Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Pawtuckaway Blue. Hot, hot, hot, so there was a fair bit of walking. Pretty clean, just one control where I had trouble in the circle and probably walked right by the control twice, one where I was a little sloppy on the route execution and had a slow attack through a bland area, and the last control, where I went right to the feature, found nothing, went over the hill to see if there was another cliff there, then thought that maybe I had pulled a Turbyfill, so I went to the registration to take another look at the master map, and a couple of people said that the control was higher than it was supposed to be, so I went back out there, climbed up on top, and spotted it on an unmapped cliff off to the south. So it looks like about 8 minutes on that one that wasn't my fault.

Seven consecutive weekends.

I just realized that I've gone orienteering six weekends in a row. I'm pretty sure it's been a decade since that's happened. (My longest streak is 14 weeks, which happened twice in 2001.)

This took 39 minutes on the bike. The bike has some catching up to do.

Warm and humid, looked to be a threatening storm when I was driving over, but the rain held off until a couple of minutes afterI was done. Bugs weren't bad while I was running, but they were pretty vicious on my cooldown walk back to the car.

Pearl Hill area. I had told myself that I'd get out and do something outdoors today, since I opted not to go flying (forecast wasn't great), and a bike ride was what I had in mind, though it took me a long time to decide where. I knew this twisty trail (the first part) existed because I've crossed it, but never bothered to explore it before. The climb was in unexplored territory. I used to be able to ride technical stuff like this without stopping, and if my friend Mike and I get around to doing a Moab trip as we've discussed, I ought to get my skills back up to it (though the steep climb might be beyond me). One dumb move was that although I brought my spiffy bike shoes, I failed to notice that I didn't have the clipless pedals on the bike, I had regular pedals with toeclips, which work okay, but not as good as the clipless ones would. It would be interesting to do this same loop (up to the split) on foot and see what my time would be. The last part was fast on the bike, but the technical and steep stuff would surely be faster without it.

No idea why the GPS got goofy at the end, coming up the road. It should end at the same place where it started.

Pond Mountain, Red. Very enjoyable course, nice open runnable woods. I was doing great for the early part, then on #10 I thought I was further along than I really was and waste some time before continuing. On #11I made great time but got a little fuzzy as to my location at the end and went kind of sowly trying to figure it out. #12 looked ugly, but the route around to the left was sweet. I was all set up to the last stone wall, but then I went too far to the left and low and floundered around there for a little while before realizing where I was. I spiked #15, but found only a ribbon, so I decided it must be missing and headed for the finish. Except I didn't head for the finish, I headed for a little tour of oblivion, and when I finally got my head straightened out, I decided to go to #15 again. Went to the same spot, but this time I did go to the finish. So the time registered between splits #15 and #16 (13:16) was my wanderings.

With Nancy at Bantam Lake in Litchfield (me orange, her yellow). A lot of this was exploring some shallow twisty backwaters, lots of fun. Got pretty close to a muskrat.

C • Getting close to where I sp... 2

Mt. Tom, Blue, 7.3 km/400 m. Steep and warm. Phil had graciously agreed to let Nancy and me start early so that we could get to Stephen's theater performance, but due to some logistical difficulties, we didn't arrive as early as we had planned to.

I had a few controls that I kind of botched, particularly #6 and #12, plus #18 was a little further NE than I was expecting (although clearly in the right place). (Note: no split punched at #2, so after #1 the controls are off by one.) On #6 I just about walked past it in the process of relocating, and then wasted a few minutes before believing where I was and going back for it. On #12, I was right on target and almost there, but I went by a big cliff that I couldn't find on the map (but I can now), and convinced myself I was in the wrong place and wandered off for a while. The mosquitoes were as plentiful as advertised, but I was doused with repellent and kept moving (but I got a few in the mouth).

My two-hour time, combined with the backup on the Pike due to the airshow at Westover, meant that we arrived late to the show, but it wasn't too bad; we missed Kansas and half of the Munchkinland scene, but were on time for Stephen's big "If I Only Had a Brain" number. This was the last of 14 performances, and could conceivably be the last (of what must be hundreds of times) that I've seen Nancy's kids on stage.

C • Stephen's show 5

After Rachel's graduation, with Nancy, on the East Bay bike path in Riverside RI, from the Dari Bee to Cranberry Island and back, in part to check out a lighthouse.

Almost since I started working at Autoliv, I've been meaning to check out the Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State Forest, and I finally got around to it. Feeling pretty lethargic, but at least it was a run. I suspect the lack of energy may have been due in part to the pollen in the air, as I was a little wheezy when I was done. I had a map, which was a little dubious, but not altogether terrible once I got accustomed to it.

Pretty nice forest. I stuck to the numerous trails, but the woods looked open, with no rock underfoot, a fine selection of boulders, and overall flattish topography. Reminded me a little of Great Brook Farm. The location would be great for a map, but I think parking might be a problem, unless some nearby parking lot (school or church or business or something) were available. (The lot at my office is plenty big, but not really close enough.)

