Training Log Archive: CleverSky

15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups.

Plyo: 10 standing jumps as high as I can. In honor of Leap Day.

15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups.

15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups.

15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups.
Felt weak on the tableups. I was using Nancy's kitchen table, which has a more difficult grip than my keyboard stand, but it seemed like more than just that.

C • table ups 3

Shorter Mystery Blazes, which I managed to follow successfully (bear right at stone wall, and stay on the right flank of the spur). Kinda taking it easy. Mulpus Brook was a little high after the rain yesterday, as I expected. I noticed part of a broken toilet lodged in a tree branch at about head height, suggesting that at some point it has flooded that much -- whoa! Total guess on the distance.

I want to say something about the OUSA Rules Committee. I consider it a pretty sad state of affairs that these guys have so much work to do. I mean, baseball is a much more active sport, but I bet the MLB rules committee churns out very little new stuff every year. (There may be some stuff relating to drug testing, or sponsorship, or media interactions, but essentially nothing about the play of the game.) The international chess guys haven't changed the rules in eons as far as I know. But the OUSA rules people have a lot to do. Now, some of this is because the formats of the sport have been doing some shuffling around, thanks to the IOF changing its mind about what it thinks the media wants to see. And some is the result of technological developments, like electronic punching. But what have they been vigorously discussing lately? How close to each other you should be allowed to place controls. Something that you'd think would have been settled years ago. And this is for a sport where you might expect that there would be internationally established rules (I'll bet the US Soccer Federation rules committee does nothing). But this is all the result of a number of factors, among them the fact that the USOF Rules Committee was managed over the past decade by somebody who turned the rules document into a ball of fishhooks. There's also possibly the issue that some people feel that if they have authority, the only way that authority is meaningful is to exercise it, and if you're in charge of rules, that means making more rules. I will say that Clare does at least seem to recognize that the most useful thing to do is to straighten out the rules that we have, starting with the formatting -- for example, one recent edition had multiple rules all with the same number.

In contrast, I'm pleased to be on the Grievance Committee, where we consider our most pleasing and successful years to be the ones where we do absolutely nothing.

Not directly related but if you're listening, Charlie: the assertion has been made that people will invariably succumb to the temptation to cheat, given the opportunity. How do they deal with this in the Golden Knights tournaments? Is it an issue?

C • Golden Knights 1

C • Grievance committee 13

15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups.

15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups.
Tummy not happy.

15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups.

Riding over to Ernie's from my house on the Incubus to pick up my car after getting a new alternator installed. I hope this turns out to have been a worthwhile investment. Ernie and I were both pretty sure that it had to be the alternator, even though it refused to exhibit the symptoms for him.

10 pushups, 30 situps, 10 tableups, 10 pushups.

Just miscellaneous glider schlepping, I didn't actually time it or measure it. I launched first, but the flying was cut short when the next pilot got too close to the trees and crashed onto Rte. 2. The other pilots who were on launch scrambled down to assist, and he got an ambulance ride to the hospital, where it sounds like they're going to hang onto him for a couple of days to keep an eye on his concussion. Meanwhile, as soon as I saw the glider in the road, I headed down and landed, so I missed the excitement. Just as well.

10 pushups, 30 situps, 10 tableups, 10 pushups.

I've been in denial, but it's getting hard to ignore -- I believe I'm in the early stages of a cold. I'm holding out hope that it's a mild one.

10 pushups, 30 situps, 10 tableups, 10 pushups. Just a token effort because of the cold, "keeping a hand in", as Charlie would say, but maybe that only applies to rowing.

15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups.

Lunenbug Project #06.
Gilchrest St.
-> trails
-> Island Rd.
-> Beachview Rd.
-> Wildwood Rd.
-> Cove Rd.
-> Sandy Cove Rd.
-> Cove Terr.
-> Sandy Cove Rd.
<-> South Row Rd.
<-> Peninsula Dr.
-> Park Street Terr.
-> Island Rd.
-> trails
-> Gilchrest St.

I wasn't initially planning on doing all of that, but while I was out there it occurred to me that future runs through the area are going to be long enough (going to more distant places) without picking up any side streets, so I decided to to South Row up to the Townsend line and Peninsula Drive while I was in the neighborhood. (How did Island Road get its name? I've wondered that for a long time. Pretty weird.)

Coming back through the Hickory Hills woods, I found a small, twisty trail that I hadn't noticed before, well blazed and well maintained. I wondered if the final hill coming up toward home would feel like a death march, but I actually felt great, almost as if I had a tailwind (which I didn't).

