Training Log Archive: bbrooke

Again today, I had one dumb mistake in an otherwise good run. I often misread the power line symbol as a fence -- and today that caused me to overrun #4 by...a lot. DOH! (Both the power line and the fence had a NE-SW trending reentrant and an intersecting spur, so things "seemed" to be matching up. But it was still a dumb mistake.)

I also looked at a hillside that was mapped as green (on the way to #3), and it didn't look bad at all from where I was standing. So I proceded up that hillside, and it turned out to be a large patch of painful, grabby cat-claw that slowed me down significantly. Which is saying a lot, for someone who moves a slowly as I do in general. ;-)

Troy and I hung out at the finish afterwards for a while, and I didn't think to put sunscreen on my arms. They look like lobster claws right now.

Even though our flight home wasn't 'til 8:45 pm, we realized our car was due back at 4 pm. So, we visited the Pima Air & Space Museum on our way back into town, and then hung out at the airport for several hours.

This meet was a blast. In addition to the meet itself, I really enjoyed Tom Hollowell's training days and Cristina's party. And, Tucson had enough fun sights and excursions to keep us fully entertained.

GPS Tracks:

C • Powerline 2

C • Tracks 6

Green2 - Splits

Event: RMOC Barneløpet Ski-O & Snowshoe-O
 

Event: Western States + Intercollegiate Championships
 

I was running with as much speed as I could muster (well, maybe an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10), and my GPS tracks show that I was fairly accurate (except for mistakes at #6 and #10). John Pascal finished just six seconds behind me. p.s. I'm 36 and he's in his 70s. Wow.

GPS Tracks (I'm not sure why the tracks are so disjointed...):

I felt pretty happy about my accuracy today. But, I made the Dumb Route Choice of the Century on my way to #5. Sigh... (I thought running fast on the trail would be better than rocky footing and going up-and-down across those reentrants and spurs. But, the suprs weren't really all that steep or high, and the trail option took me so far out of the way...) DUMB!

GPS Tracks:

Dinner at Guadalajara Grill. We were starving when we got there, but we figured it must be good if the parking lot was overflowing and there was a 30-minute wait... It was really good.

C • wait 2

Green 1 - Splits

A fun training course at TSN's Arthur Pack map -- with tons of cool cactus varieties. The terrain was pretty flat, so the focus was on precision compass work.

I skipped #6 when I realized I had missed it, and then I had an error at #7.

GPS Tracks:

After the training course, we headed to the Titan Missile Museum. Very cool!

And then we saw Vantage Point. Not as cool! (The last movie I saw was "No Country for Old Men". So, this one seemed just that much more cheesey and Hollywood-mainstream in comparison...)

Dinner at Grimaldi's Pizza.

Dessert and festivities at Cristina's (flourless chocolate cake -- YUM!).

Event: US Team training activity
 

A fun contour-only training course with a few sections of Line-O added in, at TSN's "Italian Trap" map.

It would have been nice if specific driving directions had been posted sooner than 9:30pm last night, for those of us who are "on the road". About 10 of us sat waiting at two different (wrong) parking lots after following the directions that were originally posted...("follow the directions on the TSN web site").

C • directions 1

We were able to do a quick tour of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum before it closed for the day. It's actually more of a botanical garden and zoo than a museum. We missed the hummingbirds, but highlights of our tour included seeing: a roving group of grunty javelinas, a pack of obese prairie dogs, bobcats eating chunks of mystery meat, and some other exotic cat eating a dead bird.

Dinner at El Charro.

Indoor soccer -- a new Monday night league at a different facility that's twice as big as the one in Boulder. Holy cow! Lots of running...(since the place was bigger and we only had one sub). We lost, mainly due to the fact that most of us were sucking wind after about 15 minutes...