Training Log Archive: jjcote

Event: 2006 Sprint Series Finals
 

Sprint #1 at Hickory Run, 1st in my heat. Just needed to be in the top two to advance, and since Mike Lyons and I had a good lead, it didn't have to be full effort. The one "miss" was #3, where I went a few meters past the copse and then turned around -- pretty generous to call that "4x4 meters".

Sprint #2 at Hickory Run, 1st in my heat. Got away from the pack at #5 and was out in front from then on, although I did catch Spike (from the previous heat) and was in his vicinity for a while. The miss was #11, where I popped out into the clearig in the right spot, but thought I need to go further to the left, and made a few steps in that direction before realizing where I was and turning around.

Sprint #3 (final) at Hickory Run. Missed #3 by about a minute, and that was the race in a nutshell. Spike got a lead of about a minute there, which he hung onto and claimed victory. Patric Shannon and Nate Lyons were way too far to teh right, and I was on target, but needed to be a few meter further to my left to see the control. Instead, I overshot, and arrived with those two, and we traded off the lead until the ennd when they outran me. Wound up 4th place for Heat #2.

Sprint #1 - short - Splits

Sprint #2 - short - Splits

Sprint FINAL - short - Splits

Event: 2006 Sprint Series Finals Festival
 

Sprint finals weekend farsta at Hickory Run. Abominable performance. Intentionally took the running very casually, but managed to do the same thing with the navigation. Kept neglecting to look at the map or pay attention to what I was doing, and screwed up repeatedly. Oh well. Wasn't taking this race very seriously. Footing was vey bad (lots of stony ground).

Sprint finals weekend night-O at Hickory Run. Substantially better performance than the farsta. Biggest time losses were probably due to my inability to read the fine detail in the campground area on the 1:15000 map, and a couple of coughing fits. Low-beam batteries on the hatlamp are getting tired, and at one point I left the high-beam on long enough (to get through some laurel) that I started to smell something getting toasty, and when I reached up, the MR-16 bulb was definitely hot! Looks like I got 3rd place (behind Vadim and Ross), which ain't so bad.

Farsta - Splits

Advanced - Splits

Lane-Horse-Seaver loop, successfully this time. Wore Valerie's GPS on my head, and it grabbed more points this time, 69 or so in 45 minutes. Beeped at me five times, though I don't know what that means. It's clear from the track that there are some areas where it's not working very well, because there are huge gaps beween points (the whole stretch back from Seaver through Hickory Hills in particular), and there are some sections (like the trail past the esker) that I can't discern at all. Maybe a newer/fancier one would work better in an area like this. As it is, I can't imagine how somebody would be able to use something like this for mapping.

I rarely encounter anyone when running in my own private town forest, so I was mildly suprised when I saw someone coming toward me on the trail that goes toward Holman Street. Turned out to be Dan Cronin, and about 100 meters behind him was an older guy driving a mountain golf cart. Looks like they must have been clearing trails (on Sandra Lane's property?), because when I got to the tree across the trail where I turn off into the woods, it was all sawed up.

C • Tracking 2

I'm not generally "sick" any more, but I definitely still have a lot of congestion. Woke up at about 2:30 AM and coughed for probably 30 minutes or more, and more coughing when I woke up...

While bicycling back from the high school tonight, where I had gone for a meeting, I encountered the scariest animal that lives in these parts at close range. (Not counting the sub-moron, which can be scarier under certain conditions.) Fortunately, said animal was facing toward me and I was able to pedal away from it very quickly. A close call!

I'm really jonesing for some westerly winds so I can go flying, but the forecast doesn't look promising... ooh, wait, now Monday's looking good... but that's still a long way off, forecast unreliable...

C • animal 3

A little more mapping at Swallow Union, mostly putting in distinct trees. Still with the regular pencil, although later on I remembered where I stashed my bag of fieldchecking pencils in the trunk of the car after I was done mapping in Wisconsin.

C • pencils 1

Lane-Horse-... oops. In The Dark. Wore the GPS gizmo that Valerie loaned to me, and planned to map out the normal loop. Decided to leave the light turned off as long as I could see where I was going, and it became clear when that was because as I was ducking between two trees, a branch I hadn't seen caught me right in the forehead. No harm done, but it pushed the hatlamp back momentarily so that the switch hit my forehead and turned it on. Okay, I get the message...

Navigated through the laurel jungle okay, but when I left the horse trail, I did something wrong, and found myself facing a bunch of laurel (and I didn't feel like I had climbed enough). Made sure I stayed to the left and tried to work around it, but eventually I saw the lights of houses, and realized I must be near Tyler Rd. OK, well, time to bail out and go back the way I came. Started doing that, but at this point I had no idea where I was. Found what looked ike an old cart path and followed that, but eventually decided it was imaginary. Kept going, running through a surprisingly long stretch of nice white woods, until I wondered if I were going in circles, and decided to do something to make sure I wasn't. Going downhill/downstream will always get you out, so I did that. Well, actually, it will get you to a swamp, but things are pretty dry this time of year. Pushed though a little bit of thick stuff, and hit a trail, which I quickly recognized as one of the Hickory Hills trails, based on the (new) wooden bridges. And home from there.

I did install the GPS software and managed to download the data, but it was unsatisfying for three reasons:
#1: I didn't go where I had planned.
#2: The map that the software comes with is pretty bogus, just showing where I went in relation to major roads. I think Valerie said there's some website that works better for this, and I'm sure she'll tell me what it is as soon as she reads this.
#3: Not many points recorded. The GPS thing beeped at me from time to time, which I imagine probably translates to, "Yo, where are the satellites? I don't know where I am!". Anyway, in over an hour of running, it appears to have recorded about 35 points. There was another run in memory from a few monhs ago that looked pretty similar. Might be too much forest down where I run. On the other hand, there's a track left in memory from Valerie that seems to have a whole lot more points recorded. But that appears to have been a hike, 12 km in about 5 hours, so I suppose maybe it was recording points at the same time rate(?). Poked around the menus and didn't see anything about changing the recording rate. Maybe I should RTFM...

C • GPS 3