Training Log Archive: BigWillyStyle

Event: Desert Run 2016
 

5:38/km

Desert Run, Day 1. RG

A fast course in the extreme, with nearly unlimited visibility and runnability. Fairly simple navigation, with lots of large rock features - though there were some trickier bits nearer the end. I felt good early on but started to feel the lack of recent training on the gradual climb up to 13, and lost considerable time on speed in the 12-13-14-15 section, before recovering a bit later on. I didn't make any proper nav errors though, so managed third, five (!) min behind J and three behind Eric.

As this event has been dubbed the unofficial 2016 Cascade/Greater Vancouver cup, here are the standings after Day 1 (using the simple XC system with top five scoring points, lower score better):

Cascade 1, 2, 3, 8, 9 = 23 points (Harvey Bone Enger Nachev Nuss)
GVOC 4, 5, 6, 7, 10 = 32 points (Woods Saari Barrett Rennie Smith)

Can the Canucks muster a comeback!?!?

Long - Splits

Test-running LTF Long Advanced (i.e. NOCI Day 1). This is the closest I'll ever get to what I suppose being Scandinavian feels like - prancing through the forest at full speed, knowing exactly what will appear 50m ahead at all times. And I even found most of my CP flagging tape to boot! That's all I have to say about that - these walls have ears.

After the run, I ate lunch, then did some fieldwork touch-up. At one point I was minding my own business, standing by a big stump some 20m from a trail, when I was hailed by a group of six or seven people behind me. "Here we go again," one always says to oneself in such situations - but it turned out they had already settled the question of what the hell is this guy doing by deciding between themselves that I was obviously a land surveyor in the employ of something apparently called the Cascade Land Conservancy (I was wearing my Cascade jacket).

Now facing the critical question of whether to disabuse them of their notion and endure the painful cross-examination of what I was actually doing (i.e. "tell the truth"), or to keep quiet and go along with their assumption, I naturally chose the latter (mainly because I discerned no concealed shotguns amongst their persons). This was a precarious choice, as they turned out to be a group of landowners who were attempting to locate their property lines somewhere along the northern edge of the O' venue, and who better to help them than a professional land surveyor! They even gave me a copy of their "map" and proceeded to show me Joe Bob's big parcel, Joe Bob's small parcel, Bubba's parcel, Tammy Jo Lynn's parcel, and so on, and could I use my extensive professional surveying experience to help them translate their comically sad excuse for a map to the terrain around us?

For all I knew we were either standing on their property or it was 50 miles away, but luckily these folks knew even less about land surveying than I do (plus, they seemed a little in awe of my fancy, colorful, detailed map with a bunch of inscrutable writing and symbols on it, which I backed myself into reluctantly showing them but which they luckily took for just the kind of thing a real land surveyor might use), so I was able to solemnly BS my way out of "helping" them, then we had an amiable chat for awhile until they let me go free and continued their wanderings.

Good times.

C • Top Secret Race? 6