Training Log Archive: Charlie

A lot of traveling around today. Went to the airport and got a car, headed south, stopping for a while at Avola. Nice town. Old town has many churches and public buildings made of honey-colored tufa stone, and even the sidewalks are made of the same stone. Then I headed down to Punta Secca. The driving is very complex, lots of turns, and I was relying on my phone and google maps for directions. Clearly the thing I should have brought is a car charger for the phone. By the time I got to P.S. I was down to 4%. After a walk around town and seeing the famous Montalbano house, I had lunch at the also famous Enzo al mare, caserecce pasta with zucchini, clams and shrimp. Waded in the sea a bit, but didn't swim because the surf was pretty turbulent. Hung out at my hotel a while to rest and then off again today try to see the castle at Donnafugata, unfortunately closed. Drove through a lot of very large farms and big fields bound by stone walls. I kept expecting to see livestock, but didn't. There was supposed to be a catacombs at Donnafugata, but after walking almost far enough to get there along a dirt road between stone walls, I came to a place where a muddy puddle extended across the road, and that was enough for me. Then I pressed on to Ragusa. It was already 6 by the time I got there, so I didn't intend to stay long, but I was pretty thrilled with the topography and all the old churches, including Santa Maria delle scale, where two brides were getting their pictures taken one after the other.

Back to Punta Secca, and an excellent dinner at SanDesign. Zuppa di Cozze, mussel soup in an intense tomato broth. Perfectly cooked. Also bread with the best olive oil I've had, Frantoi Cutrera. Then a second course of grilled spigola (sea bass), served with boiled potatoes dressed in olive oil and spices. Excellent.

C • Those names all ring a bell! 2

Intricate city sprint in Bronte, on the west side of Etna. Another very poor navigational outing, but physically on something of a modest upswing. A good 10 minutes of errors, basically getting lost every time I got confident enough to run. No gps track, as the mysterious Garmin discharged itself overnight. The first 5 controls took me 16 minutes. I went back later and walked them in 7. Still a delightful experience.

Then we took the bus up as far as the road goes up the south side of Ettna, crossing relatively recent lava flows, and at the end getting out and climbing up around craters from the 2001 eruption. Pretty fascinating stuff, seeing houses on the edge half consumed, islands of forest that were somehow spared in the center of a flow. "Flow" is something of a misnomer, as the lava is rough and chunky in most places, and I didn't see anything I would describe as smooth.

Stage 5 Bronte

C • Hiking Etna 3

Back up at Bosco Ragabo today, a bit late getting there as our bus had some trouble on the way up. Arrived at my start (10:42) as the 10:44s had already moved up, so had to jump the line to get off with my group. Still slightly drizzly, but quite foggy, and the most trouble I've had navigating in quite a while. I kept getting close, but just not having the right sense of the circle. Looking around for a while, going someplace else and attacking back, finally seeing it around a little knoll from where I had been. Happened on 1, ran right into the spot I was expecting it at the same time as two others, but nothing there. Wandered for a bit, tried this and that. Then rattled enough that I started to two at a 180 for about 30 seconds, before doubling back and otherwise fine on that. Then 3 I had read all the way in, up in the saddle looking for a depression, but nothing. After some thrashing around went and relocated off a road, came back to the same spot, but there it was, just a bit further right in the saddle than I had been looking. Really thought I was losing it going to 4, right up a pretty distinctive reentrant, not seeing it, not seeing it, and finally there it was behind a tree. 5 was ok. 6 I had a parallel error and was headed from 8 to 7, before I realized I was supposed to be going to 6, and then thought I was headed from 8 to 6 before I settled down, for what was really a pretty easy control. Short control to 7, but again couldn't find the pit. Got past it to a pretty distinctive rocky gully, came back looking for it, wandered a bit, went back to 6 and attacked again, same result, and then suddenly it popped up, half a line lower than I had been looking. Similar sort of stuff on 8 and 11, but not as serious. Just really ugly. But physically I held up better than I have in a while, so that's something to be pleased about.

After the race we took the buses further up the mountain to the edge of the lava from the 2002 and 2005 eruptions. Fascinating big black chunky stuff, right next to grassy pine forest. Saw some interesting photos taken at the time of the eruption in time sequence. Beautiful photography, very interesting, but I guess I would have been scared to be there.

Stage 4 Bosco Ragabo

Bus trip today to Siracusa and Noto.

Rained all day, but a nice visit anyway. Spent a couple hours in Siracusa. Saw the Duomo on Ortigia, the island just offshore that is the old part of town. The Duomo is the Ancient Greek temple with its columns now part of the wall of the church. It also spent some time as a mosque. Then a trio a,few blocks to visit the museum of the opera dei pupi, the puppet theater. I was interested because the Sicilian puppet theaters were heavily into the stories and characters from Orlando Furioso, the 15th century epic poem I studied last year.

