Flash!

Blue Caps Crush FDFs

Double Shut-out: 13-0 and 10-0

Phil came over around 5 and we rigged up a blue cap for him and then set off on the same route I've been doing, a hike up Toby and then a run back down a more round-about way. Except not wearing a pack (which felt great!), and also running the first section up to the power line.

Now Phil has not quite bought into the idea that the blue caps are a cool fashion statement, something good for one's self-esteem, and certainly not something to feel self-conscious about, even if one were to run into one's dean along the way.



So when we passed a guy and 3 boys playing by a stream, and the guy looked at us and then said something like, "Interesting headgear," I could tell Phil was feeling a little stressed.

Whereas I had figured out exactly what the kids were thinking, "Boy, if our dad wasn't such a dork, we could have cool hats like that too!"

So on we went, a little disappointed that there didn't seem to be any FDFs around, was this going to be Monadnock, part 2, when I think it was Phil looking at my cup and suddenly, Hey, you got a couple!

Was that good for morale!

We reached the power line, then switched to a power walk, still hard work on the last steep part but faster without a pack, 10:45 for the last 650' vertically, that's getting better. And at the top, check the blue cups while we gasp for air, and there are more kills.

And we haven't even noticed any FDFs bothering us at all. It really seems to be working....

And then run back, beautiful late afternoon, the air has dried out, past the hairpin, down the S curves, down the power line with long views to the northwest and not a house in sight, then back down North Mountain to the house. And just once do I feel an FDF brush my cheek, but then it's gone. At no time am I bothered, at no time do I swat at one, at no time am I pissed. It is truly fantastic. And when we reach the house and total up the final results, I have 13 kills and Phil has 10 and we haven't had to do anything. Pure magic!

C • Impressive results 6

A little history of the FDFs....

Was feeling very depleted today so by mid-afternoon, after a fine though financially unrewarding 77, it was time to call in a favorite threesome with powers of recuperation -- first lunch, then a nap, then dinner. At which point I felt remarkably good, and since there was still an hour and a half of daylight left, it seemed silly not to go ahead and do the planned bike ride that I had a few hours earlier written off as impossible.

So I headed off, usual Old Deerfield / River Road loop, with the intention of making it a relaxed ride. Wind was out of the south, so once I got across the river and turned north, it was easy going. And I actually didn't push it. Just enjoyed the evening, especially the lack of traffic even on the couple of miles out on main highways. The rest of the way cars are few and far between, and always courteous, pretty close to cycling heaven I'd say.

And then I turned back south into the wind, and the fact that I'd been cooling it for 30 minutes meant that I was fresh, and warmed up, and I just slowly and steadily put out a little more effort, and it felt good all the way home. Sweet ride, done with 15 minutes of light to spare.

And only because of Gail's comment on my return, Are you wasting away, well, Sugarloaf Frostee, here we come....

Well, Spike is out mowing his lawn, and he's probably an expert at that, because he does it pretty often. But I thought I might share a couple of things that I do to maintain the impeccable lawn we have --

1. Cut it often enough. We've found that when it reaches 18", that's about the optimum time to pull out the mower. A little taller and it gets hard to cut, a little shorter and, well, if you can put off lawnmowing for another week, go for it.



2. The goal, of course, is to have it never reach 18", and then you never have to cut it. The secret here is to focus on growing moss rather than grass, and to do that you have to remember two things -- don't use any fertilizer, and don't use any lime. I know that's tough, but if you concentrate, you can do it. The moss will slowly grown in, the grass will slowly die off, and then you're all set. It also helps if a generation ago, before you owned the land, someone stripped off all the topsoil....

Here you can see another part of the "lawn," hasn't been cut for 6 weeks. Good lawn!

C • moss 6

So I get an e-mail from Barb last Thursday, the start of an exchange of very short messages over the next three days:

Monadnock hike -- Any interest in joining me for a hike up the white dot trail Monday morning starting at 5:40 a.m.?

Sure.

Cool. Do you have any of that sticky spray yet, and blue cups?

Are you thinking we should try out the blue cups Monday morning? If so, then I certainly hope you bring your camera.

Yes, that is what I am thinking.

Is there any reason to expect there will actually be any FDFs out and about? And why exactly 5:40 am?

No reason to expect FDFs. If I start the hike at 5:40, then I can make it to work at 10:00. So maybe we should meet at 5:30 to deal with the cups. If you can handle it.

