Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Fairly short but fast (for me) bike ride.

Indoors at the Rec Center. Some competitive games, and some lopsided games. Competitive games generally involved some combination of Mike S., Mike R., Pam, Fran, Brian, Burt, and me.

Picking up the remainder of the controls. Thanks to Ed, Mike, Brian, and Rafael, all of the controls in the Log Cabin Rd area got picked up after the meet last night. It would have been totally impractical to get the more distant controls, though; would have been some major night-O involved. So my plan was to head back this morning, pretty early, to get the remaining 13 controls. I woke up and the roads were wet and it was rainy lightly, and I was still pretty wiped out from yesterday, so I couldn't get motivated to head right out. Big mistake. By the time I got there, a little after 9:00, the rain had turned into a downpour. I set out anyway, got a loop of 4, then got a couple more that were fairly close to Zoo Road. Then the downpour intensified, and I spent some time sitting in my (very wet) car waiting for it to subside, which it finally did. Finally got the remaining ones.

GPS is being very balky, and won't download tracks. For a while it wouldn't even power up. My guess/hope is that it wasn't happy about being out in the downpour, and just needs to dry out a little. (Although I think they're supposed to be waterproof enough to withstand even a pretty hard rain.)

Efforts to dry out some of the soaked equipment retrieved this morning:

Drying operation

Durand O meet course setting.

As usual, took way longer than I had expected, for a reasonably compact area. As a result, I was kind of stressed the last hour, and made a couple of errors as a result, both of which fortunately I realized and was able to correct before anyone went out. Steve asked whether I had streamered everything, and I hadn't -- even though I know that it makes control placement a lot easier and error-free when everything is streamered. I did streamer many points, and in some cases I'm pretty sure I streamered a point and the streamer disappeared. So streamering isn't a sure-fire way to avoid errors and to make setting out controls easier, if they disappear.

It didn't help that I took a break around 4:15 to go to Bill Gray's for a milkshake -- they sell shakes for half price between 2:30 and 4:30. That was probably about a 20 minute side track. When I decided to take a milkshake break, of course, I thought I was in pretty good shape time wise. As is was, I got the last controls set out by around 5:50, and then the two misplaced controls (very close to each other fortunately) corrected by 6:00.

Pickleball at the Ellison Park courts. Only 5 there, but good competition, I would say I was the weakest of the players. Joe Roth, Mike Roth, Mike S., Glenn Pearce, and myself. Played three games, lost two, won one. Losing games were: Mike S. and me against Joe and Mike Roth; and Mike Roth and me against Mike S. and Glenn. Winning game was Joe and I against Mike R. and Glenn.

For the heck of it, wore my GPS, although I forgot to start it until around 5 minutes in.

Walk with Homer to Finn Park and back. Stopped at the stream but for some reason he didn't seem real eager to go in. Stream was pretty low so maybe he figured it wasn't worth his while since he couldn't really swim. He was still happy to get hosed off once we got back home though.

Webster Park. Group included Joe Roth and his son Mike, both of whom I got to play a number of games with.

Checking out a few more control sites at Durand. Didn't wear a GPS, mileage and climbs are estimates.

Leg and other exercises at the Rec Center fitness room.

At the Rec Center, after the fitness room workout.

Two games: Sue and I vs Paul and trailsnail, and Mike S. and I vs Doug and Pam in a very tough game; they made some errors near the end and we came back from an 8-6 deficit to win 11-8.