Then I stopped for a coffee and a cornetto with a Norwegian couple, and then back on the bus. We stopped briefly at the white beach of Arenallo, where we had planned to swim, but beautiful as it is, it wasn't at all inviting in pouring rain, so through Avola and on to Noto. Noto had been completely destroyed in the earthquake of 1693, in which 60,000 people perished. Noto was completely rebuilt in the 1700s in a different place by some very wealthy families, with some very particular baroque churches. Fascinating and beautiful. The cathedral there had been the subject of some rather misguided renovations in the 1940s that weakened it over the ensuing 50 years, until the roof caved in in 1996. It was completely restored over he ensuing 10 years, and now is once again stunnngly beautiful, in a simpler style than the renovations from the 40s, and is now built to seismic standards to withstand a future earthquake.

Then a wine tasting at the Modica winery in town, very nice, with some welcome aperitivi, bruschette, some balls that looked like arancini, but bread instead of rice, some real Sicilian pizza, with a crust that is thick, but light and soft and delicious, and excellent local olives. Had a nice chat with the owner, the 8th generation of his family working the vineyard. They have some sort of distribution arm in New York.

Sprint in the intricate town of Castelmola. Quite a lovely town, very narrow winding streets with lots of stairs. 1:1500 map, so kind of like a stone corn-maze, except all those stairs! Very fun, but alas, slow. Well behind the winner, about 7 minutes. He had been here before, which is certainly worth something in this terrain, but not nearly worth 7 minutes! Ended up 7th out of 16, so a little improvement.
Relive

As for my navigation, I was a little loose on the way to 1, and not sure if I covered some extra distance. Lucky to relocate and get it. A slight missed turn going to 4, but only a short way. Otherwise going right to them, but just slow, particularly going up and down the stairs.

Started raining when I was at about halfway, and by the time I finished it was pouring, and rained on and off the rest of the day. Had pizza and beer with some of the Norwegians, then ran into the Italian organizers, Gabriele and Giulia and the bunch, and had coffee with them while they had lunch. The a bus ride to Taormina, where I saw the old Greek Teatro, one of the largest of the ancient theaters in the world, got rained on some more and then the bus ride back. A lot of riding.

Had something of an unsettled night, up several times for 15 minutes to an hour at a time, then slept soundly until 7:55 - almost missed the bus leaving at 8:20. I suppose I'll have to set an alarm, something I never have to do at home.

Stage 3 Castelmola

Beautiful forest at Bosco Ragabo on the slopes of Aetna. Pine forest, little to no undergrowth, black volcanic soil under pine needles, with some very angular rock features, but really not all that many. There were mapped trails and there were unmapped trails, and I never did get the hang of them. I did much better when I was ignoring them and just going on contours. Some sizable mistakes, all trail related, at 2, 8 and 9. And really slow. I was a bit more constrained by sore back stuff today than yesterday, and really struggled to get moving. 10th again on the day, so plenty of room for improvement, and over 20 minutes back of the winner. Probably 10 minutes lost on the three bad controls, the rest just not moving very fast. Fun place to go, though, beautiful and an excellent forest for running, if a person could actually run. We are to come back to this area in a few days.

Long bus ride. We were to go to some caves afterwards, but that was forestalled by some pretty substantial rain that came in, thankfully after the race, so headed back to the hotel and I was tired by the time we got there.

Had a nice soup for lunch, beans and vegetables, at the Rifugio at Ragabo. Just a little bar-restaurant on the road up the mountain, next to the finish area.

Stage 2 Bosco Ragabo

Sprint race in Santa Tecla, just a walk from the hotel. A serious fail from the Garmin, which seems to have both failed to download the race and erased it from the watch. It was on there when I started the download, but all it downloaded was the jog to the start. Not sure what this means.

Anyway, a bit of difficulty reading the map and forgot I had my magnifier on the compass until I finished. It would have helped.
1. Choice of going through a lemon grove to a control in the grove, or going around on the road. Failed to see that there was a fence 2/3 of the way there, so I had to go out to the road anyway. Otherwise easy.
2. Short, easy, still in the lemons.
3. Easy.
4. Easy.
5. Easy, just counting buildings and streets.
6. Didn't see that there was a shorter trail around to the left, so out to the street and around the block. The magnifier would have shown where the trail goes through.
7 and 8 were doglegs, not sure if there was any better way to do it.
9. Easy.
10-. had to find a gap in the wall, successful, and then turn left at the bend in the road. Not successful. Ran past for about 60 meters and had to turn back. Ugly.
11. Again, the magnifier would have figured this out. Had to climb one set of stairs to get to another set that had the control. Climbed the first set and didn't find it, didn't realize I had to keep going, so down and fool around for a bit before back up. Ugly.
12-16. The rest was pretty straightforward. 15 was easy enough navigation, but hard to get to because it was out on the big chunks of lava. Just had to pay attention and hop from chunk to chunk.

Ended up 10th of 17 on the day. Certainly could have done better.

Stage 1 Santa Tecla

Pretty classic Sicilian dinner. Served at the tables, four first plates, slender penne with a tomato sauce, risotto with shellfish, slightly larger penne with a mushroom cream sauce, black squid ink spaghetti. Remarkable. Then several second plates: very thinly sliced swordfish in lemon sauce, marinated octopus, tiny fried anchovies and shrimp, so tiny you just ate them whole, stuffed mussels (too much breading), mussels cooked with a little wine (delicious) all with local wine from the vineyard that belongs to the restaurant. Then a small lemon granita. Very nice. Took quite a while, though.