Training Log Archive: Work4justice

Event: ICO Conquer the Crossroads Rogaine
 

Conquer the Crossroads
Fun rust busting Rogaine with Angel. Maybe 6th/7th place? Heard there were 100 registered. Saw lots of family and friend groups it seems. Made a list on the end of this entry of what I need to review for next time. Really love Rogaining with Angel. :)

I was a bit worried about this, no real navigation for a while, but in hindsight I think it exposes challenges and if I write some of this down, I will remember it.

We got there a little early and was surprised to receive a map right away. There were A LOT of checkpoints. I felt for the 12 hour racers. How to decided (tip...I saw Michael Garrisons Strava as we were driving home. Dropped a lot of 20/30s which was wise. Not sure we could have).

We made a plan for 15-17 miles and rolled distances with my mini Silva which is 1:25...figured close enough. We landed in the SW area of the map.

CP 49: Good, good.
CP 24: Wound up bushwhacking a bit more than we would have liked, but miraculously found ourselves at the mouth of the RE where the CP was.
CP 38: Worked to take the ridgeline to it. Nice game trail there.
CP 21: Showed at trail junction but was higher on the hill.
CP 45: Could take trail or 2 track across the ridge to drop down. I had pace counted out, and when we got to the bottom, wasn't sure where to go.
Turned back west, and when we went about 100m I thought there's no way we over shot that far and tuned back east/southeast. Hopped ont eh spur thinking it would lead to the split and it did. Now realize was about 150m short. So much going in in that area struggled to figure out how to leave. Once we were on our way, we were on our way.
EDIT: looking at our tracks, we never made it down to the bottom. We got caught in a creek canyon but was on the correct spur. Interesting!
31: Climbed the very big hill and realized there was a trail almost right to it. Ha.
28: This is where getting to the 20/30 pointers was almost comical. We went right past it and landed in a northerly reentrant. Oof.
20: Got to the top of the hill out of 28. Some two tracks were actually rides and got hung up on a ride. Backtracked out. And getting to 20 just wasn't very clear, but figured it out. I don't remember the very large RE that would have been a backstop and we landed on the spur after that RE. Doubled back about 100m.
52/Water: Two track in pace count chunks. Got to the water first and then backtracked to the CP. Realized that this point we may need to drop from our plan.
62: Ran the two track to the spur and a RE looked pretty good to traverse. By this time my feet were screaming. I changed orthotics and clearly can't do more than a couple of hours with them. We had to be careful to stay on bearing with this one and landed it. We came out the spur and this is where I dropped my compass. :/ spent about 15-20 minutes looking for it. Gah. Such a rookie mistake.
Skipped 41 to go get 35, 50 and 58.
35: Out and back, fine.
50: Pace counted the trail with an adjusted pace and landed right where we wanted. Helped there weren't ten thousand million spur/reentrants. Traversed out an OK spur that got us 700+ m up the two track. I'm guessing that helped? I need to have a quick way of assessing that.
58: Found a nice ridge line trail to drop in, but, was very tricky to sort the best spur out. According to the Strava topo map there was a trail out :/ it was a smidge on our map but we floated a bit north. Angel got us out expertly and in our rush to get back, we missed a small trail marker (it was marked as a 2 track on the map) and ran about 100m north before we realized we missed it.
When I realized that we had to run trail to the road, I worried, but we finished with 30s to spare.


List for next O or Rogaine:
-Gaiters
-Streamer and Strap for compass
-Spare compass
-When looking at potentially an unclearable route, look at roads/trails/climb
-Recheck pace count stride before going. My run stride has lengthened???
-Always have beads.
-Some trails are on the map some aren't. Roll with it.
-I move faster with roads/two tracks/trails.
-When I'm pace counting need to be sure partner is holding a bearing.
-Check shoe orthotics.
-How to decide out and backs or cut distance.
-Predicting spurs and gullies.

My sweet dog was pulling like CRAZY this morning. Surprised I have a heart rate at all!!!

Run with Angel! :)

And, have a new HR strap.

Sandy quarry hill repeats. Almost quit but told myself give it 10 minutes, and then stuck with it.

C • nice, way to gut it out!! 1

Yes I did Jens.