Training Log Archive: bishop22

Went for a run during the kids' warm down, which for some kids appeared to be, literally, a walk in the woods. They did not run when I went by them, but they did start running when they saw the chicks coming towards them. At least they have some self-respect.

First time actually on the course this year. 5 3-putts meant a 50 wound up on my card. Not a good way to start the season.

I did manage to play the 9 holes in 60 minutes.

West Point A-Meet - Classic Race.

Much better than yesterday AM, but not nearly as good as yesterday PM. I let myself get too discouraged when I saw how late it was getting after C9. That cost me some time which could have changed a decent race into a great race.

I started off to the left for C1, to avoid the green near the nose and go around the reentrant, aiming for the trail, but I went way left, and wound up left of the clearing with the tower, and then I was clean to the bag. C2 looked troublesome - I got over the first set of hills and then I had nothing, so I just went slowly on bearing and pace count, which got me in the neighborhood. C3 wasn't too bad - I was able to check off some features along the way. I lost a couple of minutes on C4 - I missed the flag on the way by, so I relocated to the top of the hill N of the circle and was back in business. The early contours got me headed in the right direction to C5 and the water to the right helped me into the circle. I lost a couple of minutes more on C6 - I tried to go straight, but didn't pay enough attention to the contours. This should have been an easy control, or at least a trivial control to pull off a quick recovery. By the time I punched, Samantha was bearing down on the control.

I stayed low leaving C6, even though my goal on this massive leg was to run as much trail as possible. I thought I was angling up the wide reentrant, but luckily it was the smaller reentrant that popped me out on the road, near the bend, with Samantha chasing me. I took a right at the T and paused at the trail junction to decide if that was worth taking and she went zipping by, staying on the road. That cemented my choice, but she left the road earlier than I thought I wanted to, and I continued on, which was a poor choice, since as I got going thru the woods, it became clear that I wanted to go left of the swamp. At this point feet caught me, and since I was just going to run hard to the road, and he was headed that way, I tried to stay close. We hit the road and I kept pushing hard, and he left the road, basically on my line, but I wanted no part of that route. I started to catch Samantha again as I stayed on the road past the big splotch of green. Once again, Samantha entered the woods earlier than me, I left the road at the little hilltop on the right. There was more green than mapped, so I couldn't hold the bearing that I had taken, nor could I see any features. Eventually my pace count told me that I had to be beyond the control, and I went to a small hilltop to relocate, when Samantha and someone else came running from behind me. I realized which hilltop I was on, and was able to get back to the flag, but they were long gone. On the way into C8, I saw feet again, and punched just before him. Looking back at the control codes, I'm guessing his leg was from my C5 to my C8, so he clearly had a big problem after I saw him leave the road.

C9 was going to be another fairly long leg, so I just wanted to get to a trail. feet was headed my way, so I tried to keep up thru the woods, and pretty much did, but only because he paused to punch another control. He just used the trail briefly, while I used it to figure out how the heck I was going to get to the control. By the time I got to the trail junction, a good 350m right of the line, it was clear that I was not going to want to try to go right of the cliffs, so I was going to have to go 150m left of the line to take the trail to the left of the cliffs. With all of that extra running, I was sure I had just had another bad leg, looked at my watch, saw I was not going to be anywhere near 10min/km, and got depressed. And leaving C9 it was uphill, so I did some walking, then there was a plateau full of those annoying little (blueberry?) bushes, so I walked some more. I ended up spiking C10, but at a very low speed. I wasn't so lucky on C11 - I saw the first couple boulder pairs, first right of the line, then left, but then there was too much rock for me to deal with. I kept thinking the next little cliff would be mine, but it wasn't, so I gave up and went down to the flatter area, and was able to see the flag, so I climbed back up. A third of the way to C12, a youngster was having troubles, so I gave him a ballpark idea of where we were - he realized his next control was mine, so he followed me in, and we caught someone else. I went left towards C13, but not left enough - I wasn't below the cliffs, and they became quite impassable, so I had to climb back up a bit. I wound up catching some of the green but worked my way past the end of the pronounced cliff and shortly after found myself at the top of a high cliff, and a fourth guy joined the train, so I thought "great, just below me is the bag", but no. But I was at the top of another cliff, and hustled down again while the others paused - I was able to punch and scram before they made it down.

I saw the trail to C14 on the ground before I had a chance to see it on the map, so it was off to the races.

It wasn't until I returned from the hospital with Z that I saw the results and found out that my late-race depression was unwarranted and only managed to cost me some time and places. Had I known that 11min/km would win and 12 min would be plenty good enough for 3rd, I may have been able to stay motivated. Yet another lesson learned.

There was more "excitement" than I wanted today. As I finished the course, someone came up to me and asked if I was Zach's father. He was lying under a blanket (not on it, next to a broken toaster oven), and had slipped on a rock, fallen, and gashed his knee.

I hustled him over to the Army hospital, where he quickly got cleaned up, received 3 stitches and was sent on his way (the long pole in the tent was the delay in contacting Chris by phone to get insurance info). The ER visit took less than an hour - very impressive.

