Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Event: ROC - Webster Park Icebreaker [2011 Series #1]
 

Setting out four controls in the western part of the park.

C • Webster. 8

Setting out four easily-reached controls in the Parkview Lodge area.

Setting out controls east of Holt Rd. A couple of stupid mistakes (not navigation mistakes, but forgetting one of the e-punch boxes I needed, and totally separate from that mistake, putting the wrong box on one of the first controls I set, which meant I didn't have it for a later control) caused this to take maybe 20 minutes longer than it should have. Fortunately I had a slight amount of cushion, so I finished up around 10 minutes before noon, when the meet was scheduled to start.

Picked up e-punch boxes from Ravi, then control flags and some other stuff from Lavine's, then went for a run starting from the Park Ave area.

I made an attempt to run slow, but I found that even when I think I'm going about as slowly as I can go, I was only going slightly slower than my previous long run. But it actually did seem to make a difference; I felt pretty good at the end of the run at slightly more than 10 miles, like I could have gone another 2-4 miles without suffering too much.

Setting out controls in the Whiting Road area.

Setting out the more remote controls in Webster Park.

Between Whiting and Webster, I only set out 13 controls (out of 39), but they're generally the most remote and therefore the most time consuming to do, so I feel like I'm more than half done. Hopefully I won't find out tomorrow that I've underestimated the rest of the task.

One last trip to Whiting and Webster, to check out two spots I had either neglected to check before in one case, and which I ran out of time in the other case. One was a reentrant at Whiting, which I was pretty sure was going to be fine for a control location as I remember the area pretty well from mapping, and it was indeed an acceptable spot.

The other was on the east side of Holt Rd; it was to be the next to last control on White, a manmade object very close to a trail, pretty trivial. That's the one I just plain neglected to check, even though I was very close to it checking out other spots a few days ago. I'm glad I went to check, because the manmade object seems to have disappeared! I vaguely recall it being some coiled up wire fencing or some other construction stuff. It apparently has been cleaned up, which is nice, except there no longer is a feature there to use as a control. It turns out that the White course works fine with that control just omitted, so that's what I did.

C • wire coils 3

Mid afternoon run, with the doggie. I wasn't going to take him but he looked at me, very forlorn, so I broke down and took him, even though it was warmer than his comfort zone (it was in the upper 40's).

Listened to the ever-so-popular-on-AP Fresh Air episode about life on other planets. (I was disappointed, though, that id didn't focus even more on methane, after all of the comments with that title ... :) ).

Checking out and streamering more control sites. As with yesterday, all but one checked out fine, although for a few I identified some map updates that would be helpful in the area of the control.

The one that I moved was actually OK as far as being fair and easily found once in the control circle, but it was in a reentrant that was quite swampy. The map showed a marshy area but ending further down the reentrant than I had planned to put the control. (Who made this map, anyway??? :) ) It was actually quite swampy much further up the reentrant, and I think the reason is that there were some seeps of water coming out from fairly high up in the reentrant (a contour or two above the bottom of the reentrant). I could have left the control there but there were other nearby locations that were just as good, so I figured why subject people to ankle-deep muck (and the chance of losing a shoe, as I experienced once!) when there was really no need to.

C • swampy muck 4

Ellison Wetlands trails, with trailsnail. (Our paces were a bit different, so I doubled back to meet back up with her a few times.)

Whenever I haven't done a workout here in a long time, I tend to forget how friggin' hilly it is. I'm sure that I should do at least one hard run a week here between now and the trail marathon, and work up to doing around 10 miles (preferably more) instead of 5 miles, but that seems like a daunting challenge, after how I felt today.

Checking out and streamering control points for the Webster meet. Nice that the rain held off.

Productive outing -- probably got to 75% of the control points, and all but one wound up being just fine (in some cases with a slight modification of the control description, or a slight change in the location of the control circle). One of them was in an area mapped as light green, but there was a medium green band around where the control was to be, and it just didn't seem to make sense to make someone deal with unpleasant vegetation when there was no good need for it (esp. since it was the first control on Yellow!), so I picked an alternate location for it (and will update the map).

C • Dang 1