Training Log Archive: Nadim

Algongian Sports Complex/Algonkian Regional Park, VA. While visiting my family, I took some time out for a run. It had been a while since I'd run in the parks and flood plain lands here. After crossing the Cascades Pkwy., I went out along the park border headed west on a sort of dyke. When the trail on that ran out, I cut right and that trail took me to a pipeline ride with a rough gravel road over it. The gravel was the type which is so big (fist sized) that it was slowish running over it. It was very flat however.

As usual I kept analyzing whether or not the area would be worth mapping and I was rather encouraged. Most of the woods were nice and very open. It was so flat that I figured a 1-2m contour would be appropriate. Most of the features were root stocks ditches and streams but the further I went, the more variation I found. There were enough odd bluffs, hills and even some stony ground. There also were several oddly placed fields. The trail network was pretty good too.

I reached a fielded area at the west end and headed north on a nicer gravel road toward the river. After passing a lot of trails on my right, I eventually cut right on the green blazed Heritage Trail. There were lots of bluffs along a creek that eventually wound to the Potomac River. I had to go up one side of the stream (turning southward without even knowing it, then crossing to a white blazed trail and heading north again. I reached the river where the creek flowed in and ran along the river until the trail cut south again and crossed a bluff. I followed, going eastward and passing the cabin area and pool. I finally left the Heritage Trail where it cut across the golf course. I was looking for a trail to take me back and ended up doing a loop back to the west. Finally I took the Cascade Pkwy. back.

C • 4

Lake Bernard Frank, MD. Having finished the up conference, I took advantage to being able to stop off and do some more field checking. It was in the upper 50s. I covered a lot of ground in a short time. A lot of that had to do with being in generally whiter woods. Besides covering new areas, I made some corrections to my earlier drafting.

Shepherdstown, WV. My office had an off-site planning meeting this week at the Bavarian Inn. The somewhat fancy Inn overlooking the Potomac River is known for hosting conferences as well as being frequented by many politicians and celebrities. The surrounding countryside is rather scenic. In the registration building of the hotel there were lots of pictures of the Kennedy's and Nancy Reagan was said to "hang-out" there frequently). It was all for a cheaper price than I pay at hotels elsewhere. We worked late yesterday but got out at a reasonable time our second day.

Hopping over the picturesque Rte. 480 bridge, I descended over 100ft. to the C&O Canal Towpath as quickly as I could. It was warmish compared the the last few days--no sweat bottoms or gloves were needed but I was happy to have a nylon jacket. I ran upstream passing two locks (37 and 38?) but not not really gaining much elevation. The woods I passed were often runnable but had thickish areas and enough features. The views of the river were great but the surprise was seeing the numerous cliffs. I was surprised not to see evidence of climbers top roping on them. Though the rock was often not "pristine" or "clean" from a climber's point of view, there were plenty of potential routes of over 120ft. or more. I believe I ran up to Mile Mark 76. About half a mile downstream of the turnaround there were several cave-like openings. I'd seen a picture of Killian's Cave before leaving and from the distinctive two openings in one cliff wall, I think I happened to see the real thing.

My running was rather slowish. I just haven't been running enough to get any speed going. I'm probably too heavy too but lingering congestion from my cold had an effect. I really enjoyed the run. Available splits: 8:01--1.02m, 7:46--0.95m, 8:20--1.05m, 7:34--1.05, 7:42, 0.95m, 8:03--1.02m.

C • Looks about right pace to me! 2

I worked late and was too lazy to go outside. It was a bit cold out there and I also had been feeling like my cold was coming back stronger again.

It turned out to be a day of errands and shopping mostly. Late in the day it turned cold and my own cold had been threatening to come back. I stayed in and spun while watching a movie. I caught some of the Oscar's too but that's too long and drawn out to hold my attention on a stationary bike. After riding, I also got some more work done on drafting the Lake Frank field checking from Saturday.

