Training Log Archive: CleverSky

I brought some running gear along but ended up not using it. A long day at the hang gliding field (in this case a farm field directly across the street from the Gifford Pinchot sycamore) that resulted in about nine hours on my feet, mostly just standing around, interspersed with some walking and glider schlepping. Quite tiring for the legs, must be worth something. And I think less than four minutes with my feet off the ground.

C • Gifford Pinchot 2

Rattlesnake Hill. Gray and dreary, but a nice temperature for running. Didn't have the Active Ankle, so I was maybe a little extra-careful, but no mishaps. On top of the hill there was a guy on a mountain bike who was stopped, and when he saw me looking at a map as I ran by, he apparently felt a need to offer assistance, asking if I was trying to get back to Rte. 117. I just said hello and ran on.

C • A quick and dirty map for y... 5

Not feeling as wiped as I expected to, it surely helped that I had Nancy to do the driving on the trip home last night. Definitely didn't feel a pressing need to go out for a run tonight, though. Valerie was very charitable in taking my word and my GPS track as evidence of my having visited #8 and thus reinstating me. Winsplits was very charitable in saying that I made no errors. (Shift the criterion from 20% to 10%, and the only clean ones are me and Eric Bone. SA on AP is not nearly as forgiving.)

Kind of weird the way it worked out that this epic Blue Elite course didn't produce any team selections. I understand that it's the way things work now, in part because we have limited slots in the WOC, and there's the multiple format thing, but it's still a shame. Yeah, I'm sure that it will be a major consideration for the selection committee. But it's quite a pendulum swing from the days when Nancy was on the BoD, and there was public outcry that having only the top three slots be automatic selections wasn't enough. So she was tasked with coming up with a new selection process so that it was almost all automatic based on Team Trials results. And even "almost" wasn't good enough for some people. Not an issue for me, as I never had a dog in this fight (nor did Nancy). But I can think of at least one vocal constituent who is surely turning over in his grave.

C • GU 2

West Point, Camp Shea, Blue Elite, 13.9 km, 550 m, 20th (sort of). Well, this was certainly long. I went into it thinking that maybe I could try for 2.5 hours, not suspecting that only two people would squeak in under two. It became pretty obvious after about two controls that this was going to be a really long day, and I was thinking for a while that it might be more like four hours and that I should not do the whole thing. But I did go to all of the controls. What I didn't do was punch all of the controls. When I downloaded I was surprised to see no punch for #8, so I looked at my map to see if I had overlooked it, but no, I definitely remembered being there. So then I wondered if there was another control nearby that I had gone to by mistake, so I asked Valerie to check if there were any extra punches, but there weren't. When I looked at my watch, I saw that I didn't have a split for it, either. But I was pretty sure I remembered checking the code, and I specifically remembered putting my empty Gu packet in the trash bag there. Yep, looks like I forgot to punch at the water stop. I can't remember ever having done that before. What a noob! It was also one of the few places where I saw somebody else, as Jeremy weas coming in as I was leaving. So the results will list me as DSQ (okay, maybe not), but I extracted the split time from my GPS track and entered it in the AP splits list. And as far as I'm concerned personally, I completed the course.

Headed off to the start with a warm LS shirt and a poly SS shirt plus a hat because of the rain, and by the time I got there it was pretty clear that I was overdressed. So I took off the SS shirt and was able to fold it up and stuff it in a pocket. That was much better, and I had the option of putting it back on, which I thought about a couple of times, but then I'd go uphill again and warm back up. It was also a bit of a kick in the head when I turned the map over and faced the 1:15000 reality. No magnification, which was just as well, because when I looked at it later with Nancy's glasses, I was horrified at the print quality. The contours all look like they're made out of Legos. And the control descriptions on the map were so tiny that it hardly seemed worth the bother to have them there.

Really a pretty clean run, and SA showed me as having only a couple of minutes in errors initially, though later it bumped me up to over 10 minutes somehow, nothing big, just all spread out. I did probably lose a bit on #1, got to the right area, then had a slow and uncertain attack, but didn't have to do any hunting around. #2 was just long, #3 was just short. #4 was a weird leg where you had to decide which way to go around a big lake, with neither option appealing (I went left, which was in fact shorter). #5 I spotted from a way off, and I did lose a little time at the start of #6 with an inefficient route around the end of the ridge. But then the course went onto the glorious Lake Stilwell side for a few controls, where the woods were open and awesome and brought much joy. #8 was a bear. The straight route was going to be a horrible slog up and over the highest part of Long Mountain Ridge, which seemed like it might croak me. So I took the trail route around to the left, which involved going a little past the control and contouring back. Even with a) botched execution on the first part to get to the trail, b) a pause to take a leak, and c) a hesitation when I got close to look at the surrounding features and make sure I knew how much further to go, I only lost about 3 minutes on a 30 minute leg.

Seemed like the worst of it was behind me and finishing was in the cards. The northern loop went fine, then there was one more long leg, #12. There was a vaguely plausible trail option to the left, but it was a pretty big detour. Instead I opted for the straight route, up and over Turkey Hill through a lot of green, followed by an unfortunately zigzaggy trail at the end. Lost a minute, not too bad. The first part of #14 went over a hill complex that was shown as white, but which was really all blueberry, and I ended up getting pushed left so that I popped out on the edge of an uncrossable marsh bounded on my side by a cliff, so I had to work past that, almost two minutes lost, a route further right would probably have been better, but it didn't look that great on paper. A little time lost on #15 that was presumably just a result of my slowing down. Fine for the rest, although #17 was ridiculous, no need to send us at the end of the course on a dogleg into dense barberry mapped as white just to get an easy control at the end of a stone wall.

I had been expecting that this would be my year to come in DFL, but I'm not there yet, two people completed the course more slowly than I did. So I might be back to run the elite course at the team trials next time. It really was a pretty clean run, no physical problems like cramping, and I was cooking along at a pretty good clip most of the time (at least, what passes as such for me, at least I wasn't trudging). Also, despite being advertised as 13.8 km (and listed on the clues as 13.9), the course was actually over 14.5 km because they failed to correct for the fact that we wouldn't be swimming across the lake on leg #4 (one of the few times I've seen where it would almost have made sense to do so, though not for an inefficient swimmer like me). And the nature of the course and the terrain was such that, despite the fact that I did no wandering and took mostly straight routes, the GPS shows me as having traveled 19.5 km! Yikes!

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