Training Log Archive: JanetT

Event: QOC McKeldin
 

Brown course -- really a green (length and physical difficulty) -- at QOC's Patapsco-McKeldin 1:10000 map, 5m contours, temp near 50 and overcast
Course stats: 4.6 km, 195m climb

16th of 56

Los of steep sections (to go up, down, or sidehill). Smallish errors but errors nonetheless:

4- Checked other rocks to 4 but figured I hadn't gone far enough. Tricky enough to actually reach the bag once I found the cliff.
5- Drawn off a bit by another control and had to correct; not sure that the mapped one was where the flag actually was but I'd have to go back out to see (my impression was that the flag was on an unmapped rootstock a bit south of the circled rootstock)
9- Saw the top of the first ditches and started looking but didn't look uphill enough; when I hit the further ditches turned around and angled uphill more and found it
...
very steep and scary getting down the hill to 10
...
11- hit the trail just above it and corrected from the trail jct; ignored Florence T. who was apparently coming out of it (d'oh!)

I had folks either just ahead or at the other controls, though to 4 and 9 I helped people who had been searching the wrong area

Brown - Splits

Stroll around the neighborhood to see the new houses. Some were being worked on today; we met a new neighbor and saw a few others we know.

Edited to add: temperature around 47 when we headed out, and partly sunny. Nice.

Emphasis on deep breathing, with some chair poses, warrior 2, and balance (standing) plus other stuff sitting or lying down. She even threw in some core.

To the top of Aberdene and back. 9:32 at the 1 km point heading out.

35 and sunny with a bit of a west breeze (as is typical)

Mal Harding Extreme O, an annual tradition of GAOC after their Navigator Cup, organized by Joey Ciza, Linda and Chuck Ferguson, Shelley Pennington, and others. It took place in the same park as the two Classic days of races. This was the third one we've competed in. Temp about 26 to start, getting up to upper 30s, maybe.

We did Short Course 1 (I suspect the only difference with Short 2 were different first few controls, to spread teams out a bit). There were three different Mal Hardings* on the course, which needed to be moved from one control to the next (if you found him at one control you carried him to the next). We saw all three at one point or another (and had to take the green one twice).
*stuffed animal with a photo of Mal on it, in a slippery zipper bag

Challenges included:
--Following bearings for a defined distance to a control or clue
--Finding the properly numbered control on an island or small defined area with a number of flags in close proximity
--Using a map with sections missing except for around the point (island O?)
--Using an aerial map to find several points
--Corridor-O
--Plotting a point using grid coordinates to find a control location
--Traversing through a very deep gully with muddy puddles, some of which apparently were waist deep(!), and steep sides
--Photo O to identify sequence of clues to next point

and the final indignity

--following a rope *under* a tarp through an icy muddy section and then across a thigh-deep section of stream

Fortunately that was very near the end (<400m).

No culvert crawls this year or maze Os as we've done in years past.

It's always fun. Could be more fun if it wasn't so darned cold.