Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Doing some mapping/course check-out at Lincoln Park.

I certainly question the 179 feet of climb that AP says I did ... sure seemed like more than that anyway!

On the Genesee River trail, with trailsnail.

Spectating at the Letchworth marathon. Rough estimate of time spent walking around, taking pictures, etc.

Saw Stina come through Checkpoint #3 (15.4 miles). She looked very good! I would say she's on track for a finish time in the 5:45-6:00 range which would be outstanding, especially considering the muddy conditions of the course.

Late afternoon run. After watching all of the non-wimpy people doing the Letchworth trail marathon this morning, I had to get at least some sort of run in. I certainly didn't run as far as arthurd did, and not even as far as trailsnail did today. But at least I got out, and even ran modestly fast for me.

Comment on the climb: It's not big thing since this was a very flat run, but AP calculated my climb as 42 feet, yet when I examined the elevation trace, I counted at least 90-100 feet of climb. I had noticed the same thing in some of arthurd's road runs. So I'm a bit puzzled as to how AP calculates climb.

C • Letch 1

I'm a wimp -- I'm not doing the Letchworth marathon tomorrow. I'm too worried about the trail conditions. It's a tough enough course with a totally dry trail; I just can't imagine what it's going to be like when well covered with mud (or at least a slick, wet surface). Especially after 100 or so runners have gone before me.

So now, no excuse for not getting back into some serious training, instead of the lazy, every-other-day workouts I've been doing this week.

Good luck to arthurd!

More Highland Park mapping. The forecast made it sound like it was going to downpour all day, but around 9:15, it was looking rain-free, so I decided to get a little mapping in. As soon as I parked and got out of the car, it started raining though. So back in the car to wait it out, which was only around 10 minutes, then it was rain-free.

More Highland Park mapping.

Easy evening run. Started around 8:30, finished at 9:10, getting dark but still possible to run with no light. Nice having that much daylight. But a little depressing realizing that in less than a month, the days will start getting shorter again.

Highland Park mapping.

Evening run, mainly on the Rt 104 bike path. Nice night. Started when it was waning twilight, turned moderately dark but not totally dark by the time I got back, but no real problem seeing.

Event: ROC - Dryer Road Park [2011 Series #3]
 

Red course at Dryer Rd park. Pretty bad overall. Major problems on two controls. I think I just need to accept that I am basically fairly incompetent when it comes to competitive orienteering, rather than continually getting frustrated when I demonstrate that over and over!

My time was about 2X the winner. (Of course, the winner was feet, so that's a fairly lofty winner -- but still, 2X the winner's time is just not at all good.)

Straight-line distance was stated to be 6.9 km.

Slight injury: Developed a blister (actually more of a raw spot than a blister) on my left foot, outside of foot, below the ankle bone, where the top of the shoe contacts the foot. I was aware of it starting to get very uncomfortable during the last approx. third of the course. Can't say it was an excuse for a poor performance, though, because my major mistakes were before it became an issue.

Comments on course:

1: No issues, just going cautiously to avoid getting lost on my way to the big field at Ft. Hill. From the field, no problem finding the control.

2: (One of my two very big problems) Left #1 heading NE through woods and field, although I was tempted to backtrack a short distance to the trail just W of #1. In hindsight, I think that might have been a bit better, but that wasn't a big problem. My big problem came after crossing School Street. I decided to duck across the ruined fence, more or less in the direction of #5, and take the trails to approach #2 from the north, but I got all botched up, didn't find the trail near #5 for some reason, and finally, after much lost time, wound up on the trail south of #2. Once I realized where I was (slightly confused as to how I got there), I found the control OK.

3. No issues.

4. No issues.

5. Went down a wrong trail for a short distance (a 90 degree error, those are getting common for me), but realized it before too long. Then I left the trail near #5 but headed too high (too far NE), so I lost a minute or two finding the flag.

6. No major issues, but not real clean. I took a fairly straight-line approach from the NW corner of the field, but my distance judgment was poor so I thought I should have been at the control sooner than I was, and I spent some small but needless time looking for the control where it wasn't. It's amazing, when I pace count, it almost always works well, but I rarely think to pace count.

7. (My other major problem) I headed up to the Ft. Hill field, got the trail heading to Dryer Rd, had in mind what trails to possibly follow, but things weren't making sense. I think there are many new trails since the map was made 4 years ago. So I decided to basically ignore the trails and try to read contours, which seems like it was working, but I got to the re-entrant that I thought was the right one (and it appeared to be the one right next to the fairly straight mostly N-S trail, so that made sense), but no control. I tried a couple of other attacks before I finally found it. Not sure where I was at first; I'll get my route into Quick Routes and try to figure out where I was looking. Lots of time lost.

