Training Log: PG

Short ride up along the river. Ailments healing up.

Got flu and Covid shots yesterday, different arms. Both arms hurt just enough to know a placebo wasn't injected, otherwise no symptoms.

The culprit --



Local tire shop removed it and patch the hole, so the car is good to go. But I'm getting one of these gizmos for us, just seems like a good idea.

C • This is the one I use - but... 2

Masters Champs, day 2, Letchworth East, 3.1 km. Much more difficult course. An OK run. Botched #1, shaky on the approach to #3 but I read the contours correctly, and lucky on #8, spiked it without knowing exactly where I was. Pretty minimal mistakes given the course and terrain. I expected there would be a lot of long times , and there certainly were.

Physically another good day, though the feel was quite different than yesterday. Yesterday felt like I was really moving (for this stage of life). Today the feeling was that there was a lot of walking, and moving slowly when I was running, but I never quit trying to go a little faster. Could easily have been 5 minutes slower if I'd been orienteering like most of my outings the past 12 months, ie. walking at every opportunity. So this is pretty positive. The fact I'm still a universe or two slower than I was in my early 70s, well, we'll just ignore that. Just glad to be out there doing it.

Nice company (Gail and Charlie) on the drive out and back, plus Phil at the AirBnB. Lots of good social time. The cheese tour was excellent, the dinner that followed even better.

Though the main excitement was furnished by our right rear tire, which somehow had lost 6 pounds of air (well, air pressure) by the time we arrived at the cheese tour. What to do? Saturday evening (or Sunday) is not a good time to be wanting to get a tire fixed. But the orienteering crowd has a lot of smart and resourceful people. Jeremy travels with a bunch of gizmos and he though he might be able to fix the tire if we could find the nail (if there was a nail). So we went out and searched, but no nail was found. Ken Sr knows about all sorts of things that I know nothing about, but although he had things to say about tires, he didn't seem to have anything that would help our tire.

But obviously we hadn't figured out who wears the pants in that family, because Kenny -- Mr. Attackpoint himself -- stepped up and just hit one out of the park. Yeah, he had something that might help. We headed outside, stopped at his car where he grabbed a rather small zipped-up container and headed over to our car. In no time at all, though it must have been at least a minute, he had a battery hooked up to his gizmo, and a tube hooked up to the tire. What pressure did we want? Maybe 32. And before another minute had passed our tire had gained 6 pounds.

Was that ever cool? You better believe it.

Did I really want to have one of those gizmos right then and there? You better believe it.

Would I, as a second choice, be willing to borrow Kenny's gizmo for the whole weekend? Oh, for sure.

And Kenny, founder and operator of the best website on the planet, said, that's cool.

So, after bowing to the Great One, Mr. AP himself, possessor of magic gizmos, we headed back to the AirBnB some 45 minutes away. The guage on the dashboard said the tire was at 32 all the way. High 5's all around.

Woke up Sunday morning, went out to check the pressure. WTF, 9 pounds have disappeared overnight, it's down to 23. The tire is looking a bit deflated. I am feeling a bit deflated. But Kenny gizmo has it back up in no time, this time to 34 just for good measure.

Off to Letchworth, it's 34 all the way. We see Kenny, bow down some more, try to figure out some sort of deal so he'll let us take the gizmo back to Sunderland, then to be returned to him whenever. I'm not comfortable accepting favors, especially of this magnitude, so I counter his offer with my own -- there must be a newer and better version of this gizmo, we can procure that for him and keep the old version. So he'll think about that, perhaps while enjoying a bit of the maple syrup (top three in all classes got a container of the sweet stuff) that I passed on to him. Clearly a bribe, clearly an attempt to lessen my guilt, but you do what you gotta do. Not sure yet how this will end up.

In the meantime we topped off our tire (it had dropped 4 pounds after a morning in the Letchworth parking lot) and then made it back to Sunderland, the tire at 33 all the way, all thanks to Mr. AP, the Great One. We are so lucky.

Route Gadget

C • Gizmo 15

Day2 Brown Y - Splits

Event: OUSA 2023 Masters Nationals
 

US Masters Champs, Sprague Book Park in western NY, Brown Y, 3.1 km.

Totally fine day except for crashing just before the Go control, full speed, downhill, clipped the top of a rock or root, and again, and maybe again, and couldn't save it. Hard landing, hands fortunately landed on dirt so no blood but a sore thumb and a sore knee. Mostly lucky, but most certainly just the kind of thing I am trying to avoid. Got to remember my age....

Otherwise, mostly a good run as far as the navigating, definitely a good run as far as effort and speed. Training has helped.

And a very pleasant day just hanging out.

Route Gadget

C • Wow, that must’ve been quite a crash 5

Day1 Brown Y - Splits

With Gail, north to the power canal, and back. Another really nice day.