Training Log Archive: Ari-o

Event: NEOC: Blue Hills Traverse and Regular Meet
 

Quick warm up to pee.

Good Traverse. Especially good since I wasn't too far back (6th overall) and I left a lot of time out there with mistakes. Ran strong, and since my legs were already numb from Friday and yesterday, I didn't cramp! Warm, ran in a tee shirt, good that there was a clothes drop at the start.

I took the left option to the first control and bounded along the trail well. Got to the rock first, put in my dibbler, and then Ethan put his in and said "your's didn't beep." Well, I'm not that used to waking up controls, man! Ran with Ethan to 2 and beat him up the hill and spiked it well, making sure my stick went beep.

Then 3. I have no idea what happened on 3. I ran to the trail, took a right, and then decided to cut the corner through the woods. Somehow I either had already run past the trail junction and/or ran across the trail, and wound up way off in the woods southwest of 6! You can't get caught by a feature which isn't there. I ran back and reoriented off some terrain and found the trail, and spiked 4 well, but lost 5 minutes with that debacle. I should have followed Ethan at that point.

Did well to 4 and ran up to 5, just about the same time as Alex, Ran 6-7-8-9 cleanly, trading off with Alex on downhills and uphills, or where I took a trail and she went cross-country. What great woods to run in, none of the green of Lynn or Townsend. 10 I took the trail over and around, and this would have gone well except I overran the downhill curve and wound up past my attackpoint, so I had to navigate the green terrain over the hill to the control, but still punched ahead of Alex. Probably lost a minute, though.

Then there was a road run, a spike of 11, and water at 12. Then 13. I wanted to go off the road and attack off the rock to the left of the road. But the map here doesn't really resemble reality. I realized I'd overran the attack so I went up the hill to about the right contour and back above the rocks (since the control was uphill of the rocks and spiked it well, but probably lost another 3 minutes there.

To 14 I didn't see the trail option north of the hill and went right over, because why not. Also, after last year I don't really trust the map west of the hill, but do trust skyline trail. Spiked it. And spiked 15 with a nice attack off the trail, green, square stone wall and bench. I'd use that again later.

For whatever reason, I ran uphill from 15 to the trail, probably losing some time. I had a good plan to 16 and executed the first 90% well, but then was looking at the wrong trail and started running downhill one trail shy. I got to a stream and had to stop and follow terrain before finding the very green control. 3 minutes there, then another to make sure I'd punched (I had) because I had stuff in my shoe I stopped to get out.

Spiked 17 (terrain and compass right to the control) and then 18 was another debacle. I wanted to contour around to the stream and attack off of it. I wound up too high to avoid the cliffs, but then didn't notice when I crossed the trail (again!) and wound up towards the pass I came through to get to 16, running the wrong way. I noticed, and turned back, but lost another 4 minutes, easily, meaning that Alex was punching there but had already run the short butterfly.

I ran back to 19, and then went the wrong direction southwest not southeast to 20 (tired by this point, -1 minute) and navigated well but ran slowly to 21, used the same attack to 22 as 15, and then ran the road to the finish.

So I lost 18 minutes of totally fixable navigation mistakes, half of that because I somehow crossed trails that were there that I didn't see. I ran a mile further than Alex, which is why she beat me by 10 minutes. But still finished respectably, and felt strong and fast. So that's something!

Traverse - BC - Splits

Running to put out controls. Only mishung one. I blame the poorly printed map. The offsets are much better; we should hang off of them.

Fun Iltarastit up with Alex and friends. I ran to the first control which I'd hung in the wrong place, not on top of the obvious hill which had a flag on it, but not from where I was attacking hanging. Oh, well. Then ran the first extra loop pretty well and got a little lost to 4, and then struggled through the woods not finding the white running. Spiked 5 and then went across the marsh to get to 6 which was fun. I skipped 7 (no flags left) but there were flags at 8 (spiked) so I did the 9-10-11-12 loop. Ran it relatively cleanly but not particularly fast but in these woods for me, clean is good.

Then 13 messed with me, as I went out on the spur but not far enough, back to the Pawtuckaway rock, then re-oriented off the terrain and found it. Grr. Off to 7 and 8 and in.

NP today was a race. Three full hills (or as one participant noted, six bouts of nausea). It was cold (which was good) and I felt pretty good so I went for it. The prize? Tickets to a Celtics game in December. Which is cool, unless there's good snow somewhere. But I'll take it.

Ran down the first hill in second place (not even my fastest time down) and crested the top in third. I mostly stayed with or behind this pack, and certainly felt like I was racing (nausea, race taste in the mouth) up and down the hills. Had top-9 in hand on the last hill but heard footsteps behind me and sprinted the flats, finishing 6th. 6:53 miles—a 3 hour marathon pace–except with 250m of climb over 4 miles. Not too many marathons with 1600m/5000ft of climb, are there?

Then it was cold and I felt bad, and then not as bad.

Ran in the morning because of all the things in the evening. Issue: shin still hurts. Cut run short, because, you know, shin still hurts. Ibuprofen and icing? Stupid bruising.

NP! I went to 5:30 with George and ran 41 sections. Did about 25 pushups too. And ran one extra section at the end shirt free (it was 25) to cool down. The problem with NP is I bike home as my core is cooling down and get cold really fast, even with all the clothes. Maybe I should start running?

Ran to a meeting. Really trying to squeeze this in every so often.