Training Log Archive: bishop22

1000 Days Crystal Relay on the Antenna Hill map. Nate led off our relay and ran well, although a mistake on the penultimate control switched a 30sec+ lead over Andrew Childs to a 2min+ defecit. Zach did quite well on the 2nd leg - just over 40 minutes for 3.1K of tough yellow/easy orange orienteering. Kathy Bannister ran the 3rd leg, and finished shortly after the "catch-up mass start" - they started the last 14 teams together (out of 34), but the order of finish was still the order coming across the line, no adjustments were added for late 3rd runners.

Since I had seen Boris run the early part of the 4th leg course, and C1 was actually visible in the distance from the hilltop that served as the start/finish area, I was off quickly on the mass start. I ran around just a bit, and almost beat Marty Hawkes-Teeter to the first control. I punched just behind him (and one other person slid ahead of me) at the next two controls, then I didn't follow them to C4, and wound up going slightly longer, plus I was slow on the big upill to the control, so I was down about a minute. I eventually caught and passed the other guy, but wound up over 2 minutes behind Marty. I guess I also caught 5 others who started before the mass start, so out team moved up to 16th. I'm not sure where I passed everyone - I passed a few people on running sections by walking slightly less on the uphills. I think I also passed a couple of people by spiking the control that Nate had trouble with. That control was followed by "The Wall", which was steep enough that I lost sight of the antenna at the top of the hill that was my aiming point. After the top of the hill, the other courses came to the finish, but we still had 4 controls up top. I thought I was alone, but as I left C18 (of 19), someone was coming right in to punch. I guess that made some adrenaline kick in, as I ended up finishing 50 seconds in front of him, even though I thought I was out of gas before I punched.

So, maybe this anti-taper stuff can work. Or, maybe these courses were "runners' courses", boding well for Nate, Zach and me. We're committed to the anti-taper now, as we are all running up a course tomorrow. Luckily it's "middle distance", which means only 7K for Blue (vs 6K for Red).

C • Anti-tapering? 3

Very brief warm-up, since I was not ready for the mass start. Warm-down was jogging thru the hail back to the car, as a thunderstorm moved in quickly, a little while after my finish.

Crystal Relay Leg 4 - Splits

1000 Days Sprint at the Gates of AMT Hell. Very poor navigation on a very difficult Sprint course. Eric Bone was the only one to go under 20 minutes, and not by much.

I was to anxious to get to C1 and overran it, punched after the next starter (30s intervals). I blew C4 way left, trying to run from the map instead of the compass. Overran C6 to the left (as did about a half dozen others), but recovered in reasonable time - it was just a foreshadow of my problems on the next leg. Again, I tried to be cute and run around left of a hill, but did not come back to the right correctly. My first clue should have been when I was hunting around for a couple of minutes without seeing anyone. After failing to relocate a few times, I finally noticed the dirt road which was only 60m past the control, and ran parallel to it to get back to the control.

The rest of the course went smoothly, but slowly, as my legs were too heavy to make it uphill without walking breaks.

C6 was a total disaster for Nate - he ended up around 48 minutes. The course was too difficult for Zach, but he did make it around (but it took around 100 minutes).

C • Nerves? 2

Warmed up with about 10 min of jogging - mostly with Nate. My warm-down consisted of jogging/walking the course backwards, starting when Z had been out 45 minutes. I spotted him just before C8, and followed him to C10.

Continuing the anti-taper for the upcoming US Champs, Nate, Zach and I headed out to the campgrounds for the hash/pizza party. The trail was all trail, and longer than I expected (and no beer stop). There was a chicken/eagle split, and Zach chose the eagle, which was probably a little more than he needed after the long sprint this AM. Nate and Andrew were the FRBs for much of the way, then they eased back to save something for tomorrow, since they will both be running the leadoff leg of the relay. I walked down Eric Bone (newly named "Head Butt" at his first hash, in honor of his stitches-inducing collision with Mike Smith at the WOC Sprint Qualifier) - nice to say that since it would NEVER happen on an O course.

Abbreviated circle included an A&W birthday down-down for Zach.

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).