8. More time lost on this one also. Tried attacking from a trail junction which wasn't the one I thought it was; finally bailed out to what I think is the SW loop, where I knew exactly where I was because it's kind of a distinctive shape, then found the control OK.

9. No issues.

10. Tried to focus on getting on the trail that was less zig-zaggy than the other nearby trails, and it seemed to work.

11. No issues; basically took a compass bearing and didn't try to read the trails.

12. Found it but in a very non-optimum way. I read arthurd's comment about the woods being far from white, and I certainly agree, and that is what caused me to pick such a non-optimum route. As the mapper from 4 years ago, I guess I'm the one to blame! I don't think the vegetation changed that dramatically in 4 years, so I'll just own up to doing a decidedly imperfect job of mapping the vegetation in this area.

13 and finish: No issues.

So two very major problems (#2 and #7), and numerous places where a few minutes were lost here and there. The result is that I was the second to the last finisher (although there were several DNF's).

And it's kind of an over-done joke these days, but so I had a terrible course, at least it's not the end of the world ...

C • you are not alone... 1

Map hike in the YMCA area and northern section of Lincoln Park; checking out what map updates are needed (many, unfortunately), and getting some ideas for sprint course layout.

Checking out (with Cheryl and Homer) some of the Finger Lakes trail which will be used for the Sehgahunda marathon on May 28, to see how wet and muddy it is.

Conclusion: Trail is wet and muddy. (Any big surprise?)

We visited two sections: The very beginning of the course, from the dam parking lot; and from Check Point 3, down the access trail, and then a short section of the main trail, south and then north.

The beginning of the course (we did about 0.7 miles) is very flat, relative to the rest of the course, and the trail is a little wider; wider than single track in most spots, but not wide enough to be a vehicle track by any means. Parts of it were reasonably dry, while most of it was a bit damp but not what you'd call muddy, with parts of it being true mud, and small parts of it being covered with water (maybe an inch deep, nothing major).

The access trail from CP3 to the main trail, on the other hand -- well, it could easily be mapped as a narrow marsh instead of a trail! It was majorly swampy, nearly the entire way from the checkpoint to the main trail. In places, there was actually water flowing.

Heading south on the main trail, parts of it had decent footing while other parts (with no obvious reasons why) were muddy enough to be quite slick, but not muddy enough to sink in appreciably. We did one stream crossing, which wasn't too bad although you definitely had to watch your step on the wet, flat rocks. Going north on the main trail, it was pretty much the same -- muddy in spots, reasonably dry in most places.

If it were going to be rain-free between now and the race, the course would probably be in decent shape (but still spots where it would be impossible to avoid mud). Unfortunately, the last long-term forecast I saw indicates that next week may be as rainy as this week was.

It was particularly depressing to try to imagine the access trail to CP3 after about 100 previous runners had gone up and back on it ...

C • plenty of mud for the kids! 1

Easy run with trailsnail. Caught some drizzly rain on the run (what a shock).

Finally got a long run in. Pretty flat for the most part, so not as directly relevant to the Letchworth race as if I had done a hilly trail run (congratulations, arthurd, for doing that!). But it was a nice tour of Rochester, at least the NE and SE parts of town, and a little bit on the west side of the river.

The river, not surprisingly, was roaring. I made three crossings of it (all on bridges of course; although AP again thought I went down to river level and back up the other side, so I corrected the climb from what it said I did). The most impressive was the Driving Park bridge, just downstream of the lower falls; I could see from a distance that spray from the falls (a couple of hundred feet below the bridge) was landing on the road and sidewalk.

I wore contacts in case I got rained on again, but the rain held off. But it reminded me of how much nicer it is running w/o glasses, so I'll have to do it more often. I just wish my near vision wasn't so bad, otherwise I'd also orienteer with contacts.

I didn't bring along nearly enough water (just three waist-attached bottles of about 7 oz each), but I knew I would need a refill, I just wasn't sure where it would happen. I brought money along in case I had to stop in at a convenience store to buy a bottle of Gatorade or something. But while going through U of R, I decided to see if the fieldhouse was open, and it was! Nice cold water from the fountains. I'll keep that in mind for future runs.

Note: Weight is probably the lowest it's been in a long time, but it kind of seems like cheating to weigh myself after a 2.5+ hour run. Although I did drink a lot of liquids after the run, before the weighing.

C • nice run! 5

Very lame treadmill workout at the Bayview Y. I went there mainly to videotape our son Greg with his 2-year old Freddie in the toddler swimming class, but Greg had to get me in as a guest so I decided I might as well do a bit of a workout while there.

