Training Log Archive: Nadim

SSS Squirrel (Kill) 2017 at Arundel Mills Middle School, Odenton, MD. Before starting the event, which included a written test, foot and cycle orienteering, and card house building, Samantha was having issues. Heidi Onkst walked with her to calm her down when not much else was working. After a not so good written test result, but a good roll of the dice, I got going on this oddly nice August day. It was in the 70s F. Ted Good's newly mapped area was pretty interesting with more technical navigation than I'd anticipated. The first part was sprinty around school grounds, but after that we were in a mostly open forest with lots of trails and sometimes good visibility. The controls were the 1 ft. tall construction streamers on a wire post so they added to the difficulty factor. One often had to be right on to see it. Overall, my navigation was pretty good. I did pass the control a short way at #7 but relocated quickly. For #10, I opted to leave the trail and got into unmapped greenery--high grasses and thorns near a creek. The green pushed me to the left on that but re-oriented at a trail intersection to recover and find the control--taking the trails would have saved me a few minutes. I needed a bathroom break and lost more time. Going from #13 to #14, I had a hard time matching up the trail I was on with the map, but it got me to the control correctly. It was a nice event. I did save the card house building for last, and got 2 levels in the 2 minutes for that. I had aimed to do the cycle orienteering too, but the replacement chain I'd purchased in the morning, got left at home. The party after the event was as always, nice and a good way to more or less close out the summer orienteering season.

From Northfield Rd., to the Bethesda Metro Station.

From the Bethesda Metro Station to Northfield Rd.

From Northfield Rd., Custer Rd., to Park Rd., to Battery Ln., to Exeter Rd., to Edgemoor Ln., to Hampden Ln. to Moorland Rd. to Wilson Rd. to Aberdeen Rd., to Aberdeen Ct. to Northfield Rd. I started out slowly. It was a very nice night for August with the air being near 70 F. I was feeling my Chipotle dinner in my stomach while I ran but that got better.

From Northfield Rd., to the Bethesda Metro Station.

From the Bethesda Metro Station to Northfield Rd. I was getting home late and there wasn't much traffic. I rushed through some intersections.

From Northfield Rd Bethesda, MD., to Old Georgetown Rd. via Greenwich Park, to Johnson Ave. to Heamsteadt Ave. to McKinley Ave. to Garfield St. to Roosevelt. Ave. to Jefferson St. to Northfield Rd. It was relatively cool out. I felt good starting out so I just went with it. I did tire but kept a better pace than I have been doing lately.

From Northfield Rd., to the Bethesda Metro Station. Max walked ahead of me to catch a bus to camp so when I caught up to him I went slow too.

Washington, D.C. From 12th & Independence Ave., SW, down The Mall, past the Washington Monument past Constitution Gardens and the Lincoln Memorial, to Ohio Dr. to the Rock Creek Trail, to Calvert St., to the Woodley Park/Zoo Metro Station. I was feeling slow right from the start. My pace was steady and I slowly gained on another runner who was ahead of me, but I was just not gaining at a pace I thought I should. The hill at the end was worse as I tried to catch-up to someone who was walking and almost didn't.

From the Bethesda Metro Station to Northfield Rd. I was a little tired from the run. I was sweaty too so when the wind started to pickup I was feeling almost cold

From Northfield Rd., to the Bethesda Metro Station. Max walked ahead of me to catch a bus to camp so when I caught up to him I went slow too. After that I moved well.

From the Bethesda Metro Station to Northfield Rd.

From Northfield Rd. I ran up to Custer Rd., to Wilson La., to Exeter Rd. to Glenbrook Rd. to the Bethesda Trolley Trail, to the NIH grounds, to Maple Ridge Rd. to Georgetown Pike, to Huntington Pkwy., to Custer Rd. to Northfield Rd.

With a poor forecast of cloud cover and rain in the Charleston, SC area, Peggy, Max, Samantha and I drove to Hopkins, SC, which is outside of Columbia. We watched the eclipse on the grounds of the Harriett Barber House, a property that came to be owned by slaves and is now a park. A gathering of +100 people were there in a field. There was some food to buy, and music playing. We met our friends, the Trawicks, whom we've known since Max and Miles Trawick played together in pre-school. It was neat that they had decided independently to drive to the same general area. We coordinated getting to Hopkins.

The eclipse was great to see! In some ways it was much brighter than expected. Getting lunch was slow so I didn't get setup to take pictures until minutes before totality. We had 2 minutes 32 seconds--it went by so quickly!. I did lose some time fumbling for camera controls in the darkness but I did take in the view and enjoyed it too. The images were nicer than expected with bright whites on the edges. The light circling around the entire edge of the black moon was obviously sunlight but it was unexpectedly very white, like the much further stars appear to be in the night. I seemed to see some solar flaring as well as the corona. The picture below doesn't do justice to what I was seeing.





The drive home was not so fun. Peggy drove 4 hours in the traffic and that only got us to just short of the SC/NC border. We ate dinner and I drove almost 8 more hours with some detouring to get around the worst traffic--there was a lot of flat in the Low Country. I pulled into home at 2:59am.

Mount Pleasant, SC, at the Snee Farm (Charles Pinckney National Historic Site). We were aiming to see a plantation in the morning, but the one we settled on opened too late. We ended up first doing a tour of the USS Yorktown, a WWII era aircraft carrier. Max loved that despite the heat and humidity. The carrier was interesting to me even though I'd visited the USS Nimitz in the 80s. Just as I'd enjoyed a few seconds sitting in the captain's chair decades ago, Max was pleased to do the same on the USS Yorktown. Samantha liked visiting the ship too. I think she enjoyed the video simulation inside a re-creation of the Apollo 9 capsule that the Yorktown picked-up.

Since we were running short on time, and had already spent a lot of money on the ship visit, we next opted for seeing the free Snee Farm; this was run by the National Park Service. It probably had less to see than the large and expensive Boone Hall Plantation next door, but it had a nice video explaining Pinckney's role in shaping and signing the US Constitution. Mr. Pinkney's role went beyond slavery controversies but he the subject is brought up in the histories that cover him. He made economic arguments as well ones that were more along the line of natural law. He argued against a Bill of Rights objecting that most start with all men being declared equal. The video put all of this in context of the times he lived in.

Though still hot out, we took a short walk on the grounds. The grounds were not pampered but areas were kept nicely. The little forest we went through was dense but we saw a land crab, not very far from some marshland. Peggy also almost walked into two two inch diameter spiders as she was checking her phone. Max enjoyed pulling at some Spanish Moss; perhaps because I told him that it feeds off and often kills some trees, The Spanish Moss did look pretty in places. The heat of the field, the mosquitoes, the size of the foundations and placards explaining how the slaves were given a quart of grain a day to survive on, impressed upon me the suffering they went through.

North Charleston, SC. After our day of touring, and relaxing after dinner, Max was interested in going out with me for a run. I think the darkness had something to do with it. I went at an easy pace, though I think Max could have pushed harder. It was nice running with him like this and we really hadn't done it before. Though he doesn't train, he was confident on going the distance and probably could have gone faster. With it being warm but much nicer than the daytime, I felt going easy was still the best thing to do.