Training Archive: barbIn the 31 days ending 2006-08-31:
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| T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | |||||||||||||||||||
Thursday Aug 31 | ||
| Bicycling 30:00 [5] | |
| Biked a total of 1:34; maybe 30 minutes was fairly full out.
Met Harvey and Sally in the Fells (Sheepfold), then raced Harvey from there to Jose's Mexican restaurant in Cambridge. He was in his van but had to pick Gretchen up on the way. I was delayed by a lady who I asked directions from; she drew me an elaborate map (she was an artist with a sketchbook) which took 5 minutes, and sent me on a quieter but less direct route. I still beat Harvey by a minute. It took me 40 minutes. It must be that they didn't get back out of the house quickly enough. It was really fun to be racing; it gave me the energy to go into seriously high gear. It was rush hour, and I thought about eddie's close calls on his recent commute. I thought maybe if (like me) you don't go as fast as Eddie, it might be safer. You need more stopping distance. Although going slowly means, of course, that you are increasing your total time on the road, which increases your chance of a random hit. I made one satisfying squealing stop when a car pulled into a driveway from the other side of the street, and I didn't see them coming because I was riding along the right side of the traffic going my way, and there was a van blocking my view. 68h | ||
| Bicycling 1:04:00 [3] | |
| Note | |
| Found out about another teacher, this time on the north shore (Beverly), who wants to do some orienteering type activities with her students. Need to find someone up that way who can help out. Another great opportunity! | ||
Wednesday Aug 30 | ||
| Note | |
| Orienteering + party: Nahant
If anyone is reading this, you're invited to a party at 8 Spouting Horn Road in Nahant on Sunday afternoon. If you're interested in doing some orienteering Sunday morning at Breakheart Reservation in Saugus, let me know by tomorrow night and we'll work something out. | ||
| Bicycling 1:30:00 [3] | |
| 8 min commute.
37 min to get from home to Boojum Rock parking lot. 45 min to get home. ! | ||
| Orienteering 1:10:00 [1] | |
| With Gretchen, did part of an old green course. Walked and talked. LOTS of poison ivy. | ||
Tuesday Aug 29 | ||
| Bicycling 8:00 [1] | |
| Commute.
Arg, getting desperate again. And weighty. | ||
| Walking in the woods 30:00 [1] | |
| Walked/jogged to the Cantab, roundabout way. Drank a beer, listened to bluegrass, drank a whiskey, and had a smoke out back. Came back home. Not particularly stellar training, BUT, I made woods dates with two members of the band for tomorrow and the next day (one each day) at the Fells, so I'm SURE to get some exercise, if only biking there.
There was a message on the answering machine from a teacher in Cambridge who would like someone to do an orienteering event for 70-80 junior high school kids this fall. Cool! Also was a msg from my old friend Lee, from my home town, with just his phone number. Wonder what is the deal? I haven't talked to him for years. I think last I knew he decided to quit installing hot tubs and take up preaching and ministering. Back in high school I had a brief crush on his brother Kent, with whom I held hands all the way home from something or other, in the car with his mom driving; we must have been in the back seat. That was just before I found out Kent was gay and he took me to a gay bar in Chicago and it was a total blast. Later he contracted AIDS, and I heard about his death from a pay phone at the Grand Canyon visitor center, and came outside to the sight of a double rainbow that was a complete circle inside a circle because I was looking over the rim into the canyon where there was plenty of room going down for the bottom part of the rainbows. | ||
Monday Aug 28 | ||
| Bicycling 1:09:00 [2] | |
| weight:135lbs | ||
| Biked to Arlington for appointment. | ||
Sunday Aug 27 | ||
| Hiking 6:30:00 [1] | |
16.3 mile loop, 2900m climb.
