Training Log Archive: Ari-o

Hike out of Carter. Pretty easy clip. But my knee feels perfect. Bring on more trail running!

Got done enough making dinner at the hut (it was great! only one guest vomited during dinner!) and went out for a run. Cloudy and foggy, but dry. I charged up Carter Dome making it to the summit—1500 feet over 1.3 miles—in 30 minutes. My Garmin got all messed up in the notch, though, and then was way off, so it's super-janky. Felt good going up, and then there's a nice trail down to Zeta Pass (really cool, too) and then a super awesome switchbacked trail down from Carter Dome. Like, just pretty much perfect for running. Also, switchbacks in New England. Weird.

I was on time for a 5:00 dinner prep arrival, but a dip in the lake precluded that by a few seconds.

Left work at 5, mostly avoided the worst of traffic, started hiking by 8:45, nice night hike in to Carter with only a brief shower.

But the new headlamp. Wow. It's a Petzl RXP and it has several outstanding features such as:

* Dual beam: one spot near the ground and one further out, so you can see well in a straight line ahead of you, you know, like in the direction you're running.
* Reactive lighting: I thought this was a gimmick but it's the best thing ever. It has a sensor which dims the light when you need less of it. You know how when you look at your map at night you're blinded by the light reflecting off the paper when you're used to diffuse light in the woods? Well this thing dims the light to map-reading level. Amazing! First world solutions for a first world problem. I will not say I didn't look at my hand several times to see this in action.

Very happy with this purchase!

105 pulls in the AM. Spending too much time acting as a pawn between Harvard and MassDOT, or something.

Got home and went to plug in my headlamp to charge for the weekend and the plug was borked. Just not working. Decided after 4 years it might be time for a new headlamp, have 10 birthday dollars at EMS and they're open until 9! Off we go, with a slightly longer run home because it was super nice out.

Hike down to Appalachia. Slowly. No knee pain.

Garmin was being tres unhelpful this morning. Would only boot to the Garmin screen, claimed no charge after being plugged in all night, reset instructions didn't work. After following various instructions I finally got fed up and held down all the buttons for a while et voila, it booted! Although when it did it thought it was 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday the 6th, but apparently it needs to find satellites to reset the time, which ain't working so well in my office. Garmin online support was most unhelpful. At least it didn't erase something mid-run or whatever. Hooray?

So. My friend and former assistant hutmaster Beo (short for Beowulf, a trail name, it's a long story) said "hey I'm DJing Madfest [huts party] do you want to come up and do lights?"

Does the pope shit in the woods?

Went in to work early, skipped out, drove north. Hit the train running with my computer and some other detritus in a backpack, probably about 20 pounds, and 80+ degree temperatures at the base. The nice thing about the Valley Way is it's always 20 degrees cooler at the top! Turned in a respectable 1:18; 9 minutes off my record time but with some weight and some heat. Knee started to have feels up on the 1000 yards but seems fine.