Training Log Archive: GlenT

Event: 30 Years of Pond Mt
 

Run, walk and jog to the start and generally warming up. Not included is an additional trip from the assembly area to the car and back to get my control description holder.

Green course at WCOC one-day NRE at Pond Mountain. 5.3k, 180m. Nice course by Niels L-O, using some very nice woods. Mostly cloudy, low 60s and some breeze - good running weather.

Some days are good and some are not. Today was definitely in the “not” category. One really bad control, had a contact knocked out and re-tweaked my left ankle. The ankle tweak was only a minor distraction but happened early in the course. Between 7 and 8 a stick caught me in the eye and swept my contact out. I managed to find the contact on my cheek. I spent a few minutes trying to get it back in - it was folded but in the eye so I proceeded to 8 (it’s a distance vision correction and I can still see well enough to move through the woods). After I punched 8 I tried again and succeeded but added another couple of minutes.

The really bad control was the long leg to control 3. Lost map contact, too stubborn to turn around and figure things out, got on the wrong side of a mountain, climbed a lot to get back to where I could figure things out, finally got to a trail (the AT), ran up and down the trail including off the south end of the map (may have already been off the map when I hit the trail), started heading northwest on a compass bearing and ran into the walls about 400m south of the control which I successfully identified. Straightforward navigation from there but lost about 30 minutes exploring areas of the map which Niels hadn’t really intended for us to visit. Did fine on the rest of the course with small bobbles in the circle on 4,5, 6 and 9 but all on the order of 20-30 seconds.

Green - Splits

At Nockamixon SP starting in the Sterner Mill area at the southwest end of the park. Explored the Sterner Mill and High Bridge Trails along the Tohickon Creek then crossed the creek (using the “high bridge”) and ran some of the Quarry trail. Had the official park map and a printout of the OOM for the area. The OOM was significantly more accurate. Official trails were reasonably well marked but the trail names seem to refer to all the trails in the area rather than a linear trail (at one intersection the “Quarry Trail” headed off in four directions). Trails were quite muddy in places, but no falls today. Overcast and about 70F.

4 x ~600m @ 5:00/k pace with ~1 min recovery - on the road. Actual segment was about 580m according to the GPS watch and has an elevation change of about 7m (down for 1st and 3rd, up for 2nd and 4th). Stopped the watch instead of taking a split at the start of the 3rd one, so did some estimating. Splits: 250, 253, 257, 257.

Trail run at Evansburg SP, which turned out to be a bit more adventure than planned. I had the park map showing the trail network with the intent of working my way down to the “Eight Arch Bridge” crossing the Skippack Creek (a stone bridge built in 1792(!), repaired in 1874 according to Wikipedia which still carries Germantown Pike across the Creek). The trails didn’t go all the way to the bridge but it looked like only about a 300m bushwhack would be needed.

I started on some hiking trails which were more or less as mapped, taking me to a creek crossing on a “closed to motorized vehicles” bridge. The map showed a multi-use trail (people and horses, but no bikes) paralleling the stream from there. All I could find was a not-so-well-used footpath marked with a “no horses” sign - good enough, let’s see where it goes. The trail was muddy in places and I managed to slip and fall in the thickest, muddiest part. So most of one side of my body and of course both shoes were covered in mud (and my upper right arm got tweaked as I landed, so that’s gonna hurt for a few days). Continued on the trail for a bit until it disappeared, so had to head back the way I had come (the woods looked rather unpleasant for continuing along the stream, at least wearing shorts).

So, uphill on a paved road for a ways to see if the mapped trail there existed. It did but I was first fooled by an unmapped dirt road which turned out to be someone’s driveway. The trail I wanted was in a field paralleling the road, so I cut across and was on my way. The trail dead-ended at the creek (where I would’ve come out had the trail along the creek continued - apparently it does because there is a “no horses” sign at the beginning of a well overgrown place where a trail might have been).

Since I was at the stream I decided to take the opportunity to get some mud off and cool down a bit (it was sunny and low 80s). I was now about 300m from the Eight Arch Bridge and my planned bushwhack but it occurred to me that wading down the steam would probably be a lot more pleasant than going through the woods. So that’s what I did, never getting more than shin deep and managing not to fall in the water. The bridge was pretty impressive, about 200 feet long with 8 (duh) arches. Crossed the bridge to return on the other side of the stream where I knew ther were roads leading back to my car if the trails didn’t exist. The rest of the adventure was less eventful, although I did spend more time on asphalt than I wanted since some mapped trails didn’t exist. And of course about 10 minutes from the car I encountered some more mud and promptly fell in it, although quite less dramatically.