Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Bear Brook, Blue, 6.8 km, 185m. Rainy day, and I was apparently out in the worst of it, though I seem to have been oblivious -- a few people commented on how it was really pouring for a while, but I didn't really notice, maybe I was under evergreens during the deluge? Not moving very fast, but navigating tolerably. A little sloppy on #1, overran it by a bit. #2-#4 went fine, though the GPS track shows something weird on the way to #4 that doesn't make sense. I neglected to lock the bezel on my watch, and it got into the wrong mode so it didn't record splits for #3-#5. No real issues on #5-#7. On #8 I went too far on the trail, and was too lazy to figure out exactly where I was, so I just charged off into the wilderness and planned to figure it out later. Before long I had no idea where I was, spotted a hunter's stand that I couldn't find on the map, and was just going to head vaguely NE and hope I could find the marsh, but then the area I was looking at seemed familiar, I recognized it as the area west of #8, so I headed east and stumbled right into it. #9 was fine, on #10 I tried to get as close as I could on trails and attacked from directly south. The medium green was really not too bad, but the light green to white was all chest high white pines and I couldn't see a thing. Fortunately I happened into the depression on the SE edge of the circle. #11 was fine, #12 I took the northen trail route, but had trouble seeing the contours when I headed into the green woods, so although I was heading for the control, I got sidetracked up a reentrant where I stopped and made sense of things. No trouble on #13 or the finish.

Very weird thing: on my way to #2, I spotted a guy out in the woods, probably 50-100 meters from the road, not near any trail. And he was raking. I had to wonder if was Finnish, and I considered stopping to ask, "Hey, are you on Trump's forest fire prevention squad?". I have a suspicion of what else he might have been up to, but I'll leave it out there in case anyone else has any ideas.

C • I think I saw that guy betw... 5

Rattlesnake Hill, this time successfully navigaing my way around with Clint's trail map. Feeling perhaps even more out of sorts than yesterday, and it looked like I might get rained on (didn't happen), so I almost bagged it, but I gritted my teeth (not really) and went for it, with the compromise that I picked a shorter loop.

WBSW. Wasn't feeling it, but I kicked myself out the door anyway because it was a really nice evening and I need exercise. I managed to do exactly the loop that I had planned out in my mind, without taking any of the available shortcuts. Bypassed the twisties and went up the hill. The mountain bike trails are intriguingly free of leaves, I suppose it's just due to the passage of the bikes, but it almost looks like a work crew went out there with brooms.

Prospect Hill, Green, 4.2 km, 180m, 15th. I really don't like this place very much (been here a zillion times), but it was decent weather, so I figured I should go for the exercise and practice. Katia was starting just ahead of me, so I let her get well out of sight before I started, figuring that she'd be pulling away. But I spotted her when she was leaving the first control, caught her at #3, and saw a lot of her for the rest of the course. She eventually disappeared up ahead with a few controls to go, and I'm guessing finished a bit faster than I did. Lost a smidge of time on #4 (looked at the correct cliff but didn't see the control behind a tree, then went a bit low before turning around and spotting it) and... #6 (I think), where I went to where Katia and Dean were standing looking confused, even though I thought it was the wrong control, and then continued on to where I knew the correct one would be. The reason I'm not sure is that I don't have my map, because they ran out of Green maps and I gave mine to Jeff Schapiro. Will NEOC never figure this out? It's not like the printing is costing them a mint, the prints were actually really crappy and hard to read. Rather pleased when I downloaded and saw my name at the top of the list on Green, until I noticed that there were two columns for Green, and I was leading the second one. :-)

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