Lake Bernard Frank, MD. I parked at the Nature Center and crossed North Branch to cover areas on the east of that creek. It was supposed to be cold out in the morning but I didn't get into the field until 10:20am. It was fairly comfortable. I even had to unzip my coat to keep from sweating. I wore some new Goretex hiking boots. I hadn't been able to find my old ones since moving. The areas covered had a lot of rock features. The woods were mostly either light green or open.

At the Germantown Swim Center with Max. I mostly made sure Max didn't drown or gulp too much water when he entered the pool on the many slides. The pool was busy but I did get in some time treading. We got to the deeper pool for a while, the one without the slides and Max practiced putting his head underwater. For the first time, he was able to remain calm and back float for a few seconds. Our trip to the bigger pool was prompted by some kid having a hygenic accident on the edge of the play pool.

My lungs and sinus have begun clearing up though my glands have been sore to the touch still. I spun better than the day before. It felt easier. I watched some of the American Film Institute's best movie picks. They had 10 categories and 10 picks in each category. There were several in each category which I hadn't seen but watching spurs my interest in seeing most of them all over again.

I was feeling like my cold was abating so I spun not so fast and watched and oldish movie.

Event: QOC: Patuxent
 

QOC: Patuxent River Park. I was feeling a bit better after a longer sleep so I decided to set out on the Blue course. I had been waiting for Peggy to finish her run and at the edge of the windy field I felt chilled. I wore extra clothes than I usually would for a mostly sunny day in the mid 40's F. I paced myself from the beginning. I got to the first control okay but didn't take the route that I'd originally planned and this cost me some time. I hit the next 5 controls well enough though I was a bit wide west on #5. Control #7 was on a piece of disturbed ground which had been out of vogue for several years. I took trails to get there and somehow ended up being wide. Going from #8 to #9, I had to cross a trail but for some reason, I never saw it (other had). My route ended up being okay until just then last 50m or so and then I took a while to relocate. Between #13 and #14, I stayed low and was moving well but I left a maintenance road that I'd chosen too early. I got hung up in some slow vegetation. I screwed up on #15 by making a parallel error after crossing the road. I was on reentrant too far to the SE. It took a while to reloacate and my control description elastic straps had gotten loose. I stopped for at least a minute trying with my gloved fingers to put it back on. A similar thing happened when going to #17 except with my epunch. If I hadn't had a safety strap around my wrist, I could have lost it. I finished the rest very well but wasn't moving very fast. I passed a male/female AR team getting to #19 and managed to finish the course under the goal I'd set for the day which was to be under 2 hours. For the 9.6K, it appears I covered 7.83 miles. Lots of other QOC'ers were faster, This wasn't a good showing for me but considering the lack of strength, I'm not altogether unpleased. It's alsways been pleasant for me to run at Patuxent.

Blue - Splits

From Northfield Rd. to Custer Rd. to the Huntington Pkwy, to Old Georgetown Rd. to Maple Ridge Rd. to the Bethesda Trolley Trail on the west side of NIH, to Old Georgetown Rd. to Southwick Rd. to Garfield St. to Greentree Rd. to Heampsteadt Ave. to Roosevelt St. to Garfield St. to Northfield Rd. I got home early enough to get out for a short run before Max and Peggy got home. I happened to see them in Peggy's car along the way. All day before the run my sinuses had been dripping and I had a stuffy nose. Though it was rather slow at first, about 1/3 of a mile of running was all I needed to clear that up. Being able to breath was good while it lasted on the run. I ran in shorts and a t-shirt since it was around 65 F.

From Northfield Rd. to Maple Ave. with Max in his trailer, then to the Bethesda Metro Station via the Georgetown Branch tunnel. The promise of warmer weather got us out again but it was still around 39-40 F.

From the Bethesda Metro Station to Nortfield Rd. With jury duty and a planned meeting aborted last week, I'd forgotten to bring my work laptop back to work. It had been sitting out of sight. I had to go back home for it.

From Northfield Rd. to the Bethesda Metro Station. I had my laptop. I ran into some construction traffic too.

