Training Log Archive: Tundra/Desert

The Middle race of the Team Trials. I ran well and fast, saw almost nobody in the woods. The result is the best I could have hoped for.

The course and the map were excellent. The length needs to be measured, the climb is from the route (the Polar noised up).

I visited 16 of the controls at Hawn (Day 3 of the Trials). It was raining intermittently, so I tried to stay out of the woods. All the bags were hung in the right places, at the correct height. I was going to move Blue Control 4 a tad, but then returned it to where it was; no tree in the more correct location. See Randy's blog for more; some people had a problem with the control.

The climb is from the map, the Polar gave a number that seemed too small in comparison with its own data from the test run. I do think Zoran deviated from the exact heights of the base map to show relief features more vividly, but not that much.

After the vetting run, I dragged 6 gallons of water for 40 minutes, then another 3 gallons for over an hour, then placed White course streamers... in all, probably a 5500-kCal day.

23 ticks found while in the shower, most attached. Have to doxy when I get back home.

Blue - Splits

Event: US Team Trials
 

The Falcons are done, both of them. I took them to STL but decided not to use.

Received a confirmation from Mal Harding today that we indeed got the credit for Control #38 from the US Rogaine Champs.

Team Trials Day 1: Sprint. I literally got off the airplane, on the light rail, off at UMSL and ran. I ran as well as I could given the rogaine five days prior; I figure the hit to my speed from that exercise was about 1 minute even. And, I made one stupid mistake and one not-so-good route choice.

Distance is a very rough guess; the climb is final, from the Polar, augmented by route analysis. Agrees 100% with the course setter's estimate, but the latter can only be made valid by inserting one contour across the stairs we traversed on the legs #9–#10, #15–#16; I assume the contour was omitted for legibility.

Sprint - Splits

What a difference some food and sitting on a chair make! I seemingly recharged to a good fraction of energy available in the Universe, and kept hauling for most of the second loop. We blew the first control of the loop, upon receipt of the second and last navigational opinion from Roger. After that, we navigated cleanly.

I was feeling better and better, thanks to a cool night and regular infusions of caffeine pills. But, our pace was not so great, and I started to figure out the controls to drop about midway through the loop. I also towed Roger on one uphill leg. It looked like we had to drop 4, but we sped up in the morning and figured out an option to still get one or two of those four.

But, as we got down to the plain, same elevation as the HH, Roger called it quits. He was almost ready to throw up. At the same time, I got a giant blister—one of many, but only the first really painful one. So, we headed home, finishing 53 minutes early. We certainly had time for one, and possibly two, more controls.

Team DART beat the crap out of us, getting all but one. Given ideal circumstances, we still wouldn't have got them all. Distance is an estimate, climb is fudged from the Polar data.