Training Log Archive: Ari-o

Another day, another deck.

Exploring some new roads today. Not the greatest pavement, but NO traffic. And a segment called "Sandy River Bitch Slap" which is a nice 12% grade to climb up. Always fun. Some nice cruising downhills, some appropriately grinding uphills.

What do you do after you do core and ride bikes? Rollerski! Find a hill (the Church Road) and ski up it twice. Only about 90m of climb and rolling, but some good transitions and a lot of V2. And some double poling on the steep parts when a couple of cars passed by. Had my watch on bike mode, meaning I got instant speeds. Hit 28 mph on the steeper parts of the hills. Ed's new wheels tracked really well, but my old wheels were pretty janky.

Running back and forth to the car as a warm up. Or a hot up. Hot.

So this didn't go particularly well. I felt very rusty, didn't feel good about my compass at all, and managed to orienteer about half the course well. The other half? Well, it went not as well. Quick hits:

Ran by a wedding party to 1, then to the wrong reentrant, so that cost a minute or two. Spiked 2. 3 I blame on forgetting my clue holder. I stapled the clues over the map and over the trail route choice, so attempted to blindly navigate. Then I found the trail and blindly ran it for a while and lost contact. I had an idea I was way south and navigated up over the ridge to find Adrian and Kestrel, but had lost a lot of time. Spiked 4. Spiked 5 with Brendan, who wasn't moving fast. Got ahead of Brendan across the isthmus and mostly spiked 6 (went the wrong way around the marsh) and then spiked 7.

So things were going pretty well. But it started getting warm and my brain power started to be seriously diluted. On the way to 8 I somehow didn't see the southern crossing and instead went up and through the reeds, which worked but got my feet wet (creating hot spots later). I'd meant to follow the trail further along but didn't want to climb the hill (can't say why) so hacked along the shore and seeing the marsh looking crossable, I decided, what the heck, and went across. Basically across blue, which was pretty grown in. I think my original plan would have been splendid, follow the trail, cross the brownish/blue stripe area, which I was for some reason reading as a crossable marsh, which it was, and then hit the trail and run up the hill to the control.

Instead I got way off parallel, and Brendan kindly explained where we were. Then it was "oh, I see, let's run up the hill." Spiked 9 with Brendan. Spiked 10 ahead of Brendan, just behind Adrian. On the way to 11 I felt a blister forming, stopped to tie my shoe, and started going slower. It was also quite warm. I took a route across a beaver dam after cutting some trail and going down a reentrant. It worked, but a couple of water crossings certainly added a lot of time. In retrospect, the further NE overland version would have been better.

Then the troubles started. I had mostly spiked 11, but could not find 12. I somehow got turned around and wound up at the lake NE of 11, which didn't have a trail catching feature, and I was very confused. When I recontacted the map, I picked my way along the hillside, figuring I'd find the right features, while at the same time trying to keep my foot blister from getting worse. Coming back, I tried to attack off of a vernal pool but way overcorrected, and wound up well SW of the control. I then went back parallel to where I'd come from and back to a triangular shaped hill when finally the map and the terrain made sense. It's great when you look at your map and the terrain and go "oh, I know right where I am and where I have to go." It sucks when it takes 20 minutes to get to that point. I probably lost 20 minutes on this control.

I was pissed off and slogged to 13, but slogged in a pretty straight line. Spike. I would have done the same thing for 14 but the "crossable marsh" was far less crossable there than the earlier uncrossable marsh. So I went around the marsh, but attacked well to the control, then ran the trail in to the finish.

So, I actually did some good orienteering, but my memory is mostly of 11 and being hot and my mind not wanting to work. Oh well. Kind of a bummer to miss day 2, but kind of nice not to have another day frustration. Fun map, though, not as spastic as Bear Brook. Feels like Lynn Woods, somewhat.

Core. Cooler, but with a full stomach. Need to go faster, but it's still the first week. #deckaday

Saturday Blue - Splits

Three full NP hills. Warm, and I wasn't feeling great. My parents showed up and I walked and chatted with them for a while.

Another hot, sweaty deck.

Morning deck so it's out of the way. Still not that fast, but a pretty epic run of 76 push ups in a row at one point …

Was going to go run to Market Basket, but then a pregnant lady passed out on the bus and I was stupid enough to still have my radio on and got roped in to dealing with that. So Whole Paycheck it was, where salmon was on special. Huzzah!

50 air squats, just because.

Ran 48 sections today. Overheated on the way out, finished a stadium in something dreadful like 34:00, then went and found Alex, did a few with her, then pounded out a few more. I can not wait until it's not 70, especially in the sun it is brutal.

But Alex came! Yesterday she emailed me saying "I think I'm going to come" so of course I was all encouragey and then she did so I didn't have to shame her with a "We Missed You" as some other of my recruits have had occur. She decided that it was good for her, to work on going up steep hills.

I think one of these days we need to bring a map along to read going up the stairs.

Home early enough for an hour on the bike. Undecided where to go so I went out Brattle and around Fresh Pond and up the hill out of Belmont. Then up the narrow sketchy road to Route 2 and Mass Ave, and down Mass Ave and home through the Yerxa underpass. Scariest thing? Kid coming down a hill in Arlington on a bike and turning the wrong way in to the bike lane. Damn bikes!

Still warm for a deck, and pretty slow. Then some stretching.

SO HOT. Drippy sweaty deck. Hopefully the warmest of them. Even with a fan on me, wicked sweaty.

Ugh, very humid (when I went running, humidest part of the day), sunny and I felt SO SLOW. I tried to redeem myself running up the big hill, and sort of did, but still felt blah. Oh, well, I can survive the last bout of summer, I guess.

Deck a day, getting easier and faster.