Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Ratlum Mountain, summer picnic relay, teamed with Bill Duncan, running legs 2 and 4. Leg 2 was Course B, nominally 1.6 km. Tagged off just after Jeff Saeger, caught him at the first control, and saw a lot of him up through #11. Clean run, was the fastest until Adam C-B came in. My watch was in an annoying mode such that it was beeping every 30 seconds to tell me to either start walking or start running. I got it straightened out before the second course.

And Sprint A, the anchor leg. This time I was tagged off to just ahead of Jeff, and he caught me at the first control. More or less together through #7, then I somehow misread the map and thought we were going to the tree at the top of the clearcut again. I took the left route, got stuck in some laurel, and punched at the tree before realizing it was not my control (thus the extra split). Through the woods on #9, which may not have been optimal, and fine on the rest. Bill and I ended up in 5th place.

I think my new mantra might be, "Yeah, y'know what? Never mind. Just forget it.".

80 situps.

Nashua River upstream in the orange boat from Rte. 225 and back with Nancy. Forgot my GPS watch in the car, so I took the distance from her log. Nice enough stretch of river, but even though I had remembered it as being kind of a long haul from the parking to the put-in, it was longer than the picture in my head. Glad that I had thought to bring the wheels for the yellow boat.

Assuming the weather forecast holds, I'm planning to be up on Talcott Mountain a little north of the Heublein Tower this evening around 6 PM with a hang glider. In case anybody in the neighborhood wants to go for a hike and say hello.

C • possible 5

Up the main trail to the launch at Talcott, dragging my cart with the glider and harness on it, probably about 100 pounds total, fairly hard work. But I flew for more than twice as long as the climb took. And Woz brought the cart down for me, so I didn't have to hike back up for it. Beautiful evening, I'm pretty sure I could see Mt. Tom up on the northern horizon.

Over to Mom's house to put up her screens.

And back home.

Townsend State Forest, wanted something relatively relaxed after the busy weekend, so I mostly stayed away from technical singletrack. Almost got around this without any stops. Mountain laurel in bloom was magnificent, FDFs were plentiful. I think it's sticky hat season.

Harris Center, Blue, 2nd place (I think). Warm day, and with the tiredness from yesterday, it wasn't entirely clear that Blue was the smartest thing to do, but I heard that Ernst was out on Blue, so... I wore shorts, and despite some scratches on my knees, I'm happy with that choice because of the temperature; it's not like it impeded my ability to move faster. Forgot my GPS watch at home, so there's no track, but it was pretty much just straight on all controls except #13. I went with a plan of not hurrying, and just being careful and staying in contact. I wasn't entirely successful at that, because sometimes you're just too hot and tired to read the map, and next thing you know, you don't know where you are. My definition of a "spike" is pretty liberal here, but there really wasn't anyplace where I lost any significant time. The bulk of this was walking, though I did jog a few times.

Started right out with losing contact, though I got lucky and found a hill that I remembered from vetting, and I managed to locate it on the map; I had veered a tad left, and was just north of the control. I met Clint at #6 (on a different course and coming from a different direction). We were together for the next leg, then he made a comment abount a "Hail Mary" leg. He was on Green, so I figured it was different because I had a short leg to #8, but then I noticed that was #18 (the line to #8 was broken because it went through the #18 circle), and I also had a leg going most of the way across the map (same leg, in fact). He headed left to take the trail, and I went pretty much straight. I lost contact pretty quickly but just kept going, and fortunately found the trail 3/4 of the way there, just before the big marsh, and I got to the control about two minutes ahead of Clint. Ethan passed me near the control, and I could see him up ahead on his way to #9. On #13, I took my one trail route, on the right, attacking past #14. Missed #14 on the way back out and had to bounce off the trail. Poor execution leaving #16; I climbed up and over some topography instead of going left on the trail and just heading up the valley. As I was about to climb the steep hill, I met Mark Webb, who had just come down it and had no idea where he was. I pointed it out on his map (nowhere near his course). And the rest. Phew!

About 34 minutes behind Ethan, and 15 ahead of Ernst.