Training Log Archive: FoxShadow

Event: KS Champs (part of Possum Trot Weekend)
 

Fat Otter Winter Rogaine! What an effort this was. Ended up getting 6 inches + of fresh stuff overnight while we slept in a hotel in Rockford. Woke up to a winter wonderland, similar to what we got here in the cities, by a few inches less down there.

Started the 6 hour evert at 9AM on an aeriel map. When one choose to, we could return to the start for a Topo map. We had a great morning leading the way on the first map with the exception of running with eventual winners Andrei and Pete for the first 4 CPs. The terrain was varied and generally interesting, if not a bit thorny and thick in some places.

The second map we were caught quickly by Andrei and Pete who were out running us by quite a bit, nothing Kelly had to do with, my fitness (and ever tightening IT band in the right knee) just was not there to keep jogging the majority of the time after 14 miles. We kept after it and navigated well for almost the entire second half. I had a devil of a time trying to find the 4th to last checkpoint, and gave up after 10-15 minutes of looking where I though it would be. Funny thing was that after I left I knew just where I was and spiked the next control, so we had to be awefully close to it. The map showed it was in a re-entrant and the clue was saddle. Andrei said they hit it no problem but that it did involve some guessing. Looking at my GPS data, is appears we were either right on it or just barely to the east of it.

With an hour to go I bailed on my plan to try to get a three point CP that I knew I had been close to on the aerial map (we ran to many of the same or similar places on each map, but the aerial CPs were off limits once you turned in the first map and passport). I had run out of water so I downed my secret hydration capsule (5 hour energy) and kicked it into full pain mode. We made good time to the next 3 CPs and I felt like we were redeemed after struggling on the one we gave up on. CP 4 was near a "ruin" that was super hard to find, and honestly I don't think we would have if not but for the tracks in and out of it. We came home with 7 minutes to spare to an awesome spread of burgers and pasta, a large fire, hot chocolate, everything you could ask for.

Andrei and Pete ended up going a different route and getting 47 points while we had 46. The CP we gave up on being the difference. Good work by them!

We were just shy of a marathon according to Kelly's garmin (mine died after 21.34 miles. Doing that much distance in 6 inches of fresh snow while climbing hills and bushwacking was a hell of an effort. Worth the drive though, good work by the Fat Otter team.

C • Fat Otter Rogaine 8

Got a lap and a little in at Leb today, half in the light, half in dark. The trail is in perfect shape and my tires were hooking up almost as well as on dirt. There is a big new obstacle on the X loop that is pretty cool. It looks as if they made it out of a huge tree that fell across the trail.

I put the pic up on the forum if you want to see it (don't know how to put a picture into this field, I wish I knew HTML).

C • Image tag 5

Cut down, limbed and loaded two big dead Ash trees on my Grandmother's property. I suspect they died form the Ash Borer, but I don't know how to tell. There were still parts of the trees that were alive, but most of the trees had no new growth.

Got soaked through to the bone out there, not a good day to be outside working. Too bad it was not 10 degrees cooler, I imagine that storm would have brought near a foot of snow.

lunges, squats, sit-ups, bench, some compound movement lifts involving both upper and lower body. A good workout.

Fast walk around Calhoun and Uptown after cashing in our massage Groupons. I was pretty wrecked from the Turkey Burner and Straight Lake runs so the massage could not have been much better timed. The lake had white caps on the south side, very windy today!