Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Hollis Town Forest, Red course. Pretty miserable weather, right around 40 F and raining pretty hard, with snow mixed in as I was getting ready. My hands were pretty cold for the first few controls until I really got the blood flowing. The course was not especially difficult (it would be hard to get very technical on this map), and at least one of the two controls where I lost time I attribute to the map being pretty weak, in terms of both fieldwork and print quality. I think there was a pretty good turnout considering the awful weather, and I appreciate and pity the Bundschuhs for putting this event on. I wasn't having fun at the beginning, but it was fine once I got rolling.

2 x 20 pushups

A bit of a tour around East Boston Camps between taxi driving duties. This is another place that I should look into making some kind of map of at some point, since it's practically across the street from Nancy's house and has great access. I was surprised to see a pile of snow remaining out there (probably the result of plowing, but probably not where they would have carted snow with a dump truck).

2 x 20 pushups, 50 situps, 2 x 20 pushups

Mystery Blazes loop. Four out of five days is a lot for me these days (though it shouldn't be), so I got myself out the door by promising myself I'd just take it easy. Looks like the water levels were a lot higher after the heavy rain on Saturday night, Mulpus Brook being maybe as much as two feet above where it was today. There was some shifting of the logs, and I used a hemlock for crossing, which is maybe a better bridge in the long run. On Saturday I found a down vest on the ground up in Townsend, which I hung on a branch to make it more visible, and it was still there (presumably having gotten pretty wet in the interim).

Mashamoquet, Red course. Pretty sloppy and slow, especially in the beginning, though the end of the course was a wide open joy. The screwups tended to be in the low visibility laurel areas, should have been more careful. You can tell that this was a thin field, as it appears that I had the second-best time, just 140 seconds back.