Training Log: CleverSky

Ahern State Park, Score-O (really a Visit-All, since we all did), 1st place. The competition wasn't too tough, since Alar elected to do the two sprints, and Ernst just showed up at the end to pick up controls. It was unpleasantly muggy in the morning, but got much nicer as the day went on. It was quite windy, so Nancy and I decided not to take the kayaks out on the lake. I did jump in for a cooling dip, though.

Pretty good month of June, one close second place and four firsts. I don't think I've ever done that before.

Not enough to be worth logging, but I got my father's 1950 Sieber racing bike together enough to ride, and took a little spin around the block.

Bike to Work Day, on the Incubus. Cool, delightful morning. Heading in this direction, I was sure that I had the route worked out, but I outsmarted myself again. There was one route through Devens (on Givry St.) that looked fine in the photos, although Google Maps wouldn't let me run a route through there. Turned out to be blocked by an uncrossable fence, and I had to back out. Then when I did get to Mirror Lake, I was surprised to find that a road that GM had shown as okay turned to dirt as it approached the beach. Then there were remnants of broken pavement before it degenerated to a jeep trail... then a large footpath. On my way through, I came unbelievably close to a young deer that tried evading me a couple of times by scooting a short distance up the trail and waiting to see if I'd stop. I kept riding (not really road bike conditions, but you keep it slow and use a low gear) and tried guessing my way through, but I made a wrong choice and the unpaved conditions continued, until I spotted a clearing up ahead that I hoped was where I was intending to go, but it was actually the golf course. Rode on the cart paths until I found a road, which dead-ended to my right but continued on the left, so that's the way I went. I soon came to a spot that I recognized, remembered where I was from last night, and concluded that the dead end I had seen must have not actually been one. I rode back, and sure enough, it was actually a tight, blind corner, and I was in fact very close to where I needed to enter the woods.

Free breakfast at work, and a free bike bottle. Six of us at this facility rode today, and three of us were from my software group. I was quite happpy with how it went, and will likely do it more times this summer, and I've now worked out the proper way to get through Devens, so it should go much more smoothly. I didn't make my 90 minute target this time, because of the extra (very slow) distance, but It should go fine henceforth.

With Nancy on the Merrimack at sunset, in the orange boat. It's hard to notice that there's any current when you're out there, but the speed graph sure makes it clear.

Tomorrow is Bike To Work Day at my place of employment. It happens that I have something I want to do after work tomorrow that requires the use of my car, but... they only said that tomorrow is bike to work day, not bike from work day. As I live somewhat further from the office than most of the people who signed on for this, I felt that 40 miles of riding plus a full day of work was more than I was really interested in. So I split it up: I put the Incubus in the car this morning, rode home tonight leaving my car there, and tomorrow I'll ride back to work.

I was quite pleased with the route that I scoped out, all low-traffic back roads with good pavement. The cool trick was getting across the railroad just north of Rte. 2. I scoped it out last night, a short trip through the woods walking the bike on a trail, with one hitch: an 8-foot tall chain-link fence with three strands of barbed wire on top. It's the old perimeter fence from when Devens was a military base, but it's not maintained, and a tree conveniently fell across it and made a low spot that I could get the bike over. The part between the splits is where I was off the bike. This shortcut saved a whole bunch of distance.

I was doing this on map memory, and missed one turn (and as I went by it, I was think that maybe I was supposed to take it). As a result, I ended up at the golf course, and took a dirt path through the trees to get around it, then when I was back on pavement, the way I wanted to go was flooded, and another path that I tried dead-ended in weeds, but I eventually got back on track and popped out pretty close to where I wanted to.

I'd had a notion that I could do this ride in 90 minutes, so considering this was in the uphill direction and I wasted a bunch of time in Devens, I expect I should be able to easily make that target on the return trip.

Harris Center, Blue, 7.9 km, 1st place out of... 1. Yeah, I was apparently the only idiot who elected to do Blue, but at least that means Alar didn't set it for no reason. Muggy and buggy. A couple of the non-spiked controls were just poorly executed routes, though I still went directly to the controls. A few others I got close, but had to fumble around for a while to find the right feature. And on a couple of them, I was just wandering in the wilderness for a while trying to figure out where the hell I was. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that the course printing was very red, and in the shade I had trouble distinguishing it from black. I even started out in the wrong direction because I only saw the first digit in the number "19", but Alar made a helpful wisecrack that straightened me out. It was difficult to drink at the water stops, because the mosquitoes were so fierce (I had put on plenty of bug spray, but after 10-15 minutes it had become completely ineffective). At control #5, 25% of the way through the course in terms of number of controls, more than an hour had elapsed, and I was thinking it could be a really long day (though 4-5 was a very long leg). All in all, a pretty pathetic showing, I honestly didn't have a lot of fun, and I seriously considered DNFing numerous times, but I toughed it out, and I don't regret having done it. (Whether I'd make the same choice in conditions like that in the future is a different matter.)