Training Log Archive: biggins

Blue Long at Pacheco.
Sweet, 14 more km of side hills. I <3 BAOC terrain. My feet hurt a lot and had tons of blisters on the sides from yesterday, so even with a different pair of non-fitting shoes I was still jogging fairly daintily. The course was fairly uninspiring, in a "yay I get to contour again for half a km across a steep grassy hillside this leg" sort of way. A few mistakes today, or more likely hesitations, mostly cause I was tired and it was hot and I wasn't caring so much. qr

Also heard that the ski marathon on Saturday actually had really good conditions, and they changed the course so it wasn't so brutal on the hills (there's so much snow they couldn't groom under some of the powerlines), so the times were really fast. Oops. Looks like we picked the wrong sport for this weekend. It was still fun though, sort of.

Driving home started with the AC on full blast, then slowly turned down and down and off and then the heat was on and then the defroster and a solid windy whiteout snowstorm up the last hill to home. No chains needed though, or it would have been the full spectrum in one drive. Also sometime during the weekend the 8' x 8' x 15' pile of solid cornsnow on the roof outside my window slid, which must have been an awesome sound and probably scared the crap out of the people below, if it didn't also break all their windows. At least I'll have a view (and sunlight) from my desk again tomorrow, for the first time in four months.

C • Countouring 2

Blue Long - Splits

Blue Middle at Pacheco.
Not so tough, since we started late and there were trails beaten through the grass to every control. Only one mistake, on 7, and that was seriously because I was too distracted by thinking up snarky comments to write on AP about pointless trail-run-orienteering courses, so I dropped down too far up the reentrant and wandered around for a couple minutes. qr

Also running sucks. My feet hurt. And I'm all sunburned. First time outside the house without a wool hat on in six months, so the top of my head is totally fried, which hurts a lot. Seeing grass was kindof cool though.

Then Jonis and I drove up to San Jose for the hockey playoff game, which San Jose lost, by a lot. And they didn't even have the decency to start any fights about it.

C • Middle? 5

Blue Middle - Splits

Event: US Interscholastic & US Intercollegiate Championships
 

warm and slushy, but not too slow until the end.

They groomed the new snow from yesterday this morning, so it was still soft and cold, so I headed up the mountain since it was gonna be slow anyway. Windy and cold and drifted along the ridgeline, but I ran across two coyotes prowling around top end. Then hit some fanfreakingtastic crust skiing on the way down to get some terrain photos for the WC bulletins.

I've been waiting for the weather forecast to quit jumping around before figuring out the plan for the weekend, but it finally did and it looks super warm up here (swix makes a "dirty harry" wax? awesome). And I don't trust Royal Gorge one bit to groom that in any way thats passable. TD or TXC could pull it off, but for some inexplicable reason not RG. So we're gonna bail on the marathon and head down to SF to play summer orienteering for a couple days.

C • Dirty Harry 5

Early ski, due to some angry clouds rolling over the pass right now. Spring conditions at their finest, icy but soft.

Late ski with Jonis on the snowmobile road from Prosser. Conditions weren't too bad, the road was chewed up a little but there was usually a part of it that was still freshly groomed, or at least flat. Had some wicked stomach cramps for the last half, maybe too much lunch.