Training Log Archive: glewis

Spring Bloom AR with Kevin. First overall.

Early morning and a 3+ hr drive to Lake Anna State Park in VA. A few friends of mine did the 4 hr race last year and has positive things to say about it, so I was thrilled to make this 10hr work. The whole race fit onto a 1:14000 map, so the pre-race was easy and smooth for us.

Trek
We started really fast to get ahead of most teams on the way to the first CP, near the start. This leg had 6 CPs, and we hit them all well enough with a slight bobble on T3 (I think we just didn't see it as we came into the reentrant. We ran hard into the TA and transitioned to biking. We had actually taken longer than the "fast estimate" from the pre-race by a few minutes. Kevin had been concerned about keeping up with my speed, but this was a non-issue. As we were leaving on bike, a solo racer came in to TA; we were a bit surprised that someone we had never seen before was so fast on the trek.

Bike
We strategized with Matt Wilson pre-race about a good order, which meant that the first CP took a decent chunk of time to get, out near a historical site. We moved really quickly through the CPs here, only losing a little bit of time as Kevin repeatedly dropped his chain. We dropped bikes and bushwhacked for B1, and it wasn't the cleanest of moves. There also seemed to be a small misalignment between the map and trails near B4, but it only cost a few seconds. Leaving here we saw that same solo race again. Soon after we ran into Matt, who told us that the trail to B26 was littered with downed trees. He was right - we had to navigate 15-20 of them in the ~2km stretch of trail. After B7 we took a chance on a 300m bikewhack, which ended up being a great decision; we were able to ride through the woods for 80% of it. We finished off with B8 and B9 without issue and returned to the TA, making sure to finish as much food and hydration as we could. It was getting hot and I was very sweaty.

Paddle
The TA was super quick. I stuff in some more food and we left on foot for a <1 mile run to the paddle put-in. We moved at a nice run here. At the boats we got situated quickly and put on the water efficiently. The CPs were nicely spaced out, never much more than 1km apart. We saw that soloist for the last time on an early out and back, about 15 minutes ahead. Knowing that the two of us would paddle faster, we felt like we could extend the lead even more. The paddle was wonderful - I really enjoyed the lake and felt the benefits from all of my paddle training this winter and spring. Kevin did well enough too, considering that he hasn't paddled since his last race. We hit the 9 CPs without issue and arrived at P20, which was the furthest point and also held a map with additional trekking points. Again, we hit these very smoothly, but struggled greatly getting back to P20 from Z. RD Allen had warned racers about the deadfall in the area, and it was no joke. Crawling in and out of it I hit my head 3 times, once giving me a large brush burn. We did a pretty wild route to get back to the boat, as I had lost track of distance and bearing in the trees and was afraid that we would overshoot the boat. We got back in and paddled quickly back to the TA. There were no CPs, so we just focused on paddling quickly and eating/drinking. I did not feel well on the paddle. I think it was dehydration and overheating, but I was also nervous that it was from the knocks on my head (post-race I felt much better after eating and drinking, which ruled out any concussion concerns). We returned to the TA just under 3 hours after we left.

Trek
The final stage was set up as a large trek with very few trails. We struggled a bit with T7, as the trail that we found wasn't the one on the map. I was able to reorient us well and hit it after a few minutes. T10 was the worst of the day. We lost track of distance and time and turned into the wrong reentrant. The direction wasn't even correct, which helped me get us out of it. We found T10 but locating P3 on the water and then attacking from there. A highlight of the leg was T26, which had a very Swan-Island-esque feel to it! The rest of the leg went pretty well, but we did get fortunate twice when trying to aim off and accidentally hit the points pretty much dead on. We finished with T9 and ran hard into the finish from there. The whole race took just over 7 hours, but it was a ton of hard work!

The next full course finisher was Matt Wilson, who didn't finish until close to 9 hours. The soloist who we saw a few times early on had a miserable last trek and finished with only 30 minutes to spare before the cutoff. We enjoyed the post race food trucks and had plenty of time to get our gear sorted and cleaned up before watching the rest of the teams finish.

This was a great day in the woods. Broad Run is a real-deal race organization; this race was really well done and was a ton of fun. If they do something longer in the future it would definitely be worth the travel for those teams who are further away.

With Evan at home I've found my leadup to Endless Mountains to be a bit scattered, but this was a great check-in. I was able to race really hard and felt great for most of it and then again after only a day after.

Feeling much looser after the chiro today. Also, I imagine that this level of effort on the erg would have been impossible ~6 months ago.

Simple run at the nature center. Felt ok, better as I warmed up. My left hamstring is a bit ehhh.

Little spin around the neighborhood to loosen up the MTB. A few squeaks I need to take care of still. Through in some repeats of some steeper hills until I had to get Noah off of the bus; we raced home from there.

Event: DVOA Willows & Skunk Hollow
 

Orienteering at The Willows & Skunk Hollow. New-to-me park - lots of varied terrain and plenty of creek crossings!. I messed up briefly on 5 (way more faint trails in the woods than the faint trails on the map), was really slow on 6, made a very brief wrong turn out of 11, and took a direct but incredibly slow route to 17. All of those errors probably added up to ~5 minutes, but it's hard to know for sure as I was the fastest by more than 30 minutes.

I start way too fast and got tired too quickly- I haven't been sleeping well and my stomach wasn't great from dinner last night. Still, I really enjoyed this course. One highlight was 22, which was atop a very large pile of freshly shredded woodchips!

Orange course after a brief rest. Some similar controls, especially on the back half, but it felt like a different course. I was able to be really quick into a few repeats. My legs were very tired by the end, causing me to fall 3 times, including a comical fall on the way to 19 - I was staring at the map and running hard on a road, and my right foot went right to the bottom of a ~2ft pothole. I realized on my way in to the finish that my watch had stopped on the last fall missing about 5 minutes of the course.

This was a fun day - glad to be out and to have navigated well.

Orange - Splits

Green - Splits