Training Log Archive: hkleaf

Low 40s, clear - Putting out 4ga. of water on Blue Spruce Ridge.

Running around taking pictures. Out for ~90min, but much of it was standing around. Time and distance are both estimate.

70s, sunny, mostly clear - Picking up controls and event clean up. At one water stop, I found 2 used up but half a gallon of water consumed!

Levels varied, Random Hills. I had a little time to kill before dinner, and wanted to stretch out my legs after a long weekend.

Dinner with a few folks who had Monday flights. The table had a decidedly International flavor - Sweden, Czech, Bulgaria, Russia, Hong Kong, and USA. The food was Thai :)

Nearly got Nikolay to the wrong airport for his flight! Luckily we caught the mistake early and things worked out. But next time I need to be more careful and double check the info.

High 30s, clear - Setting controls for the sprint, plus various other tasks setting up finish/start, etc. I overslept a bit and arrived ~20min late, which probably put Vlad in more of a pinch. Still, everything got set up and ready to go on schedule. But that's the 20min I could've used to wake up the SI units, if only I knew they needed to be awaken...

40s, sunny, clear - After patrolling at control (34) for ~40min, I found ebone to take my shift so that I can head over to McFarlan to collect some of the remaining controls from Friday. With 2ga. of leftover water from the (125), I was only able to grab 6 stands, including the 3 remaining SI units. This could probably count for a strength session, too! Only 6 stands left in the woods, which Stryder will get tomorrow.

60s, sunny, clear - warm up before my leg of the relay, truncated into various pieces while waiting for JonR to come back.

OCIN Flying Pig A-Meet, U.S. Relay Champs - Mt. Airy Forest, Cincinnati, Ohio.
8pt team, 4th leg, Red Course (Variation: 1-BA): 5.4km, 19c, 395m. (1:10 000, 5m)
Course Setter: Matthew Robbins
60s, clear, sunny

Ran the anchor leg for an 8-pt OCIN team (In CinTROL). Kacey and Katie both had solid runs putting us in 5th place amongst eligible teams. Jon R., who's a good navigator, ran the 3rd leg for us. We were ~5min down on the Vaughans who were 3rd, and I was hoping Jon and Petr would finish close enough that it'd be an exciting finish leg for Steve and I. Unfortunately, Jon tried to find #2 after punching #2, and ended up off the map! So I started with a group in the catch-up mass start. This turned out to be quite fun and exciting, as I got to run with a few folks on Red, trying to keep pace yet still having to navigate on my own the whole time due to forking.

I went out fast, and started running out of gas after #10. John Hensley Williams and I were mostly side by side, then the course forks and we'd split up for a couple controls before converging again. I didn't know it at the time, but Mikkel was on out tails as well. Because of my familiarity with the park/terrain, I ran with confidence the whole time. I was able to read ahead slightly, and use the proper handrails and attackpoints to guide me along the way. The pace was quite fast the whole time, and I'm satisfied that there weren't any big mistakes. A few sub-optimal route choices to 1, 8, and 10. The two obvious mistakes were going out of #9, my mind skipped ahead 150m, so I descended thru the green to find the trail, only I haven't crossed the road yet! I realized quickly what happened but probably lost ~40s unnecessarily going thru the green. Then at #18, fatigue set in and a momentary lapse in map reading got me drifting right toward (230) instead of my depression control. It looks like I lost 30s and the overall fastest time on Red 8pt here!!! Part of it was due to the mistake, the other part was due to my struggle (slow walk) up the hill after punching #17.

Overall, it was a very good day. The solid result was a bit of surprise, because physically the past 2 days haven't been all that restful. It appears my L-knee is holding up just fine with faster running, which is a real positive here. It also shows me what running with confidence and navigating cleanly can do. Hopefully, I can channel these things going forward in future races.

Collecting signs and relay controls. Pretty beat by the end.

Saturday Red_8pt - Splits

Event: OCIN 25th Anniversary / Flying Pig XIII / Relay Champs
 

~50F?, overcast, windy
Various tasks - first it was setting out water control on White/Yellow, then double-checking of some control locations, followed by roaming around the courses and taking action shots. It wasn't always easy to find hiding places when taking pictures without giving helpful hints to the runners. The light quality in the forest wasn't very good with overcast skies, so there were lots of blurry pics. Oh well.

40s, mostly cloudy, wind - After dinner and clean up at the lodge. Collecting SI-units plus 6 of the stands that were near/on a trail. Battery on my headlamp was dying, but luckily I also brought along the Surge. Having pretty much memorized all of the control locations helped a ton with the night navigation, but I still made a few mistakes due to limited visibility. Lots of deers out and about. The remaining stands will have to be picked up tomorrow.

L-side. Legs are pretty tired from the day's activity.

75F, cloudy, impending t'storm - Setting out a portion of Friday's controls at McFarlan, with David. Had planned to double check the ones Stryder already put out earlier, but the sky was lighting up all around, so I'll wait till tomorrow for a final walk through.
*was out longer. Time here is discounted for some standing around.

L-side only. I need to be diligent with these.

Spent part of the evening packet stuffing... good times! Also picked up Vlad at the airport.
Update on the knee: I last took anti-inflammatory on Sunday, so 3 days is probably enough time for its effect to wear off now. So far, the L-knee feels normal - no particular soreness anywhere! It's an encouraging development, although I'm still not over it mentally. Looking forward to Saturday's relay :)

Another day of physical rest. There'll be plenty of running around come this weekend.

Scheduled rest day. Legs overall are a bit sore. Running 5 races in 3 days would do that. Knee seems fine.