Training Log Archive: Tundra/Desert

Event: US Team Trials
 

The Falcons are done, both of them. I took them to STL but decided not to use.

Received a confirmation from Mal Harding today that we indeed got the credit for Control #38 from the US Rogaine Champs.

Team Trials Day 1: Sprint. I literally got off the airplane, on the light rail, off at UMSL and ran. I ran as well as I could given the rogaine five days prior; I figure the hit to my speed from that exercise was about 1 minute even. And, I made one stupid mistake and one not-so-good route choice.

Distance is a very rough guess; the climb is final, from the Polar, augmented by route analysis. Agrees 100% with the course setter's estimate, but the latter can only be made valid by inserting one contour across the stairs we traversed on the legs #9–#10, #15–#16; I assume the contour was omitted for legibility.

Sprint - Splits

What a difference some food and sitting on a chair make! I seemingly recharged to a good fraction of energy available in the Universe, and kept hauling for most of the second loop. We blew the first control of the loop, upon receipt of the second and last navigational opinion from Roger. After that, we navigated cleanly.

I was feeling better and better, thanks to a cool night and regular infusions of caffeine pills. But, our pace was not so great, and I started to figure out the controls to drop about midway through the loop. I also towed Roger on one uphill leg. It looked like we had to drop 4, but we sped up in the morning and figured out an option to still get one or two of those four.

But, as we got down to the plain, same elevation as the HH, Roger called it quits. He was almost ready to throw up. At the same time, I got a giant blister—one of many, but only the first really painful one. So, we headed home, finishing 53 minutes early. We certainly had time for one, and possibly two, more controls.

Team DART beat the crap out of us, getting all but one. Given ideal circumstances, we still wouldn't have got them all. Distance is an estimate, climb is fudged from the Polar data.

Event: Big Muddy Rogaine III
 

The first loop of the Big Muddy Rogaine, the US Champs. With Roschi. I was confident that we would get all controls, since the course area was only about 120 km². I laid out two equal-length loops, about 38 km each as the straight line goes.

The unexpected wrench was the complete lack of water at the very first water stop, which we hit at about two hours going. We immediately went into conservation mode, and had to re-plan the first loop so as to hit another water stop before imminent death. It was quite warm, and I guess I never quite got out of the conservation mode or drank enough. I also had no appetite. By the end of the loop, I was dragging. On each uphill, no matter how small, my breath would quicken and I would sweat.

One control (#42) was clearly not there (but a ribbon was), and we only wasted 2 minutes at the location. At another location (#38), we did some looping around (about 11 minutes), leaving with confidence that we'd been in the right spot (I tagged a rock for evidence). At a third location, Control 65, the flag was on the wrong side of a stream, but it was dark and we spotted the reflector.

I forced myself to eat a bowl of vegetarian chili at the hash house, but my stash of hamburgers remained virtually untouched. My urine was dark brown. We spent 1 hour 12 at the hash house, but the rest was well worth it.

Roger voiced his navigational opinioin only once on this loop, but at a critical time, preventing a mistake by me. The length is an estimate, the climb is from the Polar. The climb number should be good.