Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Down to the lake and back, In The (morning) Dim, 10F. I wore a headlamp, not because it was hard at all to see where I was going, but just to make myself visible in case I encountered any cars. Stepped out onto the ice, which was nice and smooth enough in the cove, but looked like it had more rough snow coverage further out. But the ice next to shore was too thin, and I went through.

The area on the left going down the hill, where a bunch of clearing took place last year, now has four houses in various states of completion.

12 F, In The Dark.

Well, this was bordering on not so smart.

The ride went fine, but it was pretty cold. It was the loop I had in mind a couple of nights ago. Too cold for riding a bike on the road, at least for me. I was dressed pretty warm, but my fingers, toes, and thighs got cold. My toes are still cold. Uphill wasn't too bad, but the flats and especially the downhills took too little effort and produced too much wind chill. Got it in the books, but that's about all I can say for it. And I suppose I HTFU a little.

A little jaunt near Nancy's house, In The Dark. It wasn't much, but it wasn't nothing. Kind of cold out, though certainly not bad for the middle of January.

(Well, that GPS track certainly isn't very impressive in terms of accuracy!)

Tooling around the neighborhood, In The Dark. I had a different loop in mind, but I lost interest in that within a minute of leaving the driveway. So instead I dreamed up something more modest, but that kept morphing as I went along. Took a lot of mental effort to get myself out the door, but it was fairly pleasant once I did. I expect there will be days that are a lot less appealing before the winter is over. The candlepower I'm carrying is enough that the few cars that I encountered gave me a very wide berth. Had to get off the bike at the Holman bridge because the snow piles haven't melted out. I felt a little bad about all the lights at that point because there was a car parked down there that I suspect was occupied and I hope I didn't disturb anyone.

To the post office and back. In The Dark.

Didn't want to risk stressing the toe, so I bundled up and loaded the Mamacita with a whole bunch of lights and reflectors, and headed out In The Dark. I dreamed up a loop that minimized my time on numbered highways. Temperature maybe just below freezing, with a light fog that tended to reflect the headlamp beam back at me.

Huntington winter training, Red, starting and ending at #3. Another nice warm day, this time with brilliant sunshine. I had to slow down quite a bit in deference to my toe. Good news was that my ankles held up okay, just one roll on the right and that was minor. Bad news is that the toe was not okay at all. I smashed it or caught it a few more times, every one of them painful. I was concerned that I was doing more harm to myself than good. I also started wondering about my shoes, and when I was done, I took the shoelaces out to remind me not to wear them any more, they're going in the poubelle. When they were new, I think they were fine, but they seem to have lost some of the structural properties that I look for in footwear to use in unpredictable rocky forests. I really don't want a shoe that can do this:


splits
RouteGadget

C • splits protocol 5

C • I've been wondering what th... 7

And finally...
J-J's Eleven (plus one) Memorable Orienteering Experiences List, #12

Mt. Norwottuck, Massachusetts, 4/29/1990 (Billygoat)
My first Billygoat was in 1984, and I went overtime. The next year, I succeeded in getting a shirt, and I was pretty pleased about that. There was already a custom of using the initials of the previous year's top placewinners as control codes, and I wondered aloud if I might ever be good enough to get my initials on a control. Dave Bailey thought about that, and said that if the course were ever in a place with a lot of trails, that could require a lot of controls, and the results list would need to be mined more deeply, so maybe it would be possible.
The next year I went overtime again, then I got another shirt, then I missed 1988 because I was in Greece. I did a lot more orienteering when I got back, and got quite a bit better, so the following spring, when the Billygoat was at Mt. Norwottuck, I managed to pull off a 15th place, good enough to earn one point on the lifetime points list, as well as a likely control the following year.
1990 saw the event return to Norwottuck, back-to-back Billygoats, and PG decided to introduce a couple of twists, in order to reduce the following a bit. The first was that everybody was allowed to skip a control. The second was that one control would be forked, and you chould choose to go to either of the locations (or you could skip the forked control). Nobody had any experience with this, so nobody knew how it would work out. Mikell Platt initially thought that it would be a bust, that everybody would just wait and skip the last control.
For the first few controls, I was just in the pack. I made small errors on #3 and #4, I think because everyone else was, and maybe I figured out the errors sooner than most. During this time, I was thinking about the whole skip thing. The obvious choices appeared to be #7 or #8, because the course made acute angles at those controls, so there was a lot of distance to be saved. Skipping #7 also meant a trail run from #6 to #8, and skipping #8 meant a trail run from #7 to #9. But #7 was a water stop, so that was a less appealing choice. And in fact exactly half of the finshers skipped one or the other of those two controls.
But I was among those who looked further ahead. The leg to #12 was a nasty sidehill along the gully-riddled south face of Norwottuck, and then to the forked #13 you had your choice of either more of the same, or a steep climb to the summit of the mountain. However, by skipping #12 and going to the #13 at the top, the climb became a gradual one along the ridge trail. That was the choice that I made.
When I got to the water stop at #7, ten people had been through ahead of me, probably at least five were ahead of me who skipped it, and a bunch more came through soon after me but then skipped #8, so they got ahead of me as well. I had sent a 16 oz. bottle of my preferred sports drink to the water stop, which was manned by Peter and Gail. When I arrived, I quickly punched, grabbed my bottle, and slammed it all down without taking a breath, which earned me an astonished "Whoa!" from Peter. And I took off toward #8 without further hesitation. I was the second one to do that, after Steve Tall 2.5 minutes earlier. I made pretty damn good time over the next four legs, and when we got to the next water stop at #11, there were 19 people ahead of me (some were still at the water stop), but 18 of them had already skipped and had to face the nasty traverse to #12. I had cut a minute off of Steve Tall's lead.
I parted ways with the pack pretty soon as I headed for the summit. Along the summit trail I passed Steve, and continued charging up the trail, no navigation needed. The control description was "hill, western part", and I think it was hanging from the lookout tower. The event had been billed as part of the "Quad State Games", due to the four-state view from one of the control locations. I didn't have time to enjoy the scenery, but there wasn't any, because the summit was socked in with fog.
The drawback to the summit control was that you had to figure out how to get down from there. The next control was to the NW, and that face of the mountain is hellaciously steep and rocky. So I literally put my map and compass in my pocket and charged headlong down that slope, grabbing trees with each hand as I went by them to control my plunge. I made it to the trail at the base of the slope, turned left, started running hard, and did a total face plant.
I got up and started running again, and as I approached #14, I saw two figures up ahead at the control, who I recognized as Joe Brautigam and Rich Kelly. Pretty good company to be in near the end of a Billygoat. With the two of them to follow, I ran hard, and started closing the gap. At #15 (which had my initials, yay!), I had almost caught them. Then Joe headed off in some weird direction, and disappeared, losing a minute. Rich headed the correct way and I charged after him, getting closer by #16 and to within a couple of steps at the final #17. I punched as quickly as I could, and the finish chute was so short that the finish wasn't even shown on the map, no more than 50 meters. I went into an explosive sprint, and Rich responded by... cramping. So I blew past him.
I was by no means the first to arrive. Mikell Platt, Bill Spencer, and Dave Pruden had run most of the course together and had been back for about 15 minutes, and Paul Bennett was 10 minutes behind them. But I was fifth. To date, 97 people have ever finished in the top five in the Billygoat, and I'm one of them.