Training Log Archive: bishop22

Event: US Night Champs
 

Hiked from Lake Marie in the Snowy Range, up the Medicine Bow Peak trail. We planned on going 1 hour up, max, but when we got to the hour mark, the peak seemed to be teasing us, so we kept going. 15 minutes later we saw the real peak in view (the first was false), so we decided to keep going - the peak turned out to be a little farther up: 1:28 in total. Zach and I stayed on the trail, but Nate scrambled up the last 100m or so to the actual peak. The trip down went quicker than expected - it didn't feel like an hour. A little over 1/3 of the way down, we ran into 5 Amish girls that we had passed coming up - they were planning to hike past the peak, down the other side, and around the lakes (a longer, but flatter return route). I suggested that they may want to just turn around - they had been out over 3 hours, so they were still probably 1.5 to the peak.

After the main hike, we stopped down the road and had my first-ever August snowball fight (well, Zach nailed Nate from point blank). Can't believe that there could still be snow, with the sun beating down on it and the number of rain storms they get here.

5 minutes with Zach, then 10 before my start. My warm-down was limited to 5 minutes of walking after midnight.

US Night-O Champs on the Light of Cheyenne map outside of Laramie. BTW, I actually did see the light of Cheyenne (~40 miles away?) during the race.

I struggled on the first control. I got distracted by a green control (turns out it was their C2), and lost focus. I circled back to that control and it was obvious where it was, so I was able to get to C1. C2-C5 went quite smoothly. I actually led some people into some of those controls. I had a reasonable (although zig-zag) approach for C6, and it was going smoothly until the batteries in my light started to die. I had to change the batteries, which cost me time, and more importantly, focus. I recovered with a pretty clean C7, but C8 was a disaster - I tried to ignore others, since I took a different approach, but that backfired, since, in hindsight, there was a clear convergence going on. C9 was just tough going, but that was just a warm-up for the difficulty in leaving C9.

Nate finished 9 seconds out of first. His biggest regret was his hesitation in approaching the last control: he aimed right of the control to hit a fence, then went left, but had second-thoughts, and lost time. Zach was also 2nd - missing by 44 seconds, and was about 9 minutes behind the M-12 winner on White.

Night-O - Red - Splits

Red course at Day 2 of the Western States Champs on the Superfly Marsh map. Got off to a good start, slow but solid for the first 3 controls. Really struggled on 4 and 5 - big mistakes. Then leaving C7, I put my hand down on a cactus and got over 30 needles of various lengths and diameters embedded in my hand - some were easy to pull out, others are still in there nearly 4 hours later. Did a little better in the next section, but did a face plant leaving C11 and that caused me to lose focus and run too far to C12. C14 was bad news, I spent a lot of time stopped, looking at the map, and still managed to miss big, but didn't think I had, since I found a control on my line that was on the correct feature, but I was off by probably 150m east. Then I promptly overran C15. C16 was looking good, but I got distracted by a control at the top of a reentrant, way to my left - foolishly, I went and checked it, so the older woman that I had caught before C10 (and fell behind before C14, and passed again), beat me to the punch. I did manage to pass her again, and caught Cristina (again) at C17.

Zach put in a solid peformance on White, although Ethan Childs beat him by about 8 minutes. He only made 1 big error - going too far off a trail to get to boulders that were only halfway to his control, and were about 3 times the correct distance off trail - that is where Ethan went by him (had started 4 minutes after Zach).

Nate ran fairly well - finished 2.5 minutes behind a 79-point Orange runner. He may have those minutes in him later on Thursday, when he runs Orange again.

About 5 minutes with Nate/Zach, then 12 on my own and 8 warm-down.

Red 2 - Splits

After 5:30 Mass, what else could Zach, Nate and I do, but head out to the old Permian Sins map that Dick loaned us. As we were on our way to park in the lot near the finish from 8/16/99, we found out that the sheep do, in fact, own that section of Happy Jack Rd. So, we backtracked and parked closer to I-80 and played around with Green controls 9, 8, 7, 6 and 9 (again) from that meet - each of us leading a leg or two. Very different O'ing here - there was basically no green on the map, but much of the white was various shades of green, and the visibility was almost nil. I guess we now know what sage is - there were tons of little evergreen-ish bushes that Nate found particularly annoying.

We saw a sign of the subhumans that Swampfox writes about. They had bagged themselves a metal folding chair and left it for dead near C6. There was also a half-filled water container near the control location (which was a water control), but the container was not 7 years old.

We also got to experience another Laramie treat - as we got to control 9 the second time, the wind, which had been non-existent, kicked up pretty good, and the temparature immediately dropped 10+ degrees. Need to keep that in mind when packing for the Night-O.

No time to run at lunch - they kept me too busy to punish me for my upcoming vacation.

Awful 45. Opened with 2 doubles and was OB on 4 again - what's up with that? Had 3 pars, but missed a 2-footer for par on 6.

GTA with Erik, DV, JV, Darren and Leo. Over to Highland and picked up the trail parallel to 590 - comfortable 7:20-ish pace. Then we picked it up a bit and I started to struggle to hang on at 6:50-ish the rest of the way - I fell off a couple of times (before Leo), but they let me catch back up and I was fine the last 1.2 miles.

C • When do you leave for 1000 days? 3

44 - went OB to take a 7 on 4, missed a lot of par putts (including a 2-footer on 6), but made a 4-footer for a birdie-2 on 5 (shot just missed the pin on the way in).

Event: Rocky Mountain 1000 Day
 

Unplanned rest day - meetings scheduled on top of training time, then I had to mow the lawn and Huntz was in town with his family for the Bills camp, so it was pizza and beer for dinner, leaving no chance for a late jog.

5 x 1 slice of Cam's. Hard!

XC Camp at Webster Park - ran fairly easy with the faster intermediate group (included Nate and the Riegers), until I stopped to check on Ashley's rolled ankle, after which I couldn't track them back down.