From the Bethesda Metro station to Maple Ave., then to Northfield Rd. via the Georgetown Branch Trail. I left work late so despite it being light till almost 6pm, I was completely in the dark. The Georgetown Branch Trail which was rutted and frozen this morning, was a soggy mess. I had to ride slowly through it so as not to kickup mud on my work clothes. My tires sank.

From Northfield Rd., I rode Max on the Trail-A-Bike to Ayrlawn Park, then to Bethesda for some lunch, then home. The weather was great and the park was active. While Max played on the playground, I also took a few GPS recordings to update the map I made of the park.

From Flower Valley Park at the parking area off Hornbeam Dr., I recorded trail tracks and moved into the the Lake Frank area for more field checking. In the Sunfish Pond area, I made corrections to my earlier drafting, and moved south and westward. The areas covered are opening up more and getting easier to map. It was flatter and more broad. There were still plenty of features. I found another ruin foundation and some rock features. The warm air let the ice melt and made the trails sloppy. Even deer trails started looking like regular trails. I noticed some flagging on some trails which gave me the impression that the park was updating their mapping. I actually saw what appeared to be a park employee or volunteer walking straight across the woods without a trail while I was mapping. He seemed uninterested in why I was off trail too.

Going back at 5:30pm, I took a little more time in Flower Valley. I hadn't planned to map this area because it is rather narrow (100-200m wide). There were plenty of scattered boulders, cliffs, an extensive trail network, and and mostly open woods. I left most of the valley unmapped east of Sunfish Pond but it would probably be worthwhile to fieldcheck them another time.

From Lake Fairfax Regional Park, VA, to Carpers Farm Way (near Rte. 7) and back. Peggy Max and I were out in the area to visit my parents. On my turn running out, I stuck to the Rails to River Trail but coming back, I used a side trail for a ways just to see where it went. The side trail cut off the portion where the main trail climbs the hillside and stayed on or close to a buried sewer line. It was a nice day and around 60 F. I ran in shorts and a t-shirt. There was plenty of mud and some ice still on the trail. I almost fell a few times but all that happened was that I got muddy. The woods looked nice enough to perhaps extend the QOC Lake Fairfax map into one day.

At my turnaround at Carper's Farm Way, I noticed that the trail had been extended across on the other side of the road but didn't have time to go exploring. I had heard earlier that it had been extended to go up to the W&OD Trail. In 1999, I had tried to follow up along Difficult Run to the W&OD from very near the same place but that old horse trail had long ago disappeared. I'm glad it looks like they've restored it and I will someday have to come back and check it out.

C • CCT 2

Lake Needwood Park, Rockville, MD. With the jury that I was part of having reached a decision this afternoon, I got to head back to Lake Needwood to try to capture more of the trails there. It seems that there are plenty and more than I thought there would be. There are also many more rides and clearings on the west side than I had thought previously. Overall, this should still be easier to map than the Lake Frank areas. It's just that much more open. The trails on the west side are much more in the shade than those I went on on the east side. Therefore, they were fairly icy. It was around 40 F when I was running so the surface was wet and much more slippery than similar trails were earlier in the week.

With jury deliberations running late, I didn't get a chance to get a run in on the way home. I ate dinner and later rode while watching a movie.

Lake Needwood Park, Rockville, MD. With trial testimonies ending late in the afternoon, it was too late to get to judge's instructions, trial closing statements, and jury deliberations. The jury which I'm part of got to go home with daylight left and in my case, that meant hopping over a littel way to the park which in breaks I had been eyeing on the horizon from the 8th floor Montgomery County courthouse lobby.

Preparing for mapping Lake Needwood, I started running the trails on the southwest sides of the lake with my GPS. This was a bit slow since I went up and down some steep hills and did odd loops to trace and sometimes re-trace everything. Areas were icy too but most of the muddy parts were either frozen under or relatively dry. I'd been running here off-trail before several times but mostly at night. The woods looked great and were so much more open than what I've been mapping the last few months (only a mile away as the geese fly) on the north sides of Lake Frank. Together, Lake Frank, Lake Needwood and the Rock Creek valley south of them will make one big continuous but sometimes narrow map. Besides the trails going up and down, the areas covered today had rock, man made and dot knoll features on the low grounds. There weren't many other features on the hilltops or on the sometimes steep sides.

