Training Log Archive: jjcote

Surebridge Mountain, Blue. Since I had to get back to Worcester for a ballet performance, I arranged for an early start, which had the fine side effect of getting me out while it was still cool. Did pretty well for the first half of the course, then started making errors in the latter half, none of them huge, but a couple of minutes here, a couple of minutes there, and it adds up. Might have just been getting tired. I heard that Ted Good, who had the same time as me yesterday, was 15 minutes ahead today, so it could well be that although my per km times were essentially the same both days, that today's course was faster, and everybody else will have done much better as well. But I left long before results were posted, so I'll have to wait and see.

This was really a fine meet, on the first nice weekend of the year, and on the north part of Surebridge, which is a truly sweet area that has been underutilized. And for once I managed to mostly keep my act together and turn in decent performances here. I was a bit worried coming into this, because I really haven't been orienteering very much lately, compared to what I used to do, and I felt like I might be really rusty, but it turned out okay.

AOWN report: Approaching the 4th control, I got hawked! I've heard stories about this happening to people over the years, but had never had it happen to me before. I don't know birds well enough to know what kind it was (the stories typically involve goshawks), but it was a reasonably good-sized bird. It was making a repeated squawking noise, and on the first pass it came at me from the front, probably passing about a meter or so over my head. Then it made another pass, coming at me from behind. Never got close enough that I felt like it was threatening to actually hit me, and I was just thinking that it was totally cool. I also had a moment of insight and respect. It's a fairly common experience for hang gliders to circle in the same thermal with hawks, in close proximity, and I'm looking forward to being able to do that someday. But it's one thing to be circling out in the wide open. This bird was in a hemlock forest, maneuvering around trunks and branches, which is way, way cooler than I can ever hope to be.

C • ballet 4

Yep, looks like the Blue course today was faster. Per km times were on average almost 10% faster, and only three people had slower per km times, while mine was dead even with yesterday, thanks to getting sloppy at the end. Still, I wound up (barely) in the top half of the two-day finishers on Blue, and I think it's been a while since that happened.

Blue, Day 2 - Splits

Event: HVO A-Meet
 

Parked at Tiorati Circle, figuring that there would probably be no room down at the meet site. I had my mountain bike in the car, but on the way into the park, I saw the sign stipulating that bicyclists must wear helmets, and realized that I had forgotten to grab a helmet when I was packing. But the sign didn't say anything about unicyclists needing helmets, so no problem! Didn't quite make it to the top of the climb out of the circle, and had to walk it for a short stretch (too hard to get started on a steep slope), but on the way back after picking up my packet, I made it all the way without stopping, and that included a very substantial hill. Turned out there was adequate parking space, so I went down with the car after that.

Surebridge Mountain, Blue. Late start time, so I got the full brunt of the hot conditions, but I had a pretty clean run, just a bobble on the first control, and poor execution on the 11th. That tied me for 14th out of 41 finishers (plus a few DNFs), which is pretty good for me on Blue these days!

Under the stairs at the hotel, with PG spectating. Difficult hand position, so these were tough.

Blue, Day 1 - Splits

Breakheart Reservation, largely on trails. Distance is a guess, in part because I'm too lazy to measure it, and in part because I don't remember exactly where I went on the latter part. But it looks like I probably went at least 50% farther than the 6 km course that I'm looking at.

This would have been a fine evening to have done some navigation training, brushing up my skills before the A-meet, but I didn't have the foresight to bring a map with me today. Instead of having it be just trail running, I came up with a little exercise that at least has a vague relationship to orienteering. After having worked my way up to the north end of the map, I climbed the tallest hill that I could find, stood on the bald summit, and spotted two other bare rock hills out in the distance, one behind the other. Then, with no map and no compass, I took off into the valley between, and headed for the first hill, not knowing what I would encounter in terms of water, vegetation, cliffs, etc. So I at least got off-trail for a bit, and had to make micro route choice decisions. As well as keeping my general direction more or less straight. Got to the first hill, and repeated the process to the second (and ran into more of the abovementioned obstacles on that leg).

Watched Alen section of Disc 2 of the Bijelo Dugme DVD. With this crappy rainy weather, at least I managed to do something. I suppose I probably should have worn a tube top.

Click to enlarge.

C • photo 10

No, I'm not kidding. I was just going to see if I could get balanced at all in a doorway for long enough to have Nancy take a picture, and then photoshop it so that it looked like I was actually riding, so I could post it here as a prank. Didn't know if I'd even be able to get up onto the seat, because it seemed like, with the instabilities of the unicycle combined with those of the rollers, it might be like trying to stand on a ball that's on a sheet of wet ice. But I got seated okay, and when I pedaled, everything moved like it was supposed to, and I didn't have to cling to the doorway for dear life like I was expecting. In fact, I could ride just fiine with one hand on the doorframe to assist in balancing, and even more surprisingly, I could let go for several seconds at a time, and sometimes even felt like I was making stable corrections, not just "I haven't hit the floor yet". It would be a bit easier, I think, if the rollers had more of a load hooked up to them, because fore/aft stability is an issue, where sometimes I start tipping forward and can't pedal fast enough to correct. Managed to work up more of a sweat doing this than I would have expected.

Nancy arrived while I was riding, and all I could think of to say was, "This is so cool!".

C • Unicycle Rollers... 5