Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Waking up controls, syncing controls, etc., for the sprints on the Dartmouth campus map. Time is a wild guess.

NAOC Long, Burnt Mt., Red M35, 8.4 km, 360 m, 7th in class, 22nd on course. This was kind of odd. It felt like a better day than yesterday, and although my placing was the same (and the field was bigger -- 53 vs. 39 yesterday), I wasn't as far behind this time. But strangely, I lost a ton of time out there: 17+ minutes.

#1 was fine, but on #2, I got the the trail I wanted and immediately came to a junction that didn't seem to be on the map. I looked like left was probably the right way to go, and it was, but I was a little tentative and therefore slow. I got off to the right a bit at the and and had to climb back up. #3 started out fine, but 80% of the way there, I went through the slot just to the right of the one I intended, and of course nothing looked right when I popped out on the other side, and I looked over to the right before realizing whre I was, and it was fine from there. No problem on #4, and I was able to go a bit quicker.

#5 was the first long leg. I couldn't see any reason not to go straight, but it was across a big bland area, and I wasn't 100% sure where I was when I got to the hillside with the control. There were a couple of guys wandering around lost out there, one asking for directions. I thought I needed to go left, and I did, and found the control without any trouble, but I was taking it slowly at the end and SA says I was down 3.5 minutes. #6 was fine, and I got passed by Emily.

Then the really long leg. I took it pretty straight, and my track shows me going pretty straight. In retrospect, there was a route more to the left that had more trail running, and that probably would have been faster, but I didn't see it. On the grind up the hill, there were a couple of times when I tried to figure out where I was, and had to convince myself that it was a waster of time, because I just needed to keep going until I got to the top. Once I did get up there, it took a little maneuvering to get around the back of the quarry to get to the control. Half my time loss is on this leg. But there was a lot of climb involved, and there was also climb on #5, so it could be that a big factor on this time loss is simply that I'm an old man who's not in great shape and can't go uphill very well.

The rest of the course actually went quite well. On all but one of the remaining legs, I placed well above my final position, and on three of them I was actually 6th! I picked up 8 places, so I clearly wasn't worn out. I even tied (with 10 others) for best time in the abbreviated chute.

And at least I wasn't one of the many who got really chewed up and spit out. I saw Jeremy early on and commented to him, "It's hard!". Then I saw him later and he said "It's too hard!". Took hin 4:23 to get around the Blue course.

Putting out SI boxes onto already-placed stands at Dartmouth, more or less everything east of the green. I started at 6:30 PM, and when I was in the woods, the light really started to fade, so I had to use my phone as a light a couple of times, primarily to read the map. The one miss was specifically because of trouble reading the map in the low light. Once I got back onto the developed part of campus, it was a little easier because there were streetlights and such, but there was a hitch with that. When we pulled out the SI units from the case, we highlighted the control numbers with a blue highlighter. When I was under certain streetlights, the yellowish sodium-vapor light combined with my colorblindness made it look as if we had crossed the numbers out with a black marker. But I got it done.

NAOC Middle distance, Oak Hill, Red M35, 4.6 km, 165 m, 7th in class and 22nd on the course. Mostly very good, but when it wasn't good, it definitely wasn't good. My thumb slipped (mentally) on #6 and I was looking at a parallel trail to the one I was on, which ultimately led to things not making sense, and recovery was a little slow. Then on #7, a short easy leg, I was okay most of the way there, but when I spotted a patch of green ahead, I determined where it was on the map and went around it to the left. If I had gone right, I probably would have tripped over the control, but as it was I wandered around for a bit. Then on the long leg, #15, everything was okay most of the way there, but then I think I misidentified what was a trail and what was a ride and things quickly turned to mush. Comparing splits, I was surprised at how much time I lost, so maybe my route was bad as well. In all, I'm guessing I lost 9-10 minutes (confirmed by SA). I'm not old and slow, I'm just old and hapless, and the end result is pretty mediocre. One bright side is that the slope of the hill leading out of the control was rather to my liking, and I was really able to hammer down the finish chute. I'll be interested to see how that split compares (turns out to be tied for 9th, 27 s compared a best of 24s).

And of course, with the SML format, I get an entirely separate chance to to be lousy tomorrow.

Mike's Maze volume 2, Classic, 7th. I went out early so that I could pilot the drone while everybody else was in the maze. The heavy rain during the day made for interesting conditions, with some large puddles spanning several paths that were several inches deep, and a number of areas where the ground was pretty soft. I was pretty glad that I had packed O shoes just in case. Pretty clean run, got a couple of scalps, and I would probably have been fast enough to get Guillermo as well if I hadn't been waking up all of the controls.

Mike's Maze volume 2, Sprint, 8th. Some shuffling in the results, and I got a couple of scalps again; in general, I wasn't at all displeased at my results against this pretty impressive field. My sequence was 60-59-54-50-55-52-51-53-56-57-58-61. Not sure if that was best, but I think it wasn't too bad, and it is what it is. I got a good finish split because I was head-to-head with Keegan; I took the gambit of using the southern exit, but getting past the tower was problematic. Still muddy out there, but Kissy got to wake up this bunch of controls. Only four people got me in both daytime races, and a couple of those by only a 7-8 seconds.