Event: West Point A-Meet
 

West Point A-Meet - Middle Distance Red.

I have my splits, but not my map, so I'll have to update this later.

Started out conservatively, and it worked well, with a big hill to my right for most of the way to C1. Just had small misses with C2 and C3, but C4 included a nice road run to get the speed up. But that led to too much speed on the way to C5 and I had to relocate. I overshot C8, but I knew I had been left. I found a clearing as I climbed back up the hill to my right, so I thought I knew where I was, but it turned out that I was at an unmapped clearing 50% closer to the bag. I blew C9 badly, less than 100m, almost 4 minutes; I got lost in the combination of mountain laurel and cliffs. C11 was a disaster - I left C10 going the wrong way around the rocks and never really got back in contact with the map, so I did some wandering. I should have gone to the nose and/or stream to the right earlier, and been more careful leaving it, but all said and done, I lost about 10 minutes.

Did I recover from the C11 error? No, I immediately lost contact during the 100m leg to C12 and it wound up taking me almost 9 minutes. I was using the thumb compass, and did not get a good bearing, so I wound up heading between the wrong set of cliffs. One could wander for hours near the flag and not find it in this area - there are many more rock features than mapped, and I don't have a discerning enough eye to see the difference. I was a fairly clean on the last couple - well, if you don't count the fact that I took a trail almost the whole way from C13 to C14 while never finding it on the map!

I can't let West Point (and the Harriman area in general) get to my head anymore. I need to run hard on the easy legs and take my time if there is no "no-brainer" route. I also need a bail-out plan on every leg, and use it earlier.

West Point A-Meet - Red/Blue Sprint

Much better than this AM!

I started one minute behind Hillary, and caught sight of her near controls 4 and 5, as I had closed the gap significantly. I ran into a small problem shortly afterwards and then a big problem on the leg that took us past exercise equipment that I couldn't find on the map (but there was a control there - I think Ethan Childs punched it). It may have been C10. I then saw David and thought he was going from C1 to C2, having forgotten that he started ahead of me. So, I ignored him, and since I had gone to a control that wasn't mine on the way to C2, I was sure it was my C11, but when I got there, no. I punched C12 and hustled to C13, having seen it while waiting to start. By C15 (if that was the one in the field), I saw that I had closed the gap on Hillary again, to about 30 seconds.

I hustled in fairly cleanly, even though I was really running out of gas (this was a long sprint). I almost caught Carl(?) Underwood at the go control - he had started his course the same time I started mine. But I couldn't catch him or Ethan on the way to the finish, after spazzing out a bit punching GO.

I was much happier with this race. I split the Saeger sisters on the results sheet (just 5 seconds behind Samantha), and when I left, I was 7th overall on Red/Blue and 1st by several minutes on M45+. Let's see what I can do to build off this for tomorrow.

C • Much better 1

Some jogging ahead of both events, including the 1K to the start in the AM.

Walked to the start early with Zach so he would know where to go, then we walked back.

And the walk back to the cars from the finish, including a long bonus loop up and down the hill because we followed someone who thought they knew where they were going, but no.

No time to swim at lunch, so an easy day became a rest day, since I left work just after 3 to grab Zach, pick Walt and Dave C up in Mt. Morris and David L in Bath, then on to West Point.

Running around during the track meet at Penfield, including one long loop. Pretty exciting, for a dual meet. Details are at my Webster Distance Runners blog, so I won't repeat them here.

Worked from home today, since I attended a funeral. Then I took Luke to his spring hockey game (they lost, 9-4, but Luke was +1 in his second game as a defenseman). So, I had to head over to the Y to leave myself with workout options - jumped on the bike first.

21 min Random Hills-13 @ 89 rpm
2 min w/d
10 min Manual-11 @ 89 rpm
2 min w/d

Then I jumped on the treadmill. Started at 7.0 mph and went up 0.1 mph every 0.1 miles to 9.0 mph, then backed off to 8.0 for the last 0.9 miles. That took me right up to closing time.

Did some running during the track meet today at Thomas, against Athena. The boys had a surprisingly easy win; the girls just plain won.

Chelsea had a very nice 800m race against the top girl in the area - Mindy Sawnor ran 2:16 last Friday. With the cold and wind, they followed Megan around thru the 400 in a very slow 79. With 300 to go Mindy made a move; just before the last turn, Chelsea zipped by her into the lead, and they dueled it out down the stretch, but Chelsea got nipped out in 2:31 (72 for the last 400). Chelsea then ran her first 400 (ever? since 5th grade?) in the 4x400 relay - and turned in a 66 (I had her in 65.8).

Nate's 3200 was fun to watch. Our 3 guys (Nate, KDawg and Chris) took turns leading for the first mile, coming thru in just 5:37. The two Athena kids then tried to take off, but Kenny was able to stay close (at least for awhile). Nate had something wrong as he couldn't do much the last 800, but at least his heel held up just fine.