Running warm up/down 5:16 [2] 0.77 km (6:50 / km) +10m6:25 / km ahr:120 max:151 shoes: O-VJ Integrator Spikes
Warmup on a cool, cloudy day, worried about my L-knee (patellar tendon) which was a bit sore on the warmup (and during the race) quite unaware I was about to embark on the scariest orienteering race I've ever done...
Orienteering race 1:43:56 13.45 km (7:44 / km) +500m6:31 / km ahr:161 max:177 shoes: O-VJ Integrator Spikes
About 20 minutes after I started Blue @ Mt. Penn, I began to hear some far away rumbling of thunder, no problem as long as the rumbling stayed quite far away.
At about 60 minutes, with the rumbling getting a bit louder, the sky began to darken, and darken, and darken, to the point where seeing the map required nearly stopping, and seeing one's footing in the rocky forests of Mt. Penn became rather tricky. A point where I might have gotten had it been about 45 minutes after sunset... My navigation began to be affected as checking the map & compass was getting difficult and I had a 300m attack to do. A bit creepy, but this was only stage 1.
Not surprisingly, it then began to rain. Fortunately this was mostly noise in the forest as the leaves above were holding the water just fine. For about 2 minutes. The rain continued to get heavier (still in the dusk-light), and I proceed to slightly miss my control to the west, with the darkness and heavy rain making it more difficult. And then the hail started. Very cool at first to see these marble sized hail stones hitting the ground, and in the midst of that and increasingly loud thunder, I managed to loop back uphill and find my control.
2 more to go, then I can hide in the car... Or should I simply hide now? You see, the hail had become heavier and larger and was starting to hurt, esp. when it clocked me on the top of the head. My running up a trail now included a hand over my head, and when I saw one half-golf-ball hail piece hit the ground in front of me - by far the largest I've ever seen - I began looking for a flat rock I could use as a helmet, but quickly gave up and began hiding against trees during the heaviest spells. And yet the worst was still to come.
As the hail began to subside, the increasingly loud thunder, which I'd been wishfully thinking was cloud-to-cloud, began to make itself visible with flashes of bright sky. Counting seconds from the flash to the boom (3 per km), I could tell the lightening was still 2-4km away, but as it varied in that range, the possibility of nearer lightning getting scary as I ran into a semi-clearing to get the 2nd to last control.
The best route to the final control was up a trail on the top ridge line of Mt. Penn, to the GO control on a local hill top on Mt. Penn. Not exactly the place to be during a lightning storm. So I took and around route hoping the lightning would get further away before I got to the control. And then flash, 1, crack-boom.... 300m away to the southeast, something just got hit. At which point I looked for a local depression and laid down in it to keep my profile low. As I laid there for about 15 minutes I counted 5 more strikes within a km, including one 150m away to the Northeast. Finally about 5 minutes after the last strike within a km I had counted, as Sandy Ahlswede came by, I got up to run to the last control and in - my car was just past those so I might as well punch them on the way.
The daytime-darkness and hail were pretty cool, but the non-trivial possibility of getting struck by lightning is not something I'd like to repeat...
As for the course, it was pretty nice for Mt. Penn, albeit a bit long. As usual for the summer it was fairly hot (until the hail came... :) My knee was strapped, and sore enough on the hills (up or down) that I was clealry favoring it, but it was pretty good afterwards giving me little pain on the stairs at home (I've been taping it since Thursday with a SalonPas patch thing which seems to help.) Time above is from the 95% of the course until I finally completely paused competiting to hide from the lightning.
Running16:55 [2] 2.98 km (5:41 / km) ahr:135 max:151 shoes: O-VJ Integrator Cleats
Shortest loop through VF park at 9am. Why short? Well, after two hilly runs in Prague w/o my knee strap, the L-knee Patellar Tendon pain is back. Notably more so this morning after a day off yesterday. So I strapped it and did a short run. It's still sore after, but no worse than before and it didn't get worse during, so I'll try these short runs for a bit (with the strap) and hope that gets it back to the normal of a month ago...
Running (Cobblestone, grass) 50:00 [2] 7.5 km (6:40 / km) +200m5:53 / km shoes: R-NB 891's
Looping around downtown Prague. Started up to the mirror labyrinth hill, then past some churches by the palace, then back down and along the river.
Yesterday we went to the mirror labyrinth. The name sounded pretty cool, but it was rather small. The mirrors were pretty high quality, which allowed the reflections to go pretty far and straight, but other than that, and a large diorama, it wasn't much different from a town-fair hall-of-mirrors attraction.
Hours of walking in Prague. Unusually, by the end of the day, Angelica was the most tired of walking, me 2nd most, and the kids still happy to explore (vs. the morning when it was hard to get them moving.) One of the more unique things we didn't plan on seeing was http://www.reon.cz/astro.php?sekce=3