 Lovely trails up to saddles and down from them, and through the Dead Marshes. Route: Sawyer River Road, Signal Ridge trail 1.7 miles to the Carrigan Notch Trail, then 4.1 miles to an intersection where I parted ways with Dave, Geoff & David G. They climbed Mt Carrigain (from the intersection, 7.9 miles and 750m climb) and I went back via the longer but gentler Nancy Pond Trail (11.4 miles and 420m climb). I beat the guys back by 45 min, partly because they spent 35 minutes on the summit of Carrigain. It rained the last couple hours; I had the right gear so it was very pleasant. A bit of jogging; mostly walking. Maybe it's from trying to be efficient with time on rogaines, but I noticed that I get impatient with those small delays that can happen when multiple people are on some adventure together. For example, after we played mini-golf in North Conway Saturday, I turned in my club and walked out of the establishment. The guys didn't follow. What could they possibly be doing? What was so hard about returning your club and walking out the door? I finally went back in for them, this way guys, I motioned toward the door. Goals: some '07 rogaines improve my rankings on red and blue by 5-10 points in a year Therefore: speed longer-distance running etc. | ||
Friday Aug 25 | ||
| Bicycling 14:00 [1] | |
| ooo, pretty tough. Rode from dropping the van off in West Cambridge to work. And then home later. | ||
Thursday Aug 24 | ||
| Running 32:00 [1] | |
| Nahant: around the point.
I want to set some training goals. I am going to pot. As they say. I miss the good old days of training for those 3 rogaines in the spring. There aren't any inspiring rogaines on the calendar yet. I'd love to see a few events out west in that nice dry terrain (Big Muddy, Arizona, Kamloops...), and the rumored Swiss rogaine, and some more close to home. I suppose 10/7 in GA is possible; the others on the fall calendar are shorter events. The most motivating goal I can think of would be to plan on competing in some distant (in time) rogaine with a really really strong partner. Someone I'd have to work super hard over months and months to get into shape enough to be able to keep up with. Or maybe I can come up with a non-rogaine goal that is still motivating. Maybe I need a hardass coach. | ||
| Running 40:00 [3] | |
| Lynn roundabout to home.
GI problems prominent. | ||
Thursday Aug 17 | ||
| Orienteering 1:37:00 [3] | |
| 13 min/km at Yankee Springs in MI.
15-22-5-12-19-26-6-28-10-25-18-9-13-1 on the permanent course. Hot & muggy, a bit buggy, woods were thick at times but generally quite runnable. Very nice on the legs, soft ground with downed branches but not rocks to worry about. It felt good to be back in the woods running! Dave did the first few controls but bonked for lack of calories. Er, just realized that the snapshot below is more updated than the printed maps I paid $6 a shot for, gr. Should have asked for the OCAD file. Annoying, especially with kids, to not have the trail updates.  | ||
Wednesday Aug 16 | ||
| Bicycling 2:00:00 [1] | |
Biked along the Kal-Haven trail with David and Dad.
 | ||
Monday Aug 14 | ||
| Running 45:00 [2] | |
| South Haven, MI. 35 min in the morning, out to the pier and back. On the pier, I saw a man in an O shirt! He said his son-in-law is military, thus the O. 10 min or so with Dave in the afternoon, jogged to the bike rental store. | ||
| Bicycling 25:00 [2] | |
Tuesday Aug 8 | ||
| Running 25:00 [2] | |
| 22 C. Feeling pretty depressed.
929 | ||
| Note | |
| Really, this is entirely off topic, nothing to do with orienteering training at all. I'm back in the hotel room, air conditioned (I tried to open the widnow but it seesm to be thoroughly locked), and I've definitely had too much wine while meanwhile all the elite orienteers have doubtless been out training all day. I spent the evening on a breezy Fortaleza hilltop admiring the rogaine-perfect moon and drinking white and then red wine, eating a multi-course meal, and talking alternately to (on my right) a statistician from San Diego and (on my left) a computational biologist from the Max Planck Institute somewhere in Germany. I don't think that has much to do at all with training for orienteering. Though we did discuss venues for orienteering in Vienna next summer (that's where next year's conference will be held); looks like there are plenty of decent parks.
I came home and started up the computer to find out whether NED LAMONT won or not, and so far with 87% of precincts reporting, he is ahead, but barely. What with this race and WOC, it has been a very exciting virtual time here in Brazil. | ||
Sunday Aug 6 | ||
| Running 44:00 [1] | |
| 28 C. Late afternoon along the boardwalk. The vendors were setting up their stalls for the evening market. | ||
Saturday Aug 5 | ||
| Running 20:00 [2] | |
| slept:8.5 | ||
| 25 C, breezy.