Mike's Maze volume 2, Night 7th. I went out five minutes or so after everybody else, because I was flying the drone to see if I could get night video. I got six skips, and I picked 4, 7, and 24-27. Because everybody had a head start and my skips were mostly late in the course, it wasn't until the end that I encountered anybody going my way. I still managed to finish before a fair number of people. Considerably less clean than in the daytime; I lost time on a few controls due to being mixed up in the evergreens. Great fun.

Control pickup, with Earl, 32-50-33-47-31-38-59-46-49. It's kind of a mystery why I didn't just toss my socks in the trash there, instead of bring them home to throw them in the trash here.

It's clear from looking at the tracks that my GPS watch is both less accurate and more coarse (in terms of number of points stored) than the ones that Alex and biggins were using. Not surprising, because it's a very cheap model, but still adequate for most purposes. CMO pushes its limits.

C • GPS watch 1

US 2-Day Champs, Pound Ridge, Red M35, 8.4 km, 270m. Didn't have satellite lock yet when I started, so the GPS track begins almost at control #2. Screwed up #2, missed downhill to the right, and the big error was on #3, where I was right on target, then saw a huge cliff above me and decided I must be too far to the right. So I headed left, crossed some stuff that seemed to make sense for a while, but then I spotted a stone wall corner that was very recognizable and I had to swing back. #5 should have been easy, but instead of contouring I went downhill, and ended up on the road and had to come at the control from the back, a bunch of needless climb. The rest was all fine navigationally, but between the run yesterday and the humid conditions, I ran out of gas and just wasn't moving as fast as I wanted to, especially in the latter part of the course. I ended up 7th for the day on M35 (dropping me to at least 4th), and 27/48 on Red. Blah.

I've been in considerable discomfort for the past few days, a spasm or something in my upper back/shoulder area on the left side that sometimes radiates out to places like my hand, and that is occasionally almost blinding pain. I took Excedrin before running both days, and Charlie lent me his roller this morning which I used in the parking lot and which seemed to help some (as did running). Driving extended distances is fairly uncomfortable, and sleeping can be as well. Probably a minor distraction compared with what my friends have to deal with on a daily basis.

After having been used for a 90 minute rub yesterday, my old GPS watch is claiming to still have 94% battery charge. That would be awesome, but I'm a little skeptical.

One bright spot about this weekend is that I beat Yuriy Bulka fairly convincingly both days. I didn't see him all weekend, but I assume he has some sort of complaints about how this event was a total disgrace from a technical/organizational perspective.

I took off pretty promptly instead of staying for awards, but looking at the US Champs eligibilities listed on the HVO website, it appears possible that I may have taken bronze in M35. I believe the expression "backed in" would apply.

US 2-Day Champs, Pound Ridge, Red M35, 7.9 km, 270 m. Mostly pretty good. SA doesn't show my error on #3, where I navigated the long leg cleanly to the circle, and then walked right past the control, so that was about 1.5 minutes. #6 I overshot by a few meters, but the bigger problem was the needlessly roundabout route that I took to get there. #7 and #8 I just got to the circle and had trouble deciphering the busy stuff on the map: contours and rock in the first case, small knolls and laurel in the second. Ended up 20th (middle of the field), but 3rd on M35 for the day, behind biggins and Patrick Shannon.

My favorite kind of AGM, the kind where I count votes and basically don't have to be at the meeting at all. I was joking around about what we'd do if there were a tie, and I had momentary horror when I looked at the spreadsheet totals and saw that there was. Fortunately, it was a resolvable issue, and I take some pride in having taken charge to allow it to resolve itself without the need for a second ballot. And I think the election turned out just fine. Now let's see where this BoD takes us.

Having missed the Silva Service Award announcement, I was also quite pleased when I heard afterwards that Barb was the honoree -- quite deserving.

Bruce Freeman rail trail SW out of Chelmsford and back. I've now ridden the whole thing (not counting the part that's still under construction). Rode until I recognized something from my previous outing (from the opposite direction), then turned around at the next road crossing. At the beginning, a small group of people on bicycles passed by when I was preparing to mount, and since they were riding very casually, I tried to stay with them, unsuccessfully, but I kept them in sight for about eight minutes. After that, I still kept the pace up, so this was quite a bit faster than usual.

Pawtuckaway Red, 5.4 km. Watch was still out of battery, so I used my regular watch. It's clear that the start box was off by about 30 seconds all weekend, as both my Saturday and Sunday times were 30 seconds faster on my watch. Navigation went fine (I was mostly walking), except that I had trouble going in the right direction to find the dam to get off of Big Island. I had the advantage over a lot of people of not starting until after the brief, intense rainstorm had passed.

Pawtuckaway Blue, 7.1 km. Moderately stupid. Only two serious mistakes, but they were pretty awful, about 10 minutes each. Missed #3 on the hgh side, and went too far before relocating on a lake, and then it still took some fumbling around to find it. Then on #10, I was just about there, but too far up the hillside, but I couldn't make sense of where I was so I had to go down to the big marsh to sort things out, and even when I got into the vicinity, it took me a while to spot the flag despite the wide open woods. The rest was okay. I kept missing to the right, though. I'm probably holding the map crooked or something.

