Training Log Archive: Nadim

Summer Short Series: Michael Dickey setup a pretty nice 6 hour rogaine by making a map of Sugarloaf Mountain, at the SE end of Frederick County, MD; just over the line from Montgomery County. He must have put in a lot of time setting up the map--one of the joys of being retired. The contours were good, based on LiDAR; 5m interval. Many trails big and small were shown. He added additional useful terrain features such as cliffs, boulders, clearings and more. The scale was 1:15,000 and printed on two sides of 11"x17" paper.

We started at the Sugarloaf Mountain West View Parking Lot which is nealy on top of the mountain. Though I thought about it several times, I hadn't been there in decades. Peggy and I "ran" together. We spent most of the time walking but we did run where it was good enough to. QOC had evaluated this areas sometime before I joined the club, and had thought it to be too green. Many parts were just fine, even though we're in the midst of summer. Some areas were a little too steep, rocky, or had low vegetation (stilt grass, ferns, blueberries, mile-a-minute vine) including deadfall. We had the added difficulty of it being very humid. There was early fog while driving-in. The temperatures at the 8:30 start were a little above 70 F, and the expected high was to be 92 F.

Michael accurately set a lot of nice controls with appropriate point values. We took our controls in this order: 52 (2), 47 (2), 43 (1), 44 (4), 40 (3), 38 (4), 33 (2), 31 (3), 34 (2), 32 (3), 36 (3), 42 (2), 39 (1), 37 (3), 41 (3), 48 (1), 50 (2), 49 (3). Our point total without any bonus was thus 43. We probably got a point or so for turning in a Heineken beer bottle too. With the map on two side of a paper, Peggy and missed some better opportunities for points. At 47, we could have picked up 42, 36, and 35 for 9 points, instead of the 3 we got with 45 and 43.





We actually lost a lot of time on #44, a 4 point control. On our initial pass of that we used the trails, left from a bend, set different bearings and crossed the cliffs wide enough apart that neither of us was sure which cliff we'd passed. Though we'd found a charcoal terrace that we presumed was the southern on in the area, we never saw the boulder and were just a little higher than the control. We turned back up the ridge, saw Tom Nolan going the other way, and went 200m the wrong way and below before turning back. I actually got tangled up in some small branches, fell and injured my right knee on a protruding rock. That added to the pain I'm still feeling in my left big toe metatarsal. When we finally found the control, it was a little more obscured than other controls due to there being greener vegetation around it. We'd hunted 40 minutes which was a real setback. Dasa Merkova had come in nearly behind us and had barely missed before too, but we gave her enough of clue leaving that she probably found it quickly after.

At #31 there were many mapped and unmapped larger boulders. I got suckered into going too low. I should have known better from the change in steepness of the contours. We lost about 4-5 minutes there and when leaving we saw Addie. She was probably able to find it pretty quickly after that.

Later at #34, there was a great cliff overlook that we stopped to take pictures from. We didn't see the control immediately so after drinking we had second thoughts about it being on a cliff below us--that cliff was far enough below and so rock as to be a time suck and a bit dangerous. We climbed back but went to a different spur before coming back to the one we'd initially went to. This time we found it quickly. We'd probably lost 17 minutes and we gave the control away to a young man who'd gone solo and came in just at the right time.





We got back on track for a while after that. We were happy to have beaten the young guy we'd seen at #34 by getting to #32 before him. We hit our next controls accurately though the climb to #42 was wearing both Peggy and I down. What we missed due to the map being on both sides of the paper, was another shot at #35, a four point control.

For the rest of the route we spiked everything. We were just slow. When we were going down a trail pass by a group going up, we admitted to them that we were doing our old people shuffle (right knee hurt going downhill; left toe hurt on rocky ground). As time remaining was getting short, we decided at #50 to again deviate from our plan by getting #49 for 3 points instead of #54 for 2. #49 was on charcoal terrace on a somewhat vague hillside and away from the finish. Peggy started getting concerned about wasting time and losing points because we'd be late, but just in the nick of time, I popped over the last rise to spike it. Without Michael's good mapping and LiDAR, that could have been a disaster. We hurried back from there. Though we had a chance to get #54 again from a trail bend, Peggy was too tired to consider dropping down any more. We continued on up and finished with 10 minutes to spare.

This was another great Summer Short Series event for us. The SSS training exercises this year have been really good and of high quality. It's nice to see the many returning and new contributors who put these on!

From Northfield Rd., to the Bethesda Metro Station.

