Training Log Archive: bgallup

Event: NEOC: High Rock
 

high rock red. legs felt leaden - not the best tools for the hack and slash fistfight required. there were enough unmapped MTB trails to really undermine the fun after awhile. many controls mapped in the middle of nowhere actually had a trail within 20m - which was no fun to realize after a few hundred meters of hand-to-hand combat.

little less happy on review:
1, 3rd) Fine
2, 5th) fooled by a sub-contour depression, +0:20
3, 3rd) fine, but aimed a little farther off than necessary
4, 7th) stupid route choice, but at least the trail was fast +0:30
5, 6th) hesitant execution +0:20
6, 10th) ate a rock, didn't keep good track of distance, didn't read terrain well near the flag +1:20
7, 1st) okay, i guess
8, 13th) got to the major trail okay, saw the end of the loop, took a new bearing, then apparently ignored it. knew i was too far north if anything, but distracted by aaron and followed him around a bit. stared at that flast spot with the green marsh, thinking it was the clear marsh SW of the control. should've realized the terrain was dropping to the north. +9:30
9, 9th) followed an unmapped trail out of the control. hit the main trail, followed the spur trail, and picked up the wrong (unmapped) trail off the edge of the spur. paying too much attention to footwork to realize the crappy heading. followed another wrong, unmapped trail south before realizing the crap heading. hit the N-S stone wall and was flummoxed. got spanked by will when i took the E-W stone wall and he guessed well on a parallel unmapped trail. easy from there. +3:00
10, 5th) good first half, dropped too low, caught in the fight, missed the very helpful unmapped trail +0:45
11, 3rd) dumb choice to follow the unmapped trail E out of the control, should've bashed south. perfect execution on the second half, though. +0:20
12, 4th) took the wrong (unmapped, NE-heading, after the stream) trail, realized i was too low and went up to the ridge. +0:30
13, 8th) lucked out around a bunch of unmapped trails here (through lots of people searching at a walk), then blew it by heading 120m down the wrong trail. +1:30
14, 2nd) well, alright then
15, 6th) crappy bearing, got my ear pierced by a tree, briefly helped by an unmapped trail +0:30
16, 2nd) very helpful unmapped trail
F, 3rd) exit, stage west

bit of a theme, there. 18:35 down the toilet.

brendan asked what i expected before heading out, and i said 10min/k would be nice. no-mistake time would've been almost exactly that. shrug. 2.8k bonus over straightline. the park's nice - great, even - and the course could have been solid, but the map's sorely in need of a trail update. might even be good for MTBO - if there are enough trails out there.... hi-yo!

C • I like your route to 10 1

high rock green with The Family. Good times, and good training to really nail down terrain reading. Tough to compensate for the unmapped trails even at a walk in some cases. I don't have a walking pacecount, and gave Brother Rich the compass. Damn thing's retaining ring blew out again - no prayer of finding it.

actual time, 2:01:30ish

Red - Splits

from neil's aplog - something awesome. only change, try to have the maze corners on recognizable features.

a pinch of boulder and a heapin' helping of top roping with cousin's-husband Nick and a pair of his friends. if Joe asks, i'm not logging the last 30 minutes of belaying.

did well on some hard stuff. onsighted a loooong 10d, a 10c, and a 10b with an offensively burly move at the top. spanked a few 9's here and there, too. got humiliated by one stemmy 9 - rematch is already scheduled.

Thanksgiving Episode One (the turkening) is up in Gloucester with Alicia's folks, so I took the morning to go run the course from the Ravenswood Trail Race. Absolutely perfect day for it, and a great course - good mix of singletrack and fire road. I missed the race this year for an o meet, but hopefully it won't conflict next year. Kinda relaxed out there, time would only be good for ~50/120. With rest, a race 'tude, and no need to navigate, I'll bet I could break 32 minutes and crack the top 20 next year.

