Training Log Archive: JanetT

COC sprint, course 3 (W45-54 again), at McLaren Pond in Fundy National Park. Before the first start all runners vacated the parking area and gathered near the start, so we couldn't see where runners went in the field around the finish, which was surrounded on three sides by the parking lot. :-) Early finishers, of course, could stay by the finish and watch later runners come in.

Good run through the first 13, with a slight bobble on 14--not going far enough into the woods and checking out another control. And the optimum route on 16 was a "hidden" route choice which I had originally considered but didn't take the time to look at the detail of the control placement (inside corner of a fenced tennis court with 2 openings, more easily reached by taking the more subtle woods route rather than the supposedly faster open field route, which required going past the flag to the opening at the far end of the tennis court fence and doubling back). I estimate I could have been close to a minute faster overall. Finished 4th, 19 seconds behind 2nd place but ~ 2 min behind 1st (Kitty Jones of Calgary).

Another excellent sprint, which made good use of the potentially confusing chalet area (2 dozen small buildings clustered in a 100m x 150m area, in which course 3 had 7 controls). Courses 4 and 5 apparently had more woods running (we had 3 of 19 controls in the woods).

After the sprint we checked out the model map area. The model map was more of a chance to get out in the terrain for the middle and long races and less a depiction of mapping style and size (printed at 1:5000 when the race maps would be 1:10000). It gave me a healthy respect for the changes brought by a resurgence in red spruce growth, with areas mapped earlier as white woods made almost impassable by shoulder-height or higher young spruce trees. I learned I really did NOT want to enter dark green, and avoiding medium green was a good idea as well.

FR says I covered 2.02 km.