Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Event: ROC - Webster Park [2012 Series #2]
 

Routegadget:
http://www.vmeyer.net/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi?ac...

Brown course at Webster Park. I had consulted on the courses, plus I helped check out a few of the control points, so I was just doing this recreationally, rather than entering my age-group appropriate Green course.

Still, it was frustrating to make a major blunder, which was to accidentally skip the next to last control, then compound it by not noticing on the split printout that I had missed it, then compound it further by reading and responding to a text message from my son, before finally checking the results screen and seeing that I was a DNF. I quickly realized what had happened, and headed out to do that last two controls and then finish again.

My R knee is definitely complaining about the modest amount of running I did. Hopefully there will be no lingering after-effects.

I called everything a spike, including the 2nd to last one that I originally forgot to do, except for #8 (rootstock). I tried to attack it from an attack point 120 m to the west, which is way too far to expect to hit a point feature, especially given the vegetation (mapped light green but parts of it definitely med. green -- who made this map anyway??) which made it pretty much impossible to stay on a bearing. I finally made my way to the trail junction a little SE of the control, then found it easily. That should have been my original plan.

Walking to and from the Lilac Festival from my parking spot on Highland Pkwy to see Southside Johnny. Excellent! (The performance, that is, not necessarily the walk. My knee was still grumbling.)

Brown - Splits

Outdoor pickleball at the Webster Rec Center, with Paul, trailsnail, Cheryl, Kay, and May. I played 2 games R-handed, using a paddle that I had built up the grip to a larger diameter (having read that as a suggestion for tennis elbow issues playing tennis).

I meant to wear the GPS for the whole time I was playing, but forgot until the last game. Just for the heck of it, I put it on to see what a GPS trace of a pickleball game looks like. Nothing real exciting. It said I covered 0.3 miles during the game, at an average pace of 48:36 per mile. When I pull a GPS trace into AP, AP appears to guess what activity I was doing based on how fast or slow I was moving. For today's activity, it guessed that I was "mapping", an activity that usually has a similarly slow average rate of speed.

Afternoon walk with Homer on the Hojack Trail. Two stops at a creek for him to drink/swim.

AP said I had 262 feet of climb -- obviously not correct. I changed that to 50 feet, more reasonable.

My wife reported that I apparently had a dream last night, and a fairly odd one. In my sleep I stated, clear as anything according to her "The use of Forerunners is not permitted" or something to that effect. I wish I had some recollection of what the dream was about ...

I'm hoping it had to do with a rogaine rather than an orienteering event, because I'm all in favor of allowing GPS devices for regular O meets, but I totally support not allowing things like Forerunners in rogaines ...

C • dream 2

Mid-day walk with Homer, with a stop at the creek so he could have a dip.

Back yard only.

Walking from our parking spot to the main stage at the Lilac festival.

Walking from Lilac festival back to car.

The band we saw, Driftwood, was outstanding; very enjoyable. They're a young (20-something, mainly) bluegrass group, with a female fiddle player, a guitarist, a banjo player, and an upright bass player. All except the bass player are great vocalists.

To Finn Park and back, on a gorgeous day (60 degrees, low humidity, sunny, not much wind).

Video of a pretty decent Pickleball game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2DbxU_OnP8

Front yard only today. Other things I need to pay some attention to, so that backyard can wait ...

Interesting that most of the GPS tracks make pretty good sense, while a few have me mowing not only into the street but to the other side of the street, and to the neighbor's side of our driveway (and in the garage a couple of times). Although I guess that's not terribly surprising, because the errors are probably something like 20-30 feet, which for a Garmin Forerunner isn't all that unexpected. I should try it with the club's GPS (Garmin GPSMap 60CSx) to see if that's any better, next time I'm in possession of the club GPS.

Putting fliers for the Roch. Map Adventure under windshield wipers of a portion of the cars parked for the Dirt Cheap trail race at Webster Park.

An absolutely amazing number of cars, and an amazing distance some of them parked from the race headquarters.

I suspect I had enough fliers for less than half of the total cars there.

Tues morning pickleball. Only 8 people were there, about half the usual number, no one was sure why. My R knee is still a bit stiff and swollen but much better than a couple of days ago. It wasn't particularly bothersome.

I played all of the games left-handed (and actually did reasonably well, after the first game where I played terrible). I also tried hitting around with Kerry for about 10 minutes right handed, to somewhat gently start checking out my R elbow. It didn't feel too bad while playing. And it reminded me how much more fun it is to play right-handed than left-handed. I'll see how it feels later.

For about the last week, I've been following the exercises and other suggestions (ie, lots of ice, some heat, some compression) from a book simply called Tennis Elbow Exercises which I had read a good review about. Way too soon, I'm sure, to expect anything miraculous, but I figured I'd do a short test of how the elbow is doing by playing a small amount of right handed pickleball every week or so.

Streamering some controls for the Webster meet, and vetting some that had already been streamered. With Homer.

The usual amount of muddy areas that Webster Park has in the spring.

No bears, no deer, no cats, one dog.

As is usual, when I do course setting on a map I've fairly recently done (2 years ago in this case), I'm chagrined at the things that should be mapped differently/better. In most cases, it is the vegetation. Today, I noticed areas mapped as medium green that should be light green (or in some very small areas, white), and a couple mapped as light green that should be medium green.

In addition, although this isn't a case of mapping it wrong previously, there was one area where there was a trail I mapped as indistinct that went a medium distance into light green, then pretty much petered out. Now, not only is that trail a small trail rather than indistinct, but it goes at least three times as far, almost to another trail, and is distinct the whole way. I'm quite sure that wasn't a mapping mistake previously, because I recall that area exactly, and why I mapped the trail as indistinct and only for a fairly short distance. I did update the map to include this trail (and I updated the map in a very few spots for vegetation -- although I didn't want to get bogged down in map updates, and lose site of what I was there for, which was to check out control locations).

C • Bears? 5

Short walk with Homer over to the next street and around the block.

No bears.

Two other dogs encountered, one up close enough to sniff, and both dogs were reasonably cordial (lots of tail wagging, no barking or growling.)