Training Log Archive: Charlie

With Rhonda, from PV. Nice morning.

Zack's last day in town and there was a lot of chipping going on. At least 4 hours worth.

Event: Westchester County Challenge
 

Model event at Ward Pound Ridge. Drove down with Bill. Not much of a crowd. We arrived just before 2, the first to arrive, and the next folks didn't show up until I was finished. Nice course, nominal distance 4K, and WPR was lovely, good visibility despite full leaf-out. All the chipping this week was perhaps not the best prep. Found out on the way to #1 that my legs were dead, but no real difficulty getting around. A couple of real blunders. On the way to #6 I convinced myself I was looking for a charcoal platform, when the control was actually on a dot knoll. Then to make it weirder, I found an unmapped charcoal platform, not all that far from the knoll, but of course there was no flag there, so some wandering around, eventually seeing the flag on the side of the knoll and thinking to myself, what kind of charcoal platform is that? Then another clunker, leaving 7 and somehow jumping ahead and thinking I was leaving 8 headed to 9. Went about the requisite distance, found a reentrant, but no flag. Wandered for a bit, then looked hard at the map and noticed that I had not yet been to 8. So how to get there now that I have wandered a bunch? Turned out to be not so hard, although there are a lot more substantial cliffs in the area than show up on the map. The rest was pretty straightforward, straight to 9, passing the rock on the line and the reentrant was pretty distinctive, a little high at 10, but didn't lose much, straight to 11, picking off one of the stone piles on the way across and seeing the flag coming up right in front of me. A fine time, but a long ride home, avoiding the traffic jams on 84 going up 22 and through Sherman, New Milford and Litchfield

Map and route

In the gym with Eric, stretching and rolling, deadlifts (135#), back squats (85#), pull downs, GH raises, pushups on the BOSU, ball planks. Good session.

Physical therapy appointment for my neck.

Home in time to join in with Zack and his boom lift, de-limbing and bringing down a big chestnut oak that he thinks was too menacing to the hot tub. He is pretty darned skilled with the boom lift.

Event: WCOC, WOD event at Bethel Schools
 

Laurel wrangling along the back trail for 45 minutes, building a pile to chip later. Cleared a good part of a very dense thicket. Not much else grows in a real laurel area, just a very few straggly pine seedlings.

Close on another 2 hours of laurel wrangling and chipping, with Zack. Finished off my pile and went and worked on an area of his choosing, clearing a good sized area and a path around one of the gates to get the tractor there. Pretty tired after that and maybe that is enough laurel for one day.

Longest ride of the season so far, and pretty successful, considering I was already pretty tired from laurel wrangling today. Up Sandy Brook Rd to the top at Rte 183 and back.

A chipper not being enough entertainment, seems like Zack rented the boom lift and was up chopping branches out of a dead pine tree preparatory to bringing it down. He has been complaining about it for a long time. However, 50 ft of boom lift was not enough for him to take it down the way he intended, so it is still there, although shorn of branches. Instead I went up with him and we took dead branches out of an oak tree that were hanging over the shed in a menacing fashion. He is pretty good at this sort of thing.

In the gym with Eric. Stretching and rolling, deadlifts 130#, step-ups, back squats 65#, one arm rows (40#)

Maybe another 2 and a half hours of lopping and chipping Some of it involved getting rid of some big piles from Zack's big clearing experiment from last November, the rest just working off a big patch in the 2006 clear cut. Tiring work. In two sessions, before and after lunch.

I wanted to ride, and Zack liked the idea of picking me up, so we settled on Stop & Shop in Simsbury, as he wanted to go there anyway, and I added a bit to add up to about and hour and a quarter, since that seemed to be an agreeable time frame. Heading that way at traffic time is a bit dicey. When I was barrelling down 309 toward W Simsbury a woman made a left turn close enough in front of me that I had to slam on both brakes. Then on W. Mountain Rd I had a very big SUV pass me within about 12" of the handlebars. Yikes! Better to head the other way, at least at that time of day.

C • Yikes 1

In West Simsbury. One of my better rides of this young season, and I think I am more or less ready enough for the upcoming ride in Croatia. Not to say the actual bike riders don't pass me like the Acela.

Another hour and a half or so of rather intensive laurel wrangling with my associate Zack. Very satisfactory. We are now about 80% of the way through a thicket I wouldn't have imagined we could have done. Mountain laurel is mostly air, so the chip piles aren't that intensive, but it a pretty fierce barrier. Now that the area is open, it is really nice.

C • laurel 10

And one more hour and the area is pulverized of mountain laurel. Very satisfying, although I am pretty tired. About an hour a day is a reasonable amount of this for me, but pretty tempting to continue when I have such good help on hand.