Training Log Archive: AliC

Setting streamers with Alex, Brendan, Giacomo for NEOC's Team Day fundraiser (May 20th @ Breakheart- come!) meet. I haven't been on the organizing/vetting side of things too much before, kinda fun to have a good check out and contemplate appropriateness of things for control sites, and esp for white/yellow courses.

Embarrassingly, I set one of my controls wrong to start with. Yeah, we'll need to change *that* one... =)

C • Vetting 3

Back out, testing yellow. But legs were not too springy, so didn't really race it. Plus good to check out things more. All pretty fine, but we'll shorten it a control, hope folks enjoy!

And for a short 3rd round, first few controls of green, good for some feedback on some stuff, plus Garmin'ed a new trail that needs adding to the map.

Drills for health. Or un-injuredness. Becoming more drizzly...

Interesting trip home on Peter Pan, bus windshield wipers kept breaking, and it was pouring.... awesome. Driver had to keep pulling over on the side of I-90 and fixing them, about ever 5 miles... But, in the end, finally home!!

Thanks to a ride from Magnus, headed up to Nottingcook for UNO's meet organized by Bob Lux.

Great fun, awesome to have a nice long course at a local meet! Woods were already a bit thick, because it's more hemlock-y and pine-y, so just lots of dense vegetation that you need to be ninja-eque through.

My plan was to really have planned my route to the next control before I got to each control, but I found it such a battle to just keep contact with the map while being battered by branches that I didn't really succeed at that... to continue working on.

I had two major mistakes, one was a drift-off/pushed by green at the end of a long leg, think I just had to keep up a bit more focus and look at my compass more (8). The other was a didn't-quite-go-far-enough/distracted by two other runners in the vicinity (17). I was also really slow compared to Brendan on the first 3 controls, he basically made up 3 minutes to me by #3!!! Gosh-a-roni. Guess I was partly a bit hesitant, party a bit slow through the dense woods and partly he was just cookin'.

Had a good fun run around (mostly a bit behind) Magnus for 5-ish controls in the 3rd quarter of the race, he was running well, I couldn't quite get ahead. I just barely snuck ahead confidently descending to #15, but then my mistake at #17 ended up back behind. About half of the controls in the race, it seemed, I was just leaving as Brendan was coming in, but he never quite snuck ahead. Still, he was 2 minutes up at the end, despite having totally missed the water control and thus battling some serious tired/dehydrationess at the end...

1387/2000

I was tired, but Daddy-o said we had to go sprint-yellow.... so Magnus and I geared up and did. I started 2 min back, got him to 9, but tiiiiired. =)

Was very different in character, mostly all out in the open rough yellow, kinda like running on moorland. Misplaced #3 was too bad, but eh.

1399/2000

Blue - Splits

Yellow - Splits

Woo, mischief managed (talk given) and a gorgeous day in Bavaria! Finally with time to head out for a run... Ran all around, must admit, not with full knowledge of where I was all the time, but knew enough to find my way back. Garmin died for last bit, when I just ran towards the Research center and back.

Then in to Munich itself for Ethiopian with one of my co-PhD students who now works at ESO here, so good to catch up, meet his girlfriend (moved in!) and eat scrumptiousness!

My german is not doing so well, the words are not flying into my brain at a helpful time... suppose even reviewing the smallest smidge probably woulda helped, but timecrunch!

C • Lost in Bavaria 3

C • Bavaria 3

C • literary reference 2

In Germany, astronomy-meeting time! It's in Garching, a suburb of Munich that is this huge physics/mathy center. You emerge from the U-Bahn and there are 4 Max Plank institutes (Astronomy, Extraterrestial Physics, Quantum Optics, Plasma Physics), the headquarters of ESO, the Math/Technical university, and some other things that I probably haven't figure out what they are yet. It's impressive.

But I give my talk tomorrow, and it's still not done and there's a full day of meeting today. Minor panic. I get to workout again when I either have a fully-fledged talk ready to give or it's actually done. The latter may come first...

C • Talk 6

Core + travel hammies snuck in before dinner at the pizzeria. One of our group is Italian, he finds German food insufferable...