Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

Wow, did I feel gross this morning. I ran to work, and it was super nice out, but I was dragging. my stomach was queasy, and I'm going to blame my run today on eating breakfast about 10 minutes before heading out the door.

It's a lose- lose- lose situation. Either I don't eat breakfast and I feel lackluster because no food, or I eat and feel gross because I haven't waited long enough, or I get up much earlier and lose sleep!

I need a bed like Wallace's in Wallace and Grommet. One that tips up when the alarm goes off and has me slide into my breakfast chair.

Drove back from Ithaca today, 6 hours of driving sure seems like a workout even if I'm not actually doing anything, it's exausting.

Hill and I beat Sam at Kubb in a striking come from behind victory. With all 5 of our back row knocked over we managed to surge back.

C • nice! 2

I don't have my maps with me here at work. I feel guilty enough doing stuff on attackpoint without draping a map across my desk in a blatant show of "I'm not doing anything at all".

Anyways, the races on Sunday were really fun trainings. I didn't have a compass or o-shoes, and the highest level of course that they were offering was an orange. I quickly found that the terrain was extremely steep, and the slopes weren't particularily helpful for my slick sneakers. The course was fairly straight forward even without a compass, but that just meant that I needed to be running harder. It felt like a longish steepish sprint, but with a slower time. I chose a bad route to 5, and while executing this route decided that the other way would have been faster... and because I was worried about having made that mistake I messed up the control anyways, getting onto the wrong road, and having to cut back up the slope.

The vegetation around 8 had changed a lot since mapping, and without a compass I was second guessing myself. And then leaving 8, I didn't read the contours or vegetation very well and ending up climbing a steep hillside of tall brush. the rest of the course was just trying to stay sharp in the heat.

Sprint at Eastman Dunham-

we did the sprint after waiting a bit after the orange course. The sprint was E-punch which Sam and I thought was very high class. The whole event was super-well run, especially the e-punch ( no rental fee, excellent finish/download proceedure).

We had done some of the controls on the sprint already because they were shared on the orange course. I was having a good flow race ( no compass can help flow, because you have to maintain an idea of exit direction from all controls) and was cruising until #9 I cut into the woods on the trail, and decided to stay high on the slope while cutting back to the proper spur. Lucky that I did, because the control was accidently hung one spur too early, and I saw it as I climbed up the hill. I didn't think very hard about it, and assumed that I had just come upon it quicker than anticipated, and headed off to #10. Because I was thinking that I was coming from a different spur than I really was, I managed to get into a parallel error on 10. I would have figured it out with a compass, but without one, I just tried to use the wrong field corner as my attackpoint. opps. I lost time on that one to Sam. 11, was swift except climbing the hill, and same to the last control. I was really tired though in the finish chute though, and it shows since Sam had the same finish split as I did.

So nice a morning, just a tiny threat of rain. Which I missed on the way in. But ho boy it was coming down when I left work. We needed to drive to Rochester after work, so I kept the bike in the cage at work, and hopped the T home, thinking that I would be less gritty when I got home, and thus would be ready to leave quicker.

I've been pretty bad about posting training and races huh? I'll start working my way backwards and putting them in, but I'm posting today just to get the flow started again.

well, this morning was splendid, very pretty for biking to work. Sun was good, and just warm enough outside to feel like summer. I biked a section with a real cyclist up a hill, and I was hanging with him for a bit, even though he had clip-in pedals and such. Makes me wonder if I'd be noticably faster with my foot attached to the bike :)

sam got me a bike mirror for my birthday, and it's really fun to play with. I adjust the angle mostly for fun, since I don't normally get run over from behind by cars on my typical ride to work.

I'm headed out the door to bike home now....

Event: CSU Pine Hill
 

I biked to work, and then left early to try to get to the Park-O in time to help Sanne with the timing and the registration. I got really lost in sommerville. Plus it takes forever to bike on city streets, always waiting for stupid lights to change. the CSU page was down, so I didn't get directions before I left, I just biked up towards Medford.... not the best way to ensure a timely arrival. I threw my bike in the back of Sam's car after the sprint, and hung out with the peeps in Cambridge. They were suitably impressed by my bloodied legs... I could tell because they uttered phrases like "eww" and " do you want to clean up in the bathroom" and " are you sure you don't want to get some of the dirt out"

