Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Webster Rec Center. 10 people in attendance -- Cheryl, me, Jayne, Andy, Sal, John, Pat, Gail, Debbie, Mike (not Mike S and not Mike I).

Some good games, some not so great games ... trailsnail can probably guess the player whose presence tended to make the games not so great. :)

Afternoon walk-in pickleball at the Rec Center. 9 people total, I think. Quite a few good games. An improvement over this morning.

As expected, I'm not continuing to play as well as I did this past Monday night. Not terrible, but more error prone than I'd like.

Subbing at the JCC in a "bracket" league for Richard Henzel. I had a blast -- my partner and both of our opponents were all pretty close to my level, and all were consistent players so we had a lot of long competitive points. I probably played as well as I ever have and we wound up winning 2 of the 3 games. Lots of fun.

Webster Rec center. 3 courts, around 12 players for most of the session, up to around 14-15 for a while.

Mid-day walk with Homer, on a semi-sunny, but fairly cold (33 F) and quite windy (WNW at 30 mph according to the NWS) day. Over to Finn Park and back, but not around the field.

Late-morning walk with Homer around the big block.

Three dog encounters, all of which went well. Homer is most definitely mellowing in his old age, as far as meeting strange-to-him dogs is concerned.

A leisurely walk at Ellison Wetlands with Homer and Cheryl and Greg and Freddie and lots of out of town relatives -- Brian, Andrea, Tom, Lou, Sarah, Andy, Noelle, and Adam.

Mid-day walk in Corbett's Glen, starting from the Penfield Road parking lot. With Cheryl, Andrea, Brian, and Homer. Time and distance are rough estimates. Great morning -- sunny, mid 50's. Lots of people at the park, the parking lot was in overflow mode.

Webster Rec center. 7 people: trailsnail, Paul, Mike, Debbie, Robin, Nancy, and me. Had some good games when I was on the 4 person court and did some worthwhile drills when I was in the threesome.

Genesee Valley Park, first real mapping outing. Too cold. I had hoped to go in the morning, but it was definitely too cold then. So I waited until afternoon, but it had only warmed up marginally; not quite warm enough for my bare hands to be comfortable. After a bit more than an hour, my hands were too cold to write, so I bagged it. Got a moderate amount done, though.

C • U of R camp 6

Looks like I need to change my AP name to Pirata Mojado.

Read Ian Smith's log if this doesn't make any sense ...

C • Mi nombre es 1

Actually a combination of a dog walk and a "pre-mapping" visit to Genesee Valley Park, one of the parks that we're planning on totally re-mapping.

I mainly wanted to get a feel for what areas that are currently mapped we want to have on the new map vs what areas that are currently mapped it might not make sense to have on the new map. For example, the golf course, since I'm assuming we're prohibited from using it for orienteering, just like in Durand. Even today, there were quite a few golfers out, so scheduling a meet very early in the spring or late in the fall isn't a way of making sure there are no golfers to contend with.

If we absolutely can't use the golf course (which I'm pretty sure is the case), then it might not make sense to map some of the small areas alongside the golf course, which we'd have access to but are fairly small and not that interesting by themselves.

Also, if the map is mainly a Sprint map, the map would be way too big to fit on a reasonable sized piece of paper if we were to include everything that is currently mapped. Not to mention that there's no way that a sprint-distance course could venture that far south.

On the other hand, the area on the NW side of the Genesee River (where the ice rink, swimming pool, and tennis courts are) is probably worth mapping. It's about the same size as the currently-mapped portion of the park that is north of the canal.

My GPS (the latest "new" one, from about a month ago) continues to mis-behave. The main issue with this one is a new one, relative to previous ones. It spontaneously likes to turn itself off. One thing that nearly always causes it to go off is putting it on my wrist. It'll be on, having acquired satellites, then I go to put it on, and I find that it's off. I can turn it on and it will be fine, for a while, then something else (not involving pushing the on off switch) perturbs it and it's off again. This must have happened around 8 times today. I used the time and distance from the club GPS that I was carrying.

Plus, I just noticed that although the 205 says I went around 5.7 miles, it only has a track that is from the last time it spontaneously went off until I got back to the car.

Indoor pickleball at the rec center. Around 12-14 people. Overall, I played about as bad as I've played in a while. Not the most enjoyable day. Next time will be better, I'm sure.

Whiting Road. Mainly checking out trails that had been mapped as indistinct to see which ones should come off of the map. The need to do this came up as a result of the Trail Challenge, where one potentially very important indistinct trail was essentially non-existent where it was supposed to intersect with Whiting Rd. It caused lots of the people in the race, myself included, major problems, because once at where the trail was supposed to be, there was no easy alternate way. I felt particularly bad because Rob S. asked me prior to the race (we could see our maps before the start) about that trail and whether it would really be passable, and I assured him that it would be!

It turns out, based on my outing today, that the trail really does exist still, EXCEPT for about 15-20 meters closest to Whiting Rd. Since the vegetation is very nasty in this section (at a minimum medium green), with the trail non-existent, there was really no reasonable way to navigate from Whiting Rd to where the trail really did exist.

Several other indistinct trails need to be taken off of the map totally or else shortened. In several other cases, the trail exists but no longer intersects the blazed trail.

In one case, though, a mapped indistinct trail got "promoted" to a regular trail.

Also, two new or semi-new maintained trails weren't on the current map, and I now have them mapped.