I had originally (a few days ago) targeted today for my last really long run, like 18 miles, prior to the Letchworth marathon. When I saw the weather for today, I knew that an 18 miles wasn't going to happen. I've always been a wimp about running in the rain, so there was no way I was going to be out running for 3+ hours in today's weather. The experience was about as unpleasant as I might have expected -- I initially thought that once I got going, say a mile or so into the run, things wouldn't be all that bad, but unfortunately that didn't happen. 42 degrees, a bit of a wind (although not a strong wind fortunately), misty rain the whole time, which meant my glasses were likewise covered with mist.

I did run through Highland Park, and found very few lilac-watchers in my way (no surprise!), although there were a few.

C • maybe 4

I'm sure it's possible to have worse weather in mid-May than we had today, but I think the odds of worse weather are quite remote.

Fortunately I had planned on this being a rest day anyway, with the intent of doing my last long run tomorrow, when the weather looks to be marginally warmer with somewhat less rain.

Sort of an urban score-O. I'm in the market for investment property in the city (slightly more complicated than that explanation, but I won't go into a detailed explanation, other than to say it's nothing negative or under duress), and there were about 12 properties on my radar screen that I haven't yet seen, so I decided to combine a medium-long run with an opportunity to check out some of these. I printed out a map and indicated where the properties were, and tried to come up with a route to view as many as possible (and my route wasn't exactly the most efficient). It was also a nice opportunity for hot weather training, and getting used to running with a Camelbak on my back (which I was glad to have had along).

C • investment property 10

Getting a little mapping done at Highland, before the Lilac Festival hits full stride. As it was, parking wasn't all that available (although I was working in the NW area of the map, which is away from the "festival" areas, so I found a spot).

Short but fairly tough (hilly) run at Ellison Wetlands.

Long run, mostly on trails, with a few sections of road running.

In two spots, I stopped the GPS for one reason or another (once to tighten my shoelaces, can't remember about the other), and then neglected to start it until I had run a fairly appreciable distance (like half a mile or so each time). I attempted to estimate the unrecorded distance from the GPS trace, and added it manually to what the GPS said I covered. Similarly for the time.

Although the run didn't go that badly, I'm having a hard time fathoming doing the Letchworth marathon, knowing that it is double what I ran today, and a lot hillier. But I keep telling myself that I'm in way better shape for it this year than last year, and I did complete it last year, even though it wasn't very pretty for the last 10 or so miles. The difference is that last year, I totally didn't appreciate how tough the race was (not sure why I didn't), so I got talked into doing it by a local radio personality who was going to do it (and who did it), and who I was pretty sure was way less prepared than I was (and I was right about that). This year, I don't have ignorance about the course to lull me underestimating the task!

Addendum: Only animal siting of note is that I apparently startled a really big turkey on my last loop around Whiting. It was very close to the trail, in some brush, on the left side of the trail, and it flew across the trail not much more than 20 feet in front of me, looking a bit alarmed. (Although I'm not sure how to know if a turkey is alarmed or not, really.) I might have startled it, but I do have to admit that it likewise startled me!

C • you know you want to... 3

Map hike at Lincoln Park, with Homer.

It looks like I'm signed up to be the course setter for the June 5 meet, so I decided to check out the map to see what needed to be updated, and specifically to walk a relatively new, fairly long, and kind of important (important to have on the map) trail, with GPS in hand. Also walked a new trail that leads from the new playground into the park, and some of the paths right around the playground -- although I don't think I'll have that area mapped real accurately -- no real need from an orienteering standpoint as I don't plan on putting any controls right in the playground area itself, the important thing is to make it clear that it's easily possible to get to Empire Blvd via the playground area, since that could be a possible route choice during the Score-O.

Long run, mostly on roads or paved paths.

A bit discouraging -- my goal was to get in an 18 mile run this week and use that to decide whether to enter the Letchworth race. I'm sure I could have tried a bit harder to get a few more miles in today, but I felt very wiped out after 15, so 3 more would have been a major struggle. It might have helped to have waited until tomorrow or Wed. to give a little more time to recover from the Mendon meet, but my schedule and the weather were both about as perfect as they could be for a long run today, so I didn't want to postpone it.

I took one break of several minutes while I refilled my water bottles and then walked at bit at North Ponds Park on my way back, then a couple of other shorter walking breaks. (None of them included in the time or distance.)

Really feeling the effects of the Mendon meet. I feel way more sore after yesterday's meet, than I did last week a day after the Mendon 15 mile trail race. I'm assuming it's because so much of the orienteering was off trail, meaning stepping over logs, climbing extremely steep hills (and descending steep hills), walking along the side of hills, etc. -- basically things I'm not all that used to doing.

I mowed the front yard, but that's the extent of my activity for today.