Washington, D.C. From 12th & Independence Ave., SW, down The Mall along Independence Ave. and the Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln Memorial, to Ohio Dr. to the Rock Creek Trail, to Calvert St., to the Woodley Park/Zoo Metro Station. It was fairly warm and humid outside. I seemed to get a good start with a quicker first mile. Though this wasn't a fast run, it was faster than I'd run it in a long time. Once again I couldn't stop sweating afterward. Though I wrung out my shirt and shorts as much as I could and waited a while before getting on the trail after the run, I still ended up with a sizeable puddle under me.

From the Bethesda Metro Station to Northfield Rd. My calves were cramping as I rode so I slowed down.

I dropped Max off at school for his first Cross Country practice. He was still a little nervous and asked for advice. He later cycled back home.

I worked late and then made a big dinner for Max and I. After eating it was too late and I was too full. I suffice to live this day vicariously. Max said his Cross Country team had about 75 people. I thought that was huge but then I remember that my own high school team grew to around 45-55 boys and girls. For his first team workout the freshman he ran with opted for an easy 4 mile group run.

From Northfield Rd., to the Bethesda Metro Station.

From the Bethesda Metro Station to Northfield Rd.

I'd been having trouble with my iPhone. My Windows PC won't recognize it and it's been that way for a while. I decided to go to the Apple Store after work and they recommended I replace it. Since I didn't have a good backup at home on my PC, I needed to backup wirelessly. The Genius in the store told me it'd be best if I did the backup in the store, and that it'd be quick. It started to look okay with a 15 minute wait but eventually that grew and grew to a 40 minute wait. It estimated a 38 minute wait by the time the store was 15 minutes from closing at 9pm so I headed home. Needless to say, the backup failed; since the data can be large, it only happens over Wi-Fi. With pictures, music and some other files the storage used on my phone was over 100GB. I got the backup started at home again and by the time I was going to bed, it still showed several hours of backup time remaining.

Max was probably a little nervous about the next day, his first day of Cross Country practice. He planned to run this evening so he and I did it together. He likes the quiet streets at night and this standard loop of mine was fine for that. We talked about what he might expect to see tomorrow and how running is really something to be adapted to, and gauged over a longer time. I hoped that he'd just find some buddies to run with and to enjoy it.

By the time my Apple phone backup finished the next day, it was only 1.3 GB, since the pictures backup separately and other things in the cloud already don't get backed up again at all. I even had backups of most of pictures on my desktop computer but at least I have everything from the last few months backed up now.

From Cedar Ln., the Rock Creek Trail to Ken-Gar Park, to Plyers Mill Rd., to Connecticut Ave. to Howard Ave./Kensington Pkwy., to the Rock Creek Trail, to Cedar Ln. I had an appointment scheduled for 10am. Since it didn't make sense for me to go to work and leave as soon as I got there, I used the time to run. I think it was 71 F when I started. It felt nice in the shade. Gradually there was less of that. If my splits are accurate it looks like I slowed more when there wasn't shade than when I was climbing. I felt like I was slowing going gradually downhill in the sun, and later in the shade I was able to pick up the pace again. I definitely felt warmer as I went but when I got finished my car still reported 71 F which is odd. I worked on my stride, mostly my right leg. When I weighed-out, even though I'd already drank 2 glasses of water, I was 188.5--lowest in a long while.

From Northfield Rd., to the Bethesda Metro Station. I was feeling rather tired and I didn't want to push to keep from getting sweaty in my work clothes.

From the Bethesda Metro Station to Northfield Rd. I was already a little sweaty from walking around Bethesda so when I got on my bicycle, I felt cooler. I picked-up the pace as I went.

Waldorf, MD. After dropping Samantha of to a weeklong summer camp, Peggy and I started cycling from Theodore Green Blvd. at the eastern end of the Indian Head Rail Trail, to Bumpy Oak Rd., and back. The trail was well graded but we seemed to be going downhill or flat the whole way out. We were probably riding into the wind (gentle) so that helped coming back. This end of the trail was not quite as scenic as the part Peggy and I rode in June. It was however, just as quiet. We overlapped sections of the trail a little but we've now ridden the whole of the trail. There were a lot of young deer jumping onto and off of the trail. They could be seen from far away. The many benches along the way seemed to have been dedicated by various donors. They had quotes routed into the recycled plastic boards and sometimes the quotes were interesting. I had left my watch at home so I'll have to rely on Peggy's measurement of time.