Training Log Archive: ebone

Event: Saguaro Training Mini-Week
 

I ran a direction-following training exercise at Sweetwater Preserve. The object was to mark one's spot on the map at each of 13 labeled streamers along the trails. Although the whole route was on trails, the trails were omitted from the map, so it was necessary to pay attention to the contours, rock features, and washes to follow one's location on the map. It was a fun exercise, and it seemed useful.

I ran a window course at Arthur Pack Park, going at easy to very easy pace. Around each control, only a ~100m diameter circle of map was showing, and the rest was whited out. I have run courses like this before, usually fairly successfully, but this one was especially hard, because the streamer at each control was only a few inches long, the terrain features are subtle and highly parallel, and some of the legs were 300-500 meters long. I did pretty well early on, then spent several minutes milling around searching for a couple controls. My actual time out was about 53:30, but I'm not logging the longer stops, when my heart rate dropped substantially.