Training Log Archive: kgeisen

Super headwind-y first 40 miles. And 29* at the start. What happened to our lovely 70's?

Lots of sections with thick gravel. Left my perpetuem bottles in the car, so I subsisted on Reese's and Mounds. Didn't drink enough water.

Open gym

Straight up fun. I think I was faster uphill than downhill most of the time, which is a mark of both my downhill wimpiness but also how much faster I am uphill on the SS. Super nervous with my hand around any trees but much better than yesterday.

Practice in yard with Jeff and Jacob.

Lost 3/3 to a bad team.

Event: SLOC - Meramec SP
 

Super fun meet today. Mickey and I went early so we could MTB after. Planned to run the course separately but that didn't exactly work out.

1-I took trail, he took road. I got there first.

2-I took trail, he went back out to road. I was pretty confident my way was better to dining lodge since he was giving away elevation only to climb that hill on the road, but I thought his ability to move faster would get him there first. Nope! But then I followed that up with expecting trail on the wrong side of the road and got behind; he got 2 first and was back on trail before I got off trail to punch.

3-I red-lined, he took some other route. I got there first, he was shortly after.

4-We both wanted to red-line, kind of gave up on the race separate plan.

5-My head was just not in this one. Had vaguely thought to go up to trail and then cut in from hilltop, but ended up staying S of trail. Not really seeing/noticing things well on the map -- oh! a powerline as we reached it and then for whatever reason I had it in my head that I'd need to cross the trail to get to the point. Part of the problem is that I kind of lost focus following along with Mickey, but eventually I kind of muddled it out and stayed high when he went around the bottom of the spur. I still undershot it and ended up having to walk a ways along the hillside to find the control.

6 - Planned to go up the hillside to catch the trail leading towards 6; judged distance really poorly and thought we were on where the trail should be way early then got distracted by the wrong reentrant. Lost a couple minutes there before deciding to go the rest of the way up to the ridgeline where - voila! - we found the trail. Initially overshot the pit in the reentrant (hazard of getting spoiled by easy sightlines with no vegetation.

7 - I planned to take the road to its high point/the saddle where we could cut in and attack from the hill. Mickey convinced me to cut in before that high point, and we ended up losing 20 minutes going down the wrong spur. So there we were, with our compasses making no sense with what we were seeing on the map and in front of us. He wanted to go back to the road and reattack; looking at the map I tried to figure out where we could be if we weren't at the right reentrant, and then it made sense to me. We backtracked down the spur and hit the right ridegline to the right reentrant. Dumb mistake, but I was pretty excited to be able to figure it out.

8- redline

9 - Took the ridgeline to the hilltop and attacked from there. A guy who started way behind us caught us on the way and passed. As we came up the hill, I even said "He's attacking way lower than I planned to," but still let myself get pulled over towards the wrong reentrant.

10 - back to the ridgeline/superhighway. Mickey was uncharacteristically dragging (big ride the previous day) and totally not into it, which made it much easier for me to lead without him racing ahead and (unintentionally) pulling me off my plans. Came in a little farther south of point than I wanted but found it w/o problem.

11 - took low route from 10-11 and this is where I started dragging a little. My feet were getting sore and rocky/off-camber terrain was less fun.

12-Tricky! Thought it was going to be just along the side of the great big spur, totally looking past the smaller spur poking off of it. Took longer than it should have. Leaving the control I was totally gloating about Mickey having an off day and me kicking his ass on the nav -- the words still coming out of my mouth -- when my hair got horribly tangled in a huge thorn bush. I couldn't have gotten out of there without help, so I had to switch gears from shit talk to asking for help. Karma.

Smashed my finger between handlebar and a tree less than 15 min in and spent the next hour being super timid. Definitely more technical riding than I'm used to; even easy trails are tricky. would be a fun trail to have closer and get better on. Second hour was better, rode some features.

Still had light, went back and rode an easy section again. I may have been less than enthused about this plan.