It was around freezing outside but I felt fine. The park is under the same 5:30pm curfew as the Lake Frank areas are for deer culling. I didn't see any wildlife.

Cabin John Regional Park, MD. From the Tennis Pavillion/Nature Center parking lot, Peggy and I went for a run together sort of. Though we came together we ran our own paces. I ran trails mostly along the eastern banks of Cabin John Creek. Running with a GPS, I recorded trail tracks for future mapping use. I often turned around or did loops to capture all I could in the short amount of time available. The trails had ice and mud. I had to go slow and even walk in places. The temperature was right around 40 F. I wasn't at work this early evening because I had been on jury duty in the day--not a lucky thing from my point of view. At least we recessed with just enough daylight left to allow for this.

I figured that after the races the other day, an easier day would be appropriate. Once on my bike I felt good. I spinned with ease at a good cadence and resistance.

Event: QOC: Lake Fairfax, VA
 

QOC: Lake Fairfax. For a warm-up, I walked and jogged a streamer-o course with Alexa Merka. Max was going to go with us but he changed his mind as he is prone to doing. It was Alexa's 5th birthday. Since it was our club's winter meeting, lots of people were around after the activites and we sang "Happy Birthday" to her.

QOC: Lake Fairfax, VA. The format for today was an unusual and fun one. We had a Qualifier sprint to start with. It was a quick course with a lot of open field running. There were a few legs through some woods. I never felt like I was running comfortably. I climbed okay enough but never ran with any speed; it was probably a function of my weight. I made some small baubles but did okay. I've never liked the contours on this map. They seem too generalized to me. They confused me on the one leg where they counted going to #4. Between #5 and #6 there was a huge +30 foot house or larger sized mound beside the road and it was unmapped--perhaps it was added after the initial mapping but it looked like it had ben there a long time. It was nice to be outside. The temperatures were in the mid-50s F. There were some slick icy spots and a little soft old snow in the woods. I think my qualifier time was 4th behind Dave Pruden, a young Norweigan, and Ted Good in that order.

C • Correction 1

QOC: Lake Fairfax Regional Park, VA. For the finals, racers were handicapped by both time like a reverse chase, and by course distances. The idea was that no matter who was running the first person to the finish line would be the winner for the day. I had qualified for the Final C course. The first starter took off 21:11 before me. Starting behind me were Ted Good (9 seconds), a young Norweigan (about +1 minute), and Dave Pruden (about 2 minutes).

Ted nearly caught me at the first control but had overshot on my right when I saw it on my left just into the woods from a field corner. We took separate routes to #2 with Ted climbing and me going around low to save strenghth for later. I got into some traffic from other runners and thought the control on a broad spur was too high. Like many mass start meets where we're both competing, Ted and I were together for a long way after that. Ted's tendancy to start faster and his generally better navigation kept him in front most of the way. When I got ahead going to #9, I made an error and chased him again going to #10. Eventually we got bunched-up with others and chaos ensued. It wasn't a completely mob-orienteering type of scene but there were trains and everyone was reacting to either leader errors or small mapping discrepancies. As we finished the last control in the woods we had a kilometer of open areas to go. I was in a pack with Ted Good leading, Dave Onkst, Dave Pruden and myself chasing. On a climb we were all fairly close to even and Ted faded. Going at threshold pace, I was in the lead but wasn't reading the map very well. Dave Pruden passed and stayed ahead to the end. I would gain on him only to wait at the punches on the last few controls. I'm not sure what my overall place for the day was. One thing to note was my heart rate measurements. Though I've only been measuring for about a year, I hit both the highest maximum and highest average rates that ever recorded. Since my times were not the fastest I've done in the last year, I conclude that I pushed hard while being out of shape. I find that significant because of the mental aspects of training and competing.

It was a fun day. We had nice food and club announcements afterward. Though just a local event, the volunteers for the event did a lot of extra preparations making it memorable.

C • Flag folding 2

Qualifier - Splits

Final C - Splits