Training Log Archive: Sandy

A very good outing. I kind of shut down at around 45 minutes - the rest of the time was hiking up some of the trails, jogging a bit of the road by the horse stables and walking the rest of the way home. What made it good though was that for those 45 minutes my knees felt pretty good and I was able to jog up a lot of the big hills. Went down to the covered bridge, up the old hill-repeat hill, back behind the Indian, across Rex and up on the top of the three trails on that hillside but looping back on the middle trail to Rex, onto Forbidden Drive towards Valley Green, but doubling back up the trail right before Wise's Mill and taking that over to the top of my reentrant and then by the stables and home. So lots of hills in that route and only walked in a few places through the Drive part.

I also took a map of Mendon Ponds along with me and tried to do some map reading while running. It was really, really tough to read what was up and what was down on that map but it was good for me to try to focus on a map. It certainly made the run go by a lot faster. I couldn't do much reading on some of the trails where the recent storms have washed a lot of the dirt away so that the trails are mostly rocks and roots, but I did try to read on the better parts and would occasionally stop and absorb as much as I could and then try to visualize what I had just looked at.

Did the PT stretches afterwards. I really feel like they're making a difference.

I'm psyched. I sent an email to one of the SJU students that came to a couple of the orienteering events last year telling him about the event at the Schuylkill Center on Labor Day weekend. Since it's only 15-20 minutes from campus I figured it would be a good opportunity. He replied within minutes thanking me for letting him know, that he would definitely come and he'd be rounding up a group of friends to come with him.

Next step - get a map made of campus!

C • Well done! 20

with some of the PT stretches instead of the dvd ones

Inspired by the US Team performances I decided I would do some orienteering training today. So I made a 3.3 km course out of all the controls at the SCEE for my event Sept. 5 and was going to try and run the whole thing. I was also going to check that the streamers were still there and that the trails hadn't been damaged by the recent storms to the point that it would be problematic.

I had trouble with four of the streamers which were short pink tapes on 12-18" small white stakes in the ground: two I eventually found buried under stilt grass (moved them so I'll hopefully be able to find them more easily when I'm hanging controls and two I never did find - not sure if they're missing, or if I just couldn't find them). Probably spent a total of at least 10, maybe even 20 minutes poking around for them. Should have stopped my watch each time but didn't.

Ran almost all the rest of the time but had to walk the hill up to the finish.

Only one trail had sustained significant damage but it's still usable - thank goodness! Did not want to be designing new courses.

C • permanent course 3

Side planks were the only tough ones but then they always were.

TNT - Bob, Karl and I ran; Sandy and Dennis joined us for dinner.

Ran down to the drive with Bob and did two miles (10:26, 11:25) while he did three, stretched while waiting for Bob, hiked up the hill running part of the road part.

Baby steps.