Training Log Archive: arcticQn

This, even though I usually hate long legs and few controls, was a lot of fun. Maybe it's just that I love Pawtuckaway woods. Seven controls over 8km = long legs. Lots of fun though, and lots of route choices, though I typically went straight, as much as I could with the larger swamps out there. Pawtuckaway is just so interesting that you have to concentrate on the legs at every step, otherwise you could definitely screw yourself over. I think that's why I get bored with most long legs, if they're in uninteresting terrain.

Overall, this weekend was fantastic, many thanks to Ross and Brendan for organizing and for Peter Andersen fro letting us crash at his place after finding out that Pawtuckaway was booked solid for the weekend. Next year we'll have to reserve in advance.

C • Happy Birthday Erin!! 3

Long route choice - Splits

Went on this course with Kristoffer, both of us slathering on the bug spray for morning in Pawtuckaway woods... oh boy!

This was an excellent training for me, since my memory is so poor. It's amazing how much faster one can run through the woods when they're not having to look at the map!

This was supposed to be an excercise to compare route choices, but ended up not having a whole lot of route choices per leg, so we just ran it as a normal course and compared what routes there were afterwards.

This was fun, I love short courses. Lots of short little legs, exciting to find controls often. As opposed to looooonnnggg legs. ALTHOUGH! The long course that we did Sunday was a lot of fun too even though it was 7 1km legs...i'll write that up next.

Group Route Choice - Splits

Control Picking - Splits

CSU Training weekend
Kristoffer and I arrived at Pawtuckaway late, after everyone had already done 2 excercises, the attackpoint course and a line-o. I don't like line-o, so I went out on the attackpoint course. Not sure if I consciously determined attackpoints to controls, but it was a fun course, except for the Big island. Thick woods and I got the wind knocked out of me from running into a thicket that was hiding a log, partially stuck in teh ground and aimed right at my sternum. Laid on the ground for about a minute figureing out what just happened. Rest of the course went fine though.

Attackpoint - Splits

Kristoffer gave me my birthday present early (b-day is monday) which was fortuitous for training this weekend! A Polar RS200sd!!! Measures not only heart rate, but speed and distance, calories burned, pace, max and ave. of nearly everything, and for each split! Very cool!!! I love my husband.

I set the course for today at the very last minute. Three butterfly loops and then some nice long trail runs (downhill!) towards the end. legs felt slow in the beginning, but then we lost Loki and I went runnign back to find him, to no avail, decided he had gone with K, so I sprinting down the trail to catch back up with him (skipping the second loop) and Loki came dashing up to me from who knows where. hmph. Then on the third loop I lost the dog again!! This is getting frustrating. Again, thought he went with K, so I went dashing up the trail again, faster than race pace probably (legs were feeling good at this point), grabbed a few controls in my race to catch up with kristoffer, then skipped the very last one, on my sprint back to the car to make sure that K had the dog. Nope! He was lost in the woods. Just as we were goign to head back out to call for him, he came running down the trail and back to the cars. What a good tracker dog! Who knows where he was. Probably chasing the moose that K scared up (twice!) or perhaps the porcupine that I ran into (though he had no quills stuck in his nose.) So, I didn't end up doing the whole course, but had a really good training run anyway.

Ken set a nice 6.1km course on Burnt Mtn which used some of the map that I've never been to before! There is a quarried area at the top of a mountain that is mapped (however not very acurately anymore.) Loki ran with me, but by the time I got up to this quarry area and was then heading back down, Kristoffer ran by (on a crossing loop thing) and Loki (I assumed at the time) ran off with him. So I headed down the mountain without him, but then kept thinking more and more - "what if Loki hadn't met up with Kristoffer and is instead fallen into a hole and can't get out, or got a stick through himself or something!" So I stopped at the next control to meet up with K and verify that he had the dog, and waited...and waited...and waited, probably for about 1/2 hr. Then started makign my way out back the trail and the car, hoping to intercept K as he ran the course behind me. Never saw him, so Ken and I (who I did meet up with!) ran back to the car and sure enough K and L were there waiting for US! (you can read K's run in his log. Nielsen
Great course, for what I ran of it (never got to the last 2 controls, but an hour run was plenty for me anyway.)
I get to set a course Thursday. Anyone else in the area want to come up?

C • smart dog. hey you ready to ... 2