Training Log Archive: RLShadow

First bike outing of the year. Had the bike tuned up which involved the shop taking everyone off of the bike and cleaning it well which it really needed.

I forgot to start the GPS until about 1.7 miles into the ride. Entered time and distance from the bike's odometer.

Felt pretty bad the first couple of miles, then only slightly bad the rest of the way. Typical first time out.

Monday night indoor open play at the Rec Center. I must have been playing pretty lousy, because I lost my first 5 games, all with different partner combinations! Finally won my last game, Ron and I against Linda H. and Diane M.

Event: ROC - Dryer Road Park Regular Meet / MTB-O
 

Green course at Dryer Rd.

Not too sure about having a map with no trails which has contours and vegetation that aren't particularly accurate. Of course I'm the one the blame for the contours and vegetation issues. I do recall that the base map contours were distinctly sub-par by today's standards. They were LIDAR but they were quite crude, and actually no better than USGS contours. Doing a re-map with new and better LIDAR (if available) would be in order.

Main issues were with #4 (first found a control that wasn't on my course, then found my #5, then using #5 as an attack point, found #4), and with #12 (nothing terrible, but came out to the right (east) of the side reentrant and I wasn't sure if I was to the right or the left of the control. Decided to head downhill (right) a bit, then sensed I was too low, so headed back uphill and found the control. Not real clear on the description which said lower part of the reentrant, as it seemed pretty much in the middle of the reentrant.

Finished 8th out of 15 finishers (and 18 starters).

Around the big block, on a cool, slightly drizzly evening.

Green - Splits

Outdoors, at Webster Park.

From North Ponds Park.

To Finn Park, around the field, stopping at the stream, and back.

Started off kind of cool, had long pants and a long sleeve shirt on. By the time I got back, it seemed much warmer although I think it was still only 58. But I had wished I had had shorts and a tee shirt on by that point.

More moving dirt around, at our rental house.

Landscape work at our rental house (basically, moving wheelbarrows full of topsoil from the pile at the end of the driveway where it had been delivered, to the low spot in the back yard).

Thursday drop-in play at the Rec Center.

Rochester Map Adventure. Scored 75 points.

I of course had had plenty of time to study the map, but I still didn't have a highly detailed plan of what order to do controls in. I did have a basic strategy mapped out in my mind though, which was (1) get everything within the Inner Loop, as that was a fairly high density of points; (2) get all of the controls at U of R and the cemetery, as that included seven 2-point controls; (3) get all of the controls in and around Highland Park, which was another high-density area; and then finally (4) get as many controls in the South Wedge as I had time for.

So I did the Inner Loop controls first, doing all of them except #2, which was right next to the start and which I'd walk past on my way back at the end. I had a rough goal in mind of taking no more than an hour to do the Inner Loop controls, but it wasn't based on any sort of distance measurement. But sure enough, as I was walking across the pedestrian bridge over 490 leading into Corn Hill, my watch said it was exactly an hour at that point.

I next did the 5 controls in Corn Hill, and then the long walk along the west side of the river to the U of R with only one control along the way -- but it actually didn't seem as far or as tedious as I had thought it would. Then the U of R controls, then ducked through the tiny opening in the fence into the cemetery, at the SW side of the cemetery. I had a navigation issue going from 93 to 92, partly due to a couple of guys handing out right on the route I had planned to take. Not wanting to invade their space, I took a different route than I had planned, and got way off course. I actually would have been better off at that point to forget about doing 92 -- the time I saved would have given me time at the end to get at least 2 additional controls.

Next was the Highland Park area controls. Then I headed over to the Field St area, did a few controls N of 490, then worked on the South Wedge, and worked my way back.

All in all, it was a nice outing and I felt reasonably good about my strategy. However, Ali Crocker got 11 more points that I did (in 3 hours!), and according to her log, she covered 16 miles, which is exactly what I covered (in 5 hours). So that would suggest that if I had used Ali's strategy (and I'm not totally sure what that was, although I know it included getting all 12 of the 2-point controls), I would have gotten 11 more points out of the same number of miles covered.

Around the big block. New shoes, just purchased this morning at DSW.

Gosnell field, with trailsnail. Trying out new shoes.