Training Log Archive: DWildfogel

Calero. Run the Day 2 Brown course from last Sept (had not run that day at the time because the US Nationals were set to begin the following Fri; figured my Day 1 run at Calero was enough).

Threat of rain, but mostly sunny when I ran. Grass was very wet. Navigated very well and ran pretty hard (close to race effort, but not quite, especially over last two controls).

Hadn't even considered coming out here today, but L had planned to run with Norma on the LG Creek Trail, so I saw the opportunity.

At the actual meet, Filan Swift (M17) ran 43; Gary Carpenter was next with 53, followed by Penny at 55.

1. Straight-forward.

2. Stayed on the left side of the reentrant, waiting for the side creek bed, and once across that I could see the boulder.

3. Contoured. Planned to and did use the saddle on the next to last spur to tell me where I was. Came to the last patch of veg a little high, but saw the thicket in plenty of time to go straight to it. Might have gone to the road in a meet (according to route gadget, most people did), but I came here for the practice of running in terrain.

4. Angled to the saddle on the road, then angled down to the creek bed coming down the opposite hillside. Bearing uphill, when I got to the nose of the spur, could see the rocks a bit left of where I had been heading. (Gary C's routes throughout show that he attacked things more directly than I did - I have to save any elevation that I can.)

5. Contoured, trying to stay high, but when I got to the last spur, could see I was too close to the pond; looked uphill and saw the boulder 25m above. Lost :30.

6. Probably should've contoured into the big reentrant and then up, but dropped to the pond and angled up the opposite side. The steepness was killing me, so turned N and switchbacked my way up to the road. Had to walk on the road. Contoured, staying high, and came around a little closer to the upper road than I intended (that's happened before in this area!), but adjusted immediately and had no trouble from there.

7. Angled my way up to the ridge, then a long run along the ridge to an attackpoint above the control; nailed it from there.

8. Mostly contoured to the final ridge. Came down along a mild broad reentrant, but it was the one to the right of the one I wanted. Spotted the fallen tree well to my left. Lost :20.

9. Contoured as much as I could.

A very good training day. While I wasn't familiar with any of the details, having run so many times in this park certainly helped.

The splits on my gps track are my splits at the controls. RouteGadget. WinSplits.

Warmed up by jogging to the start and then running a bit in the vicinity of the start.

Cool down: walked a couple of minutes, down to where the trail got flat, then jogged back to the parking lot and then one big loop around the parking area.

The usual weekly accumulation of morning stretching and strength exercises.

Colonoscopy at 930am. Not bad, really. Surprised how well I did with not eating for a day and a half.

Walk on Skyline to the retaining wall and back.

Theraband interleaved with core, weights, two sets of everything (3 for core).

Long Ridge. Casual walk with L on a sunny, cool afternoon. Should've worn trail shoes.

Colonoscopy scheduled for tomorrow, so only clear liquids today. Looking forward to eating again!

Lake Ranch Reservoir. Start off with quads still feeling tired from Sunday, but after a mile started feeling better and picked it up. Only ran halfway up the hill, and then pushed it a bit on the way back. Faster last 2 miles than even the spirited run of a couple of weeks ago.

502(531)1031(443)1517(427)1944
(116)2100 loop back
(250)2350 third bridge
(208)2558 down
(122)2720 loop back
(412)3132(354)3527(501)4028(359)4428

Usual 4.0: 3652
Extra 0.5: 458
Loop backs: 238 (.275 miles)

[Easy distance w/hills]

Cool down

Oracle gym, after long "staff meeting". Quick workout, upper body only, including 10 bar dips.

Casual walk on Skyline. Legs tired from yesterday, but not terribly sore.

Lake Herman, Benicia, CA. New map. 12 of 36 on Green (4.7 km, 160 m climb, 18 controls). This was the longest course of the day, so Blue and Red runners were on this course, too, as well as the better Brown runners. Winsplits

Great training to run on a new map. Even though the terrain was relatively simple, it took a while to get used to the mapping style and the openness. Bushes were undermapped, and there were other issues. A bit disconcerted early until I adjusted to the mapping style, stayed away from any serious errors. Six errors in the 10 to 50 second range, all but the last one due mostly to map issues. The hills got to me towards the end; my slow split to the GO control was due to being worn out.

