Training Log Archive: barb

Putting down an hour to get the hike on the log, but it was of course longer both Friday and Saturday.

Went to Lonesome Lake hut with 10 kids age 3-12. Dave, Keegan (age 5) and I hiked a bit further along the Fishin Jimmy trail. In the morning all the kids did a 3-mile hike with us before heading back down the mountain and on to mini-golf in Lincoln.

Unfortunately, my knee bothered me in the same way it did in the last hours of the rogaine last weekend. It hurt when I was going downhill (and only then). I took 1600 mg ibuprofen in two doses before and during the hike.

C • Eat eat eat 7

I took a couple different bikes for test rides yesterday, and my knee hurt a lot last night.
I have been eating way too much. Every morning, I resolve to eat less, but I end up eating a lot by the end of the day.

C • Bikes 2

Today I met with the 4 junior high school teachers, plus the French teacher and special ed teacher, and we planned a field trip to the woods for early in September. 80 kids. I hope to improve on a few things from last time, but the basic idea will be the same. Teams of kids will be working to find controls - hopefully some of which will be moving, a la bus stop O. (Need to find some orienteers to volunteer to do that - no takers yet.)

The science teacher was on leave last year, and I'm very glad to be working with her this year. She pulled a 3D model of Somerville/Melrose out of her closet, and other models, and told me that contour lines are tested (bleah) by the state, so it's nice that the kids can learn it this way. (Wouldn't it be cool if most of their learning was as fun as this? Actually, with these great teachers, it might be.) I'm particularly pleased that I'll be able to spend 40-50 minutes in the classroom with all 4 classes a couple days before the field trip, to teach navigation, and talk about their team challenge.

Teams of 4 or 5 will basically do a score-O, with some controls being unique to that team (so higher priority for them); maybe there will be some puzzle element for those controls. One team got pretty lost last year, which was worrisome, so this year they have to have a cell phone and/or an adult. But teams can get a "navigation license" by taking a test ahead of time, which allows them to opt out of having an adult chaperone along. If at least 2 of the kids get some minimum grade on the test, the team gets a license. The test will be administered the day before we go to the woods.

The teams will be organized into 2-4 large groups, and groups with the highest score win. So there is cooperation amongst the 4-5 person teams instead of them all being in competition with each other.

I'm hoping that we can also have an overall reward: if the combined score of all the teams is greater than 10,000 or whatever, then they get a pizza party or a movie night where they vote on the movie and get in free...

My son David's latest work (click on the image, and then on the green flag to start it over):

Right knee was "clicky".
(Doctor said on Monday to wait and see how it feels after a couple weeks.)

Minor comments on PG's writeup.

I observed that there were some buff-looking people doing the rogaine. By buff I just meant that meaty hyper-muscular look. Which doesn't mean faster or better for rogaining. Or the only way to look strong. But might make for better TV coverage.

I think any apprehension I had about the race ahead of time might have been anticipating the thick woods and the rain (less pleasant than out west), and knowing what strong competition there would be (Bash/Leanimal, Joe, Ernst/Adam...). Plus the fact that it just might not be as fun the second time around for PG. In fact, in the middle of the event I was worried that I was contributing a lot less than our first rogaine, mainly because Peter was in front of me most of the time. So I said this was what I was feeling, and we had a little discussion about what was actually going on, which was that we were talking stuff through and working well as a team, so then I felt better.

I think my precise quotes at the rapids, each repeated several times, were:

"Dude, I can't believe you're doing this."

and

"Dude, I don't think this is a good idea."

C • Competition 10

1706 points out of nearly 2400 possible.

We were slowed down by a knee injury I sustained when I fell hard on a small log and struck my knees. Outside front of right knee, below the kneecap; hurt more and more until the last few hours it was very tough to go downhill and sometimes just to lift the leg. Interestingly, the pain sometimes lessened and didn't seem timed in any obvious way to the massive dosings of ibuprofen I took. Main result was that we didn't gather a few points we otherwise might have gotten in the last few hours.

Wet the whole time. I applied Unpetroleum jelly to my feet at the beginning of the race. I think that helped a lot. But I think it may have worn off after a few hours of completely wet feet, and I did not reapply any, and ended up with blisters.

As before, it was amazing to rogaine with Peter. It's so much fun to work with such a strong navigator.

A couple times Peter seemed to create passageways where there weren't really any. For example, he found a narrow overgrown intermittent not-on-the-map line of land so we could cross between a lake and a deep marsh - and this crossing was hidden from our lakeside "trail" (another Peter concoction, I think, as it was extremely difficult to pick out [and not on the map either]) by a huge downed tree root. Crossing the river at the rapids was another example. Maybe he'll write that up when he posts the map.

Francis put GPS-mapped trails on the map, and they were wonderfully accurate and reliable. Which was a good thing in terrain where the woods could be really thick (so different from Oregon!). We did a lot of careful navigation using these trails.

No bad run-ins with dogs, and only one confrontation with a landowner, and even that was mild. One dog ran toward us and then lay down on its back and exposed its tummy to be rubbed. I didn't rub the tummy but spoke to it in friendly goofy talk and it started following us until Peter spoke commandingly to it to STAY, and it obeyed.

Controls in the north part of the map were farther apart and fewer - but generally high scoring. The hash house was on the left middle of the map. We started going north, clockwise, figuring that it would be easier to make adjustments at the end with the many choices in the south. We decided to ignore at least 3 high-scoring controls at the fringes of the map, because it seemed unlikely we could get all the controls. Part way along Peter suggested changing our plan and getting the 90-pointer in the lower right, because we could get there easily at night, and we'd be in that area of the map at night. So we did that.

Ken Walker Sr & Glen Brake walked with us a bit at the end, which was actually quite invigorating and gave us the energy to go for the last 2 controls (worth 24 points together) instead of skipping them as we otherwise would have done.

Today hips and upper legs are sore, and blisters slow me down. The knee is definitely sore, and I'm being careful with it. I'll make an appointment to see a doctor.