Training Log Archive: JanetT

Tuesday was our travel day back home so the only exercise was walking in the airports. Fortunately no bad travel experiences to report; tailwind the whole way. :-)

After the drive back into San Diego from the A-B Desert, we stopped for lunch, then went tidepool hopping at Point Loma. The timing was ideal as the tide was at its lowest point at 3 pm because of a full moon that night, so there was a lot of beach exposed.

Though we were at the beach for about 2 hours, I've only logged a few minutes of it.

We saw kelp, limpets and anemones, several sea hares and one sea star, lots of hermit crabs and a few fish. Also saw pelicans flying low over the waves, and a few white egrets fishing along the beach and in the tidepools as well. Fun! I love the ocean and the beach and a few visits a year recharge my batteries. :-)

The Bay of Fundy sprint at the COC's this year will be awesome! I hope we can go...

Day 2 at Buttes Pass, this time south and west of the base camp area, so less climb.

I lost about 30 seconds at number 7 when I checked the wrong reentrant (west of the control location), and a good 8 minutes or so on a parallel error in the badlands section near the end when I misidentified a spur and ended up going too far down a steep rocky section; the only safe way out was to go farther down and around the spur and back up the correct reentrant to the control, all of which took extra time. I loved the views from up on top of the spurs, however.

1st of 1 in F50, so I won an award, which is a reproduction of the map (lower part) backed by a photograph of the corresponding scenery (upper part), dotted with mini-photos of orienteers. Really neat, imaginative, and appreciated. Thanks to everyone in SDO for a great A-meet weekend.

But it's not over yet...

Sunday afternoon, those who wanted to do the Maze-O in the badlands/slot section of the park followed Bill Gookin down the long slot from the parking area to a wider sandy section with a road (accessible from the other direction, apparently), which was an adventure in itself as we had to weave our way through sometimes narrow gaps between sandstone cliffs.

The Maze-O is a score-O format with 8 controls scattered across the area. I managed, with some trepidation in spots, to find 4 controls. I intended to collect another on the way back to the parking area but missed/overshot it (more parallel errors to finish the day) and was tired enough not to want to go back for it. Sometimes it was just hard to read the map, too, with all the black squiggly lines (cliffs) along the brown squiggles (contours). But it was definitely a fun event -- not to be missed!

Distance from my FR205... I can't wait to see the SportTracks overlay after I download the workout!

Worth the price of admission!

Green Day 2 - Splits

Event: Anza Borrego Desert O-Fest
 

Event: Georgia Navigator Cup
 

Green day 1 at Buttes Pass in Anza-Borrego S.P., east of the camping area. Thanks to Bill Gookin this park is VERY well mapped and if you took your time you could navigate well. Spur areas covered with small rocks were more stable than the reentrants between them where the rocks loosened from the soil and slipped out from under you -- I quickly learned to stay on top of the spurs. Oh, and I quickly learned to watch carefully for the teddy-bear cholla, too, which was ubiquitous, but scattered so you could pick your way around it. Beware if you look down at your map, however!

I was off about 50 meters to the right to the first control (I was busy getting used to the map and crossed the proper spur at a slightly wrong angle, but saw someone punching the flag to my left). As I was a later starter, I also had help along the way seeing people going into the control area, from a good distance, despite not being able to see the control. The second half of the course got into more hilly badlands (steep spurs/reentrants) requiring more leg strength and attention to avoid parallel errors. On leg 9-10, rather than taking the obvious safe route to the road and then along a spur to the control, I chose a different reentrant route which required more effort and a difficult descent, so it was much slower; I probably lost 5-7 minutes on that leg (if not more).

Technical and physical sprint course in the closer-in badlands around the campsite/base area. Fine through the first two controls but then bobbled the third after a climb, and parallel error on number 4 (the eastern-most of 4 deep erosion gullies on the side of a hill; I didn't want to go too far down and have to climb back up so kept checking them out from the top; it turned out I didn't check the eastern-most one so missed the flag until other sprinters arrived). Other than those two bobbles I had a good (for me) run and really enjoyed the terrain.

Sprint - Splits

Green Day 1 - Splits

Stopped at the Oasis of Mara in Twentynine Palms and walked around the palms. Not much water left in this oasis, though apparently it was quite the watering hole a hundred or more years ago.

On the way to Anza Borrego, stopped at the cholla cactus garden and strolled around.

Our motel in Borrego Springs was just across the street from a little mall with several restaurants and a coffee shop, so we didn't even have to drive to dinner or breakfast. It's a nice place to stay if you go to a future AB meet and don't want to camp. A portable radiant heater was necessary, however, to heat the room in mid-January. :-)

Time estimated; includes short hikes near Barker Dam (Yes! water in the desert!) and Hidden Valley at Joshua Tree National Park. JTNP is fascinating scenery; high elevation desert contributes to this unique life form (JT is a kind of yucca that grows into a tree shape. We didn't see any in bloom (that occurs in March and April) but saw some spent seed pods from previous years' blooms. The trees are widely spaced in flat plain-type areas and interspersed with other growing things (some cactus; some creosote bushes; little grass) and boulders.

Some granite areas remind me a lot of Vedauwoo in Wyoming and we saw a number of rock-climbers.

The overlook at Keys View (at about 5000' elevation) was just abover freezing and the wind so strong that we had to lean into it, so we didn't stay there long, but you can see where the San Andreas fault goes through the Coachella Valley which contains Palm Springs south of the viewpoint, and the Salton Sea to the southeast. A couple of 10,000'+ mountain peaks around the valley had some snow on them.

Flew to San Diego for the Anza Borrego A meet over MLK weekend.

Small amount of walking at Point Loma near San Diego, both around the lighthouse, and down by the tidepools. Learned that the tide will be optimal for tidepool viewing on Monday afternoon (21st) because of full moon on Tuesday, and plan to be there since we'll be back in S.D. on Monday.