Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Still not feeling totally recovered from the Thanksgiving-day stomach flu, but I wanted to get out and do at least a short run. Ran one outside loop at Whiting Road with Homer. Very windy day, so I appreciated being in the woods and somewhat shielded from the wind (except for the fairly short stretches in open fields).

An observation of some concern is that I noted a pile of glass in the parking lot; upon closer inspection, it was very definitely auto glass. No doubt due to a car break-in. Always a concern of mine when parking anywhere to do a run. This parking lot is on a relatively well traveled road, and is very visible from the road, so I might have thought that this is a reasonably safe place to park (and it probably is), but I guess it goes to show that no place is 100% immune from break-ins.

Combination dog walk and exploration of the very northern part of the Whiting Road nature area, to see if it is worth mapping or not. Unfortunately, the conclusion is no. This is the area north of the very large rough-open field, which is about 400 m north of the parking lot. So the area I was looking at was between this large field and Lake Road. From the contour lines, it looked very interesting, but unfortunately, it seems way too thick to be useful, or at least enjoyable. I did find a small pocket of open woods, and I'm guessing there are other small areas of open woods, but they are surrounded by pretty nasty vegetation, even in late November. So it has to be even worse during the spring-summer-fall O season.

So the conclusion is: I don't want to map it, and you don't want to orienteer in it!

C • Vegetation 2

Webster Turkey Trot, 2.5 mile version, done extremely non-competitively. I accompanied my 26-year old son Greg and his 2-year old child Fred (in a baby jogger, of course). I didn't register (although Greg did), and of course didn't cross the finish line. I just thought it would be fun tagging along with them, and I would be there to offer support if Freddie got whiny or something fell out of his stroller or something like that.

Turns out that Fred was fine, the whole way. Greg did better than I thought, given that he literally never runs for training. We started at the very back of the pack, and I didn't even start my watch until we crossed the start line, so the official time is about 2 minutes slower than what I recorded. Once things opened up (only a little bit though, they never really open up on this course, with something like 1300 runners on the 2.5 along with another 2000 on the 4.2 mile course -- and there are two times when the courses overlay so we have runners from both courses at those points.

He finished very strong, in fact I couldn't keep up with him at all, which I was impressed with since we were running on grass at that point, and he was of course pushing the stroller.

Soon after getting back from the race, realized I was quite sick (stomach flu or something like that), as was Cheryl. So we unfortunately had to bow out of the invitation to have Thanksgiving dinner with Freddie's other grandparents (who live very close to Webster Park).

Lay around, dozed, and watched some football all day. This is the first time I even felt like getting on the computer. Hopefully this is short lived. And hopefully I didn't give it to anyone else ...

C • no fun 2

Urban run, on a morning that was much nicer than it was supposed to be. Forecast called for rain to linger until around mid-day, at which point it would clear up but start getting colder, and windier. The rain had ended by 9:30, it was still mid to upper 50's, with a breeze but not too bad of one. Plus, the sun appeared sooner than it was supposed to.

From Park near Berkeley; into downtown, did kind of a "random walk" (actually a random run) on some downtown streets, then headed a bit west of town, south along the west part of Corn Hill, to the U of R, another random walk, this time through the campus, then to Elmwood, South, Alexander, Monroe, Oxford, Park, and back to the car.

By far the longest run I've done in quite a while; it didn't feel all that bad, and was certainly helped by the ideal weather conditions.