No track, got lazy with the 310's better battery life - and left it on last night.

a long, solid session of respectable bouldering. got a v4! of the brute-force-and-ignorance variety, of course.

C • why? 5

back at it. 40F (and dry) is a great temperature to run

still trying to dissect CP19 from the traverse. click through to embiggen.



Didn't want to torture the route in QR - but that's the best two-point fit i could make, based on the trails before and after. I don't think 18 was that far off, and I didn't drift off the trail like that, it was definitely a turn. I did, though, relocate off of the northern stone wall thinking it was the southern, and about a minute later realized the error. So I think the track's decent.

game plan going in was hit the trail, take a right on a trail (that would probably be vague) after the green on the right broke up, and after the trail flattened out a bit. i was walking up the cliff out of 18, tired, and my estimation of distance was total crap. i wasn't working too hard on estimating, either, thinking the trail junction was a solid bet. Got fooled by a whiteish gap after the medium green and thought it was a leaf-covered trail. Realized I had gone far enough north and started to wander east. Then I got caught up tracking Ernst in hopes he was being smarter. Gave up on that after a bit, relocated off of the (wrong) wall with Aaron, found a cliff where and when we should have, but I didn't realize how well our features (cliff 50m E of the S end of the wall) mirrored the control, and were just pissed. Eventually realized that we were at the bald rock with broken bits NE of the control, and were joined by katia and PG.

In the beginning, I should've realized that uphill was to the south, and not to the SE, meaning I was more NE than I should've been. A smarter Ben would've turned uphill, and either found the tiny hilltop just east of the control or recollected the trail, hit the spur, and put this thing in the bag. That Ben would've beaten Magnus the Magnemisis.

and it wouldn't be a special o event without gratuitious nerd-mongering. For the NAOC sprint, Clem estimated winning times based on expected paces and known leg lengths, with a different pace guessed for each leg. in the absence of route lengths, AP spits out times for each leg - times that seem like the average of the top three (or so, can't be bothered to actually figure that out). Back at the traverse, those times plus leg lengths equals winning paces:

Leg	Distance [m]	Fast Time	Fast Pace [m:s/km]
1	250	1:39	6:36
2	1360	9:00	6:37
3	880	6:16	7:07
4	420	4:04	9:41
5	370	2:27	6:37
6	980	8:26	8:36
7	1020	8:14	8:04
8	490	4:37	9:25
9	370	2:23	6:26
10	390	3:28	8:53
11	380	2:37	6:53
12	170	1:17	7:33
13	170	1:05	6:22
14	1180	9:22	7:56
15	940	6:16	6:40
16	240	2:07	8:49
17	140	0:59	7:01
18	880	6:58	7:55
19	340	5:14	15:24
20	610	5:07	8:23
21	870	5:47	6:39
F	140	0:40	4:46

Only outliers were 19 (a short leg starting with a steep climb and ending in technical terrain) and the finish (down a ski slope). 4 had a bit of a hill, too. There may be subtle insight about train-versus-bushwack or roundabout-versus-direct buried in there somewhere.

and then there's Ben:

Leg	Fast Pace	Ben Pace	Ben Lost
1	6:36	6:44
2	6:37	7:02
3	7:07	9:13	0:46
4	9:41	11:51
5	6:37	8:25
6	8:36	10:41	0:35
7	8:04	9:21
8	9:25	9:37
9	6:26	6:29
10	8:53	10:20
11	6:53	8:01
12	7:33	9:42
13	6:22	7:38
14	7:56	8:35
15	6:40	7:12
16	8:49	11:56
17	7:01	7:37
18	7:55	9:16
19	15:24	50:17	10:57
20	8:23	9:20
21	6:39	8:37	43
F	4:46	6:54

Far too lazy to color-code the cells, but there are a few legs of nearly hanging with the cool kids, a majority of ambivalent legs, and a few truly crap ones. So no news, but one more way to look at things, I guess.