Didn’t use pace-counting as much as usual, and it would have helped at times. Don’t know whether it was the 1:7500 scale that threw me, or just a bit out of the habit. Have to work on that.

1. Straight-forward.

2. Puzzled by skate board park on my left where the map showed only a patch of green. Didn’t realize until later that it was the out-of-bounds green. Still, it should have at least been enclosed by a fence. Anyway, seeing that things didn’t make sense on the left, looked at stuff on the right to get my location. Cut left off the trail before the mapped fenced in area. Looked at a control off the SW corner, not really expecting it to be mine, and it wasn’t. Hadn’t realized that the control was over a ridge, but realized that as I neared the top. Arrived right at the gap in the green, as planned; went through, turned left, and there was the bag.

3. Thought about bailing to the trail (odd use of sprint-standard symbol for the path) but it was too far out of the way plus I’m here for navigation practice, so decided to go straight. Had some trouble being sure which ridges I was looking at, so a little unsteady. Didn’t want to lose elevation, so swung a bit to the left. Identified the small hilltop S of the path, then the big reentrant 2/3 of the way through the leg, so regained my confidence. Once at that reentrant, followed a bearing and crested the ridge at the perfect spot, with the control right in front of me.

4. Contoured to the nose of the ridge, then straight down on a bearing, no problem.

5. A little too casual with my bearing: while starting to run down the side of the spur, kept my head on a swivel and spot the control well to the left of where I was headed. (Didn’t seem that the bushes matched up with the map.) Lost less than 10 seconds.

6. Punched 5 just ahead of Johanna M, who was coming in from the right. Headed off quickly to 6, looking for the last bush, but though I wasn’t pace counting carefully, it seemed that my count was too high, and I was approaching a small reentrant, so started thinking I had gone too far and looked back and saw the control 50m back, and bit higher. Lost :50.

7. Followed bearing; saw the bag from straight ahead from a distance.

8. Past #4, down the center of the reentrant, right to it.

9. Tried to strike a balance between following the straight line and contouring around the big spurs and reentrants. Was aiming for the saddle N of 9, but as I ran up the last big spur, Erin Schrim passed me and I realized I was pretty near the top and further SW than I’d thought, and so it made more sense to go straight over the top, which I did.

10. Went up a little bit and ran along the top edge of the hill, lined up with the big rocks in the distance. Hesitated when there didn’t seem to be any small boulder ahead, and saw that there were people searching below, to my left. I think my pace count told me to go a bit further, and I kept my eyes to the left and soon spotted the boulder a bit down the hill. The map is clearly wrong here. Lost about :10.

11. Contoured to the big rocks, then followed the contour to the left. Now I saw that there was a goat herd ahead, separated from me by a fence. We had been warned about this, so I followed the fence, as instructed. But then I came to a fence running uphill, with no obvious way to get to the other side. (Turned out the pen had moved from when the course setter had seen it the day before.) Just then some guy (presumably the goatherder) was there and asked me if I wanted to get to the other side, and opened a section of fence for me, and Gavin Williams came up behind me and went through the opening, too. Now, though, I was quite uncertain about where I was, though I knew I had to go downhill. I suppose I should’ve followed the fence, but instead I went for the bushes that seemed to be the furthest to the right (as the map shows). Apparently, though, the ones I was headed for are not on the map. Puzzled, decided to head back towards the fence, and then saw Gavin higher up, looking like he was heading for #12, so went a little higher, still angling towards the fence, and soon saw the bag. Lost about :50, but certainly there were extenuating circumstances.

12. At first thought I’d contour through the big saddle ENE, but then saw that the hill to the saddle SE didn’t look that bad (didn’t realize until after the meet that the contours were 2.5m not 5m), so went that way. Caught the trail on the other side of the saddle, ran that to the bend NW of the control, then followed the line of bushes up.

