Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Walking down to the repair place to pick up my car.

Hah! AP thought this was orienteering. (Maybe because I punched a couple of splits?) I think the first two splits were at stone walls, and I thought the third was at a trail junction, but I don't see one on the map.

Willard Brook SE, In The Dark. I had noticed that OSM showed some trails in this area that looked interesting, so I decided to check some out. Did I do this on foot, in daylight? What fun would that be? Sometime in the past year, on the recommendation of 'Bent, I bought myself a fancy-pants bike headlight, but until tonight I'd never gotten around to using it. Having a light on the handlebars is good, but the one on my helmet was more useful. The one on the helmet wasn't charged up very much, though, so by halfway around it had become pretty useless.

The trail started out pretty genteel, but got a little more challenging partway around. With a bit of practice I think it would be almost entirely rideable, save for a few obstacles that I'm probably not interested in trying to jump over. Two wipeouts, the first at an unexpected turn on a steep downhill just before Old City Road, and the other at an intersection just before the end, when I hesitated before deciding which way to go, and tried to do a too-tight 270-degree turn. Going pretty slowly in both cases, no harm done. Paradoxically, the bike came back considerably cleaner than when I started.

Looking at the GPS track, I was totally not on the trail that I had in mind to do, I was planning on the one that runs near the road, but didn't find that turnoff. And the map shows a trail juntion at the sharp turn after going SW from split #2, but I didn't see that, either.

The next question is, how much faster can I do this on foot?

C • punched a couple of splits? 5

Willard Brook SE, In The Dim. Intended for this to be a slightly abridged version of the usual loop, but I went on a couple of trail segments I hadn't before. There are several new trails out there, and a couple of signs, as well. More exploring to do. Carried a flashlight, but it didn didn't quite get dark enough to turn it on. No ankle twists, which is nice.

I had a failure I've never seen before, wherein Attackpoint could see the run on gc web sync, but said it couldn't upload it or something. I ended up going to Garmin Connect and saving it as a gpx, which I then imported, but it didn't automatically fill in the time and distance. I kind of wonder if the problem is my increasingly sucky internet connnection.

C • Increasingly 2

From home to Dan's place to pick up Nancy's car that Stephen had dropped off when he picked up Dan's truck, so that I can drive Nancy's car tomorrow while mine is having brake work done. Since Dan's place is about to be sold (in a week?), this could well be the last time I ever set foot in Nashoba Village. But you never know.

Brisk walk home after dropping the car off at the repair shop.

Midstate Trail, East Hill Rd. to Browning Pond Rd. just short of Rte. 31, with Nancy. Back at this after a little over two years, apparently. Quite a few bugs, most seeming to be some kind of gnats that just hovered in a cloud around our heads, plus some mosquitoes, and a few FDFs. Nancy wore a bunch of repellent, but they still went after her enthusiastically when she was in front; it got better when I led. Two landmarks on this route, the first being the halfway point of the trail, which was just about 100 m from where we started which means that I had essentially already done the north half (save for one tiny bit up at the NH border). The other was Sampson's Pebble, a notable boulder which would have been an interesting and challenging (and hazardous) climb, if I had brought proper footwear.

C • A few years back I made a r... 2

Back to fetch the car on the Schwinn MTB with road tires, which I had tossed into the weeds at the end of our hike while driving to the starting point. No helmet, no brakes, no big deal.