Hard to get out of bed in spite of all the sleep. I don't actually train these days but I think about it a lot. I suppose even the tiny little jogging forays would not be as likely to happen were it not for the AP addiction. Nasty long board meeting starts tonight. Started reading New Yorker article about Khan, Iran and nuclear technology trafficking. In transit here I read a book by a young woman who spent around 5 years in the CIA. I'm mildly surprised that she can report some of what she does report, in terms of contacts she made abroad. Must be that these were safe examples to report. It was depressing, though - the unthinking and even enthusiastic CIA support for stupid blundering foreign acts of aggression, the lameness of the other case-agents-in-training, the institutional unwillingness to recruit agents "compromised" by having had any meaningful contact with "terrorist" organizations (so... how do you get useful information, then?). ... She had to do some night orienteering in her training at the Farm. I was envious of that part. Actually, most of the Farm training sounded like fun. I guess this "training" entry has enough keywords to attraction some outside attention. The program chair of this conference is originally from maybe Serbo-Croatia. He lives in a neighborhood here in Brazil where all his neighbors had fortified their houses: big walls topped with broken glass and electric barbed wire fences. He thought that was silly and so did not take the same precautions, modeling for his neighbors that one does not need to be so ruled by fear. Half a year ago, some guys broke into his house and held him, his mother and his daughter hostage until he came up with some money. They took his TV too. The hardest part was apparently restraining his aging mother, who I think doesn't even speak Portuguese, from trying to clobber the attackers. She was pissed. His house is now fortified. | ||
| C • the farm 2 | ||
| Note | |
| In honor of attending this conference, I'll refer readers to what remains my favorite Intelligent Design cartoon of all time. | ||
| C • doonesbury 1 | ||
| Running 15:00 [3] | |
| 27 C.
Still, it's something. On my third caipirinha... | ||
Friday Aug 4 | ||
| Running 28:00 [3] | |
| slept:10.0 | ||
| Muggy, 24C. Lots of people walking along the boardwalk; a few joggers. Trucks of coconuts being delivered to the beach refreshment stands. | ||
Thursday Aug 3 | ||
| Running 27:25 [2] | |
| 29 C, muggy. Along the beach boardwalk. Felt slightly ill, possibly from eating too many nuts (travel food); the city smells didn't help. | ||
Wednesday Aug 2 | ||
| Note | |
| I am in the middle of a 14-hour layover in Sao Paolo, between two ovenight flights (from Dulles and to Fortaleza). My only exercise has been pushing my luggage cart around the airport to get the lay of the land.
I picked up a travel guide to Brazil at Dulles. It says that under no circumstances should a woman travel alone in Brazil, if it can possibly be helped. It also talks about robberies and muggings in some detail. Like, a scout hangs around a taxi stand, identifies a vulnerable target (eg single female), radios ahead to motorcycle thugs, who pull the taxi over at gunpoint. It is recommended that I put my cash in my underwear. Yuk. So anyway, I decided not to leave the airport here in Sao Paolo. Anyway, I can not recheck my bags until just before the next flight, and it is cool and rainy outside. Instead I reviewed a paper on using multiple species' gene expression data to improve the identification of previously unknown genes in a biological pathway. bleah. Since I am feeling edgy anyway, I will share this Random Swiss Matterhorn photo of the day, sighted at an apothecary on Zermatt's Bahnhofstrasse:  | ||
Tuesday Aug 1 | ||
| Bicycling 8:00 [1] | |
| Work commute.
Desperate last few hours of work & packing before leaving for Brazil. Except I'm hanging out on AP instead. The WOC Sprint discussion thread is Very Exciting. Random Swiss photo of the day - a two-pronged cloud floating above the Castor and Pollux peaks:  | ||
| Note | |
| As I flew out of Boston, I looked out the window and some pattern-recognition trigger went off in my head; I realized I was looking at the island I visited with the Graham and Parks primary school class. It was just like in our pictures and maps and model - but there it was for real. | ||
