Training Log Archive: iansmith

Setting the first 13 of 21 controls on the March CSU semi-permanent course at the Blue Hills. I was compelled to significantly redesign parts of the course because I felt certain features I had chosen were too bingo-y, especially small reentrants formed by small bobbles in the contours. I was moving a bit sluggishly, but I spent quite a bit of time standing around, checking nearby features, and verifying my position. The 1:15 scale is very difficult to read for technical areas.

I set with a bland orange streamer tape that is hard to see; I will probably run the course and place a more exotic color, like neon green or pink streamer tape.

I started almost two hours later than I planned, and it turns out that I-93 traffic into Boston is miserable as late as 10 AM. I'm inclined to confine my course setting to 2-5 AM.

C • Orange Tape 4

Biking to Peter's Hill via the insidious Washington St. I arrived about fifteen minutes late.

I arrived for our CSU training, which consisted of two 2.5 km sessions each with a set of 5-6 hill controls and a set of 5-6 "forest" controls. Unfortunately, I had designed the forest controls to be too difficult to reasonably accomplish at night, and in some areas which were nigh impossible to traverse. Ross attempted some (without a headlamp, even) of the more arduous controls.

I found that I was too wasted from earlier activity in the day and from sleeplessness to train effectively, and I aborted after 2 sets of hill controls and 1 of forest controls.

In my judgment, Peter's Hill is not useful for a technical training session because the park is too simple and lacks sufficiently many point features for any complexity. Some possible workouts for Peter's Hill:

- a purely physical hill exercise; up and down, with some nominal navigation

- a dog-bones exercise incorporating significant climb, and largely based on the hill

- (Night only) a compass exercise: starting from the top of the hill, aim for a point at the base of the hill based on compass only, trying to stay on track while descending at high speed. Run back to the top and repeat with a different point. Since the objective is a compass exercise (and a physical hill workout), the points don't necessarily need to be set on point features, provided they are accurately placed on the trail encircling the hill. It has to be at night so you cannot see the points while descending.

- a massively fast sprint, involving lots of trail running (e.g. a Park-O).