13. Headed straight for 16, figuring the big patch of green on the left or the path on the right would catch me if I was off, but I hit it right on. Angled downhill (my toes were starting to hurt from all the downhill), just under the big patch of (hatched, I guess, hard to see on the map) green, and from there I could see the rocks. Thought I might cross the rocks, but as I got close, looked like that would be too slow, so went all the way around to the right. Didn’t feel like I lost anytime, but my split ranking was 17, so myabe my route was at the end was a little too circuitous.

14. Ran alongside the rocks, dipped into the forest because the straight line looked too gnarly, angled out at 45 degrees from the forest corner and very soon saw the bag.

15. Towards the hill, then along the edge of the green. Stopped when I thought I should see the bag but I didn’t, but then took one more step and saw it right where I was expecting. Guess I lost a couple of seconds with the stop.

16. By going a few meters to the right, found an easy place to go right through the green. Legs real tired going uphill, just walking. Came to the bush I thought was the right one, but didn’t see the bag - because I was looking at the SE corner instead of the SW! So, went uphill another 30m, then saw some kids higher up pointing down past me, so looked back and saw the bag. Lost :30, the only mistake of the day I can’t blame at least partially on the map.

17. Contoured to the footpath, trying to give it all I had given that I was near the end, but there wasn’t much left. Took the footpath to just before the big patch of green, intending to run along the SE edge to just under the control. But when I got there, there was a small footpath I wasn’t expecting running right in the direction I wanted to go - and I couldn’t see anything like that on the map. (Now I see that the path is there, but the space between the dashes is so small and the line so light that it looks like a contour.) Stood there for a few seconds convincing myself that I was indeed in the correct place, then ran down the footpath, spied the bag, and angled up.

18. No problem navigationally, but my climbing muscles were shot and had to walk the uphill.

The usual weekly accumulation of morning stretching and strength exercises.

Attended all day session of my Mindfulness class.

Front of house. Lovely day is starting to cool off. Legs surprisingly heavy - guess it's from running fast on Wed. Been having mild dizziness and some headaches over the last few days, and this run made my head feel well worse. Didn't plan to do much anyway with an orienteering meet coming up Sunday.

624, 600, 554

Cool down

Los Gatos JCC. Towards the end, worked on pausing before shooting, and hit 4 out of 5.

Los Gatos JCC. Haven't been doing these much, but pushed a little while keeping it to two sets rather than 3.

Bar exercises: 1-2-7

Curls, presses, arm rotations, pull downs interleaved with core, punches.

Drove from the cabin back home, with a stop at Lowell's in Sebastopol for lunch. Feeling a bit dizzy.

Kortum Trail, Sonoma Coast St Beach. Overcast but very still, so still quite lovely. Stay on the flats as much as possible. Legs felt tired from yesterday's long hike at first, but then started feeling better and got going at a pretty good pace.

Started at Shell Beach parking; ran N to Sunset Rocks (1.27 mi according to Garmin on Saturday), then S to the edge of the big gorge (Furlong Gulch), then back to Shell Beach. One big loopback the first time I got back to Shell Beach.

Shell Beach (1327) Sunset Rocks (1201) Shell Beach (342) loopback (502) Furlong Gulch (443) Shell Beach

Cool down.

Armstrong Woods. Hike to Armstrong Tree, up Pool Ridge Trail, down East Ridge.

Armstrong Woods. Continuation of the hike. My Garmin battery was getting low, so saved what I'd had so far. This is the final portion. From the East Ridge Trail, rather than go all the way to the Ranger Station (and parking lot), cut down to the picnic area (downhill past the waterfall) and then went back to the parking lot the usual way.

Armstrong Woods. Final part of the hike, after the Garmin battery ran out. So, totals are: 6 miles, 1340 ft climb, 2 hrs, 1 min. Assuming the Garmin under-reported as usual, the distance might be more like 6.3 miles.

Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve. Walk to the picnic area then up to the waterfall, back to the icicle tree, to the Armstrong tree, then back. Quite chilly in the woods.

