Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Sugarloaf USA, with Nancy. Cold again, and a bit windier at times. I wore an extra shirt and different socks, and survived. No lift lines anywhere. Four runs, and took a cocoa break at Bullwinkles.

C • No lift lines 1

And four more runs afterwards, including all the way down to the bottom of the condos. For the last two, Nancy and I went in separate directions, and I did a double black run that was fine, though a little icy.

I seem to have logged a comparable amount of exercise this year to recent years, which seems a bit surprising. Definitely less hiking than last year, but a bit more orienteering, helped by the fact that we had a Highlander this year. My Billygoat result in 2017 was pretty pathetic, but my Highlander and Traverse were both pretty good. 32 O races, including one DNF and one DSQ, both unusual for me. Six A-meet weekends, of which I ran M35 at five of them (and M21 at the Team Trials), and I think I came away with two first-place awards and one second place from all that (thanks to various award criteria). Five races in which I turned in the fastest result (one of which I was the only one on). 223 km of orienteering, which is the most since 2011. It would have been good to have done a bit more pedaling, and a bit less shoveling. And with a bit more wisdom, maybe I can avoid injuring my back in the future. A combined highlight/lowlight was the trip to Manitoba with Charlie, which was wonderful in terms of company, but at the end of it, I was saying that I'd had enough and didn't need to return to those sandhills. I think Charlie really has had enough, but I suppose I would consider going back, despite the insane poison ivy situation. I ended up with a decent results despite some pretty disappointing navigation, as it really is pretty hard. But I got through it.

Sugarloaf USA, with Nancy. Temperature on the way to the ski area hit a low of -17F, though it was up to around zero by the time we parked the car, and maybe slightly more than that during the day. Four runs in the morning before a break for hot chocolate.

And then five more runs with Nancy, and one final black diamond by myself. Pretty bundled up all day, though I switched to the really serious Frostline mittens for the afternoon. No wind today, so the next two days are likely to be considerably less comfortable.

Right around sunset, temp 7F when I started and it dropped a couple of degrees while I was out there. Bundled up pretty well, four layers on top, two on the bottom, fleece beanie and lobster mittens. My chin was chilly for a little bit, but not for long. I was just a tad warm a couple of times, but that beats the alternative. A couple of inches of fluffy snow over a more solid base, but most of it had been snowshoed or skied or snowmobiled already, except for the part north of te Power Line trail, which had just one set of old snowshoe tracks, so I was basicaly breaking trail there. Over all, it was invigorating.

Snow dealings, round 3d: finishing up my driveway. Half an hour or so, mostly with the snowblower. Got rid of most of the snow, and now it's a sheet of thick, solid ice. Not good, glad I have AWD now. Also blowed out the mailbox.

Snow dealings, round 3b: Nancy's driveway, maybe 4" of fluffy snow over an ice layer. We had four people, so we made reasonably short work of this. I dropped them off at the house and drove back to park at North St. Auto, then jogged to the house. Nancy and Rachel cleared off their cars, I went after the plow snow with a shovel while Stephen used the electric snowblower. Did a little scraping with the pusher on the steep part after that, and when we got Rachel's car out, I jogged back down the street to get mine.

Snow dealings, round 3c: my driveway, 3" of fluffy snow over a hard layer of ice. Stephen cleared off his car (he got the key to the Mazda for Xmas) while I blowed as much of the driveway as I was interested in doing that late at night. I didn't have to walk behind the snowblower, it could pull me along on the ice without my feet moving. I'll maybe get out and sweep it to get some black showing so that the sun can work on it, but it's going to be cold. I also had to give Stephen a push to get out because he hadn't cleared in front of his tires very well.

Snow dealings, round 3a: Nancy's parents' driveway. Used the snowblower on the main part, then Doug did the western section. The couple of inches of snow had been preceded by a bunch of freezing rain, so there was a thick layer of nasty ice underneath, and most of the exercise was chopping that stuff with a steel tool and shoveling it out of the way. There's a lot of pavement exposed to the sun now, so hopefully the snow tonight will be easier for Doug to snowblow.

My right leg was bothering me a lot on the drive up yesterday, pain just under my butt cheek, with occasional shooting pains down to my ankle or sometimes up my back. Sounds like the kind of stuff that Peter, Charlie, and Phil complain about, so I'm guessing it's POOMS (Premature Onset Old Man Syndrome).

C • POOMS 4

Snow dealings, round 2a: my driveway. Got 1"-2" of snow this evening, and I figured it was probably a good idea to get it out of there before it gets saturated with the freezing rain that's supposed to be in the offing. Did the whole thing, realizing after I did that main part that the depth was low enough that I could bump it up out of the lowest gear.

Back down to Seeley, In The Dark, to pick up Nancy's (soon to be Stephen's) car.

From Seeley, In The Dark, after dropping Nancy's car off. Easy jog because it was raining a little, and I was concerned that it might start raining more and I wasn't dressed for that.