-------------------------

So I'm up at 3:15, a nice big breakfast (4 pieces of toast and jam, an apple, two scrambled aggs, a glass of OJ, cup of decaf, glass of water, vitamin pills...). And head off just as the sky is starting to lighten. I've already assembled the key ingrediants over the weekend, the bright blue cups, the sticky stuff, and a way of mounting them to the caps. And as long as there are two of us coneheads, well, I don't feel self-conscious at all.

Meet at 5:30. Apply the sticky stuff, on with caps. Not a soul around to laugh at us. Nor are there any FDFs around. As I've said, I think they've heard the rumors.

A very pleasant hike, hard work on the way up keeping up to Barb since I've 17 pounds in the pack (including a pair of ankle weights, headlamp, 3 liters of water, extra clothing, food, a few ibuprofen), you just never know what you might need. A very thorough and well-presented explanation of the whole range of vertical pacing concepts presented by PG, not sure how much of it registered, though I am pretty sure that more of it registered than was the case at 6 am at the rogaine, when I asked Barb to bring me up to speed on genes, DNA, chromosomes, and various other very small things I keep reading about, and she explained a lot and I, well, let's just say I'm not yet ready to take a multiple=choice quiz on the the subject.

And various other topics of conversation, including how long it takes to get to the top, and she didn't know, which really surprised me, but she guessed maybe an hour and 20 minutes up, an hour down.

So we reached the top in 51 minutes. And I was feeling it. Time for photos. And also to check the blue cups for kills. So far I had snagged one lonely mosquito and little bits of leaves and twigs from not ducking enough under a branch. But the cups sure were stylish.


A couple ibuprofen for her complaining knees. And back down at a very mellow pace, about an hour. Talking, among other things, about her kid's school and how cool the education model is, and Barb's plans for O' outings in the fall, when she's planning some new adventures for the kids that she hopes will include me and Jeff Saeger and other "O' gurus." Hmmm.

And then we're down. And she went off to inspect JJ's strawberry patch, and I headed a mile down the road to play a round at Shattuck....

C • All play 1

C • Hat 4

.... where it took me longer than expected to play, because my game was, let's say, shaky, and I had to hit the little white thing quite a few more times than I hoped, and also had to attempt a number of search and rescue operations in the woods, not all of which were successful.

And all the time I'm rewarded with such nice views of Monadnock, and I start thinking, you know, I paid 3 bucks for a trail permit and it's good all day, and it would be possible to knock the cost per round-trip down to a buck fifty....

.... so I head back to the state park, and head up again, this time no pack, and I'm sure quite dehydrated even though I polish off a couple of bottles of water. Zip up to the top (about 1800' net climb, with a couple dips along the way, and very, very rocky) as quick as I can.

Get up there and note that the population at the top has changed substantially from the earlier trip -- was 2 people with an average age of 53, now probably 200 with an average age of maybe 15. Just as glad I don't have my blue hat on now.... :-)

And then back down at a very careful jog, really trying to be careful, and even so within about 200 meters of the top my right foot catches a crack in the sloping rock slab and the ankle rolls more than it wants, and Damn, that hurts, and I'm hopping on the left foot for a few steps.

It's not so bad that I stop, but it twinges on every step, and I'm not happy, and I'm even less happy thinking how far I've got to go down. But this has happened before, and it seems like it's worse than I might wish, but also not so bad as it might be, probably in the category of slowly fading away over the next 10 minutes and then hurting quite a bit the next day. So I keep going, very careful and very nervous now, especially on all the drops, and it slowly gets better as expected, and I don't roll it again, and by the bottom I'm moving pretty well, quite aggressively actually.

But for a moment I thought, it's going to be a long way down hopping on one foot.

Pretty beat by the end, on my feet for 7 hours, but the quads felt good on the downhill. Stopped for a quart of chocolate milk on the way home, yummy, then barely made it back without dozing off.

A fine day....

And, Phil, the blue cups are ready.

Forgot one other thing. On the first trip up and down, Barb was in front setting the pace, me behind. And so I wasn't paying much attention to where we were, or where we were going, just enjoying the company (and trying not to fall over backwards when I lost my footing). All of a sudden we were at the top. And then somewhat later, oh, here we are at the bottom. Almost no recollection of the trail, the terrain, etc.

On the second trip, the powers of observation/concentration were back on, and it felt like I hadn't been there before. And from this trip I have very distinct recollections of the trail, the terrain, etc.

