Training Log Archive: Nadim

I started from Colonel Zadok Magruder HS, heading out to field-check North Branch Park. I carried a folder and my better GPS in hand.

North Branch Park, MD. When I left this morning, I had to take Samantha to a birthday party--it was at a Rock Climbing place in Laurel, MD, so not really close. I had rushed getting ready so by mistake I had grabbed used batteries for my GPS, and I'd forgotten to bring along the orienteering clothes that I had already prepared. That meant traipsing around edges of the sometimes thorny fields with no protection, and not having a great concept of where I was. My watch GPS was working so the time wasn't lost completely. Being precise with point features and some linear ones was difficult. I was trying to stick to easier things like field edges, only the edges in this area of succession forest with subtle contours, was the difference between rough open and semi-rough open. That wasn't so easy with bushy things mixed-in. I also got further down an open forested reentrant system with some ditches and rock features. I was only partly able to link-up to where I had been before, before my old GPS batteries died. Feeling ineffective and needing to run, I stopped and decided to run.

North Branch Park. It was already warm but I hadn't been feeling it too badly. I started out running over to part of the map where I had to end field checking on an earlier outing--I lost the intermittent trail briefly but picked it up by the main creek. Going north along the west side of the water, I realized that I hadn't run this part of the park in a long time. It was nice and I saw a few mappable features. Much was obscured by leaf cover. I did see some nice forest along the way and as I climbed out of the valley. I hit the fields where it was hotter again, and took what amounts to a perimeter route. There used to be a better defined trail but most of what I ran on was grass and more like a ride between semi-rough open terrain, and forest. The grass sometimes had tufts. In one place, the essence of a trail disappeared completely. I struggled to keep moving. However, I knew that running in the heat would be good and much needed acclimation for what's to come when it really hits summer. It was 87 F and humid when I finished--normal temperatures for July and August, not April.