Quite a remarkable car




It was a 2003 Pontiac Vibe, the first year they were manufactured. Five-speed manual transmission and a moonroof. I bought it new on New Year's Eve at the end of 2002 and took delivery a week later. Not sure how many states/provinces it went to, but I know it made it out to Wyoming and Colorado at least once. Transmission was replaced twice, but that was about all it needed in major repairs, pretty much just routine maintenance beyond that. It took two kids (Rachel and Nicole) off to college, and two kids (Nicole and Stephen) learned to drive stick on it. It was mine until I gave it to Nicole in July 2012 with 322895 miles on it, though the odometer had been stuck at 299999 since a year earlier. We lost track of the mileage after that, but it was Nicole's daily driver for a long commute for a while, and it was Nancy's daily driver as recently as this summer, and we estimate that the total mileage was probably around 450000. We had decided that we weren't going to spend any more money on repairs, so when I started it up at the end of the summer to take it in to get a sticker and the brake pedal went to the floor, we decided that was the end of the line. I had already bought a new Subaru, and this was one car too many, so Nancy called up to donate it to the public radio station.

The above pictures are from the day I picked it up in Brattleboro, and from last Saturday. From this angle, it doesn't even look so bad -- I seem to have aged a lot more than the car did in those 15 years. My parents drove me to get it, and they're both gone now, and for that matter so is Pontiac itself. Today the junkyard guys came and hauled it away. So long, Red Vibe, you served us well.

Round 1, before lunch.

Round 2, after lunch.
Loon Mountain, with Nancy. We rode every lift that was open (including the Magic Carpet at the very end), so 11 runs if you count that last one. Cover was a little thin, not tooo bad for this early in the season, and it snowed pretty hard for a bit in the afternoon, which helped.

Snow dealings, rounds 1a (Terry's Teri's driveway), 1b (Nancy's driveway), and 1c (my driveway). We stayed at the vacation home of one of Nancy coworkers last night, so I had a little shoveling to do this morning. Then when we got back to her house, I blowed her driveway with the electric, and when I got home, I blowed my driveway. I also stopped by Mom's house and ignored the snow, but saw work has started: the tree guys came Saturday morning and dropped ten big trees. I was expecting that they would have used a crane, but that's not what my surveillance camera shows. Too bad I'm only doing timelapse, it must have been really something when those giant white pines fell over.

C • It's Teri by the way 2

Urban Forestry Center, Green, 4.5 km, probably 3rd (behind Ernst in 39:xx and likely Alar). Pretty sloppy, though I'm using very tight criteria for a spike since this area is so easy. Errors were generally either getting to the circle and not seeing the control behind a tree, or dubious/outdated mapping or somewhat questionable control placements. The woods are really not that pleasant (better December than any other time of year), but there are plenty of trails. Probably lost time on the route choice on #9, because I had looked at the salt marsh between #7 and #8 and it looked like high tide to me, so I didn't even consider trying to cross it on the way to #9. But it was in fact only an hour past low tide, and Nancy says she crossed it without getting her feet wet. Huh. A few flakes of snow started falling as we were on our way out.

Beaver Brook, Red, 5.3 km, 220 m, 1st. Nice ending to the weekend trifecta. Quite clean, only two very small fishhooks, on #7 and #15, both just tiny misses inside the circle. Pretty tired now.

Made the right call on going orienteering instead of hang gliding. The guys who showed up to fly decided that the field was too mushy, and spent the day scoping out other potential venues.

Westmoreland Sanctuary, Red, 6.6 km, 9th I think. Pretty physical course, some steep climbs and rocky underfoot, but very open except for some spotty greenbriar and a few areas of ugly deadfall. I had been on this map twice before, once in 1989 and the second time on New Year's Day in 1995, so just about 23 years, and my memory of it wasn't very accurate. Screwed up the first control (got pretty close but couldn't figure out what was what), and basically clean after that. Got caught by a guy (Denis, I think) at #1 and saw him off and on for the rest of the course. He was taking more trail routes, I believe, and I did finish a bit ahead of him. I also caught Daniel Schaublin at #4 and we were together until around #8.

splits - results

C • Westmoreland 1

Ratlum Mtn., Rhin-O X, 3.4 km, 180 m, 18th. Back after having missed last year's edition due to a leaky spleen, and my worst placing at this event in its history stretching back to 2008, primarily due the big turnout fro West Point -- I was beaten by over a dozen cadets. Quite a sloppy run, actually; I'm surprised that SA has me with only 4 1/2 minutes of errors. I was running with the self-imposed handicap of no glasses, because I was too lazy to go back to the car to get my orienteering glasses. Not such a big deal, because it's not necessary to see that far in the dark, and I haven't worked out a good way to combine headlamp and eyeglasses.

Sloppy on #1, OK on #2, no problem on #3 though it might not have been the fastest route. Missed a little to the right on #4, then on #5 I encoutered Nellie, who had pulled up short and was wandering. I found the south end of the marsh, and was crossing on a fat log, but I hit a rotten spot and my foot went throught it and into the drink. Clint caught up here, but he had a fading light. #6 and #7 were fine, but I drifted right on #8 and ended up in a bunch of unmapped laurel (beyond the edge of the fieldchecking. Not quite sure what happened leaving that control, but I ended up on the trail heading south instead of the one going WSW. Things didn't seem right, but I knew exactly where I was when I hit the Buttonhole Trail. At that point, under the mistaken impression that I was heading for #12, I backtracked to Ellen's Pond, where I fortunately realized I was headinng for #9 and had no problem. Missed #10 a bit to the left and the leading cadet passed me. The chase pack of cadets passed me on the way to #11, though they were hesitant and I knew exactly where I was going. They backtracked to the trail, but I pushed through the laurel and went by Ellen's Pond again. Anothet cadet passed e on the way up the hill, being very polite and excusing himself for going by (I just gestured and said "Play through"). A couple more were on my tail heading to #13, and they got ahead on the way to #14.

But at least I beat Phil. :-)

splits