Training Log Archive: CleverSky

UNO Club Champs, Beaver Brook. Surprisingly warm day (64 F), and it seemed like everybody was doing Red, so I opted for Blue to avoid the competition. Don't know who else ran Blue, maybe nobody with any prowess. Blue was just Red with a couple of extra controls stuck into the middle, so splits are almost entirely comparable. The map was a photocopy that was barely readable, with the contours extremely faint, and the light green effectively invisible. I didn't make many errors in the sense of losing track of where I was, but I had several legs where my route choice was poor, mostly due to not being able to see the contours. I also wasn't breaking any records in terms of speed, but it was a really nice day to be out in the woods.

Mystery Blazes loop, late afternoon on one of those kids of days where you go though alternating patches of warm and cool air in the woods (t-shirt weather). Leaves are pretty much all down now, so visibility is increased, but footing is somewhat degraded, and faint trails hard to follow. One little delay, due to some leaves and sticks having dammed Mulpus Brook a bit, enough to have raised the water level at the shoal where I've been jumping it. Instead, I used a fallen tree just a bit downstream as a bridge. Might even work as a reasonably civilized crossing with snowshoes, especially if I trim some of the branches a bit.

Long course, Hickory Run Gould Run. Not perfectly clean by any means, but certainly better than yesterday. A few little fishhooks, plus I pulled up a little short on #3, wasn't quite sure what corresponded to what between map and ground, and went to the nearest big feature (clearing) to make sure I knew where I was. Didn't feel like it took that long, but it was apparently two minutes. On the crux leg through the green stuff, I opted for a fairly direct route. Screwed up the beginning part, but did okay in the latter section, and probably half of the time lost was actually due to the fact that I was slowed to a walk because it was stony and uphill. Good enough for second on M45.

Silly intervals: across the Hickory Run Boulder Field and back with Ali, because Peter had jokingly suggested 2x100 intervals. We we both wearing street shoes, hers maybe less favorable than mine, and I also had the advantages of having been there before, and having done a short jog out into the rocks to warm up, so I had a better sense of how precarious things were. I was also wearing a coat, and am arguably more stupid. (I timed this only on the way back, and doubled the value.)

C • I am duly impressed! 4