A discouraging thing is that the vegetation mapping really needs to be improved. In some cases, it's because it has actually changed, due to clearing of brush by the town, or just from changes over time. In many other cases, though, I just didn't do a real consistent job of mapping it in the first place. Mapping trails is easy compared to accurately mapping vegetation, which is why this observation is so discouraging.

Webster Rec Center. Six people -- Cheryl, Jayne, Robin, Dwight, Mike S. but only for 2 games, and me.

Tues afternoon drop-in pickleball at the Rec Center. 12 people at the max.

Mid day walk. Cool (37 deg) but not that windy so it was reasonably pleasant.

Webster Rec Center, indoors. Only 6 people, but that was OK because there were enough BB players, we only had room for 1 court.

Over to Finn Park and back.

At Webster Rec center. We had a bumper crop of pickleball players today -- probably around 20 people with 3 courts to work with most of the time. Huge range of ability, also. I had about 4 really competitive games (and I think, sad to say, I may have lost all 4 -- no check that, I did win one), and about 4-5 rather non-competitive games because of the very wide range of abilities of the people in the foursome.

Indoors at the Rec Center. Maximum of 13 people, but we had fewer most of the time.

Walked Homer over to the next neighborhood and around the block. Short walk for him today because I'm planning a longer walk home from the car rental place where I'll drop off my rental car, now that my car is back from the collision shop. (After getting pretty seriously damaged in a collision with a deer -- I'm guessing the deer got much more seriously damaged than the car though ....)

A fairly brisk walk from the car rental place back home. Still pretty cool out, but I warmed up a bit too much; however I couldn't really find the right combination of unzipped coat vs zipped, hat on vs off, or gloves on vs off to be at the perfect temperature, neither too warm or two cold. But it was quite tolerable.

Another mid-afternoon dog walk, to Finn Park, continuing to the large field near Gravel Rd, Gravel Rd to the Rt 104 path, to Maple, north on Maple and back home. For some reason it seemed longer than yesterday's walk (probably because I was further from home at the furthest point) but was actually slightly shorter.

We had a dog encounter about a half mile from home on the way back that I was a bit worried about at first, but it turned out fine. A bulldog that I had never seen around before was out by itself on a corner lot. It saw us and started walking across the street towards us. It looked threatening but in retrospect I think that's just because that's how bulldogs look -- short, heavy, kind of a mean looking face. So I was worried about it, and I was also worried about Homer, because he sometimes acts aggressive towards dogs he's never met, especially if he can't tell if they are friendly. But the bulldog was fine, just wanted to greet Homer and me, and Homer acted fine in return, no barking or growling or threatening posture. He's definitely mellowed with age, a few years ago, I don't think he would have handled a meeting like this as well!

Soon after the bulldog got to were we were, a lady came out of the house; I asked if it was her dog, she said yes, came over to get it, and apologized. She had a little trouble corralling it because it didn't even have a collar on, so nothing to grab it by. It came back towards me, I petted it a bit, and the lady finally got it rounded up. No harm done, just a few anxious moments until I figured out the dog was quite nice.

Spur of the moment attempt at getting a pickleball game going this morning. Only 3 people for around 45 minutes, then Cheryl showed up, straight from her water exercise class, the a couple of other guys, Sal and Mike (a new guy). Overall, not one of the more enjoyable pickleball sessions, but at least the 3 of us, when it was only 3, worked on some touch-shot drills which I'm very bad at and can use some work.

Mid to late afternoon walk with Homer, over to Finn Park, around the big field (with a stop at the creek, for no good reason, as he declined to do his normal swim -- must be 37 degrees is a bit below even his comfort zone for a water dip), then out to Maple, Rt. 104 to Bay, and then home. Not a bad day, very little wind. I was reasonably bundled up and neither too hot nor too cold, for the most part.

Indoors, at the Rec Center. Three courts, 15 people, nice sized group. Got to sit out for a breather only very briefly (couple of minutes) before a game on one of the other courts ended and they were looking for a new foursome and needing the few of us sitting out.

All in all, I played so-so. Not terrible but way more mistakes that I'd like to make. One thing that wasn't problematic, fortunately, was my serve, as I didn't miss any all day, despite playing with a few people who had quite a few misses and seemed to be spreading serve-missing around to others near them. I won't say who that was but trailsnail might be able to shed some light ... :)

C • arm 2

C • mis-serve virus 2

Event: ROC - Mendon Ponds Park - Night-O
 

Cheryl and I had signed up to do the night-O, but I was having trouble thawing out from taking lots of pictures at the trail races in the morning, and Cheryl worked all afternoon at the library which had minimal (or maybe no) heat due to an electrical power issue. So neither one of us was real eager to venture out in the cold drizzle.

We still decided to go down to the meet, though; I had neglected to bring the checks for the mailed-in entries for the trail race to the race this morning, and I was hoping one of the Worner clan would be there so I could pass them off, eventually to Lindsay. (I was in luck, Linda was there.) Plus we thought we'd offer to help if needed. Turned out that there was a job I could do, which was manning the computer for people to download at the end of their runs; my main job being reminding people to turn in their e-punch sticks if they were borrowed from the club. So I felt semi-useful.

Then we stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home, and found some interesting-looking frozen Indian meals, plus a few other things that we wouldn't normally find at other stores. So it was a somewhat productive trip to Mendon and back even though no orienteering happened for Cheryl or me. (Got rid of the pile of checks, helped at the meet (slightly), and got some interesting-looking food items.)

C • TJ 4

At the Rec Center; drop-in play on Th afternoon for the bargain price of $2. We had 19 people at the peak, with 4 courts going.