Training Log Archive: Spike

2 x 20 minutes of MTBO on a street map (just like yesterday, but shorter).

Some additional non-MTBO biking.

Jogging around at the "Lawrence Nature Park." I carried a Karttapullautin map of the park and looked a bit. Some of the trails were very wet, but overall it wasn't too terrible.

2

The Emporia Gazzette has some good DK200 photos on their twitter feed.

https://twitter.com/emporiagazette/status/60466327...

https://twitter.com/emporiagazette/status/60461966...

https://twitter.com/lebutthead/status/604616628945...

MTBO on roads. I printed a couple of maps from http://oomap.co.uk/global.php and drew a course. The course basically wandered through town out to Lakeview and then back via Martin Park. It wasn't especially interesting, but it definitely required looking at the map to find the contrrol locations. My only trouble was some confusion around the hospital where I think someone drew a drainage ditch as a road, making the map a bit confusing if you're counting intersections.

When I was at Lakeview I felt good and decided to take a mid-course break and just ride beyond Lakeview until I was just outside of Lecompton. The route between Lakeview and Lecompton is so nice to ride. There's very little traffic and I only saw one dog. Here's a snapshot:

https://instagram.com/p/3UDsWzw08c/?taken-by=okans...

As I was biking on some of the gravel I was wondering how things were going for the DK200. Tilford's blog has some photos from the course:

http://stevetilford.com/2015/05/30/dirty-kanza-liv...

200 miles of that would be really tough.

Today's biking was fun. The cool and cloudy weather helped. I have a vague plan to do some long-ish MTB riding through the summer. We'll see if I stick to it.

3

Work commute. Kind of rainy today. It was nice to be on a bike.

Row, row, row.

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Felt sort of crappy by the end of the day. So when I got home I just napped for a few minutes. I am feeling better, but I think I'll just take the day off completely.

Didn't get enough sleep last night.

Mowed the lawn.

Jogging to/from the little area of the map I wanted to look at. I got out around 9 but it was already starting to feel warm and humid.

1

I spent about 35 minutes fieldchecking a few features for a little section of the map at Rockland Lake. There is some really nice stuff. I'm going to design a little bit of orienteering training that Mary can use over the next few days.

A mix of kick ball and lacrosse with the niece and nephew on a warm and sunny day. The heat really drained me. So did all the running around. It was a blast.

1

Jogging around at Rockland Lake and making some notes on the map. The time is the "moving time" only. I was out for a good 10 more minutes than that.

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Long and slow jog at Rockland Lake. I carried my map. I looked at it a lot, except when I ran along the trail that goes off the area I mapped. I ran through a small area of super nice terrain.

Hudson Valley terrain is so nice for orienteering. I thought I might head back to the little area and do some field checking just for fun.

I stopped a few times to look at some rock walls. When I got home I was able to spot the rock walls in the lidar data and add them to the map.

I saw a fair number of people out on the trail that goes along the top of the ridge above the river. It was amusing to see what shoes people had. I saw everything from serious heavy hiking boots to flip flops.

I also saw a Piliated Woodpecker.

3

Jogging to/from the start/finish, plus a bit extra.

I ran a park sprint course on the map I've created of Rockland Lake. The map is a combination of Karttapullautin and Open Street Map, with a few additions from air photos. The sprint course was in the flat park area, but there is also a fair amount of hilly Hudson Valley terrain. Fun.

http://sprintseries.org/doma/show_map.php?user=spi...

3

C • Rockland lake 5

Jogging on roads, trails and grass. I made a Karttapullautin map of the state park across the street from Mary's parents house. I added some info from Open Street Map and a few things from air photos. I carried the map and looked at things as I went. The map is pretty good. Fun.

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C • Buildings 4

Just the work commute. I'd planned to run after work, but I stayed at the office a little bit late, then had to do some laundry, pack and cook dinner. I decided to skip the run.

1

More coverage of the crazy furniture guy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3087995/Ka...

Work commute.

KU has started a couple of road construction projects, including work on the Daisy Hill bridge. I thought that would be a pain, but they seem to be keeping it open for bikes and pedestrians but closed for cars. That's really nice.

Row, row, row.

1

I figured I could use a rest day. I managed to work up a good sweat by mowing the lawn, doing some weeding and then cleaning my bike.

I also spent some time playing around with karttapullautin. I made a map of an area near Mary's parents house.

I need to spend some time experimenting with the vegetation settings to see what settings would seem most useful around Lawrence.

I forgot to note the weather - warm, but not too hot and very little sun - and humid. I drank 2 water bottles with sport drink and nearly 2L water during the Ft Lev event. I also had a Gu and little bit of a candy bar.

A little more to drink and another Gu probably wouldn't have hurt.

Also, I should do a better job of getting some food in me at the finish. It was ok (since they had a picnic at the finish), but I didn't really have a plan and it wouldn't have been a good idea to be a bit more prepared.

The MTBO portions of yesterday's Fr Leavenworth adventure race.

From the start, we did MTBO that included biking on the levee that cirles the airport. It was in much better condition than last time when the levee was coated in fresh fist sized rocks.

The first section of MTBO ended near the lake by the golf course where we did some other stuff (logged separately as "other").

Following the other, was another MTBO course. This time we went to the section of the map that is completely worthless. But, I was prepared and had a newer map with me that showed things like the current roads. After that section, the course went up into the hills and included a few legs on super muddy trails. Part of the course involved walking slowly along a very muddy trail, stopping to carry the bike over various fallen trees. It was slow and rough.