Kortum Trail, Sonoma Coast St Beach. Spectacular weather after a bit of smog burns off. Start at Blind Beach, out to the road to Wright's Beach, back to Sunset rocks. Ran mostly on my own, looping back for L many times.

Cool down by walking over the big hill back to Blind Beach (quite an effort in itself).

The usual weekly accumulation of morning stretching and strength exercises.

Kehoe Beach, Pt. Reyes. Had seen pictures of this beach, and remembered roughly where it was, so after lunch at Pt. Reyes Station (on our way to the cabin), drove out to the trail head, walked out to the beach, then N for a bit and back. Extraordinarily lovely beach, and extraordinary weather to match.

Lake Ranch Reservoir. Lovely day: 75 degrees, sunny, no wind. A little sluggish at first (from yesterday's workout), but had originally planned orienteering practice at Monte Bello today, so to make up for missing that, started pushing the pace after the first mile. As I came back along the lake, saw a young woman running pretty fast, about 100m ahead, so that gave me some incentive. Caught her (Tamar; chatted with her a bit afterwards) with less than half a mile to go. Scintillating splits for the final mile and a half. Calling this "Easy dist / hill" is not correct, since it was more like "Distance / hill", but I didn't want to start another sub-type.

Nearly as good as 12-27-14, and yesterday I ran a pretty hard workout (in terrain).

503(535)1038(437)1516(425)1941
(617)2559 - up the hill to the set of three trees
(417)3016 - back down
(418)3434(358)3832(506)4338(356)4734

Loop backs: 156

Usual 4.0 in 3700
Extra mile: 1034 (equal best, even with taking it easy going down).

Cool down

Local terrain. Short on time, went for intensity. Really have to do more running in terrain.

749 - warm up mostly on Skyline

Then 4 x (1 x round-the-house plus 2 x woods loop):
453, 440, 429, 411

Fair amount of new deadfall from recent storm, but first time I did this when it was dry.

Cool down in front yard.

Not quite a regular Tuesday since my manager is in India so I had no afternoon meeting.

Lake Ranch Reservoir. After days of heavy rain, just a few showers today. The top of Black Rd was closed off, so we drove down Gist and up Black from there, only to find that the actual blockage was below our trail head, so we drove all the way back up Gist and then down Black the usual way. All of this took an extra 35 mins, so we got out pretty late. L was running slowly and stopping to take pictures, so I ran mostly on my own, with a lot of loop backs. Felt good on the flats, but my climbing muscles still seem a bit tired from Fri at Monte Bello.

Tons of water in the streams and lake - very scenic.

Cumulative times below are adjusted (as usual) for the removal of loop backs, and also for the removal of the extra half-mile up and down the hill.

458(523)1021(449)1511(433)1944
(309) - up to third bridge (and then :36 piddle break)
(207) - back down
(427)2411(412)2823(532)3355(429)3824

Loop backs: 1320

Usual 4.0 in 3824
Extra half-mile (to 3rd bridge and back): 516

[Easy distance w/hills]

Cool down.

The three of us walk down (plus the long climb back up) to MacKenzie's road at the edge of our property. Get caught in quite a downpour.

Nearly full slate of at-home strength exercises: 3 sets of each of the theraband exercises interleaved with core, then 3 sets each of two arm exercises with weights.

Went down to the Bear to meet the run clubbers, but only Norma was there. Later, Rachel came down from SF and spent the evening; helped her with geometry/math she needed for planning some brain surgery on her song bird.

The usual weekly accumulation of morning stretching. Still rating the intensity of this as 1 even though and the great majority of mornings I include 3 sets of 120 "hundreds" (core exercise) and 70 - 80 pushups.

Monte Bello. Run first 6 controls of a Blue course I set in 2003. Thought I could get out there before the impending storm, but it started raining just I started and I wound up in pouring rain and high winds. By the time I got to the vicinity of #2 my magnifier was useless; by the time I got near #6, my glasses were very wet, as was the map case, making things even more difficult than they would've been otherwise. Made small errors at 2 and 3 and a significant error at 5. Well, at least I got some terrain running and map reading in.

