Training Log Archive: CleverSky

NAOC Long, Burnt Mt., Red M35, 8.4 km, 360 m, 7th in class, 22nd on course. This was kind of odd. It felt like a better day than yesterday, and although my placing was the same (and the field was bigger -- 53 vs. 39 yesterday), I wasn't as far behind this time. But strangely, I lost a ton of time out there: 17+ minutes.

#1 was fine, but on #2, I got the the trail I wanted and immediately came to a junction that didn't seem to be on the map. I looked like left was probably the right way to go, and it was, but I was a little tentative and therefore slow. I got off to the right a bit at the and and had to climb back up. #3 started out fine, but 80% of the way there, I went through the slot just to the right of the one I intended, and of course nothing looked right when I popped out on the other side, and I looked over to the right before realizing whre I was, and it was fine from there. No problem on #4, and I was able to go a bit quicker.

#5 was the first long leg. I couldn't see any reason not to go straight, but it was across a big bland area, and I wasn't 100% sure where I was when I got to the hillside with the control. There were a couple of guys wandering around lost out there, one asking for directions. I thought I needed to go left, and I did, and found the control without any trouble, but I was taking it slowly at the end and SA says I was down 3.5 minutes. #6 was fine, and I got passed by Emily.

Then the really long leg. I took it pretty straight, and my track shows me going pretty straight. In retrospect, there was a route more to the left that had more trail running, and that probably would have been faster, but I didn't see it. On the grind up the hill, there were a couple of times when I tried to figure out where I was, and had to convince myself that it was a waster of time, because I just needed to keep going until I got to the top. Once I did get up there, it took a little maneuvering to get around the back of the quarry to get to the control. Half my time loss is on this leg. But there was a lot of climb involved, and there was also climb on #5, so it could be that a big factor on this time loss is simply that I'm an old man who's not in great shape and can't go uphill very well.

The rest of the course actually went quite well. On all but one of the remaining legs, I placed well above my final position, and on three of them I was actually 6th! I picked up 8 places, so I clearly wasn't worn out. I even tied (with 10 others) for best time in the abbreviated chute.

And at least I wasn't one of the many who got really chewed up and spit out. I saw Jeremy early on and commented to him, "It's hard!". Then I saw him later and he said "It's too hard!". Took hin 4:23 to get around the Blue course.

Putting out SI boxes onto already-placed stands at Dartmouth, more or less everything east of the green. I started at 6:30 PM, and when I was in the woods, the light really started to fade, so I had to use my phone as a light a couple of times, primarily to read the map. The one miss was specifically because of trouble reading the map in the low light. Once I got back onto the developed part of campus, it was a little easier because there were streetlights and such, but there was a hitch with that. When we pulled out the SI units from the case, we highlighted the control numbers with a blue highlighter. When I was under certain streetlights, the yellowish sodium-vapor light combined with my colorblindness made it look as if we had crossed the numbers out with a black marker. But I got it done.