Training Log Archive: JanetT

After dinner stroll with kid and grandkid. :-)

Event: DVOA Core Creek Park
 

Core Creek Co Park Green, 5.6 km, 100m climb, 1:7500 map; courses by Sam K. Low 70s and humid, with some breaks of sun but mostly overcast.

Pretty clean on everything (partly because I was going slow enough), though I messed up the route choice on the last control...should have stayed up between the woods and oob parking lot but I hadn't taken a close look, so I lost a bit there looping around the woods and climbing back up to the tree.

Route choice legs:
-L to 4
-R to 6
-R to 7
-Main trail in to 10 and same way out
-Between lots to 12
-Back to road and N trail along water to 13...Glen caught me here
-L on trails to 14
-Main trail to parking lots then out to road to 15
-Road to end of yellow then through woods to 16
-S to trail, but after seeing 17 was on N side (foot) of embankment I headed up to the road. Fell on the way in and bruised my left knee. Glen caught up again after attempting to cut through the vertical green between 13-14
-Across rocks 18-19, then R of woods
-R of parking lot, buildings to trail, to 22
-Idiot move* S around woods to 23 instead of noticing the gap between oob parking and woods (*my "non-spike" due to bad route choice)

Nice change of pace from the woods orienteering I've been doing, and I actually jogged some on the downhills and across the big field (the first time, 7-8)

Thanks to Sam, Lena, Dave M, and the other volunteers who made this event possible!

Green - Splits

Event: Westmoreland 3 for 1
 

HVO Westmoreland (Mt Kisko) Brown, 3.8 km (no climb stated, but there was plenty), on a 1:7500 map.

Downhill from the nature center to the start, then a climb to the first control. Down and up to #2, then level to 3, long leg down and up to 4. The rest had fewer major drops/climbs, except for the last control (1.5 contours up from a trail jct) and into the finish (up 4 more).

Of the folks on Brown I was first. All map reading; never needed to pace count, although I did mess up a bearing to #8 and got too high and had to drop down to it. At #7 there was a nice narrow reentrant with a boulder near the top of it (as mapped), but the flag was one reentrant farther west (and I never saw a boulder there). Otherwise just slow and steady; I could jog on the downhill trail sections, and there were a lot of trails to interpret.

Chatted in the parking lot with Karen and Tony M, Dave W and Daniel S, Phil B (a bit) and Steve T, and Nadya P inside the building. On the course I only saw a few people; Betsy H on the way to start; Karen M at my #2; a fellow wearing a blue jacket from 4-8 (he may have been on Red which had the same loop); a young girl [c. teens to 20s] between 9 and 11; and George H at 11; plus a couple of scout groups at trail jcts. When I went to download I was able to tell Betsy that George was close to the finish.

Decided to do Brown today (more technical) and Green tomorrow at Core Cr, which is more park-like and less technical (new map), rather than vice versa.

Brown - Splits

Our neighborhood's garden club had a tour of 6 homeowners' gardens (at 4 stops), in the fine drizzle this morning. Not much distance (1.6mi total), but a lot of standing around (three hours).

Some people have ripped out all the original foundation plants and gotten very creative in their replacement; others have planted on all four sides of their homes. My favorite specimen plant was a serpentine blue atlas cedar.

Felt quite protected in my new Keen waterproof boots (low cut, below ankle), quick drying pants, raincoat, and an umbrella. And the temp was comfortable, in the low-mid 60s.

"Ganesha" practice from Deanna (included some hip openers)

Neighborhood, after dinner.

I visited the grands yesterday into today. We ran around (inside) the house yesterday afternoon probably for a good 20 minutes or so; I know I put a couple thousand extra steps in. The kids were giggling most of the time; the house has lots of extra doorways to hallways or rooms on the first floor, making lots of route options possible. Today we walked around the block.

Nice to get back to weekly visiting, and the younger one (at almost 28 months) is a lot more fun than he was at just over a year when I stopped going over regularly. He's very attached to his pacifier(s), though, so he's hard to understand much of the time.

Well, that was an adventure!!

Another hot day but we wanted to get out, and Glen's weather app said we weren't supposed to get any rain (as previously predicted), so we picked a section of the D&L rail trail north of Allentown, parking at the Cove Rd lot near where Rt 145 crosses the Lehigh River, and heading north towards Slatington. This part of the D&L is almost entirely shaded partly by tall mature trees and partly by the steep bank of the Lehigh itself, often by cliffs of slate or shale alongside the former railbed, so it made for a good place to ride on a hot sunny day. We'd ridden on part of this section before but hadn't gone all the way to Slatington (hereafter S'ton).

There were various things in bloom: some were invasives like multiflora rose, dames rocket, and buttercups; but others native like a mountain laurel hanging onto a cliff, and rubus odoratus (flowering raspberry) with large purple rose-like flowers. We passed one remnant concrete phone booth (used for communication by those working on the railroads or in the vicinity, back in the days of the RR line's existence), and a few remnant poles and signal boxes, a former dam, and a spot near a stone water-tank foundation that a local had decorated with a couple of phantom bikes (rusty old bikes with fake skeletons attached), so a bit more interesting than your typical featureless rail trail.

Not long before we reached S'ton we heard a few rumbles of thunder but the sky was still bright so we kept going. There was a shale/slate restroom building near the former train station (both refurbished and with fancy slate roofs), and a food truck nearby. We'd only had granola bars before heading out so we split a soft pretzel from the food truck, heard more thunder, and decided we'd better head back towards the car. Made one stop so I could photograph the raspberry flowers, but shortly thereafter (about 2.2km from the car) it started raining, and then it poured. It was still warm (86 when we started) so we never got too chilled. (So much for G's weather app. ;-) )

We had talked to one fellow at the S'ton station, who was heading farther south than us; we encountered him, and two other guys on bikes, stopped to wait out the rain under the Rt 145 underpass shortly before the lot where we parked the car. We chatted about bikes and rides while the rain continued to pour down, and when it lightened up some, the other fellows continued on their way to wherever they were headed. Since it was still raining, we moved the car under the underpass so we could change clothes in relatively dry conditions.

At least the conditions were warm enough that we wouldn't get hypothermic, and we weren't riding on a flat open area exposed to lightning (saw some impressive bolts on the drive home, though!). A ride to remember!