Training Log Archive: mintore

leaf removal; hard enough work today

Shake-out run with Aidan.
My leg was still really cramped in my upper calf at the start. Hobbling at the start, this, plus a tiny bit of rolling, really loosened it up.

Event: Sleepy Hollow Rogaine
 

Event: MVOC - Bill Yeck Park
 

Sleepy Hollow Rogaine
Meet 27, course 39

Our 12-h team with Aragorn -- A Large Orange Hedge

I will write a bit more later in the day after a shake-out and some leaves but the fact that I am typing here says we made it back. Really hard work for the last 150 min. Distance is the sum of two posts and the Garmin shut off for a bit of this track.

It was a crisp start to the day, a touch cooler than I wanted because I am prone to compulsively overdressing. The race started suddenly and immediately after the pre-race announcements so we were off and away up the spur to 52. Our figuring before the race left us thinking that the course might be clearable at about 40 km straight-line; the top third of this climb didn't agree. After 52, we made our first course adjustment deciding to knock-off 55 followed by 33, as it would be hard to get back to at the end of the race. Making a plan change one control in was unsettling but unanimously the plan. This emptied the west, then we headed S, E, N and back through the middle.


We were cruising for the first 17.5 miles during the initial 5 hrs, getting more controls than expected per hour and dealing with the well-spaced eastern controls. It was a long way out to control 82, at a high point of a big dog-leg. We thought it might have been nice if it were control 102. There was little nearby to justify the effort but to clear it couldn't be left. The next 1.5 hrs we slowed some but progressed toward the airport. There was a missed food stop, so we took 10 min here to regroup. It was our first stop of more than 3 min. At the water stop, there was about 400 mL of water remaining. Another group gave us a gatorade that they thought we needed more than them; we were super grateful (and they were right). My legs were starting to feel it after control 53 but I was still intermittently running to 65, 66 (chatted with Mark Lantanzzi here; with 4C to go at less than 8 hrs, he was both mindbending and inspiring) and 45. The climb out of 45 to the giant switchback was god-awful. Unrelentingly steep, with nasty vegetation, for 100 m and that lit the fuse on my legs. We decided clearing was still in the realm of possibilities and headed N. Carefully navigated straight to 71, headed down the long gully to the trail chasing an unexpected runner. She was headed to 81 as well and we arrived at the control at the same time. We got our second egg-stop in on the way, headlamps on, and did a good job of finding the poorly defined trail along the saddle W of the bag. After punching the control, I dropped the card and our partner-of the moment (I don't know her name) picked it up when were 20 m from the control. Wow, that was a disaster averted. It has been quite a few rogaines since I have let a punch card get away. I still don't know how it happened as I have a velcro-sealed covered pocket. My best guess is that I put it outside the pocket and sealed it closed. We all ran together until the climb onto the ridge on the eastern trail back to Snake Hollow. As I mentioned earlier, imploding legs, Yeah, they were completely done. With hands on knees, I managed to laboriously walk up this climb with a few jogs induced by Aragorn's searching head lamp. The climb out of Snake Hollow, just as anemic. We fought along to the road and turned for 75, still on plan. Went for about a minute and then made the call. We reversed course and figured we could get 54, 75, and 44, stranding bag 43; clearing was out. Through all of this, Aragorn was absolutely keeping us going; he was a fantastically supporting team-mate. It turned out to be very nasty getting down from 44 to the campground; the green briar was huge. We jogged most of the way to the highway but it was not really running and it was not continuous. I would say Aragorn is conservative and I was not at my best, physically or in race-drive. We had about 18 minutes left Control 42 was 80' up a reentrant 175 m from the road. The circle was off-centered. We thought about it, and just kept going. We alternated jogging and walking between highway markers until the end when we pushed in at 8:50.

Final score: 1660 points on 30 of 32 controls; we ended up second in the team division, tied in points but back on time. It was a beautiful fall day, Aragorn's first 12-h race, and we made only about 5 min of nav errors (all indecisiveness about the correct direction to go on a road at night). I was very happy


...and a bit disappointed. There are always a thousand what-ifs. The ones that I thought most about were: 1) both because of age and also because I think more distance is being covered at a more rapid rate, it is to the point that I really should train for something like this. It was way further than any training run would be but my long runs have been missing way too much of late. 2) Any hill training would be good; I wasn't bad on low grades and flats but so much climbing was just yikes! 3) Race-head is a pendulum. I drove some bad decisions at Green Corn moon, we made risky choices at the end, and got nothing for them. Here, I backed off and I have to keep it together in the final few legs. 4) 12-h food stops that were missed are very negative. We needed to carry more Gatorade to get easy salt and calories and probably to add 30 min snacks between 4:30 and 9 hrs. This may have delayed my crash by 30-60 min which would have been ample time.

A Large Orange Hedge now has a pair of 2nd and 3rd place machetes. It is fair to say will return.

Starting to get used to running in the dark.

twilight run with OJoy, just enough light to see the roots.