Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Coop Sawmill BYOM, Red, 8.0 km. Nancy was driving and I was navigating from the back seat, and as we were going down Birch Mountain Road, I hit recenter on my phone and saw that we had arrived, so I said "Stop here", and Nancy took me a little too literally, braking harder than I intended. So I said, "Well, not right here, you can pull over up ahead, behind that... well, behind Clint.

Clint had known we were planning on coming, but he was a little surprised when I stepped out of the car, Nancy's newly-acquired Forester. He was surprised because he had seen the silver Forester with Massachusetts plates parked across the street, and assumed that was us, and that we were already out in the woods. He had just finished, so he drove away. I mused that maybe the car across the street belonged to somebody I know. Nancy asked, "Do you know everyone from Massachusetts?", and I replied that I might know everyone from Massachusetts who would have a reason to be in that particular spot, and most of them drive Subarus. She admitted that I had a point. And shortly after that, PG arrived, finishing the course. I was right!

Such a nice piece of forest, it's too bad we can't use it for regular meets. Colder than yesterday, so I wore two shirts, and had a hat on for the first few controls; my hands were a little chilly until I got warmed up. I was a real doughhead on #1, so that took a while, and I was off a bit of #5 and #6 as well. The big mistake was on #11, where I was right on target, but then got the impression that I was on top of a big cliff, which I misinterpreted as being the cliff that was actually directly above me (and which I would have seen if I had bothered to glance to my left). But no, I climbed down to an area that I worked hard to convince myself looked right, and after a big circle finally came back to where I should have been. No problems after that, although I'll opine that having both #15 and #16 in there was pretty mean. ;-)

Stephen K came along with us, Phil and Charlie were there as well as Peter, and Jim and Rich were out earlier. If you allow for a substitute Stephen and let the Hendertupskis fill in for Betsy, it was a reunion of the gang at our California accommodations.

C • #15 & #16 5

Macedonia Brook, Red, 6.4 km, 3rd. Reasonably clean run, a few fishhooks here and there (9, 10, 14, 16), and two controls where SA shows a modest time loss. The first was #7, where I was expecting to see mostly whit woods in front of me, but instead I just saw a sea of laurel. I picked my way through, but all the green made it hard to keep track of where I was, so the route came out pretty wobbly. The other was #8, where I had to slow down some when I wrenched my ankle and hobbled for a bit until the pain subsided, then ran into more unmapped laurel, but the real issue was at the end when I was (tooo low and) looking for a reentrant with green in it. I overshot, in part because there was no green that I could see. Doubled back and found it without any real trouble, but it was really tucked in low and hard to see. I got lucky on #14, which also had a lot of unmapped laurel, but I looked for the cliff in almost the right spot and spied it nearby. Then more mysterious laurel on the way to #15, but that was jjust something to push through before it opened up again before the big drop.

Pleasant company driving down with Clint and Jim. The day was wet, windy, and warm, though when you're wet enough and it's windy enough (like in the exposed upper area), it can get pretty chilly anyway, But, low 50s F and a t-shirt worked for me.

SA is probably not too accurate due to the small number of participants (and is definitely out to lunch on the chute time, as the 7 seconds is clearly wrong). The graph shows that I did comparatively better relative to Will and Andis on the early climbing part, and didn't speed up as much as they did once we got to the flatter upper reaches. My actual errors were certainly bigger than SA indicates.

splits
(It occurs to me that the splits from the epunching are completely out to lunch, presumably because the boxes have not been synced recently. Normally my watch will disagree by a second or two, but these are way, way out. Likely consistent from person to person, though, i.e. if I'm shown as 30 seconds too fast on a leg, so is everybody else.)

Just a quick lake stroll, In The Dark. Tried stopping the watch without looking when I finished, but that didn't work.

Pleasant temperature (38 F?). Warm rain coming tomorrow.

Wiggle-waggle, In The Dark. A slightly shorter loop than I had originally planned, based on what the time was on my watch when I was about halfway around. Temperature about freezing, so not uncomfortable. Finding route combinations out there that I've never done before to try to keep it a little interesting.

Around the block, In The Dark. After the rain stopped and the stars were emerging -- I almost didn't go out at all.

Across the street, In The Dark. This was the shortest loop I could come up with that included the Landlocked trail. Temperature a little below freezing, but I was dressed warmly enough, and the gloves came off about 1/3 of the way around. I was glad that I was doing this, but not particularly enjoying it, if that makes any sense.

C • if that makes any sense. ... 15

Down to the lake and back and forth and around, In The Dark. The lake is surprisingly low, I think lower than I've ever seen it. Probably part of some invasive weed mitigation strategy.

C • Interesting premise. Sheni... 5