Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Bear Brook, Blue, 6.8 km, 185m. Rainy day, and I was apparently out in the worst of it, though I seem to have been oblivious -- a few people commented on how it was really pouring for a while, but I didn't really notice, maybe I was under evergreens during the deluge? Not moving very fast, but navigating tolerably. A little sloppy on #1, overran it by a bit. #2-#4 went fine, though the GPS track shows something weird on the way to #4 that doesn't make sense. I neglected to lock the bezel on my watch, and it got into the wrong mode so it didn't record splits for #3-#5. No real issues on #5-#7. On #8 I went too far on the trail, and was too lazy to figure out exactly where I was, so I just charged off into the wilderness and planned to figure it out later. Before long I had no idea where I was, spotted a hunter's stand that I couldn't find on the map, and was just going to head vaguely NE and hope I could find the marsh, but then the area I was looking at seemed familiar, I recognized it as the area west of #8, so I headed east and stumbled right into it. #9 was fine, on #10 I tried to get as close as I could on trails and attacked from directly south. The medium green was really not too bad, but the light green to white was all chest high white pines and I couldn't see a thing. Fortunately I happened into the depression on the SE edge of the circle. #11 was fine, #12 I took the northen trail route, but had trouble seeing the contours when I headed into the green woods, so although I was heading for the control, I got sidetracked up a reentrant where I stopped and made sense of things. No trouble on #13 or the finish.

Very weird thing: on my way to #2, I spotted a guy out in the woods, probably 50-100 meters from the road, not near any trail. And he was raking. I had to wonder if was Finnish, and I considered stopping to ask, "Hey, are you on Trump's forest fire prevention squad?". I have a suspicion of what else he might have been up to, but I'll leave it out there in case anyone else has any ideas.

C • I think I saw that guy betw... 5