Training Log Archive: mikeminium

pre-dawn snow removal. An inch or so of fluffy stuff had fallen overnight. Ten kids showed up at my door at 6 am, and we packed them into two vehicles (my van and Guy's Saab), and headed off for the Relay Champs at Friedlander. Roads were unpleasant but not horrible.

U.S. Relay Championships, Green Course at Camp Friedlander. Ran as aprt of a revised OCIN Minium's Minions team this year, since Katy Drinkhouse was still recovering from an injury and unable to run. Maybe it should have been Minium and the Minions? I was feeling pretty sore and slow, and I think my late night control pickup, and the fact that I got less than 2 hours of sleep were definitely slowing me down.

Anyway, I started the leg in 4th place, about 2:40 behind Matt Little of TROLs in conTROL. I had a clean first leg, and caught up to Matt at control 1. In my excitement at reeling in Matt, I hadn't planned ahead well enough, plus the steady rain was already clouding my glasses, and every glance at the map required a full stop and raising the glasses. Anyway, I wasted a minute in the first reentrant system I came to instead of going opn to the second system. The control description said "reentrant junction", and when I finally got to the correct reentrant system, I headed straight for the junction. Meanwhile, Matt, after also hesitating at the first reentrant system was paralleling me to my left. Well, I got to the junction and there was no control. I looked left, and saw the control, well up the reentrant, with Matt just about to punch it. And curses, there was an enormous fallen tree between me and the control. My 2:50 split was not teerible, but it was at least a minute slower than it should have been.

By the time I managed to clamber over the meter high trunk and get to the control, Matt was well ahead, and as I came out to the road, he was putting on distance, heading toward number 3. That would be the last time I would see him.

Approaching 3, I did road and trail. wilburdeb passed me heading the opposite direction coming out of number 6, and seeing the little shortcut trail I had taken, hollered "nice route". I don't know if that meant that he had also doen the same or that he had missed it. But I kept on keeping on, expecting to see Matt doglegging back out of 3. To my dismay, I never saw him and figured he must have gotten even farther ahead. (Unbeknownst to me, he had made a big mistake, and I was now ahead of him).

4, 5, and 6 were all clean cointrol picking legs. 7 was back to the road, down the road to the stream, then up into the woods. Not too difficult. 8 and 9 were also easy legs, but you had to be a little careful not to overhshoot.

10 was the next big route choice - which way to go around Marge Schott Lake. I went right, and had the 15th fastest time for that leg (compared to my overall placing of 19th for the whole green course). TundraDesert swears that left (and back through the start/finish/exchange would have been faster, but I'm not sure I agree. Anyway, I used the clearing for a safe and fast approach to 10.

From there on, it was short control picking legs. I probably lost 20 seconds or so on a less than optimal route out of 12, but otherwise pretty clean.

Another very fun course. Not exceptionally difficult, but I appreciated that cedarcreek kept us on the upper levels of the camp, and didn't make us do the brutal hills out of the Little Miami River Valley (not so for red runners). Thanks cedarcreek for a very fun course.

Oh, and I had the 2nd fastest 12 point time on green, moving my team into 3rd place for a bronze medal. With just a little more help from second or third leg runners, we could have been in contention for silver, although I expect that Stryder (OCIN Vaughan Trapp Family) could possibly still have beaten me in flat out running if we had ended up in a dead heat on the run in. Although our actual splits show that I got him by 30 saeconds from penultimate control to the final control, and 2 seconds on the 250 meter run in. So it could have been one heck of a finish if we'd been together.

Would have liked to stay to help pick up controls, but my van was full of drenched shivering kids, so getting them safely home became priority one, and I made pretty quick tracks getting out of the camp. At least by then, the roads were just wet and no longer icy. By the time I hit the interstate, my six passengers were all sleeping and mostly didn't wake up until home.

Removing more ice and snow from the driveway. Most places that I had shoveled in the morning were pretty clear, but there was an inch or so of slushy ice on parts of the drive, and with a very hard freeze expected overnight, I figured it needed to go, or it would be very hard and very rough in the morning.

OCIN_US_Relay_2013_Green - Splits

Event: OCIN - US Night and Relay Championships
 

U.S. Night Course Championships at Hueston Woods. Green Course. Very nice course set by David Waller. The snow covering the ground made it almost like daylight, and I felt really good.

Spiked 1 through 4; a little right on 5 and probably lost close to a minute there. 5 to 6 was the 1.6 km long leg across the map. There was a very long road and trail option, but I chose to go pretty direct. The key point here was to be sure of going up the right spur once you crossed the powerline and the creek. I was a little extra careful there.

7 might have been the trickiest cointol on the course - tucked into a small side reentrant, where it could not be seen from very far away. I hit it dead on, although partly assisted by the excellent visibility and seeing lights going in and out. As I left, I am sure I passed the same favor on to the person behind me if he / she was alert enough to pick up on it. 9 was back across the nasty powerline, definitely using the trail to cross. I had already looked ahead to 10 and knew that it would be potentially deceptively difficult.

Control on a trail. How tough can it be? Well, it was a short piece of trail in the maze of open corridors and thicker patches of vegetation that make up the new disc golf course. Fairly flat around it. I decided on the right hand trail route, leaving the trail where it bent to cross the powerline, and using the ditch / dtream junction as an attackpoint. Hit it cleanly.

Leaving 10, low honeysuckle branches ripped off my ski cap and headlamp, and I lost 20 or 30 seconds fumbling to get it properly seated back on my head. Probably was less than optimal getting out to the road (seemed to hit morte green than should have been necessary), and then blasted down the road to the lodge. Light snow was falling at this point. A few seconds lost finding the control behind the lodge which was hiding in plain sight. Right out in the open, right next to a paved walkway, but the blasted landscaping lights along the path kept me from notyicing the reflection of the control, and I had to hesitate to check the map again, within just meters of the control.

From there, the return to the last control and the finish chute was into the wind, into the teeth of now heavily falling snow, an exhilerating finish, and I managed to kick high for that last little bit of effort, snagging third place in M50.

A very fun course. Thanks again Dave!

Late night control pickup at Hueston Woods. 15 controls and a crate of water. Jogged most of it.

OCIN_US_Night_2013_Green - Splits

Putting out control stands at Armco.

Snow removal. A fresh 2-3 inches of powder overnight.

Snow removal. Light dusting to small drifts on about half of the driveway.