Training Log Archive: Linear Ice

I switched to Monday nights, "women only" group, due to new work conflicts on Wednesday nights.
Group seems fun, but I didn't feel like I made any progress since last week.
Maybe that's because the snow (and really, it's a miracle there even was any snow) was pretty much ice. It's been in mid 30s the last couple of days. I think Green Acres makes snow but whatever was left was slick slick and fast.
We spent the first bit of time skating around sans poles. Then worked on V1. Group split up with the more confident and experienced skiers taking to the hill, but I opted for more flat work. I don't feel steady yet. At times it felt good, but I had a number of falls from leaning over too far on my balance.
I need to work on so many things.
Getting my feet closer together, bringing my hips forward, not lifting up my skis so much. Sometimes, for maybe 100 yards at a time, things came together. It seemed to work best when I concentrated on moving forward... looking ahead and just skating. And when I bent my ankles more and relaxed.
Worst was when I was concentrating on keeping balance. So maybe I'm overthinking.
The girls are definitely more talkative and social than the co--ed group so I'm glad for the switch. Also kind of glad to "get it out of the way" early in the week. I doubt the Wednesday session will have any snow at all.

Possum Trot XV

I've been hearing about PT for about two years now... "you oughta go!" and my response has been a resolute, "No, I'm just not interested in long follow-fests, it seems too much like cross-country, I'm out of shape, blah blah blah" But somehow... I got talked into it about two weeks ago at the otnt brunch when everyone was going on about the silver bullet and how much fun we'd have and how great PT is.
And, I do really like seeing maprunner and she was course setter for sprint, the SLOC people are great, other orienteering friends, socializing, etc.
So.....that just left the decision of short or long. ..... heck, if I was going to do a PT, this might be my last chance! And the weather was warm.
But then the long ended up being LOOOOONG and I was kind of worried maybe I wouldn't finish in five hours.

Nonetheless, I found myself on the Silver Bullet headed to KC. Kind of like a big covered wagon working its way across the Midwest, but filled with crazy people. And good food. And lots of gas stops.

But this log is supposed to be about the event.
I was happy to see that Kansas isn't all flat, the park was nice and open and had lots of good runnable areas.
The mass start took us off across a wide open area, so I could see a string of people up ahead of me. A clear path and so yes it was like a xc run. Same with 2
On 3 I took a diversion and took what I thought was a better route, on the low trail. Jim was right behind me, Mike was up higher but saw the path and dropped down. Definitely the way to go.
Then somehow they both got ahead of me on the hill up to 4, and they took the path... I took a quick peak and decided that was the way to go but we had to backtrack a bit and way around. So maybe not. And even then, at the top.... the control was a bit farther than I (we) expected but there were plenty of people around it so not too hard to find.
5,6 7 easy. Map was good, people here and there, not quite as much following.
On 8 I meant to go up to high clearing, approach from near the top end of the hill, but saw the clearing on the bottom and a lot of people running through there and ended up where I didn't really mean to be. And with lots of other people which I don't quite like.
And I all think we might have thought 8 was near the previous re-entrant... everyone started walking, slowly.... Jim, Silkychrome, and a bunch of people I didn't know. Then we saw the control and sprang back into action. It looked to me as if a bunch of zombies wandering out in the woods were brought back to life. Kind of funny, the mass.
9 easy, 10 I ran the bottom trail while most everyone else headed straight up. The downside to running without the pack is I'm a lot more hesitant but I think it was the right route.
11,12, 13 easy and people around. Water stop and I grabbed my camelbak. 14 I should have stayed further West. 15 I decided to go around to avoid the re-entrants but I think that was a bad choice. I also ran on road for a while.... was getting a bit tired. Came back to life a while later after the Hydralite took affect. 16, 17 easy. 18 fun due to the mountain bike trail.
19 easy... Jim was still around but everyone else was gone. I finally remembered I could take 2 skips, and decided to take one there and head off on my own. Plus I got to run down an open spur which is my favorite, but I got stuck in the fence for a while. And had a bit of a hard time finding the ditch from the angle of approach.
22 Easy, water stop but I stupidly decided I was fine. Bad bad choice. Spent a bit of time re-tying shoes, but not well enough because they came loose a couple of time later. Maybe I used it as an excuse to stop for a while.
23 Skip (as did most people) 24 Easy up the re-entrant. At 25 I saw Molly and she pointed out "Weird, how we don't see each other for so long and then just run into each other". Agreed. And fun. Easy to 25 though.

Hmmmm.... this writing is getting redundant. The bottom line: rest of the controls were fun, no one around but I was definitely getting more and more sluggish and falling and slow on the ups as well as the steeper downs. At about 2:30 in, I just didn't feel like orienteering anymore. (kind of like my log here!)
And made one last stupid mistake, with the result being that I decided to wade across the stream from 32 to 33; just didn't feel like running the short distance to the bridge once I realized my error, would rather go down a very steep bank into muddy thigh deep water. By now, there were some people ahead/behind me and I knew it was the slog to the finish; no one close enough to catch by the end, no one close enough behind me to run up the big hill.

I don't feel entirely great about the event; no major booms but of course I think I should have done better.
Came in third, behind Silky Chrome and MoBiz and ahead of Sharon. I think there were only four girls running.
MoBiz was +6 over Silky, I was +20, and Sharon was +38. Which also, coincidentally appears to be about a minute or so per year in age.

So what did I think of it? I didn't particularly like the first 30 minutes or the last 45 minutes (mass start and getting tired) but the rest was quite nice. I like PT :)

Route

Possum Trot - Splits

Event: Possum Trot Weekend
 

Really fun sprint course set by maprunner, on the Lawrence Campus. Lots of changes of pace, some longer legs, some pinball legs, some legs where I really had to look at "out of bounds" lines and pick routes around in awkward ways. And of course a good "go" control with a nice sprint in.
I especially liked 17, where best route (I think) involved practically crawling under a segment of a building, past some bicycles, around barbecue grills.... felt fun and adventurous. Maprunner told me later she had to have Spike especially enlarge the map in that small section to get that in there.... great addition!
I did have a bad leg on 12 to 13 when I ran down too far trying to avoid the black lines and then had to come back up. Most of the rest was pretty clean... I probably had more problems with the manual punch (like when it wrapped around my arm and I couldn't get it loose!) then reading the map, so that felt good.
Nice map, nice course.

Ended up with a retro-SLOC knit cap at the Christmas party! Woohoo!

first lesson on snow. Now I know why skiing is on snow and not just jumping up hills with poles.
We first spent quite a bit of time of the flat area, without poles. Just learning to push to the side, glide, shift weight, keep skis together then push. It did feel a bit awkward at first but not bad for too long.
We played some games..... little minnows and a few big sharks, a tag kind of game and of course that took our mind off the skiing in a good way for a bit.
And we practiced skiing in circles, clockwise, counter clockwise.
Then skiing down small incline, up small incline... across a big field
Finally we also got to use our poles and practiced the V1.
I fell a few times, in a good way in that it was from go over the ski too far in the sideways direction, so at least I know I'm shifting my weight!
I liked it. It was much less work than I expected and fun.

It's back to "indoor seems pretty attractive" season.
And I think I'm getting a cold. sniff.