Training Log Archive: CleverSky

US CMO Champs - Long. My typical pathetic type of performance, with an embarrassing error total of nearly six minutes, which cost me a lot of places -- others ahead of me made errors as well, of course, but not nearly as much as I did. Two of these were large errors, on #3 (where I really got lost), and #16 (where I was right there and then choked). Also, a bizarre fastest split on #4 - what the hell did I do? The first race every year is always a problem for me, as my brain adjusts to the unfamiliar scale.

US CMO Champs - Sprint. Better, just one error of 30 seconds, which I partially made up for by taking the fastest split on the next leg. But the same placing as the Long, and deducting the errors would have moved me up only two places. I was somehow seeded last in the start list, so I didn't see anybody out there.

US CMO Champs -- Trail. I took my best shot at it from the platform, ad my angles were pretty good, but the answers are really sensitive to distance errors, so I didn't fare very well. Part of the secret may be to try and think like Peter, to figure out what locations he's likely to have chosen.

The deal with my balloon contraption was that I brought the camera rig into the party store at 1:30 PM, and two dozen balloons was enough to lift it, so I bought a extra half-dozen (and one popped). By 7 PM, I cut off a lot of the extra strings to lighten the load, but the balloons had lost enough helium that they wouldn't lift it any more, even after I removed a strut to reduce the weight. I had thought about mylar balloons instead of latex (helium diffuses through latex pretty fast), but that would have been quite a bit more expensive. My other plan, which might have worked, was to buy a small helium tank and use it to fill a trash bag just before using it. A major issue is that party balloon helium contains some air (maybe 20%?); it's not intended for lifting things, and any more would be a waste. (I had suspected the helium content was even lower, but that's what I found on the web, I haven't done the math yet.) I know it's possible to get pure helium at a higher cost. It's also possible that the drop in temperature from the afternoon to the evening adversely affected the buoyancy of the balloons. I think the general design was pretty good, and it would have been nice to at least have the chance to see what the video quality looked like. Probably worth trying again if the winds are calm next year.

Since I couldn't do anything else with the balloons, I just left them floating over the barn on their dental-floss tether during the night-O, but they escaped somehow.

C • Part of the secret may be t... 2

US CMO Champs - Night. Better. Due to the start order, this was really a train for quite a while, and people quickly realized the hazards of doglegs, so that when we were in a curlicue, everybody was yelling "Stay right! Stay right" to avert head-on collisions. It did eventually string out, though there were still people who I was repeatedly seeing -- I don't remember this from any previous corn maze races. In particular, Jeremy passed me a lot of times, often bellowing "STRAIGHT LINE!!" when it happened in a section of dead running. I think I was pretty clean this time, though it would take a lot of perusing of the splits to be sure (looks like I lost a little time on #36, #38, and #40, likely due to route choice). With the fences removed, I did find myself gravitating toward the peripheral highway a lot.

Most fun event of the year. And I was quite pleased at the performance of my ringer Swedish coworker Roine. My other three coworkers (Magnus, Olof, and Ryosuke) seemed to enjoy themselves as well.

Willard Brook, got out of work a little earlier and went right over there, so I managed to keep it in daylight. A variation on the previous loops, trying to hit previously unexplored trails, including some out-n-backs to explore some stubs (and the ones in the far NW kept going, full exploration will have to wait until another time. 88F when I left work, and just a little cooler when I was running. And somewhat humid. This was a respectable effort. The minimalist spiked O-shoes were maybe not a great choice for rocky trails. The upper section of this has some extensive areas of bounteous laurel and other thickitudes. When I came off of the road in the NW corner, I encountered the sign on the gate that informed me that this forest is off-limits at night (and it has specifics depending on the time of year). I believe it said that it's closed from 1/2 hour before sunset to 1/2 hour after sunrise. Sheesh! But maybe I read it wrong.

Willard Brook, In The Dim. This was more like it, I managed to read the trail map correctly (armed with some knowledge gleaned from Friday) and did the loop I had intended to do then, along with an exploratory jaunt on an unmapped section. I started 10 minutes earlier this time, but this is the time of year when sunset is changing most rapidly, so it was getting pretty hard to see by the end again, but at least I had some familiarity with the trail I was on. Not that I have all the rocks and roots memorized, though. Again, I didn't plan on being out for so long. I could have used a headlamp, but it was too hot for it at the beginning. Working pretty hard.