Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Mt. Tom, Troll Cup, Red M35, 6.4 km, 320 m, 17th. Not moving very fast, especially uphill (or downhill)(and there was a lot of both), but not too horrible on the navigation. Nancy and I arrived a bit late, so I started a bit over a half hour past my assigned time.

Completely befuddled on the way to #1, couldn't get anything to match up what I was seeing on the map, but I kept going on compass and spiked it. #2 was through probably the most beautiful open woods I've ever seen, and it seemed a shame to just be going downhill through them (that's praise for the terrain, not a criticism of the course). Slight miss on #3, coming up over a broad ridge to a stone wall. The wall was pretty low, and I saw the reentrant that it was in, but guessed incorrectly that it was the larger reentrant to the right, so I turned left, which was the wrong way. #4 - #7 went fine, on #8 I was low and overshot just a bit, but corrected when I saw the big reentrant ahead and didn't lose too much time. No problem on #9, I took the left-hand trail route on #10. Overshot #11 a smidge (misread some small contour detail), and missed to the right a bit on #12 after crossing the end of the marsh. Still had a little energy at the end, so I was proceeding along briskly in the chute, gaining on another guy who was there. He either heard me coming or heard people cheering for me, so he stepped it up, and I did as well. When he added another gear, I turned on the afterburners. Probably not nearly as fast i the chute as some of the kids, though.

Last place in M35, which is quite a contrast to last week, when I was first. But on the other hand, I was also last a week ago, so it's about the same. Looked like there's going to be a pack of maybe about eight of us in the span of a few minutes in the chase start tomorrow, spanning the four RedY categories (M35, M40, M45, F21), which could be fun, we'll see.

splits - RouteGadget

8 ring pullups (fully clothed), 20 pushups.

Bruce Freeman rail trail from NARA Park up to Rte. 225 and back, shorts and T-shirt weather. Last time I was out this way, this part of the trail was still under construction. Mounted first try, and I had only two stops, the first when crossing Rte. 27, and I mounted again first try. The second was at the turnaround, and I needed three tries. On the way back, there were some kids on bikes coming the other way who arrived just ahead of me, and traffic stopped for them, so I was able to ride right across. A tiny mishap at the end: I usually dismount off the front, which is okay, but it seems like it would be more elegant to dismount off the back. I was trying to do that, and somehow got my foot caught in the spokes, and the crank hit my calf, and I went down. No injury, just felt like a klutz.

On the outbound part of this, I saw a guy coming toward me on inline skates, and when he got close he called out my name -- it was Gary Gallagher (and Helen was close behind on a bike).

Rockhouse Mountain (West Point A-meet), 8.1 km, 265 m, 18th (1st M35). Largely a quite good race, but ultimately a minor disaster. I navigated well with the exception of #4, where I went off in totally the wrong direction (thinking I just needed to go "up the hill"), and lost about four minutes fiiguring out where I had gone. I did a nice job on the long route choice leg to #5, and even better on the route choice to #12 (aided by local knowledge from 25 years ago that the edge of the marsh is runnable). But I was almost totally undone by #9. Short leg that should have taken about 3-5 minutes, and I got to the circle in that time, but failed to find the right boulder and couldn't figure out what was what. I went up the hill to relocate twice, tried coming in on careful bearings, and checked a lot of boulders, but I was too high all this time, and the boulder was in what is now a pretty solid patch of laurel (although it doesn't really look that way from the map. So I lost a lot of time, but I did eventually find it and finished the course. Wrenched my ankle yesterday, and managed to re-tweak it several times today, so it probably deserves a bit of rest.

splits - RouteGadget