Training Log Archive: CleverSky

NE Canoe-O Champs, Tully Lake, C-1 (Terry's boat). Took a couple of controls in the opposite order that I should have, because I changed my mind about my overall strategy, and made a poor choice as to how to get the last few; doing it differently would hve saved me quite a bit of time. Earlier I had carried the boat for close to 3 km, and I think that worked out pretty well.

Brought the GPS (though I forgot to turn it on until halfway to the second control. Looking at the track, it's pretty clear that the accuracy and plausibility are quite good on the open lake, somewhat less good on the river with tall trees adjacent, and pretty awful when running through the woods (vertical accuracy goes out the window, and horizontal degrades somewhat). Not at all surprising.

Willard Brook SE. Hadn't run here since last year, and I was pleased to see that it wasn't seriously affected by the ice storm ? just one short trail section was wiped out, and that was easy to get around. I did miss the sharp right-hand turn on the final descent, and realized it when I saw the chicken coops, so I turned right and went through the woods (and through a lot of short laurel) to get back to the trail.

I somehow missed noticing that there was a meet at Ahern today, or I would have gone there instead.

The weather was really nice all day today, though just before I headed out to run, I saw on the radar that there was a line of storms just to my west. And of course I picked a place to run that's west of here. On the drive over, it started sprinkling, and continued to do so during the early part of the run, and then again at the end, but it didn't make it through the canopy. But on the four mile drive home, it was raining hard enough to warrant putting the windshield wipers on the fastest setting. Once I got home, there was even hail, and the power went out for about 2.5 hours. In the wake of this, the network interface on my desktop computer seems to have gone MIA, but I think I have a way to get it up and running again. Unfortunately, it now looks like maybe the power supply has gone wonky as well. Fat lot of good that surge suppressor did.

I brought the GPS with me this time to see how far I was running, and got a good track (see below). Not bad for a $50 piece of hardware and a little programming time. Although I discovered a bug. For hang gliding purposes, I have my program calculate the maximum climb rate. It's indicating that at some point, I gained 157 feet in 12 seconds, and that's simply not feasible.

From misc

edit: I looked at the GPS track more closely, and I don't think the problem is in my software. Although the horizontal accuracy of the GPS looks quite good, vertical is a different matter. The vertical component of the track looks pretty plausible when I'm flying and presumably have a great signal, but it appears that it's what suffers when I'm close to the gound and under a tree canopy. Viewing the track from the side, it looks like a roller coaster ride.

Mystery Blazes, cool muggy evening. At least I got out and did something.

SprintA at Ratlum Mtn. Not very smart, left a couple of controls heading in the wrong direction. Would probably have been faster if I had gone a bit slower.

SprintB at Ratlum Mtn. Only slightly smarter (or maybe not even). Made it all the way to #6 without going to #5 and had to go back, and in my nettle-addled state I completely missed #15, not realizing it until I finished and noticed that I was short one split on my watch, and had to go to #15 and #16 again.

Big River North, Red course. I would say that this map and course comprise unprecedented bogosity, but, well, this was Rhode Island...

After the first control, I could see where things were heading, and decided to try and emulate PG in two regards. I didn't do so well on the first, that being to adapt to the conditions and find a way to find the controls anyway. I did find them, but I kept trying to use normal orienteering techniques, which clearly were not applicable to the problem at hand. The second was to not get pissed off about it. I just dropped my ambition down a notch, and figured that running around in the woods is a fine thing to be doing, and if the map or course sucked in some particular way, I just laughed and rolled my eyes. And spent a bunch of time thinking about ambiguous things that I could say if the clown responsible for this fiasco asked how I liked it. At the finish he kind of did, and I gave a response that, while true, didn't convey my real feelings about his handiwork, so he could go home not feeling bad. Because it's not like he's going to learn and improve, and I'd rather he keep on hosting crappy orienteering meets than none at all.

C • One would think, given the ... 2

Dan Parker loop CCW with David Ellsworth. The marsh on the power line is really flooded at this point, and we had to go way around through the woods, and came out in the big field on Kemp Rd. I'm hoping the guys in charge of the electric lines remedy that, though once Nancy's house sells, I really won't care anyway. Since I have a GPS gizmo, I guess I should bring it along for trail runs so that I'll know how far I've gone, but I apparently don't care that much.

Two trips out to Ascutney launch, first time with PK's harness and half of my glider, second time with half of his glider (and Ryan took my harness). This includes the 12-minute trip back, which was lower intensity (I was waiting up for PK).

To Ritter Building and back, for ConComm meeting, with hatlamp on the return trip. Going about as fast as I could, but it's hard to get the intensity up on a unicycle once you know what you're doing.