Training Log Archive: jgreen

took the dogs for a stroll round the neighborhood after finishing my working commitments for the day.

paddled around the lake near the house with the two girls. more a test of how to do it than actual exercise. good fun though.

AR time
the Terra Firma Extreme AR.
An interesting format. each leg was given at the beginning of the leg. Only 1 CP from each leg was needed to remain official. Number of CP's dictated the winner, and best time for equal CP's.
12 Hour time limit with 1 CP loss for each 5 mins late - so you got a free 5 mins actually.
We started out struggling with my home made UTM plotter, never having actually used one before meant it too some time to plot the points. Then my reading the topo map was a bit off, powerlines are represented differently in the US than in SA. So we overshot the first CP. CP0 interesting numbering!.
Them we took a short cut on the bikes directly to the dam, through what turned out to be private property and a lady kaked us out cause she had hunters on her farm and we need to get off fast so we are not mistaken for game. Punctures on the fancy rented bike with ultra lite tubes, no tyre liner and no slime meant that we spent time on the side of the road with a puncture repair kit. not a great first leg.
the paddle went reasonably, no mess ups, but the boat was a little slow compared to the three man canoes that were in action. We have a 2 man convertible inflatable from advanced elements. www.advancedelements.com
Both Sams tyres were flat at the end of the paddle, so it was more bike admin before we headed back to the central transition for the next set of coordinates.
A quick (or not so quick) short running leg that seemed a little pointless before getting back on the bikes for a ride around the MTB area of Reiville Peak Ranch. It was fun and tough and hot. Some bike carrying and some more puncture repairs got us back to the central transition with all the cp's so far, and about 3.5 hrs to go before deadline.
the next run leg we rationed at 2 hrs. We were hoping to get 5/7 CP's but in the end ran out of time, mostly because I plotted some of the points a little out due to not having a UTM plotter, and not taking the time to measure properly. lesson learnt, again...
we gave ourselve 90 mins for the last cycle and special task, but more bike admin turned a 10 minute transition into a 30 minute transition, and we left on the last cycle leg with only 53 mins to go. we cycled hard and got back with 20 mins to spare. excellent navigation, climbing a very high fence, and some quick riding got us back way quicker than anybody expected. The last task was a quick pull across the lake and back to fetch a ball to deliver to the finish.
A fun day out. The mantra of getting tot eh start is 1/2 the battle won was very true with this race.
I ordered the boat on Amazon, twice, and eventually went to the kayak shop in Houston and bought one at 12pm on Friday before we left at 3pm. Then I had a small bumper bashing on the way to the event that saw us phoning the cycle shops in Austin at 8pm on a friday night. Performance bicycles were working late and stayed open an additional 20 mins for us to come and get a replacement wheel from them, and it was on a 50% special - silver lining maybe?
the rental bike saga is still on going. I rented a 29er epic expert carbon frame for Sam to use and the frame is a little shattered after interacting a little to harshly with the bike rack. it made it though the race, but the bike shop are none too impressed.

been sick for a week - sux bricks.