Somewhere after #6, my Garmin seemed to be showing the time of day rather than my running time. Tried twice to "resume", but it didn't work. I assumed it had stopped because I accidentally hit a button, but in fact, it was still running until I looked at it several hours after I got home; hence the odd gps data.

1. (1:05) Spotted the lone tree in the distance, made it easy.

2. (4:59) Good job of getting onto the terrace SW of the control, but apparently stayed on that too long, and when I scrambled down the hillside, came to two large mounds. Took a while to see that they were actually on the map. Had to contour SSE 100m to get to the control.

3. (5:38) The reentrant was actually less vegetated than mapped. Got to the road bend, took a bearing towards the stream bend SE of the control, but somehow wound up on the trail 100m E. Took the trail across the stream and around the bend (cutting the corner, then follow a bearing towards the control. Recognize the shallow hilltop E of the control, and go around it to the reentrant.

4. (2:39) NW to trail, trail around the big cliff, angle down to stream junction.

5. (12:47) NNW to trail, follow trail across bridge. Remember from the past that this is th best place to go W and cross the big stream, but decided to try something different. Follow the trail up, heading for the second set of switchbacks. Just before there was another bridge across a side-stream; after crossing it, headed down and crossed the stream. But then I lost my place: took a bearing as if I was at the stream junction 100m NNW. (Didn't figure this out until I got home.) Not surprisingly, Wound up in the clearing 100m SSE of the control. Figured out that's where I was, but the neck between the uphill and downhill parts has become overgrown, so thinking I was in the upper part, contoured into the woods; came back after not seeing a boulder. Saw that there was another clearing further up, realized it was the upper half, so went there, contoured into the woods, and after a bit spotted the low boulder to my left. (Took a minute to confirm by going to boulder 50m to the NE, and it was there.)

6. (5:04) More or less straight SSE to the trail bend, along the trail to the big clearing, contour and climb some, into the woods, see the rocks just slightly above me.

At this point the course was 1.35km, 85m climb, and I had done 32:12 (subtracting the 1:01 spent verifying that the other boulder was there near #5). Roughly 8 minutes of error.

By now it was pouring, and I couldn't see much, so decided I should just take trails straight back to the car. But when I crossed the bridge near #8, decided to look for that boulder. Wandered for about 8 minutes, and never did find it.

Then ran hard for about 8 minutes, mostly on trails, back to the start. Near the end, the trail was so slick I got hardly get up; 40 mph wind in my face, pouring rain. It was tough to get into dry clothes and I was chilled for a long time.

3 sets of pulldowns interleaved with sets of 40 "hundreds", 2 sets each of curls and military presses, 6 bar dips. Haven't done these much lately, so didn't want to overdo it.

Weights, two sets each (curls, military presses).

Skyline Hill. Felt rested and had good energy, but legs felt heavy the first lap. continued to feel loggy, but surprisingly fast splits. Decided to go for one fast hill, but unfortunately hit the stop button instead of the split button at the start of the hill, so the elapsed time for the first split is a guess (it was clearly considerably faster than last week). Faded on the second part, but still within :02 of last week's reps.

4 front-of-house loops: 611, 532, 505, 437 (Tot: 2126)
[538 jog] 445 (253 end of wall)

Cool down:

Slow jog 0.2 mi in 4 mins (plus some walking)
1 min walk/stretch
Jog 0.5 in 7 mins

Lake Ranch Reservoir. Run the usual 4.0 miles twice. Stay with L the first time, but she doesn't continue due to sore ribs. Wanted to keep the second time the same (nice and easy), but went a little too fast for miles 5 and 6. Still, it was surprisingly easy.

---------------504(543)1047(509)1556(454)2050
4130(500)3630(613)3017(439)2537(446)

---------------443(529)1012(503)1515(447)2002
4021(455)3526(600)2926(439)2447(444)

:47 piddle break after first 4 miles.

Cool down

Ross, CA. After lunch at a cafe in "downtown" Ross, we walked up Shady Lane to an open house (nice place, but the foundation is crumbling) on Sir Frances Drake, and then back.