Pawtuckaway, Wicked Hard Night-O, 6.7 km. I took the three butterfly loops 2-3-1, thinking that maybe at the end of my second loop, the leaders would pass me if they were doing the obvious 1-2-3, though that didn't happen. Jeff and I were together off and on for the whole first loop, and I was on my own for the rest. Saw Ernst at the common control after the first two loops, and ant the end of the second one, I saw somebody (Alex?) heading off for the finish. Lost a little time on #9 when I got close but then drifted and found myself starting to go 180. Lost more time on #14 when I didn't know where I was on the trail when I hit it, and ran about 200 m along it to figure it out -- turned out I had been right where I had hoped to be. Ended up in fourth place, not too bad. Watch battery gave out on the way to the penultimate control, with about 13 minutes to go.

I had one of my most awesome AOWN moments ever, when an owl swooped through my headlamp beam about 2-3 meters in front of me, then perched on a branch just off to my left where I was able to get a better view and confirm what it was. I don't know birds that well, but looking at a few web images, I'll guess that it might have been a barred owl. Pretty intense.

C • Owl 7

US CMO Champs - Classic, 8th place. A better start than previous years, perhaps attributable to my preparations. I'll take the SA assessment as correct that I had three errors, none of them too bad. Couldn't find my GPS watch, so I don't know the actual distance.

US CMO Champs - Sprint, 6th place. Another decent run. My order was 49-54-53-55-58-57-52-56-59-51-50-60, ot in other words, more or less CCW. I had been planning to get 59 before 52, and I think that would have been better, but I got caught up in a train with Steve Richardson and Rick DeWitt (I think), and next thing I knew I was at 51, so I had to revise my plan. And in retrospect, maybe going in the opposite direction would have been slightly better. Still didn't have the GPS watch, so the distance is still a guess.

US CMO Champs - Trail-O. For anybody who has been wondering these past several months, CMT is unrelated to CMC, it's actually Corn Maze Trail-O, and CMT training is practice drone flying. Two flights with the balloons in the maze, the first of which actually got all of the needed data, and the second was just in case I missed the middle two balloons. Turned out that it was the rightmost balloon that I almost missed, but I was able to locate that one using the traditional method anyway.

This third edition of the CMT event was the easiest to date, as evidenced by the results, as well as the distances to the balloons (see below). This probably made the event less dependent on luck and therefore more fair. Although I turned in the first perfect score, Ian was damn close, and the next ten weren't far behind; I'm guessing that maybe they all got 3 out of 4 right (though some might have gotten 2 out of 4 and just missed the other two). I might have had more of an advantage if it had been harder, although as it was, I was reasonably confident but not certain when I handed in my entry. More wind and I would have been busted, and I was concerned about the possibility of a piloting error resulting in the drone dropping into the maze, where it would sit there blinking its lights until somebody (hopefully) spotted it during the night-O.

For my efforts, I got a cash prize of 500 Mexican pesos, which appears to be worth $27. Not bad! I wonder what that will buy in Tijuana...

2014, 3 controls: 83, 93, 117 m from viewing platform
2015, 5 controls, 80, 105, 105, 137, 144 m from viewing platform
2016, 4 controls, 37, 44, 60, 133 m from viewing platform

C • I'm quite sure that 500 pes... 3

US CMO Champs - Night-O, 7th place. Well, the GPS watch turned out to be sitting in the speedometer of my car, and I found it wen Nancy and I drove over to the Frostee for dinner. Definitely sloppier in the dark, but no complete disasters. I had two skips, and I picked #1 and #11. Three errors? Maybe. Certainly #2 (kind of wasted that skip, should have started out more sedately), but I guess most of it wasn't so bad. Ten seconds behind Phil (I started earlier and finished earlier), but he got more skips than I did.

Third place overall. I'm pretty pleased with that. First and second were way out of reach, and the Trail-O result sure halped, but I did okay on the real races, too.

Control pickup (in the dark) - balloon #4, #35, #40, #41, #39, #34.

On the Hudson with Nancy. First out to, and around, the Hudson-Athens lighthouse, then a trip up the river and into the wind, figuring it would be easy to drift back. The intended turnaround point was further than it looked, and although the return leg started out seeming easy, it paradoxically got much harder. Nancy noted that when she'd stop paddling, her boat would rapidly come to a halt, and I observed that when I just sat there, although I was going downstream with the wind at my back and swells moving in my direction, I was backing up. I concluded that it was due to the tide coming in, even so far up the river, and when I saw water flowing the wrong way under the bridge over a tributary, it was pretty clear that that was the case. On the plus side, there were a few stretches where I was able to get up enough speed to surf the swells -- fun! The park did have one of these roller launches which Nancy used and greatly enjoyed, like launching an ocean liner. But the river was a little hazardous, with some power boats that either couldn't see us or didn't care if they flipped us with their wake.