Biking round the bean town. I went to work ( it was raining) and then after work hopped down to JP to go to a birthday dinner for a friend. Then I biked home in the dark from her house. It was a bit of a map memory course actually, since I just looked at google maps on her computer and chose a route and then tried to memorize the street names that I would need. I got it perfectly. It's really nice biking at night, almost no cars to speak of.

getting to work. I didn't need to bike home in the rain because Sam was nice and came to rescue me. We hit two birds by going shopping at the store right across from my lab, and while we were hanging out in the produce aisle ran into Torah Olafsen. This is not the first time I've seen her while shopping there. She says she lives like a block away, but I think that she's somehow following me. Oh, and if Erin reads this, Torah thinks that red bridesmaid dresses are too hard to find, and I agree with her.

to and fro, to work I go. Colder this week than I was prepared for. I assumed that having a sunburn meant that I had a get out of jail free card for the blustery side of spring. The solution is to always bring hat and gloves, even when you think they'll be superflous. legs felt decently good considering the weekend's activities.

I cut through brookline to go to the star market on beacon street to pick up dinner foods. Pretty much we had nothing edible in our house ( well I have plenty of ramen, but that's for special occasions only) and a mini-shopping trip was required. mmmm breaded pork chops and couscous with salad.

West Point, day 2.

so I went out a lot slower, knowing that saturday's race wasn't something I wanted to repeat. The first cluster of controls was actually much trickier than I expect, and I came very close to making a fool of myself, I did hit the first four cleanly though, just a little more hesitant than necessary. Also, 2 may have been hung a bit off, so my exit bearing did not lead me exactly where I expected to be, so I slowed down getting to 3 too, in order to reaffirm that things were okay. The float bridge was super cool, so mad props there. 5 was just up and over, six was a clean bearing as well, keeping to the west of the green. I headed south out of the control on my way to 7, looping around the swamp and attacking up the hill. Didn't quite get far enough back across the hill and ended up finding the Red control before dropping over into the re-entrant. 8 I knew I needed to be carefulm, since it was sidehilling, and somehow I blew it anyways. I came across slowly, staying with the map, saw the big wide re-entrant in front of the control and then managed to drop down too low, forcing me to climb back up once I realized my mistake. took it straight and easy to 9, where I saw Patrick Shannon. he dropped low to contour straight across, but I headed out on a bearing trusting the mess of rock features behind the bag to act as a catching feature. This worked well because I hit it right on, though Will was still faster than me on the leg. Up and over the hill after 10, and then scrambling down the other side and coasting along to 11. the nicest woods to run in all weekend, I thought. John went out to the road to 12, but I stayed to the right of the line, thinking the road was too much added distance. I hugged the north end of the swamps and came over the saddle which made for an excellent attack point, considering that the control was fairly hidden. going to 13 I had a bad bearing, and hit the rocky knoll to the south first, and needed to adjust to get the control. 14 I took the climb early, then staying along the shelf for a little bit, but then decided the footing wasn't worth avoiding the climb, and went over the top. 15 I went straight along the line, and was really proud of how well I executed the route, checking off just enough and simplifying the rest. to 16 I arced to the east, around the clearing, and then hit the stream junction and came up the hillside from there, which made the control super easy. 17 I was careless and ran through the wrong saddle, and had to hop over the hillside to get the cliff. 18 and 19 were short and sweet. for 20 I decided to stay high, which made attacking the control easy, but I wasn't as quick as Vadim who took the road. 21 I was too excited and tried to go too fast, and ended up hitting the stream to the west of the control, but then it was just running hard to get 22 and the finish.

I was happier with my race, I still made little bobbles, but I was in great control mostly. I also think I paced well, since I was running less hard but had almost as good a time on the 10 k as on the 7.5 k.

Also, I thought that with a clean run I had a chance of overtaking Vadim for 2nd place.... and i did. I clearly need to run cleaner races still ( should spike them all) but progress was made.

Blue 2 - Splits

West Point. Day 1, Blue. Got off to a good start, and got a little cocky. I spiked the first three controls like it was a park-o or something. The climb hadn't destroyed my legs yet, and i was feeling the groove. All this was to change.

