Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Mid morning walk with Homer to Finn Park and back. Sunny, mid 30's, light wind, nice day. Homer did a little wading in, and drinking from, the stream in Finn Park. He decided not to go for a full swim, though ...

At Bristol, with Cheryl and trailsnail. Absolutely fantastic skiing! First hour or two were awesome mid-winter conditions, then it softened up some to where it was more work but still very enjoyable to ski on. All trails still open! And for any XC ski buffs, both XC trails are still open, and we saw quite a few XC skiers out and about!

First time snowboarding this year. Took 4 runs; two down the easy way down, where I did OK but it wasn't terribly satisfying because there had been about 2-3 inches of new snow and it was fairly slow, so even at my low ability level, it generally wasn't all that challenging. Then I did two runs down Rocket; upper Rocket is tougher than I'd like, lower Rocket is just about perfect for my skill level. I managed upper Rocket OK but I didn't look nor feel very graceful. Second run was a little better (slightly faster and smoother) until my edge slide out and I took a very gentle fall, but enough to disrupt my confidence.

After I was sufficiently tired from snowboarding, I did a few runs on skis. Not the easiest conditions to ski in, with the fresh snow which was a bit pushed around by the time I got out. But really, quite nice for March 28. By far the best March I can remember for Bristol.

Urban walk with Homer. Nice day, but made worse by getting stopped on the way home by a state trooper (in the city??) who gave me a ticket for an overdue inspection.

C • Trooper 6

More pseudo mapping at Durand. Certainly observing a lot of places where the new map needs improving.

Drop-in pickleball at the Rec Center. I played pretty badly, but the upside is that I didn't play very long. Would have been worse to play badly for 2 hours rather than badly for 40 minutes! :)

Durand, with Homer and Cheryl. Again, pseudo mapping -- walking around with map in hand observing where the new map needs more work.

More pseudo-mapping at Durand. Sunny but pretty cold and windy.

Skiing with Cheryl. Decent conditions, although a bit firm overall, with a very few icy spots. I demo'd four sets of skis while there -- Elan GSX (GS race ski), K2 Bolt, Salomon Rocker2, and Volkl Kendo. The Elan is a great ski, I know (because one of the top adult racers at Bristol uses it a lot and raves about it), but I suspect I'm not a good enough skier to take good advantage of it. The Salomon Rocker is easy to initiate turns with, but it doesn't hold for beans on anything approaching ice. Probably would be a good ski for powder or soft spring conditions. I really liked both the K2 Bolt and Volkl Kendo. Both were stable and held well on ice. I would say I liked the K2 slightly better on today's conditions, but the Volkl is much wider underfoot (88 mm vs 72 mm) so it would be expected to do much better in any sort of soft-snow conditions. Anyway, lots of fun trying various skis.

GPS got accidentally turned off at one point, so I'm not sure how much was missed.

JCC pickleball league. Partner was Glenn. One the first game, lost the next two: 11-5, 8-11, 9-11. I was playing pretty bad all in all. At least relative to how I need to play to be competitive in that league. I would say I'm tied with maybe a couple of other people as the weakest in the league, so when I play my normal game, it's pretty easy to feel like I'm playing badly.

Skiing at Bristol with Cheryl, Greg, and (briefly) Freddie. The main point of the trip today was to get Freddie in a lesson (free for Bristol's Spring Carnival weekend). Success. He not only had a lesson, but a private lesson, as he was the only kid of his age (4) there for the 11:30 lesson. It was a 1.5 hour lesson, and the expectation/worry of Cheryl and Greg was that he wouldn't last for the scheduled duration of the lesson, as he was in a somewhat grumpy mood (according to Greg and Cheryl -- I didn't drive down with them as I had a church commitment, and arrived after his lesson began.

Using a telephoto lens so I didn't have to get close enough for him to really see that it was me, I spent around 20 minutes taking some pictures of him, then got dressed for skiing and skied a couple of runs, by which time his lesson was just about over. Greg collected Freddie and had a chat with his instructor (a young man well younger than Greg), who reported that Freddie had a good attitude (to our surprise), and did OK for a 4-year-old.

We got a quick snack for everyone, then took Freddie up the Sunset Lift, for his first time on a chair lift. (Even though he hadn't been real into skiing until today, he had been telling Greg that he really wanted to ride the chair lift last time they were down.) With very significant help from Greg, he made it down Infinity, and said he really wanted to ride the chair lift one more time, so we did. By the time we had gotten to the bottom, he had become fairly whiny (not surprising considering how long he had skied at that point), and although he claimed he wanted to ride the lift a 3rd time, it was pretty clear that his skiing for the day needed to end at that point.

