Training Log Archive: TomN

Drumm loop. Running well, pace was slower than it felt like.

Event: QOC Patuxent
 

The Goat at the QOC Patuxent meet. This course was my suggestion, indirectly. I thought a long intermediate course would be a good idea for this National Orienteering Week meet, thinking it would be something for the AR crowd to sink their teeth into. In Nadim's hands it turned into a Goat, with a fork and a skip, and it turned out to be pretty good. The navigation was plenty hard enough, no controls on point features, but the reentrant systems in this park often have a lot of detail that makes them tricky. The forest seems a lot whiter than mapped, and offered really fine running except for a few areas of downfall. The course, or at least my route, avoided most of the mountain laurel, but I hear it was rough on Brown.

I ran with Dave O. and Victor Lin for the first few controls. Dave took a wrong turn before #5, and I shouted something to him but he didn't hear. Didn't see him again. I caught up with Victor after a couple more controls, but then he took an early skip at #10 and he stayed ahead of me after that.

I skipped 18, which looked good geometrically, but with no good route from 17 to 19 it didn't turn out that great. I maybe saved 2 minutes over the full 17-18-19 combo. Interestingly, when I was backtracking towards 16 on the Blue Trail I passed a long line of runners on the 16-17 leg, not just on the goat, but other courses too. Popular route choice.

Only one mistake, leaving 15 I got on the wrong trail and paralleled the field for way too long before realizing the mistake, backtracking, and taking the Blue Trail towards 16. A couple minutes lost. Happy with this run, pretty competent navigation overall.

Picking up controls. Walking the whole time.

QOC Goat - Splits

Same same again.

Same run as last time. Pace and speed felt consistent this time around.

Meant to run yesterday, but time got away from me and then it rained. Overcast and cool this morning. Legs felt heavy, and pace was slower than it felt like.

Kensington 8K. Finish time 37:41, net time 37:37. About 30 sec faster than last year, that's the good news. Second place in age group, same position as last year. But not a very good run, and, like last year, I lost it on the hill from mile 3-4. Near the top was where the other guy passed me, and there was nothing I could do about it. This is especially galling because I've always thought I was relatively fast on hills. But I guess not now.

I got the first two mile splits at 7:08 and 14:15, but I didn't see any mile markers after that. Mostly downhill to the first mile, so that split isn't bad, but the second mile was surely too fast. From mile 2 to 3 I was breathing 2-1, and on the hill 1-1. Over the top of the hill and there's still a mile to go, but I never got my speed up again.

I guess I'm the geezer of this lot.


Place Name Age Sex Time
67 Charles Green 62 M 37:20
73 Tom Nolan 63 M 37:41
110 James Rohrer 60 M 40:15

Out and back on half of the perimeter road at GSFC, with 7 20-second strides thrown in randomly. Trying to keep light feet, particularly after each stride.

3 x (5 min medium, 5 min easy), 5 x (10 sec sprint, 50 sec easy). Workout came from the Steve Magness book. Planning another light run on Thursday, then the Kensington 8K on Sat.

QOC Fountainhead Red. A fine course in very nice woods, and a perfect day to be out, with the temperature in the low 70s and some breeze. I've had a lot of trouble with this terrain in the past, but for some reason everything clicked this time. I had a great run with only one mistake (leaving 13 I saw the trail to 14 and didn't bother thinking about what to do when I got there; went up the wrong reentrant, punched an orange control, and finally saw the mapped rock pile southeast of the control). Lost about 4 min. Pretty happy with this run.

Red - Splits

4-mile road run, with a set of hill sprints inserted after the first mile or so. 10 sprints on a moderate slope at 25 seconds each, jog back down another 35 sec, let's say 1 minute per sprint. These were shorter than the 60-sec sprints I did the last time I ran this workout (because I couldn't find the place I did them last time). But I did more of them. So far, I think the longer ones offered better training, but we'll see.

Hanover, ME to Kensington, MD with a stop in Exeter, NH to unload Mei-An and all her stuff for her senior year at school. The drive timing wasn't too great, because we got stuck in terrible traffic around NYC from about 4 to 7 p.m. in the pouring rain.

Down to the Post Office and back. The route is about 2 miles of steady 5% grade, down then back up. This run felt really good. I felt like I was actually running, and not just jogging in place. Intensity was moderate, 2-2 breathing the whole way.

Then I jogged back to the east end of the pond to take a picture
in the morning mist. It seems like the new Google+ "get shareable link" doesn't work if you want to embed a thumbnail.

We convinced my dad and stepmother to go up to the Woodman's Peak overlook, because they hadn't seen the new trails that had been put in over the last year or so. They had a fine time, but I was giving Sandy pretty much constant help, and hoisted her up some of the hard spots. Dad hiked the whole thing independently (his 90th birthday is next month).

Back again today for the Puzzle Mountain - Woodsum Spur trail, solo this time. Weather the same as yesterday, warm and muggy. Got an early start to avoid the heat.

The Grafton Loop Trail is the newest AMC trail. It ascends Puzzle then continues around for another 14 miles north to Baldpate and down to the notch, then crosses Route 26 and completes the loop on the west side over Old Speck and Rumford Whitecap, 12 miles.

Puzzle Mountain overlooks Howard Pond and dominates the view out from our lakefront. I've done the Puzzle section of the Grafton Loop Trail several times before, but the Woodsum Spur is new, and makes a loop through the ledges on the south side of Puzzle Mountain. I was hoping for good views of the pond.

As it turns out, the views are mostly southwest, but there is one really outstanding view of Howard Pond from an open ledge just below the SE summit. I phoned home to see if they could spot me, waving and flashing a reflection from my phone. It didn't work, too far even for binoculars. But worth a try again, now that I think I have a better idea where I was.

Made reasonably good time going up, had some trouble finding the trail on the Woodsum Spur in a few places (it's new and relatively untraveled, and pretty rugged), and ran the 3 miles down.

An aborted attempt at the Puzzle Mountain section of the Grafton Loop Trail. An hour or so in Mei-An decided she didn't want to hike. Too bad, we were making decent time and the day was great. My goal was to hike the new Woodsum Spur trail, but it will have to wait for another day.

Shortened version of the Perimeter Trail at Greenbelt Park. I wasn't keeping track of either the distance or the time.