Training Log Archive: bishop22

Brief w/up since I arrived at the O meet a little late after 8am XC practice at Webster Park (which I left just a bit early).

ROC Sprint Race at Powder Mills Park.

Struggled a bit early because the trails were no longer as mapped.
C1 - hesitated when wide trail ended earlier than mapped. It has Tim D confused even more.
C2 - Didn't manage to get off the trail early enough to save any time.
C3 - Couldn't see the gap between the hills at first, so I was a little too far left
C4 - Saw the clearing, but trails didn't line up, so I had just a bit of trouble getting to the flag, and then more trouble leaving it.
C5 - ignored the trails and just went by the contours and took trails that were headed my way.
C6 - Out the spur.
C7 - Climbed to avoid the side hill / junky running. Ended up leaving the trail a bit too early.
C8 - Should have switched trails to the right, but thought I could find a remnant of the trail that went thru the rough open near C4, but that was a fail, so I got pushed way left by the trail and the thick stuff.

ROC Score-O at Powder Mills Park

Interesting Score-O event. We used e-punching, as Tyler had downloaded some scoring software. 24 controls scattered throughout the park, including in two areas that I had never visited.

I saw four areas of controls - west and east of the creek and north and south of the start. If I couldn't get all 4 10-pointers, I figured the other side of the creek was the one to skip, so I started southwest and went counter-clockwise. I skipped one control relatively early, even though I wasn't sure what the timing would be overall.

Then coming up the east side, I realized I had to make a decision whether to stay way east, or the the more western line, because there wasn't going to be time to zig-zag. So, I chose the 5 points over the 4. I decided to skip 181, since I was starting to worry about the time.

I had a slight delay getting 170, since I did not notice the depression symbol on the map and there were no clues provided. I got to the trail near the edge of the field and came back without much lost time. Still I realized that it was risky to go right, around the swamp, so I skipped that control, but got the northwest control. I lost over 30 seconds locating the trail heading south on the west side of the creek, and then the trail did not turn toward the clearing as mapped, but the woods got less dense and I could see the clearing, so I bashed through. Another delay trying to go straight towards the next section, when stuff was clearly more impassable than mapped and I had to go around to the left. Not a bad route to 180, kept out of the thickest stuff. I was afraid of continuing south, since time was running out and I wasn't sure how green stuff would turn out to be, so I skipped 173 or whatever, and doubled-back to the bridge.

Hustled back and had plenty of time to spare, without even considering the one-minute grace period that was provided.

Managed to total 62 points FTW, someone else had 61 minus a 4 point late penalty (the penalty was only 1 pt per minute, no the traditional, highest value control per minute).

First day of XC practice!

Ran easy, much of it with Noah, James and Mike, since I plan on a busy running weekend.

4:16/8:38
1:38,39,38,37,37
3:37,35

Arms were quite heavy - haven't done twice in three days in quite some time.

RH3 from the Pelican's Nest

Nice trail, despite several long falses. Great ending at the beach.

10 min w/up with Zach, then about 5 minutes to and from car to change shoes before the start.

w/dn after was limited to walking.

Dirt Cheap Trail Race at Webster Park

Looks like I was about 5 seconds slower than in the other direction in May. But this course is slightly longer, since you run around on the gravel road at the start, instead of taking the shortcut trail that the first race used to finish.

Ran with Zach for the first half, then his legs got too heavy and he slowed down. In the second half, I lost 3 places and gained 2 - had no drive to go with the pack of 4 in the last 600m or so. Even though I had cut Tim's lead from 38 seconds to 22. I just enjoyed the finish instead. Zach wound up back about a minute, and Patty about 90 seconds.

Geoff and Joe also showed up, with Geoff taking 4th and Joe taking a wrong turn.

Oh, and we had some great spectators out on the course!

4:15/8:31
1:38,39,38,39,38
3:41,43,46

Ran with the remaining campers for a while, then finished up with just Zach.

Dropped the campers off at the trailhead leading into the State Game Lands #127. It had just started raining and it only got heavier. Drove around to the Brady's Lake parking lot with Walt, but the campers beat us there and continued on, so Walt traded shirts for water on their return trip.

Meanwhile, I flagged the return route, then came back down to the lake to verify that the campers were on track (all but two were), then followed them back up to the old RR bed and to the finish, where it turned out one other runner failed to appear. After some logistical scrambling, we sent out the search party. We found two of the missing quite easily, but it turned out that the other had slipped thru our net and returned to the cabin, unbeknown to us.

My overall route resembled this, plus some woods excursions. The overall distance of 9 miles is a conservative estimate, as is the 75 minutes of "moving" time.