Training Log Archive: Mr Wonderful

Took Barbara's yellow pirate canoe around Kent Lake for a great paddle on dead calm water.

Did not start from ILRA because some tri dude was pretty sure they got exclusive parking lot use until 1 pm and I wasn't feeling the 400 m portage.

Couldn't quite get to a sustained 5 mph, but did alright considering both paddlers had quality yesterday.

Event: Cuyahoga Valley National Park Python Goat
 

Event: Get Lost!! in Henry Coe
 

Drove to down to NEOOC with Andrew for the long goat

My grand vision of being well prepared fell apart when some car repair extended to 1:30 am. 5 am wake up came fast.

What was not fast was me. Given my physical state I should have dropped down to the middle. Instead I stuck with the long. I felt awful 1/4 of the way to #1!

Since I was slow, that minimized mistakes, although I managed to overshoot #3 despite seeing Sherpes's correct exit. I was very alone by #4.

The course as fantastic- confounding layout and nice running woods (if you could run). Bobble at three joined by 24 (wrong spur down to creek) and a couple other hiccups or careens.

Very glad to have gone down. Thanks NEOOC!

QR (blacker track over Sherpes route) shows other quirks:

1 - which was faster? CW or CCW?

3 - oops

You can see my water stop en route to #7 - (I drank full cups at all three stations)

8 - not sure what I was doing going to the wrong clearing on a slow route. Then I stood about 15' from it and didn't see it, doubled back to the other forest bump, finally argh. Should have skipped

10 - I thought I could use the high speed brain off. 180 bpm to jog downhill on the trail off the road to #11 - not a good sign

14 - saw my first competitor in a long time. He helped a little as I was a bit right.

15 - other competitor gave me a nice target to #15 and helped with 16

17 - Those lines aren't kidding - it's a drop into that creek bed!

18 - oof, hill
19 - oof, hill
20 - oof, hill. two small breaks on the way up. :)
23 - woah, massive fatigue strike climbing up - hands on knees that might explain the
24 - wrong spur! Oops. Didn't notice the west one, so I when I saw one I took that instead of north one. Should use compass more. Took a few seconds to figure out the swamp/creek/rocks to confirm my oops
25 - missed left, came back from road
26 - fun, gave good help to mid? team who missed it from the bottom
29 - A deer saw me inspecting various rootstocks. I thought she might run away, but then she was more like "ah screw it" and continued to snack
F - tried to muster some energy. Considered more beeline but too much stuff to jump over. Not sure if rounding bend helped.

C • Nice run! 4

C • I knew your trip to Cuyahog... 2

Python Goat - Splits

Like running in a sauna. The claimed 67 deg didn't seem much like it; I would believe the 96% humidity.

Family wanted Salsaritas; I wanted to be lazy and not drive anywhere.

Then I realized I could do a point-to-point bike ride. Woo woo

It was intended to be casual, but I passed a guy, then I later heard him rattling behind me, and I couldn't shake him, so I yielded at the big northernmost climb on Yellow, but he said, "No man, your pace is good! I'm practicing keeping up!" Well game on!

So I hammered out to the bridge over the Huron, where I took a Gatorade breather. He passed, then I finished my drink, and ran him down, proudly passing by taking the rooty side of one of the uphills. Then he sat on my wheel most of the way back to the main lot.

He retired there, so I took a more leisurely ride out to Spring Mill Pond on Blue.

Trying to be ready for anything, I practiced clothed immersion and swam from one end to most of the other and back (but no shoes today), with only occasional and accidental toe grazes. Wee cramp just before the end.

Back to the ranch. I tried to ride down one of the steep soft sand hills, but couldn't quite do it. Maybe with the seatpost lowered, it would be possible.

I see the Thunder Rolls results are up.

My exhaustive analysis suggests we were:

Not fast to the put in (10th overall, up from ~16th after the ropes).
Paddle was okay - five minutes off Rib, but 66 back from Alpine Shop

Which got us into 7th

Bike from boat to trek was inconsequential (still roughly 7th into trek)

Rib were the CP monsters at around...estimating...18 mins/cp. AS was 20 mins/CP. We were ~23 ish. (I forgot how many CPs so my spreadsheet has 28 on trek as placeholder until I can jog my memory.) Our 23 mins per would get worse if we had more time to complete the arduous and dispersed northern section.

Our traditional leisurely ride and trek was 40 minutes off the fast teams, and 18 back from the Fragile team - very midpack!!

Short of becoming super human, there's no touching the top two entities - at our rate of ~3 per hour on the trek, even getting two hours back in section #1 still leaves us 5 cps short - we'd need to pick up a lot of bike time and an hour of paddle time to have enough to clear, and even then you're still 3rd entity/4th overall, same as you were.

So for 2016, phone in the training and hope for no MRA again? :)

C • Wrong- 7

Dog #1 does not like to walk away from the house. So he goes about a block, then I carry him a block, then he'll walk the rest of the way home.

C • Funny! 1

I figured I should bang out a long run before the goat.