Sunday May 1 |
 | Orienteering race 1:09:49 [4]**** 5.76 km (12:07 / km) +225m 10:08 / km | |
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| Day 2, West Point, Green X. I remembered our start times wrong (by an hour) so we were late to our start but because we were late in the window, we were easily fit in a few minutes after arriving. Thanks! Beautiful start down the ridge. Not pleased to have to go down the hill to the bland (on the map) area & then right back up. Didn't plan well enough and hit the men's control first. Lost about a minute or so. Was not running fast at all because of my ankle. No other errors of note, just some route choices that were a bit questionable. Running okay, just not fast nor with a lot of confidence. Nice course, nice woods, nice weather. |
| Trail warm up/down 7:00 [3] | |
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| Jogging down the road and then jogging on the easier parts of the trail to the start, with Nadim at first until he pulled away on the trail. |
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Green X - Splits |
Saturday Apr 30 |
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| Event: West Point
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| Orienteering race 1:23:17 [4]**** 5.82 km (14:19 / km) +290m 11:27 / km | |
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| West Point A Meet, Bull Pond, Green X (F45 ... never run up at WP). My goal for the weekend was to have better concentration than I've had lately. But I still blew the first control. I went right above the boulder, saw it even, but wasn't sure where I was so I went on. Got further up the hill before I figured out where I was & headed back down. After leaving it, I saw a woman wandering a bit, looked at me as if to ask for help, and then saw another woman checking out the control beyond ours on the cliff. Lost a bit of time on 4 because it was hard to tell where I was on the hill but it was less than a minute. Got to the cliff at 5 (same cliff as Red X #4) and couldn't figure out why the control wasn't there. Then a guy in a NEOC suit came up behind me, and then he looked up ... that's when I remembered the description said "on top." D'oh. Went out the road on 6 because I could run faster there with the ankle making me nervous in the woods plus the wet, slippery woods. I got a bit below the control, saw another, and had to figure out where it was. Lost another minute or so on the penultimate control. All day, had trouble seeing: hard to read the map (1:15 is tough in this terrain for me), the rain on my magnifier not helping, and hard to read the terrain in the fog. And going slowly because of my fitness level & fear of further hurting my ankle.
Nice course, wish the map were more up to date, weather not my favorite. Overall, I give it a B. |
| Orienteering race 33:10 [5]*** 2.9 km (11:26 / km) +100m 9:45 / km | |
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| Camp Buckner Sprint. Figured I better do this as soon as I got back from the regular race or I'd not do it. Peter accused me of pulling a Sharon when I tried to orient my map before starting. Okay, fair enough! I went on to blow the first control as I went down into the lower parking lot and then had to climb up through some unmapped green thorns to get to the control. Blew #3 as well when I didn't see the control hidden in the green ... Patrick Shannon and I were both scratching our heads because we knew we were so close. I even started to climb on the boulder but for some reason didn't see the control. Patrick finally saw it and called to me. By 4 Greg Balter had caught me & passed on the road to 5. We both took the trails through the marsh. Got yelled at by David Irving when I went through the trail o' area. I wasn't sure where they wanted me to go. Sorry. Went up the reentrant across from the camp entrance booth but was not sure where on the hillside I was as I approached 9, so I was slow. Kenny Jr. passed me on the way to 10 & I had him in sight until he left 12. Patrick was laying on the ground at 10 but he said he was okay. Slow going to 13 as there was a bunch of unmapped stuff, I thought, and I didn't want to miss it. Went around on the trails to 14 but was probably too cautious, and definitely too slow as I was fairly tired by then. The rest was fine if at times a bit tentative. Overall, okay, just tired and sloppy. 3 min behind Suzanne A, who was leading the women when we left. Nice course, though at the time I wasn't loving 14. |
| Trail warm up/down 4:00 [3] | |
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| Jogging up the hill to the start before the A meet race, with Nadim. |
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Sprint - Splits |
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Green X - Splits |
Thursday Apr 28 |
| Yoga 1:15:00 [2] | |
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| Terri was at a yoga seminar last week with John Friend and that's always scary because they come back all reinvigorated and with new, painful poses ... A few of the standing poses are still painful for my ankle. But other than that, it wasn't a bad workout. And I REALLY needed the calming influence of the session, after a crappy, stressful day. |
Wednesday Apr 27 |
| Road run warm up/down 36:00 [2] | |
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| Warm up, warm down, & between intervals. Because of time constraints -- e.g., the carpet guy didn't leave until 6:30 -- I had decided I would forgo the MCRRC track workout and run at BCC instead. So I headed up there but found a lacrosse game going on. No biggie, I was going to run halfs, and I can do that on the trail, which has half miles marked off. I have no idea how accurate they are but I ran the same section back and forth twice so at least it was consistant. Nice evening. Felt the ankle. Will be bringing, and using, my Active Ankle this weekend. |
| Trail intervals 15:04 [5]2.0 mi (7:32 / mi) | |
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| Half mile repeats on the Georgetown Branch trail -- a rails-to-trails trail that is unpaved and pretty flat. It goes along the edge of our neighborhood and through a beautiful exclusive golf club. I felt remarkably light and "fast" on the first half. Mentally, this was much easier than going around on the track. I struggled on the second one; my breathing, which I noticed I was having a bit of trouble with on Monday, was a bit wheezy. The high pollen count? I have never had pollen allergies before and I really hope I haven't developed one. I've been feeling crappy since October as far as breathing goes so developing an allergy would pretty much be par for how the year is going.
Took a longer recovery after the second one and I felt better for the third, and okay for the fourth.
Splits: 3:42, 3:56, 3:40, 3:46. Though this is pretty slow, I know I'm going too fast for my fitness now. I need to run a 5k or something so I have a better idea of what my current training pace should be. But for now it's kind of fun to really push myself. |
Tuesday Apr 26 |
| Nordic Track 35:00 [3] | |
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| Busy doing other things until 7:40, then had to get a quick workout in before dinner & Amazing Race. Read part of the Tahiti & New Zealand chapters in Darwin. |
Monday Apr 25 |
| Trail 1:04:21 [3] | |
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| From Lock 10 on the C&O Towpath upstream to Carderock. Wanted to check out Carderock for mapping -- I've been there many times but mostly for office picnics so mostly just the parking lots & fields & shelter. There is a string of 4 parking lots & a variety of fields & trails & stuff so I thought it might have sprint potential. At first the woods were greenish and rather featureless, but just before coming to the final parking lot the woods suddenly opened up and my wish came true: rocks/cliffs/stony ground stuff/knolls a plenty. Some of the cliffs near the river are so huge that I saw the ropes of a climber on top of one. They're pretty dangerous. But the rest of the area is quite nice. I will pursue mapping it. :-) Coming back I got on the Billygoat Trail (eastern part of Section C), a portion I'd never been on, despite my concern for my ankle. Indeed it ached all evening, even though I didn't really twist it anywhere. The wild flowers were gorgeous, and a half mile upstream from the Beltway, all I could hear were birds, the rushing water, and an occasional distant airplane. So nice. Good temps for running. |