The draining of the boat launch cove is under way. They've built the coffer dams, and the flow from the stream is going through a long corrugated metal pipe. They have electric pumps running to get the water out of the cove itself. The idea is that the invasive weeds will be exposed and the freezing will kill them, but I guess it's possible that there won't really be enough cold weather left this year to do the job.

15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups.

From Nancy's house to Ernie's to pick up her car after a tuneup. Seemed like a convenient way to get a little exercise, even if Rte. 40 didn't seem like a very pleasant place to run (and it wasn't). I was surprised to see that the temperature was close to 40 F, so I just wore the Descente jacket over a T-shirt. No gloves, and my hands were chilly for about the first five or ten minutes, but fine after that.

The flag counter has curiously shot up from 30 US visitors to 145. There's also a mysterious UK presence, and a couple from Mexico, which surprised me until I realized that Charlie is logging in from there at the moment. I can also see individual states, and it looks like there are lurkers in places like Arizona, Wyoming, and Louisiana. Welcome!

15 pushups, 40 situps, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 15 pushups.

15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups.

Nary a flake fell at my house, as far as I'm aware.

Mystery Blazes. Got a new (shorter) GPS measurement, and the track looks pretty good, so I'll go with this length from now on.

edit -- Upon closer examination, with the individual track points turned on, it's clear that for at least one stretch, on the way back up the parallel trail, the GPS went completely loopy. When it's in the process of recovering starting from about km 6), I appear to have been going really fast. 1:25/km, that's pretty sweet!

Lunenburg Project #05.
Northfield Rd.
-> Holman St.
-> Chase Rd.
<-> Country Rd.
<-> Boucher Rd.
<-> Asplund Dr.
<-> Chase Rd.
<-> Windermere Dr.
-> Northfield Rd.

Chase Rd. is one of the least pleasant places to run in this town, fortunately, I've almost completed it, though I may still need to run on it some in order to get to the stuff around Wal*Mart.

Lunenburg Project #04.
Northfield Rd.
-> Chase Rd.
-> Beal St.
<-> Windward Terr.
<-> Skylark Ln.
-> Massachusetts Ave.
-> Chestnut St.
-> Highland St.
-> Oak Ave.
-> Turkey Hill Rd.
<-> Cushing Ln.
-> Northfield Rd.

gmap-pedometer had this as 5.06 miles, as opposed to 4.86 on the GPS, which seemed a little weird, because it should be the GPS that comes up with a number that's too big, due to little spurious wiggles. A bit of scrutiny reveals that the discrepancy comes from GoogleMaps thinking that the driveway at the end of Cushing Lane is an extension of the street.

It's a good day when you're out for a run or a bike ride and you find a tool on the side of the road. Sometimes it's just a screwdriver or a wrench, but my best finds have been things like a cordless electric drill and a sledgehammer. Today I found a shovel. It was early enough in the run that I didn't want to carry it the whole way, so I left it. I could go back for it (maybe with the car), but if I do that, I kinda feel like I ought to go back with a big trash bag, because there's a whole lot of trash that could stand to get picked up on that stretch of road, and I'd feel a bit guilty taking the shovel without doing some cleanup work.

The groundhog did not see his shadow here last Thursday, and there are at least 50 robins in my yard right now.

15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 10 tableups.

Mystery Blazes. Warm (about 48 F), but very low energy.

Long-Sought-For Pond. I wouldn't have expected safe ice with the warm weather we've been having, but there were ice fishermen out there and I had my skates in the car. I asked about the thickness, and the first couple of guys said four or five inches, but then another guy hailed me and said that they were only trusting it on the south end, that it got thinner farther out, and indeed, you could see open water way up at the north. So I scoped out an oval and did laps in the cove next to Rte. 40. Temps just below freezing, and I was okay in my black tights, and the Descente jacket over two shirts. A woman on skates asked if I was training for the Olympics -- hah!

15 pushups, 40 situps, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 15 pushups.

Hiking up the road at Skinner with my harness backpack on, towing the trailer with two gliders (Jon was also on the tow rope), then hiking the harness out to launch, back to the parking lot, and hiking the glider out to launch.

From the landing field back to where the truck was with Jon, then while he went back to load the gliders on the truck, I went up to the parking lot via the Halfway Trail to retrieve the little trailer.

Running back down the road "pulling" the trailer (it actually wanted to get ahead of me). This seemed like it would be quicker than going back down the very icy trail. Nice moonlight by this point, and I was able to run the whole thing except for one stretch on the north side that was icy.

In between -- the view overlooking Earl's Trails.

C • Nice pic 3

15 pushups, 40 situps, 15 pushups, 40 situps, 15 pushups.

ES Koorb Dralliw, using the longer option at the north end. About 50 F with an inch or two of very soft old snow for most of it. Long-sleeve t-shirt was plenty.