Greg put him in child care for an hour, and Fred was quite content to do that, while the 3 of us skied. Probably the first time we had skied together in quite a while. I think we did 3-4 runs at that point, and it was around 3:30 by then, so we called it quits, collected Freddie again, and had a bite to eat at the cafeteria (and drink at the bar for the adults).

So it wasn't a very hard day of skiing at all, but successful in the Fred had a good time and made some progress in learning how to ski (although he's still a ways from being able to ski down even a very gentle slope with no assistance).

Rec center. Five courts, 20-23 people for most of the time.

I was pondering going skiing today, with possibly some snowboarding (would have been the first of the season for me) thrown in, but when I was making the decision this morning, it seemed way too cold and blustery for that activity. So I did some pseudo-mapping instead, walking some trails at Durand with map and GPS in hand, with Homer in tow.

More like psuedo-mapping; walking around Durand with Homer with the new map of Durand in hand, observing places where there were either blatant errors (and there were a few of those -- I'm guessing errors in transcribing from the field work notes to OCAD) or places where things could be improved. A little to cool to actually do a lot of writing things down w/o my hands getting too cold to function. But a worthwhile visit to the park anyway. Makes it obvious that the map still needs work.

Mid-day dog walk; looked like it was threatening to rain but it didn't. Around 50, not much wind, not a bad day for a walk.

JCC league, with Mike S. as my partner. We played Larry and Kathy, a very solid team but one we beat 2 games to 1 last time we played them. And again, that was the outcome. Close first game, blowout by them in the second game, and blowout by us in the 3rd game: 11-8, 4-11, 11-4. Mike and I played pretty solidly in general. A few more errors than we would have liked in the blowout 2nd game, but a lot of the reason for them winning was them playing quite well that game.

C • Game 2 4

Urban walk, with Homer. Surprisingly, there is significantly more snow on the ground in the part of the city we walked in than there is in our neighborhood in Webster.

Mid-day walk around the big block with Homer, on a pleasant day (upper 30's, I think, sunny, not much wind).

I played pretty badly, especially the last two games when I played in a foursome where I was at least marginally the weakest. Sometimes I think my game picks up a bit when I play better players, but it didn't seem to work that way today.

Bristol, with Cheryl. Awesome conditions. Nicely groomed, cool enough for the snow to hold up reasonably well over the few hours we were there. The first few runs especially were great, definitely the best skiing conditions I've enjoyed this season. After an hour or so, there were a very few areas where a bit of ice appeared, but it was so minimal it wasn't much of a factor.

It probably also helped that I'm in reasonably good skiing shape from 3 pretty hard days skiing in VT, and also that I had freshly sharpened my skis after VT and before today, so the skis were performing quite well for me.

Conditions today were what some skiers term "hero" conditions -- meaning, basically, that everyone feels like a very competent skier, even people like me who basically aren't.

25.3 miles covered per GPS (including lift rides up).

Webster Rec Center. Around 16 people; 3 courts. Some decent competition.

By the way, if anyone wants to see what some very high level pickleball looks like, take a look at this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQOlo2PVfqU

Also, be aware that the pickleball I play bears no resemblance to this video! Analogy might be me orienteering vs William Hawkins orienteering ...

JCC league. My theoretical normal partner, Glenn, and I played (2nd time in about 6 weeks that we've both been there). We got demolished by a team that I knew would be good, a guy around my age who I've seen play previously, and his (significantly younger) wife (maybe about 50), who is tall (5'11" or so?) and very athletic looking. I've heard she's a phys ed teacher which I can totally believe. They are both excellent players, with well balanced games, including excellent touch games which they used on us to significant advantage. Very even with each other in terms of ability.

We got clobbered 11-3, 11-3, 11-1. We played a 4th game that didn't count for anything and got 6 points that game, a slight improvement.

I didn't feel so bad about getting killed when (a) I found out that they haven't lost many games at all yet, and (b) the lady was asked to sub in the A league which plays after us, by one of the best players in the A league. I watched some of their game for 15 minutes or so, and she seemed to be holding her own just fine at the A league level.

Rec Center. Lots of decent players today, including two teenagers who have been playing for 4-6 weeks and seem to know the game fairly well already. So we had quite a few fairly competitive games.