Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Watatic hike with Patti, Chris, Kath, Liz, and Mike.

How long does a mylar helium balloon last? About 57 days. I came home from the CMO champs with one of the balloons from the Trail-O, which has been in my bedoom ever since. About a week ago it was not able to lift all of its string, so I started clipping the string down shorter, until yesterday I snipped it down to nothing. It disappeared overnight, and I had to wander around the house to find it hiding behind a door. It initially seemed like it was able to still float, but some experimenting showed that it couldn't really stay off the floor. It worked better in cooler rooms, so I took it outdoors where it was able to rise, and I screwed up and it drifted away. I briefly felt like a jerk, but once it cooled to ambient temperature, it came back down on the other side of the house. It has been returned to my bedroom, just barely touching the floor for now.

C • Real question 4

Nobscot night-O, 45 minute time limit, but I didn't need nearly that much time. There were three options: medium, long, and score-O, and it seemed like the latter would be the cool move, but maybe not. I wasn't expecting there to be 100 scouts in the mass start, but I was able to quickly get out ahead of the crowd, though later in the course I saw people all over the place. My biggest time loss wasn't a navigation problem, it was the fact that my punchcard fell out of the map case on the way to the 8th control. I retraced my steps to the previous control looking for it, but no luck, and I just punched my map for the rest of the course. Took some thinking at each control to figure out where the right box would be, and at some point I think I screwed that up. That also meant that I had trouble keeping track of where I had been, and when I thought I had one to go, I counted the punches, realized I was still missing two, and had to figure out which one I needed to go back for. (Also failed to punch my watch at the 13th control.) Dean finished 1-2 minutes before me.

Hurd State Park, Red, 6.6 km, 2nd. New map by George (I never experienced the old version), and it's quite a wonderful piece of terrain. No energy right from the start, really struggling to move, though I guess I must have finally gotten warmed up around #7, because my pace picked up after that point. I misremembered the course length, thinking it was 6.8 km and that I had gone under 10 min/km -- not quite. Slight miss on #4 (tough to read the contours because of the twisty MTB trails on top of them), bad route to #5 (should have gone down and around to the left instead of the extra climb of the straight route), and I was trudging up the hill on #7. I went left of the lake on #8, and saw what looked like a nice lawn where it's mapped as indistinct marsh, but as soon as I stepped onto it, I went in knee-deep in muck with both legs. Fortunately, there were a couple of nearly-submerged logs at hand which I was able to use as a bridge. Beautiful day out there, glad Nancy suggested that we go.

Willard Brook. After a spectacular morning of hang gliding on the Cape, I had been planning to go back to work for the afternoon, but the weather was so nice that I said screw it, and ran a couple of errands then went out for a ride. I had a plan in mind that wouldn't involve any singletrack, because I thought the freshly fallen leaves might make things slippery, but my mental map was defective and the trail I was on petered out, and I had to push the bike through nice woods for a while between km 3 and 4. I popped out at the south end of Cop Out, so I ended up doing 3/4 of Trilogy anyway. I very nearly made it through Trilogy East with no stops. The climb around km 7 is something that I think I'd done on foot before, and downhill on the bike, but never uphill on the bike. I'm very proud that I made it up with no stops, but I'm not sure I'll ever be inclined to do it again -- it was hard! Pretty nice way to wrap up the day.

Nobscot, Red, 6.8 km, 300 m, 10th. Not moving particularly fast, but at least I was mostly clean. Lost a few seconds on the first control mostly due to the detail around the start being obscured by the triangle and double circle, and on the long leg (#21), I really had no idea where I was for a good portion of the leg, but just kept telling myself that it didn't matter, just keep going SE and you'll figure it out eventually, which I did, but I lost about 1:45, presumably in large part due to drifting left early on. There was probably some trail route that would have been at least as fast. Best split was second place on #5, a well in some green where I lucked out and ran right to it. Beautiful autumn day, quite a nice course.

Willard Brook, In The Dark. Been a while since I've gotten out for any exercise, and I had a couple of evenings this week when I intended to but didn't make it happen, but I finally got out the door. One way to keep from getting distracted by the pretty fall colors is to run in the moonlight, when there are no colors (I did have a headlamp, as there wasn't enough moon to see the footing under the leaf canopy). The intent was to do a tour of the twisty trails in the south, with a rewind along the base of the hill in the middle. But I turned left a bit too early, and found myself on the trail that goes over the hill. Oh well, sometimes you get extra exercise, and it's good for you. I also missed a turn near the end and got onto a trail I'd never run before, that dropped me off at the paved end of Vinton Pond Rd, whilch was fine. Almost slipped on the wet rocks crossing the creek (in both directions, actually), and I had quite a few stumbling and ankle-wrenching incidents, but didn't do any serious damage. Probably not the best choice of shoes.

Thinking about my medical appointment yesterday, and about PG's experience at the dentist, I have to say, I think it's pretty poor bedside manner for a doctor to say to a patient, "There's no escape for you". Makes my situation sound a lot worse than it is, and it's kind of depressing .

Well, I guess the ulcer is gone -- barely. But I'm being told that the meds will go on in perpetuity. :-(

Noon Hill, Red, 5.8 km. New map, not too bad a place, but despite Ian's praises of how open it would be, it was just typical eastern MA stuff. OK, so I ran at Pound Ridge recently, and I'm spoiled. Not actually raining, but the foliage was all wet, and by the end so was I. Biggest error was on #1, and it was a clerical mistake amounting to probably five minutes. Although the leg was mostly a trail run with a little hill to climb at the end, I instead left the trail early and made my way toward #16 (the control number was printed on top of a tangle of contours and rock features). I realized the mistake I was making, and instead headed for #1, but when I got there, the code didn't match... because I was at #7 (which was almost on the line between the start and #1). I also lost some time on #3 by overshooting to the next small hill in a low visibility area. The rest was basically okay, though my route to #15 might have been slow -- I didn't see any appealing route to get there.

I haven't been training much, due in part to muscle issues I've been having with my back, but I did run 13 orienteering races in September, which hadn't happened since May 2003. In fact, that's a three-way tie for third place (there have been two times when I orienteered 16 times in a month).

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