Training Log Archive: Nadim

Event: QOC Little Bennett Night-O
 

Cabin John Regional Park, MD. For my first venture at actual field checking, beyond capturing trails with a GPS, I covered the stream valley just north of Tuckerman Rd. and a little bit beyond. I knew this area to be somewhat detailed so I wanted to make sure to hit it while the leaves are still off. Unlike the Lake Frank and Lake Needwood areas, I'm trying to stick to the larger features on this map. I still found more than I expected. I tracked out 3.52 miles of objects via GPS, most of this for vegetation and some trails in the campground area. I look forward to getting back sometime. It was cool, in the upper 30's F starting out but it warmed to the mid 40's F.

Little Bennett Regional Park, MD. I had just a little inadvertant warm-up going between the car, the Start, and some toilets. It let me get a feel for my latest headlamp mount. It would have been better to test this earlier but that's the way it goes; the indications on how well it was going to work on the warm-up were not good.

QOC: Little Bennett Regional Park, MD. It was a cooler than usual night for QOC Night-O but it felt fine when running. I made some errors but often time had trouble adjusting to what I saw on in the terrain vs. what I saw on the map. Some areas seemed greener than mapped though I know that they usually do when navigating at night. Other areas had contour detail that was missing or smoothed-over too much as sometimes happens when generating them from LiDAR data. On the second to last control, I was confused leaving the 3rd to last control when I kept climbing much more than I thought I should. I cut a little left and soon after started going down more but it seems like I ended up much lower than I thought was. I wonder if this was a map seam problem where the newer portions of the map were joined to the rest. Maybe it was just me being tired.

My lighting was bright and held out fine despite my being worried about it after I passed 75 minutes. I used the medium setting. However the problem I had with lighting was with the new headband that I'd just gotten. It attaches my Nigh Rider MiNewt that I usually use for cycling. The setup with the headband keeps the light pointed too low so I had to lean my head back to look far ahead, especially when going uphill. It also didn't stay on my head well. It was constantly sliding upward; quickly headed to popping off. The hardest thing about it was the way the cable to the battery hung. It kept flopping in front of my left eye. I'd reach behind my back when running to pull it away but it kept moving and quickly would get in front of my eye again.

It still was fun going out. I hadn't done a night-o in a long while. The courses were pretty fun. I did keep making the wrong choice when selecting a way to go around deadfall or other green obstacles. Without much training lately, I had the intuition toward the end that my body was more tired than I conciously felt.

Night - Long Advanced - Splits

Spinning kind of late at night after fixing my flat tire.

45 situps. I haven't been very motivated lately. I haven't fixed the spoke on one bicycle and I discovered a flat on another.

Washington, D.C. From Independence Ave., SW to 17th St., down The Mall to Lincoln Circle, 23rd St. SW. to the Rock Creek Trail along Ohio Dr., around the Tidal Basin to 15th St., SW. to Independence Ave., SW. I didn't have to work late and felt it was time to try a short run. Much of this was on pavement but I felt okay. I can see that I'm not out of the woods yet. I was going a bit faster than I thought I was when I hit the first mile at about 7:15. I wanted to see the Cherry Blossoms which have really popped the last couple of days. It's already just a little bit before peaking. A few trees haven't really any flowers but others have them on most of the buds. None have started being blown off yet. After getting back to Bethesda, I made it to a bike shop and got a replacement spoke for my commuter bike. Max has been wanting to bike to school again.

Spinning and watching a movie. I felt sluggish starting out but moved quite well after a few minutes.

Max insisted on playing tag with me while we were at the playground at the Haggerstown Outlet Mall (MD). Peggy got to shop while I ran in circles for 15 minutes, just ahead of Max. I felt slow but did actually run through just about the whole time to the point of feeling winded.

Earlier in day, we toured the Antietam Battlefield, hiking up and down the 60 steps of the observation tower, and making a small excursion to the Burnside Bridge. It was amazing how beautiful the area is now with all the intersting topography, rocky outcrops, and patchy fields; how scary and terrible it must have been 149 years ago.

Once home, I did some yard work felling some trashy trees in our very heavily tree covered back yard. For some reason my neck was sore in the evening.