Training Archive: CristinaIn the 7 days ending 2007-07-08:
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| M | T | W | H | F | S | S | |||||||
Saturday Jul 7 | ||
| Event: Finger Lakes Rogaine | ||
| Orienteering race 12:00:00 | |
| shoes: Asics Trail Attack III | ||
| I don't think I could have asked for a better first (1/2) rogaine experience. The weather was great, 12 hours was just the right amount of time, and Sandy and I meshed very well. If our flashlight bulb hadn't burnt out before we started using it, and if a few of the controls hadn't been in such sketchily mapped areas, it would have been perfect... but this was close enough.
Started out with the planning, which I think Sandy described well. We basically ended up with a pretty flat route on the northern portion of the map, with options to extend a bit to the southern depending on how fast we were going. The longest plan was ~34km, which seemed quite ambitious and nabbed us quite a few points. So off we went. First control (77) was not where everybody expected it to be based on the logical attackpoint - a trail bend. I was wearing shorts and gaiters and the 25 minutes we spent hunting around the stupid marsh were enough to tear my knees up pretty good. We bailed out to the trail and saw a happy team run by as if they had found it further south. So we headed to the next (though I'm still convinced it's no the "right") trail bend and nabbed it. Not a great start, but we saw that at least a half dozen teams were still looking, so at least we felt like we were ahead of the gang. The next several controls went well enough, and we learned quickly that pastures were often easy to move through, just hard to get in and out of with all the fences. And pastures change. Sometimes a lot. We ended up adding a 50-point pasture control in exchange for a later woods one that was promised to be ugly. And we never found 45, which appears to have been placed creatively. Despite that we made great time and got to our hopeful 6-hour point at 1801. At this point we knew we were going to have to extend our original "longest possible" plan, so we added on another 4 southern controls and kept cranking. At some point around here my knees had had enough of the grasses and weeds and I threw on pant legs. Or, as Sandy put it, my pants. I have no particular aversion to nakedness, or pantlessness in general, but I was not exactly pantless prior to this. Okay, so we head south and we're still moving pretty good. No problems with my feet, Sandy wasn't whining about anything (she never did), and navigating fine. At some point it got dark and we slowed down a lot, but that was expected. We had some trouble with a control on a pond just before dark, but the frogs were croaking well and that helped us find the thing. After that it was fine up until 75 - a control on a one-line hill ~200m from the trail. It was getting late and my feet were hurting pretty fierce, so I'm not sure my brain was functioning well, not that that should have been needed. We attacked three times and never had any luck finding any hill, let alone the control, so we sulked on pressed towards home. Turns out it was only ~30m from the trail, so we were never even close, attacking from an angle as we were. Anyway, I'll cut to the chase... we finished fine, though my feet were pretty beat up. Thought they were just sore but I actually did have a few blisters and some wet wrinkly parts. We'd felt we'd done pretty well and we did, certainly within reach of the #2 team (shoulda coulda...). I really liked the fact that we were done when we were, and the next day had some kind of post-race euphoria/selective amnesia and really wanted to do more 12 hour events. It's very satisfyingly demanding without being uncivilized. And apparently I never got bitchy, which is my worry with 24 hours, though maybe Sandy's just being nice. Logistical things to note for the future: I packed my mule, which has a 100oz reservoir and plenty of packing space and a good spot to clip the tow line. I filled up water once, at 5.5 hours, and seemed to have had a total of ~150oz of water. I carried food in my cargo pockets. Ate one baggy of cristina's oh-so-special gorp by the ~5 hour mark and ate half of another baggy (stored in pack) during the rest. That was plenty of food, never touched the bars in the other pocket. In the pack: long sleeve shirt, extra socks, pant legs. Used the pant legs because of the stupid grass, never used the shirt, should have used the socks. | ||
| C • burnt out bulb 4 | ||
| C • Frogs 7 | ||
| C • Control #45 4 | ||
Friday Jul 6 | ||
| Note | |
| Travel day, Tucson to PA/NY for ~10 days east. Of real leave! It was physically painful for me to click those buttons to request so much leave all at once, but I had been planning to do it for a while and it will be good to try to relax.
I keep meaning to write a mid-year self critique (inspired by J-J) but, like about seventeen million other things I keep meaning to do lately, it hasn't happened yet. Later today or next week, hopefully. Looking forward to losing (half of) my rogaining virginity tomorrow. | ||
| C • Good luck!!! You'll like it :)... 11 | ||
Wednesday Jul 4 | ||
| Running (trail) 1:10:00 [2] 6.0 mi (11:40 / mi) +200m 6:34 / km | |
| ahr:172 max:187 shoes: Asics Trail Attack III | ||
| Morning run in Saguaro East, starting about 7:30. Pleasant enough to start, about 82 with some breeze, finishing in the upper 80s. Route went through a lot of sandy stuff making it slow going. Legs felt stiff yet again. Lots of stretching and/or yoga is in order, I think.
Saw lots of aminals today, all the usual suspects - lizards, jackrabbits, squirrels, quail, enormous alien creature insects that fly, etc. Sort of a normal day until I say this very cute but rather large snake curled up along the side of the trail in the shade of a little shrub. It's not often that I *skid* to a stop while running, but this was one of those times. Took a cautious look to see if it was what I thought it was and then gave it a very wide berth because it was one of these, looking very much just like the picture: 
That's my first dangerous snake spotting in the wild, and my second snake for the week. Neat! Despite such excitement, I think I will be going in to work today. :( | ||
| C • Cute snake 19 | ||
Tuesday Jul 3 | ||
| Note | |
| Spent the morning on the range requalifying on the M9. Shot expert but it was hardly satisfying. | ||
Monday Jul 2 | ||
| Note | |
| Spent the day on the range qualifying with the GUU-5. As usual, good mental experience. Lots of sweat, too. And it's nice to know that I can still shoot. | ||
| Note | |
| We're having a "heat advisory" this week because I guess 110 is the magic number where all of a sudden it's not just hot, it's wicked hot, and people might die. Not sure Tucsonans really take it that seriously. I mean, I can't feel the difference between 107 and 111. All I know is that next week's jaunt to the comparably frigid northeast is going to feel very nice. | ||
| C • comparably frigid 2 | ||