Wolf's Den (Mashamoquet), Red. Very warm conditions (mid 80s), nice woods, the course used some areas that were very lightly fieldchecked, and the one (unannounced) water stop was pretty late (control #10). Had a nice time, though I was wilting some in the heat and not going uphill very fast. Thanks to Jim H for straightening out the computer so that my result finally showed up and I was able to be in first place - for a few seconds, until Becky downloaded. :-)

Pretty much straight on all legs, no matter what was in the way, even laurel, Charlie got me on #8 (I guess I was just slow on the climb, and looking around a lot since there was a lot of omitted detail on that hillside. I did lose a smidge on #9, stopping a little short because it felt like I was on a knoll already, and I hunted around for a minute or two to find #6, which was one cliff too low (still well within the circle).

Ended up third, behind Carl Underwood and Becks. I apparently lost small amounts of time on five controls, but was second only to Becks in terms of least time lost. No fastest legs, but intriguingly, my best leg was only two seconds out of first, and that was #10, where I went straight at it and fought my way through a tremendous amount of mountain laurel and figured it was a totally screwed up route choice, I expected to be well back in the results on that one. Always more to learn.

I was about five minutes down the road from home when I realized I had forgotten my GPS watch.

This is the loop I've had in mind on my earlier forays this year, doable now that the snow is gone (just a couple of flooded spots on the trail). So now that the property across the street is finally publicly owned, why am I driving up to West Townsend to go for a run?

On the Vandenburg Esplanade from the boathouse to Marbles Brook and back, with Nancy.

West Point Blue, Black Rock Forest, 8.4 km, 220 m.

Busy weekend, so I originally hadn't even signed up for West Point, but then one of the things I needed to do was pick up my hang glider for which I had arranged a ride back from Florida, and which had ended up near Ellenville. So, I signed up for West Point for Sunday only, figured I could run Blue, then go over and get the glider and maybe fly as well.

I was invited to stay with Charlie and Rhonda, but my schedule would have gotten me to their hotel much too late, so I made backup plans to crash at either Clint's place or with the DeWitts. As it turned out, things ran later than I had planned, and I stayed at Nancy's place and got up at 4 AM. Not doing too well on the drive down, pretty sleepy, lost time by making a wrong turn, then I got dressed and fell asleep on the bus from the parking to the meet site. When I got off the bus, Mark Domine wanted to talk to me and came into the registration building. I gave the cadet my name and he found my packet and looked at my start time, and said, "Your start is 9:16, you can try to make it if you like, sir". (That was over 30 minutes away.) And I looked at him for a moment, then said the obvious, "Well, you going to have to hand that packet to me first". I took the bib number out, handed the rest of the packet to Mark, and said I'd talk to him later. Got to the start without hurrying, with five minutes to spare.

Didn't end up wearing the ankle brace, and it didn't matter (I didn't do a lot of running). I'm told that Saturday's course was worse, so I'm glad I missed that. I wasn't impressed by this one. Two of the controls (#1 and especially #16) were pretty easy controls located way up at the top of a hill that we then came right back down. #4 was interesting, supposed to be "boulders, between", 1 meter each, but there were no boulders in the circle, just a spur with stony ground, and that's what was in the terrain as well. And on the leg from #11 to #12, I went off the south edge of the map, but in doing so I was thinking that the best route choice might involve going even further off the map, but there was no way to tell. A really bad cropping/layout job, especially since there was an ample margin of unused terrain on the north edge, so the whole map could easily have been slid south a centimeter or two.

On the way to #15 (I think), I felt something on my hip, and reached back to find what felt like a tick that was unable to crawl past the waistband of my underwear and had decided it was a good spot to set up housekeeping. I was able to pluck it off without even looking, confirm that it was what it felt like, and discard it, never stopping forward progress.

Split analysis shows me losing more than a minute only once, on the last control, but that was less a matter of the small mistake I made at the end as it was my running out of gas and walking while others were presumably putting in a final kick. But by the same token, my error on #9 should probably have been bigger (I sat and drank water for a bit at #8, and missed #9 and had to back up), but I went faster on that leg because Andis and Hannah caught up and I hung with them for a bit. In general, I was cleaner than I expected given how drowsy and spaced out I was. When on Blue, I always figure there will come a day when I'm dead last and will have to consider not doing that any more, but that day hasn't arrived yet: 16th out of 22 starters.

After a nap, I went over to get my glider, then checked the wind forecast, and realized that I was hoping that it would look unfavorable so that my decision would be easy. Sometimes it's not obvious that when you're looking for an excuse to not fly, the right thing to do is to just not fly. So I went and got something to eat and took a nap, then drove to Danbury and took a nap, then drove home and went to bed early. Just as well, the reports I got in the morning said that although the day had been predicted to be epic, it turned out that a big crowd of people waited around a long time and eventually launched into light conditions where they had shortish flights that didn't get very high.