Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Pawtuckaway Red. Fairly warm, and wretchedly humid. After a few controls, running was out of the picture. Ed Kotowski had said that he figured I could do the Red in about 90 minutes, and I was pretty close to that. My only mistake of any consequence was on #3, where I took it pretty casually, got to about the right spot, but I was a little short, then when I went to the correct reentrant, the control was quite a bit higher than I expected, and I didn't see it at first. Pleased to have chosen Red instead of Blue, but going out as early as possible would have been better still.

Wicked Hard Night-O, Pawtuckaway. My second time doing this, and first time getting all of the controls. I was with Alex and Kseniya early on, then through about #7 I saw a lot of Alar and Jeremy. We got separated on the way to #8 (found the upper/middle beaver dam, though), and I was out in the lead, but their lights were approaching as I left. #9 was the only one that I found with no lights in sight. I should have taken the trail further around to #10, and got a little lost in the Devil's Armpit. When I came to a pond that I couldn't identify, I bailed toward the trail, and on the way I went right to the control. Jeremy was just coming in, and Alar was close behind. I failed to see the trail route to #11, but did okay going straight other than walking right past the control, giving Ben, Sagi, and Kseniya a chance to catch up. Kseniya gestured back toward the control, and after punching, I ran them down halfway to #12. We just blasted through the woods, since the road was a solid backstop, and spotted Jeremy up ahead. I tripped over a log crossing the road on the way to the finish and got a calf cramp, but pushed through it. I believe Jeremy was up ahead, followed by Ben and Sagi, then me, Kseniya, and I guess we got ahead of Alar. (Plus a number of people ahead of this pack.) Nice course, and a nice night, much more pleasant than running during the daytime.

(First part of the GPS track is completely out to lunch.)

Maybe 45 minutes of paddling around in the moonlight with Nancy in the kayaks at Pawtuckaway. It was excellent.

Headed off to go flying, but when I got to the airport, I found out that the tow pilot hadn't showed up because he didn't think any of us would. I was the fifth one to get there and then go home, and it was still fairly early. Serves me right for not calling ahead. Since I was out in that area, I scoped out the parking for my next Midstate Trail excursion, which looks very convenient, and probably not overly long. Not sure when I'll get to it, though, as my weekends are kind of booked up through November.

I did this the smart way, taking the bike in the direction that had the significant downhill, because you get a lot more benefit out of going downhill on a bicycle than you do on foot, and the way I was doing this, it also meant that the mass of the bicycle was going downhill, but I used the car to get it back up. This is the first time I've done one of these with the bike section first, I think. This was in part because the weather looked completely threatening, and this gave me the best options in case it started raining.

Mid-State Trail, West Bushy Lane* to Westminster Rd. I kind of had in mind to just hike this, and that's what I was dressed for, wearing shorts with pockets (with a phone in one), and no pack or anything. I intentionally picked a sort of short section, but there has been some significant rerouting of the trail, because I came up with 9.3 km when I measured this in gmap-pedometer, and therefore wasn't expecting the extra 3 km. (There's also something weird on that gmap thing, because one of the mile markers is off the route.) I ended up jogging just about the whole thing including when I went through the wildlife sanctuary with the sign listing prohibited activities, one of which was jogging. Thought I was getting close when I could see the Mt. Wachusett wind turbines up ahead, but it was still quite a way. When I start out on these things, I'm quite attentive and noticing all kinds of interesting trees and how nice the forest is, and by the end I'm all, "where the hell is the road?". But although the bike section had definitely felt like a lot of downhill, the trails didn't feel like they particularly had much climb.

About 80 degrees and very humid. The only person I saw was one guy taking a stroll in his neighborhood, and as I loped by, he said something that sounded like "You're a little monkey, huh?". I paused and gave him a puzzled look, and he elaborated and I realized he had said "It's a little muggy, huh?". It was actually pretty gross weather for this sort of thing. Among other things, my stupid Garmin watch went into spazz mode after about 20 minutes, beeping intermittently and not responding to bezel touches. I had to take it off to coax it back to training mode, and promptly locked the bezel so it wouldn't keep doing that. I would have gotten grumpy if this had been much longer, because I lost some calluses on my feet (right foot in particular) at the Rogaine, and those spots are a little tender.

I timed this all very well. It didn't start sprinkling until I was in the car going to pick up the bike, and there wasn't significant rain until after I had gotten ice cream.

*I'm cheating a little on the name here, to keep the 'W' theme going. The sign actually says "Bushy La WB", and a better name for this point would be either Pommogussett Rd. or Rte. 56.