Training Log Archive: Charlie

Middle distance race at Lake Moreau. Avoiding the contact lens, and decided it was not raining when I left the car, but it was raining pretty good by the time I got up to the start, and that turned out to be a disastrous eyewear choice. It was remarkable that I did as well as I did, given how little of the map I could see. Stopped a bit short on 1, but otherwise ok. Got to the right place on 2, but I had seen the cliff as being right down by the marsh, so I was a little perplexed with no cliff there. Then I figured out it was up a bit and met George M near there.
3/ By now the glasses were very badly fogged, bad enough that I had to take them off to see where I was going, and put them on and look for a dry spot to try to figure out where to go. A little right of the line around marshes, then left to get up cliff and went right to the correct dot knoll, but didn't look far enough around for the flag. So some milling around until Geoman showed up again and showed me the bag.
4. My best navigational leg. Across the slim marsh, then left of the marsh before the flag and on the slim strip between the marshes and in. Saw people coming down from the right.
5. Couldn't figure out where to cross, and it turned out I could cross the big marsh by hopping from tussock to tussock. Only problem with that strategy was I got across and tried to look at the map but my hand was empty. I had to go back about a third of the way into the swamp to retrieve the map. Then some copious wandering N of the control before mercifully figuring it out.
6. Couldn't see three marshes, so went two, and a little disappointed not to find it. Press on and it was on the third.
7. Trail to the bend, then straight across the marsh on tussocks again. More or less straight to it, but with very little confidence, and saw a flag I thought was facing too far N, and was maybe sooner than I expected it, but luckily it was mine.
8. Another pretty good leg, under the circumstances. Across the trail and the stream, up some cliffs, then looking for the highest ground and the slot in the cliffs up top. Straight to it.
9. Feeling more confident here, but stopped just short and ended up drifting right toward the marsh where I decided I had to go back up, easy then.
10. I could see how slowly I was moving when Oslug went zipping by me, but I caught back up to her at the marsh, where she was contemplating which direction to go, and I had already decided to go right. A little extra climb, but I didn't want to go through the finish.

map

Middle Brown Y - Splits

Event: 2013 U.S. Individual Championships/Team Trials
 

Morning yoga class with Rhonda and the girls and special guest Leslie. Very fine, and the girls had to leave early so it was cut short to 45 minutes, which works much better with my attention span.

Sprint course at lake Wakapominee scout camp. Very nice. Not moving fast, but no real mistakes, so I hung on for second behind PG. Lucky.
1. Started to run, but couldn't really see the trail on the map, so after a bit I stopped dead to see it, and then saw the stonewall in front of the trail, so I could keep going and spike it.
2. Up the hill, a few steps on each of the switchbacks, but very slow climbing, from reentrant on second trail segment and straight up to it.
3. Not much enthusiasm for going up and over, so went around to the left. I thought I might be losing time doing this, but had the second fastest split. I might have had the fastest, but when I saw the code I panicked and looked around, because I was expecting 143 (not having looked). Looked back at the map and saw 126 was right and punched.
4. Through the spectator area and across. Stopped to look at the small building first. Should have known better. Probably cost 8-10 seconds. Ross went by at a pretty high rate of speed.
5. Ross disappearing quickly.
6. Cut off the main trail one trail early, through the woods to the bend in the trail and down to the building. No control! Read the clue, looked at the map a little, then back to the bag. Map doesn't show much of a boulder cluster. Another 8-10 seconds.
7. Straight.
8. Started left along trail, then through the woods aiming for the clearing, hit it right on. I was going to go down the small trail, but easier to aim right for the flag.
9. Trail.
10. Trail for a bit, then cut off on the trail to 7, thinking it was the trail to 6 and left at the bend. Pretty surprised when I got to 6, but then ok.
11, 12, F, just run as fast as I still can. Worked out well for me, because the splits revealed that I was just behind Rick W after #10.

Map

Sprint Brown - Splits

Dog walking with R&S and our house guests Dennis, George and Leslie. Excellent company.

Rhonda's morning class. A bit better than Monday, but maybe because I got there a bit late, cleaning up after the dog, who had a digestive lapse this morning, threw up her breakfast.

C • Glad 5

Dog loop with R&S. The way the day looks now, this could be it. Back to back calls scheduled.

Not much time. Just a few laps of the hospital loop, one to warm up and then three faster. A little R hamstring tweak on the first faster one, so backed off a little. A little tender now, but not bad. Gentle, gentle.

Rhonda's morning class. First time I'm several months I think. Very hard in my current condition. Seem to have jammed my shoulder a bit when I took that hard fall yesterday.

Class would probably be a good thing for me to keep up for a while.

Event: WCOC Pond Mt
 

Beautiful day at Pond Mtn on the Red Course. Drove out with Bill Duncan, pleasant company. Generally finding controls fine, but navigation was a little loose. Only one big mistake, at #8, but had to look around a bit on a few of them when I got to the right general area. The only person I saw out on the course was Jenny Hawkins, Tiny Feet's grandmother. She was heading uphill toward #6 when I was going down toward 5, and then I passed her on the way down toward #7, although she had a different control there.

Compression socks kept my calf happy, but the back was aching and I wasn't able to run at all fast. 1 and 2 were fine, going on trail as much as possible. Took a hard fall between 1 and 2 and had to lay there a while until the shock of it wore off. 3 and 4 were a tough climb. All that bike riding didn't prepare me adequately for how hard that was. 5 I stopped a bit short and had to look, but just kept going and eventually got there. 6 I stopped short and looked around passing the big line of bare rock, but kept going and banged right into it. 7 I was a bit off to the left and had to stop and look until I saw it. 8 was the only significant error. I was too far right, and then climbed too much until I realized what was going on. Had a harder time coming back down! The rest were pretty unremarkable, running pretty good routes and finding them just fine. For the long leg to 13, I realized that a road/trail approach would be the fastest, but wanted to do more in the woods. I angled toward the Trail heading N and left it after the bend, contouring around the worst of the hill and going not far from 14 in the process. Very tired in the latter part, but hustled a bit to stay under 100 minutes.

The map with route. Nominal distance 6.9K, so I seem to have done a bit extra. More extra than I would have guessed.

Red - Splits