Next was some more "other" and an orienteering section.

After the orienteering, there was a short MTBO ride back to the finish. It included about 5 minutes of a drenching rain storm.

The orienteering section was basically a long slog on muddy trails with a few steps into stinging nettles and poison ivy to punch control. The trails were just slow (but still better than going off trail). The mud varied from squishy-over-the-shoe to slippery to just wet.

I spent a bunch of time looking for one control on the powerline trail on the hill above the cemetery. The marker was "on the trail" from the description but was actually tucked into some vegetation about 10 meters off the trail. I've done enough adventure races that I don't get frustrated by that kind of stuff.

This time also includes a short compass course that was near the end of the second section of MTBO. The compass course was a bearing + distance to a note with another bearing + distance to a note with another bearing + distance to a control.

Other was (in the order I did them);

I used a sledge hammer to slide a heavy weight. Then, I partnered with a firefighter to drag a heavy dummy a little ways. Then, I dragged a fire hose a short bit, opened the nozzle, and used the spray to move a traffic cone (also with the help of a firefighter partner to help drag the hose and explain to me the proper way to use a fire hose). And the last of the fire challenges was to start a small fire with a flint.

Next up was some kayak orienteering. But it wasn't really orienteering as you could see the markers from the start. We had to do two laps of the course. The hardest part was trying to get in/out of the kayak without falling in the lake or tripping in the rocks along the banks.

Before getting back on the MTB, I had one more "other." I had to put together a small jigsaw puzzle and when I did that I got a compass bearing and distance for use later on the MTB course.

Just before starting the orienteering section was the last "other" - shooting targets with a paintball gun. There were penalty laps to run if you didn't hit 6 targets, but you got up to 30 shots and it wasn't much trouble. The biggest difficulty was that the first gun I used didn't seem to reliably re-load after a shot.

5

PTOC sprint course at Kill Creek before the annual meeting and potluck. I just shuffled around the course as I was pretty tired.

2

Bike commute but nothing more.

I'm planning to do the Fort Lev adventure race in the a.m. and then the PTOC sprint at Kill Creek in the evening. We'll see how that goes.

The weather went from pleasant to super humid. Yuck.

1

Nice result from Emily Kemp. Very cool:

http://resultsalo.fi/2015/prisma/tulokset/tulokset...

C • TV 2

Work commute.

I got caught in the rain on the way to work. I got caught in the humidity on the way home.

Row, row.

1

C • Erg coxswain 1

My plan was to bike the river trails after work. I drove and had my bike in the back of the car. But about 4:30 it began raining. It seemed like it was going to keep raining (both how it looked and a quick look at the weather radar).

I drove home and then the rain stopped. So I took my MTB out on the roads of West Campus. There was a little off-and-on rain, but nothing much.

I basically just went up and down Asbestos Hill. I stopped when my watch showed >200 meters of climb and then went home.

1

Work commute. I had to go to the City Commission meeting, so I didn't get to leave work until almost 9. I was surprised at how many people were walking around campus at 9. I guess they must have been leaving an evening final exam.

1

Work commute.

At work I read Chad's story:

http://www2.ljworld.com/weblogs/town_talk/2015/may...

Biking to/from the hill.

4 x Asbestos Hill. I expected my legs to feel great. They didn't feel great, but didn't feel too terrible either. It was very pleasant conditions - temp around 60 and very comfortable humidity.

2

MTB on the roads. I probably should have looked at the weather before I left.

After about 30 minutes I noticed a fair amount of lightning west of town. It had been raining on me for maybe 20 minutes. But the lightning was distant so I just kept an eye on it. I was hoping it'd head north of where I was. But it seems like more lightning was coming from directly south of where I was. So I turned around and started heading home with a plan of sticking to roads that wouldn't be high spots. I don't like being on high spots in lightning.

Then the rain got really heavy. I had a rain jacket and put that on. Then the rain wasn't so heavy and the lightning moved away.

When I was about 15 minutes from home I started thinking that I should go ahead and add another 30-60 minutes to the ride. But then the lightning started again and I just went straight home.

I'd planned to do at least 2 hours.

1

I went for a jog on West Campus while the women at 10 Mila ran the "long day" (which turned out to be just over an hour). No wind and heavy humidity made for a sweaty run.

When I got home I mowed.

1

Work commute. I was caught in some rain on the way home.

Row, row.

I was inspired a bit by the last episodes of "Svett och Etikett" and "Efter Svett och Etikett."

http://www.svtplay.se/svett-och-etikett

I have no idea how popular the show is in Sweden, but I really like it. I think the first season was (so far) a bit better. But that's nitpicking.

1

A final jog on the beach before heading to the airport.

1

Another early morning run on the beach. Fun.

1

Woke up early and got out for a short run along the beach.

1

Longish but slow jog on the trails at Clinton. Nothing special - didn't feel especially good or bad. I carried the current version of the map and looked at it occasionally.

When the sun came out, the temp felt warm. But with all the leaves out, the trail was in the shade and that helped.

The places I ran didn't seem to have been damaged/destroyed the way some of the MTB riders seemed to say. There are certainly some bumpy spots from both bikes and footprints.

2

Work commute with a trip to the grocery store. I thought about running, but decided to make goat cheese and red onion quesadillas instead.

1