Leg 4 was down and crossslope, and I was trying to be careful... but I let my concentration drift ahead and so when I hit a plateau I assumed that I had gone too far, and in reality I hadn't gone far enough. This was a sign that I needed to slow down, but instead I decided to get #5 really well and to forget about my mistake. I hit way far north, and had to trek all the way back along the hillside. 6 was in many ways a gimme control, and 7 my bearing was good so I cleaned up there too. 8 was downhill and then back up, I was going well, but by the time I had gotten up the hill I was tired and not thinking clearly. I saw a flag and ran over to it, eventhough it wasn't in the right spot. it could have been a very clean control had I just kept to my route and not gone jumping at bags. my legs were tired and there was the option of going up and over to 9.... which I went well out of my way to avoid, trying to contour as much as possible. This was okay, but I hit the right cliff more by luck than anything else, since talking to others it sounds like there are a lot of unmapped cliffs in the area. 10 was a quick downhill control, and I did fine, though my bearing could have been a little straighter. I got messed up a bit on 11, because someone else was searching in the area at the same time. I had a decent bearing, but didn't see the set of lower cliffs I was looking for, so I climbed up to the next set, and then had to drop back down again. I need to learn to ignore others in the forest when they aren't going to help me. 12 was a slow slog up 12 contours. 13 the best route was up over the top of the hill but I thought I could be quicker contouring along the shelf. Actually I did a good job on the execution of my route choice, but over the top was still faster. I need to learn to not let climb scare me so much. 14 I really bombed, came out on a bad bearing and ran into a parallel swamp. However the swamp wasn't apparent on the map because it was covered with green slash marks. I wandered around much longer than I should have trying to figure it out. Physically tired was making me mentally stupid. 15 I went straight, which turned out to be the best option, since the swamp wasn't as bad as it looked on the map. 16 I never looked for the route to the left of the line, and again I didn't want to go straight up and over, so I dropped down and went to the right of the line. The footing wasn't stellar and the climb at the end sucked royal. worst of all, the lefthand route was clearly a better choice all around. 17 was quick, and 18 would have been if I hadn't come across another broken down stone wall that wasn't mapped. 19 I cut out to the eastern road so that I didn't need to think too hard.

overall I was dissappointed in myself for making mistakes, but was mostly in contact with the map and my legs performing well considering the climb. It felt much longer than the Long O course from last week though and it was over 10 k shorter!!!

Kudos to john for running under 10 mins a k for the course.

C • nice work 1

Sprint fundraiser at West Point.

I was really tired from the morning, and I put off running the sprint until the very end. I think this added recovery was just what I needed.

I was pretty good about knowing which bearing I was leaving the control at, before I punched in. An important sprint skill. I was a little hesitant mentally going across slope to #4 just because I didn't see it as soon as I wanted to, I didn't let up too much though and trusted that I would have seen it because I was on the right contour. I was also a little hesitant going to 9, and got a little caught in the vegetation at the edge of the road, nothing to write home about though. #10, I chose a good route choice, cutting a little ways up the road then over the fences, across the field, and over the fence at the otherside. I didn't see all of the fences in advance though, which could have been very serious if any of the fences were marked uncrossable! my next route choice of note was under the building to number 15, which saved me a couple of seconds at least. And it was clean running all the way in.

as a spectator event, I had attempted the swimming route choice across the baylet that peter was trying to make a viable route choice. I waited at the go control until Sam arrived ( having run the rest of the course) I then attempted to sprint freestyle faster than she could run the perimeter. She creamed me. Wyatt did a much better job vying with Angelica actually. I think if a real swimmer with a speedo and goggles attempted the route it would have been quick... but not for me. Anyways, the second time around I knew enough to stay dry until after I had completed the sprint.

I was proud of this sprint, feeling fit and in control.

Blue 1 - Splits

West Point Sprint (Team fundraiser) - Splits

So it was raining a whole lot this morning. but I was good and I ran to work anyways. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow....

but yeah, my legs are still tired from all that runnin' this weekend. Better than yesterday, but decidedly grumpy still at such abuse.

Amusingly, the first song on my iPod this morning was a version of CCRs "have you ever seen the rain"

Boston drivers are even less friendly in inclement weather, either because they can see even less or because the gloomy feel of the morning makes them want to annoy the cheerful runners they see passing.

wow did my legs feel tired biking to work today! I explored gears lower than Dachshund basketball. I guess that's all there is to say about the whole biking spiel, except that somewhere on the way to work I encountered a road hazard. I know this because when I got out of work and was about to bike home, I found my tire sadly flat, and stubborn about staying that way. I would have patched the hole, but I didn't bring tire levers with me. bummer. So Instead I called up my chariot, and sam came to my rescue.