Training Log Archive: CleverSky

For a few years, my brother Alan has been scoping out multisport races that we could do as a relay team, but for various reasons, none of them have panned out. This year he found a good one, though, the Craftsbury Mud n' Ice Quadrathlon. He's a reasonable skier and a skilled cyclist, and I'm a mediocre runner who owns a boat, so our resources were nicely complementary. March 29, which was an available day for me, and we were in agreement that we were not interested in the case of adverse weather (like cold rain). But the race got postponed three weeks because the river was still frozen, and that meant it would be the day before the Billygoat, with a lot of distance between the two. Sounded great, there's nothing like a race the day before to give you an excuse for poor performance.

Alan had the leadoff ski leg, and he reported that the conditions changed on each of the three laps, starting with gray ice, and ending up slushy. He tagged off to me about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way down in the field, I think.

Second leg of Craftsbury Mud And Ice Quadrathlon. Alan tagged off to me and I took off down the road. This was mostly relatively flat dirt roads, with a moderaately steep downhill ear the end that had a little bit of ice left, but there wasn't any serious mud. I passed one guy early on, then got passed by a woman, then another guy. I gained some on the woman going down the steep part, but not enough to catch her, and another guy caught me right at the boat transition and was in the river first.

Third leg of Craftsbury Mud And Ice Quadrathlon. I brought the orange kayak, and had clothes and my PFD waiting with the boat, and Alan had driven down there to help me get going. I handed him my glasses to put on the wetsuit jacket, and got it on backwards and had to pull it off and start over. I opted to not change my shoes, and just ditched the gloves in the boat. I shoved off, zipped up the spray skirt, and quickly realized that something was wrong: I wasn't wearing glasses. In the confusion with the wetsuit, I forgot to get them back, and figured they were somewhere in the mud next to where the boat had been parked. Whatever. There was a lot of current, and it's a very twisty stretch of river, so it was a little technical, but I didn't come close to capsizing and didn't lose too much time to current tactics. There was one portage around a snowmobile bridge that I did pretty well. I managed to pass one recreational C-2 (with two woman who didn't really know how to paddle), and a boat I heard coming up behind me at the bridge didn't catch me. We also apparently gained a place because one of the leaders tipped over and lost his boat, then DNFed after working his way down the bank to where it finally got hung up.

I tagged off to Alan (who wisely had put my glasses on his head, and then left them on the dashboard of the car), and he took off on the bike leg, which we figured would be our strong suit. He had scoped out the bikes in the rack, and most people had mountain bikes, while he had brought a cyclocross bike with pretty skinny tires, because the roads were good enough that fat tires were not needed. In fact, he said afterwards that his road bike with time trial bars may have been a better choice. I haven't found any results, but we figure he probably gained a lot of time, but since there was a big gap ahead of him, not many places. He finally passed two guys at the end, but on the last steep climb one of them got him back.

The field was a mix of teams, and solo competors, the latter including Adrian Owens, who kicked our butt.
Results, 16th out of 24, 7th of 9 teams.

The GPS track is from Alan's cyclometer, which we used as a baton.
Before and after:

Goals for Sunday:
1) Beat Phil.
2) Beat Charlie.
3) Beat Sharon.
(I'll note that the second and third of these at one point seemed out of reach.)

C • Goals 5

Since I figured the woods are probably really wet, I went out on the road, much as I dislike that. The length of Northfield in both directions, taking it easy. Could I do this ~4 times at this pace? I think so. That would be a 4:39 marathon, or, taking into account AP's climb prorating, equivalent to about 4:03 if it were on the flat. Part of the reason for the pace was that it was getting pretty dark, and unlike the people who go out with fluorescent reflective vests and lights even in daylight, I was just wearing O-pants and a black t-shirt. As a result, I was pretty invisible, and every time a car was approaching, I got as far as I could onto the shoulder or somebody's lawn. But I didn't get killt, so I guess it was okay. And nice temperature to be doing this. The big question for this weekend is going to be how much moleskin/ductape I'm going to need on my feet, depending on what happens with the blisters from running on the sand in Florida.

As of when I got home today, the only snow left anywhere on my property is the little bit left piled up against my right-hand garage door, which is somewhat insulated by the pile of leaves that have drifted on top of it. My neighbor out back still has some extensive patches in the shady spots.

Half-day downhill skiing at Okemo with Patti. I think about 8-10 runs (though Okemo has a lot of vertical, so some of them were long) in total spring conditions -- temps in the 60s, bright and sunny, frozen base all softened up, and lots of slush puddles at the bases of the lifts (though not much in the way of bare spots, really).