Event: ROC - Mendon Ponds Park [2011 Series #2]
 

Mendon O meet. Loop 1. Really, really bad on one control. Comments later (and if I can survive the embarrassment, my GPS track which I'm sure will be quite hilarious).

Route Gadget:
http://www.vmeyer.net/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi?ac...

C • just a little detour 4

Mendon O meet, Loop 2. Comments later.

Mendon O meet, Loop 3. Comments later.

Switched to a different pair of shoes, because the ones I started with were started to give me some wear and tear sensations on the back of my heel (where the top of the shoe contacts the Achilles area).

Helping to pick up controls.

I felt a cold coming on yesterday, and I was hoping that if I ignored it, maybe it would go away. It didn't. Feel much worse today. After sleeping 8 hours last night (more than I typically sleep), I took a nap this morning and another one this afternoon, and I still don't feel the least bit energetic. I'm hoping I'm at least a little better by the Mendon meet tomorrow. Unless I'm worse, I'll still do the meet, but I can't imagine it will be enjoyable if I'm feeling like I am today.

C • uh oh! 5

Spent a short time working on the Highland map. Despite this being an urban park, it is not a real easy area to map ...

Ellison Wetlands run, with trailsnail. From Empire to Old Browncroft and back. Nice day, upper 50's, sunny, windy, but wind not too noticeable except in a couple of spots. Trail generally very dry except for one very muddy area, in the low area shortly before climbing the hill to Old Browncroft.

Semi long run, on roads, from home. Low 40's, fairly pleasant except when I was running west, directly into the moderately strong wind. Listened to the latest Tell Me More and then Fresh Air (not quite the whole episode of either).

Couldn't talk myself in doing an outdoor run when it's 42 degrees and raining moderately. (I know, I need to HTFU ...) So I did a treadmill run at the Webster rec center. There are only two treadmills that have those little fans in them, and one was out of order and one was in use. The air was very still, reminding me how even at my slow running speed, there is a tiny bit of wind-chill effect when I'm actually moving through the air, as opposed to being stationary on a treadmill. I got very warm very quickly.

C • Meanwhile.... 2

Results from the Medved race are now available (and they did correct my age!).

I finished 45th out of 68 solo runners. Not a real splendid showing, actually. But then again, I maybe can rationalize that people entering a 15 mile muddy and hilly trail run are a bit more dedicated on average than those entering a 5K road race, or even one of Fleet Feet's 4-5 mile trail races.

I did indeed hold up better than many people on the third loop (or maybe I just knew enough, having done this race a couple of times before, to really take it easy on the first loop, and not even stress myself too much on the second loop). My time on the first loop was the 50th best; on the second loop, it was the 46th best, and on the third loop it was the 38th best.

I did finish 1st (out of only two people) in my age group.

Two other orienteers were in the race: Michael Meynadasy and Brian Thomas. In his log, feet had hinted strongly that he would be doing this race instead of West Point, but I see that he did West Point instead.

AP'er jsnyder was the #1 woman finisher (and 7th overall) in a nice time of 1:49 -- congratulations Jessica!

Medved Madness Mendon "15 mile" trail race. Was somewhat shorter than 15 miles, but way closer than in the first couple of runnings when it was more like 13.5 miles, by my estimate.

We expected the course to be muddy, and it certainly didn't disappoint. The first major continuous muddy stretch was at the 1 mile mark, and it persisted (on and off, mainly on) for quite a while, maybe a quarter mile? I was being careful not to lose a shoe in the mud, which I did in an O meet once.

Overall, I was pretty happy with how I did. For each of the three loops, I averaged under 11 min/mile which doesn't sound real impressive, but with the hills and the mud, I'm OK with it.

I wasn't exactly pouring it on during the last loop, but I tried to maintain a steady pace, and I wound up passing four people (with no one passing me). That doesn't sound like many, but with a sparse field, people were quite a ways apart, so this is about as many as I realistically could pass.

Since it was a small field, I thought I had a decent chance to win my age group, but they announced someone else. When I saw the person who was announced to be the winner, I mentioned to trailsnail that I'm fairly certain I watched him finish, well after I finished. I obviously didn't want to disrupt the awards by claiming they were incorrect (esp. since I wasn't 100% positive), so I'll wait to see the official results on line and determine if I should appeal to get a prize ($15 gift certificate to Medved, I believe it is). In any event, there were so few people in my age group, it's hardly anything to brag about.

Addendum: I figured out why I wasn't first in my age group. Looking at the information printed out on my bib number, they had me down as 31 years old. Don't I wish. I entered on-line, so I'm baffled as to how that could have happened. I can't imagine I entered "31" when I meant to enter "62" but I guess it is possible.

C • congrats! 10