Training Log Archive: Charlie

Event: Explore the Sanctuary, Westmoreland Sanctuary, HVO event
 

Green course at Westmoreland Sanctuary. New map by Greg Balter, who also set courses. Beautiful open woods, and physically not so bad. Quite a few mistakes, although none that were as bad as the ones at Harris Center 2 weeks ago. Rode down with Rhonda and Bill D, pleasant company.

Map and Route

Finally got my Highlander maps posted:

Part 1 - Surebridge
Part 2 Trail Run- Surebridge
Part 3 - Rockhouse
Part 4 - Sebago

Green - Splits

Event: Kentucky Orienteering Games
 

Abbreviated Rhonda class. It wasn't going to happen, but then Jackie showed up at 5:45, and Rhonda wanted to finish at 6:15 to see Zack off to school.

From the house. Should have gone out a bit earlier, as it was getting cold, even with a jacket and tights. Also the sun was getting low enough that the combination of glare and traffic on 219 was a little intimidating, but otherwise a delightful excursion. Enough of a hill to get the motor running.

working out with Eric. Loosened up considerably from the Highlander.

13 ring pullups

From PV up Sandy Brook and back. Felt reasonably lively after two days of hunkering down. This was the fastest by far I have done this ride this year. Part of that is doing it by myself, so I concentrate a little more, part is being stronger after riding around Sicily for a week.

Still not able to post HH maps on sprintseries.org/doma. I had a problem with this about 6 months ago. When I try to post the map I get a page:

"Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /doma/edit_map.php on this server.
Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at www.sprintseries.org Port 80."

When I had the problem before, I published the map directly from QR for a while, until that didn't work, but by then my original method of loading the .jpg file from DOMA was working again. Now, neither method seems to work. It was working last week after Boulder Dash. Hmm.

C • File size limit? 2

Another rest day. Not motivated.

C • Give yourself a break! 1

Definitely a rest day. A couple of short walks, but with some difficulty.

Event: Hudson Highlander XVIII
 

Hudson Highlander XVIII

I had it in mind to walk the whole way, but leaving the start I was almost keeping up with Phil, Peggy, Bernie and Nadim walking, and so a little jogging kept me in the group. It definitely wasn't comfortable, though. On the flatter sections they would pull away, and maybe out of sight, but then on the hills I could walk faster and I caught up. It was definitely fun to be with them, but I was going faster than I was comfortable, and not really planning my own routes. We did a lot of the trail run leg in reverse, going to #2, and then going to #6 and #7. On 3, Phil went straight up and over and I stayed with Bernie, Peggy and Nadim going a little right to scrub off a line or two of climb. Phil seems to have gotten a bit ahead there, and I was doing my own navigating to 3, 4, 5 and 6 anyway. Phil stopped short on the way to 8 and we caught up to him again.

The trail run was hard, trying to stay with the group. Again, they got away a few times, but came back to me on the uphills. Happy to get off Surebridge to the easier to see Rockhouse map. 11 was easy, and saw Alex on her way to 17 right after. I was heading more or less right to 12, but Peggy was reading a bit better and saw the right cliff developing before we got to it.

Then down the big reentrant toward 13. Phil headed up earlier and I followed him, but we were still too far left, when we saw Bernie, et al further down the hill. We all converged. We saw Glen a bit further along, but apparently he had already punched, and we had to go back uphill for it. By then, a stick in my shoe was getting intolerable, so I tried to get it out and catch back up, but it took me a while to tie it with cold hands, and I just caught a glimpse of Phil before they all disappeared into the mountain laurel. I tried valiantly to catch up, catching sight of them a few times, but working harder on finding them than on finding the control. Headless chicken? Pushed through some heavy mountain laurel and got out to the marsh, but a fair amount left of the control, and saw them coming toward me. Tried again to catch up, and again they disappeared. I was following the faint trail west and lost it, wandering around in some dense laurel for a while before figuring out that I was near the marsh S of the trail. Fought my way through horrible laurel, finally hitting the large E-W trail well W of the way to 15, where I saw my group again and knew that they were way too far ahead to catch. So a relief, more or less. Studying the map leaving 15 I walked right into an overhanging chestnut oak branch, smacking the top of my head pretty hard and falling down. But then I just chilled out, had a GU, took the trail until near the marsh NW of 12 and 16, up and over from there and got my confidence back. Caught a little laurel on the way to 17, but in good contact all the way, and easy to find 18, too, although I whacked my ankle on a rock near there. Interminably slow slogging along the road to 19. At that point I was under 5 hours, and it seemed reasonable to do the last loop in 1:30, but that might have involved some jogging, which wasn't going to happen. I saw Dave Onkst, a cadet, and Stina Bridgeman all heading from 20 to 31 when I was on my way to 25. The southern loop on Sebago was particularly pleasant, including a very brief visit from Ian, who was moving quickly when he passed me near 27. I was thinking I ought to be careful looking for 30, but then I saw it from a good 150 M away, so that was easy. Back by the tennis courts and across the footbridge, thought about going up and over, but decided that it would only save about 100 M and be harder navigation than just going around, and indeed around was trivial. I could see the bag from the trail. Down to the road and then up through the houses. Bag was on the ground, but I could see the ribbon around the tree from a distance. A slow jog in. HH XVIII in the books!

Part 1 - Surebridge
Part 2 Trail Run- Surebridge
Part 3 - Rockhouse
Part 4 - Sebago

Great organization, super grill-master Max, pleasant ride home with J-J, Jeff and Ernst.

C • Streak stays alive! 16

HL - Splits