Amazing the difference.

But both very enjoyable trips.

C • How many lines? 3

C • I'm game 8

Event: Paugussett SP Local
 

WCOC local meet at Paugusst. Red course, very fine design by Dave Webber, always interesting. Warm (upper 80s), quite humid, summer orienteering.

Had an ok run. The first priority once again was not to hurt the hamstring, which meant just be more careful, less crashing through stuff, much more cautious on downhills, especially where it was rocky. Mission accomplished in this regard.

Certainly didn't have much energy. Partly the heat, I was sweating like crazy. Partly I wasn't rested. And partly, and surely the bigger reason, was I'm still out of shape. Though making a little progress.

My O' skills were ok at times, a little shaky at others. Got into it sometimes, reading the map nicely as I ran along. At other times that just wasn't happening. Maybe 3 minutes of assorted minor errors.

But still a great pleasure to be out doing it.

Today's map.

C • Coneheads 1

Left Paugusset right after running to head down to Cranbury Park in Norwalk, site of the Sprint Finals in September. Spent a while walking around with Joe (the course setter) talking about the general layout of the courses. Looks like it will work really well. Even have parking, a pavillion, power for the e-punch crew and the loudspeaker, and good spots for the starts and finish, all within about 50-100 meters.

Plan is for the 2 sanctioned sprints, each also 100-pointers for the Sprint Series -- and the point scale may be something like 100, 95, 90, 85, 80, 78, 76, 74, 72, 70, 69, 68, etc., still not decided. So someone a ways behind can still advance quite a bit.

And then a third sprint, a women's course for the top 6 women in the Series, ditto for the men, then both courses open to anyone else (mass start) who wants to see if they can do better. Lots of loops, three-winged butterflies, who knows what else we will dream up....

And then home, stopping to buy a quart of chocolate milk, which Dr. Mark (Hammer's nutritional guru) says is about the perfect post-workout nutrition. It was all gone within a few miles.... :-)

Red - Splits

Getting lots of things done today -- mow the "lawn," change the oil in the car, laundry, grocery shopping (where I check my blood pressure, 117/70, good), continued upgrading my rogaine gear (new and bigger Camelback, new shoes to try), plus drinking/eating lots, but it's dinnertime and so far no training as the thunderstorms have been rolling through all afternoon.

Maybe after dinner....

Usual hike up to the top, right after dinner (grilled salmon, red potatos, salad), feeling very full. Thought I might take it easy. Didn't.

Back the round-about route. Again, didn't take it easy, full belly and all. Like ultra training I used to do, get used to running on a full stomach. Sweating a whole lot.

Looking gloomy when I left, thought I might have to pull out the headlamp, but it had cleared up by the time I reached the top and there was still enough light at the end.

Still not an FDF to be seen. Perhaps they have heard the rumors....

Bike ride just before dinner, beautiful late afternoon ride, Old Deerfield / River Road. Working hard the whole way.

It ocurred to me after I was done that I hadn't been daydreaming at all, but completely focused on riding -- the pavement, the grade, the gears, the traffic, the wind, and how much my legs and lungs were complaining (and they were complaining for sure, but also felt pretty strong). Which was sort of a nice feeling, means you're putting some effort into it and not just cruising.

Reminds me of the complaint often lodged against running races (as opposed to orienteering), that they are just so boring. Wheras I almost always have found my mind totally occupied by thoughts similar to today's on the bike -- pace, form, running surface, grade (up/down), monitoring one's vital signs (by feel), all the above just focused on yourself, and then there was the competition. Never found the races boring. But maybe I'm easily entertained. There are some much smarter folks on AP and in orienteering, and they may have higher standards.

Also a very early round of rogaine practice before driving home from Wolfeboro after a very nice visit.

C • Concentration 19

Got to bed by 9:30, excellent, out cold right away, but then awake at 4:30 again. That's more sleep anyway.

More rogaine practice, really awesome today, beautiful course and weather, very hilly walking.

Now have to get out the door for another run....

On the woods roads in Wolfeboro, slightly different section, very pleasant. Get a gold star for getting out both days.

For those with some interest in rogaine practice, hit possibly my longest drive ever, about 285-290, on the 16th at Owl's Nest. Downhill, tailwind. Power rating of about 2.2. (And John Goodwin, age 17, hit his about 340-350, power rating off the charts.) Had a really fun day.

C • Long drive 2