't come, so I almost could have won! And the men's podium was swept by former AMC staff, so we should have had a flag to unfurl or something. Anyway, great race, fun course, good atmosphere. I've sort of planned and missed this race for a while, it was fun to do!

Leah and Tristan asked us if they wanted them to drive us up to the Northern Presis so we could do a point-to-point and our answer was "does the tin man have a sheetmetal cock?" So off we went. We started up Castle Ravine the wrong way, then found our bearings and set off at a slow jog. Then we had to take our shoes off to cross the river.

And then we had to do that, or trickily rock-hop, about half a dozen more times.

But while Appalachia's parking lot was filled with goofers, Castle Ravine was empty. We didn't see a soul all the way up. The trail got harder and steeper and we went under Roof Rock, which happens to have a lot of ice under it. Glacier! Then we hit the scree. Going uphill at a 45˚ angle we went the wrong way up one field, had to come down and regain the trail, and then went up the next scree field, hand over hand, on one of my new favorite trails. It's up there with the Great Gulf headwall as probably the best scree climb in the Whites. Much fun.

We popped out at Spaulding Spring which had a small snowfield and played in the snow, then up to Edmands Col. As I stood on the ridgeline I was on cloud nine; it's hard to describe how much I love it up there. There Jess realized she'd dropped her map, and went back to (unsuccessfully) look for it where she'd put on a layer (it was about 40˚ up there) and I thought about running after the folks with heavy packs who were hiking southbound from Edmands with heavy packs and moving slow. Time to darkness: about 3.5 hours. 3.8 miles to the Summit, 4.6 miles to Lakes, and much further to the nearest camping. Not sure what their deal was.

We set off and passed another group (more prepared, and said they were going down Caps Ridge) and then a Quebecois couple looking at a map. We asked if we could help. "Yes, we're looking for somewhere to camp that way," pointing at the Great Gulf. We both shook our heads. Don't go down any of those trails, we said, and suggested RMC facilities or the Valley Way tentsite nearby.

We actually came up with a really interesting idea. With use in the Whites up (likely up 10-20% in the past five years) it begs for a "ridgerunner" between Lakes and Madison. There are similar ridgerunners on much-less-used and less-exposed sections of the AT further south (and maybe in Maine, too). It could be a separate position, or a roving task for Lakes and Madison croos. It could be someone with at least a WFR certification, carrying a first aid kit, maps and headlamps for sale, but really to give advice as far as camping opportunities (few and far between), itineraries, weather, and call in late hut arrivals in both directions. I doubt the Forest Service has money for such a position, but it could be funded by the AMC and coordinated with the Forest Service as a public service. We thought it was a good idea.

Anyway, then it was a jog down to MADHAÜS! We wandered in around the start of dinner with many friends there (some on the croo, some just visiting from RMC; great to see RMC-Madison collegiality). We ate some bread, then some extra applesauce cake with butter-cream frosting and then, when a third pork loin came out of the oven, I ate about 10 slices of perfectly cooked pork stick, and it was delicious. I didn't want to eat too much if there was a chance they'd run out, but they had enough for 70 people and 50 guests. It was great.

We bid adieu to the Haüs around 7 and went up over Madison, down the Osgood, and then down Daniel Webster-Scout. Along with Castle Ravine, this takes the major trails I haven't hiked in the Northern Presidentials down to Castle, Cabin-Cascades, some of Israel Ridge, and Pine Link. Not bad! DWS was steep but manageable, as sun set and the multicolored shadows were cast on the Carter Range, a magnificent phenomena of that part of the world that is hard to describe. (Basically, the shadow from Madison is a much different shade of blue since it's a lot closer than Washington, so there's less ambient light.)

We switched on headlamps near the base and jogged the road to the Great Gulf Link Trail, which led us along the river in the dark; we crossed the suspension bridge as the last light left the sky, and gunned across the notch to buy some food for second dinner. And collapsed in to bed at the OH.