Training Log Archive: DWildfogel

Shell Ridge/Diablo Foothills. US Team Trials A-meet, Long Brown. 3.8 km, 270 m climb. Fortunately, not as warm as yesterday. Scheduled start at 10:41, but starts were delayed by 11 mins.

Wore my trail shoes because my toes were sore from yesterday and the trail shoes are easier on my feet. This was fine except for a couple of times when contouring on the sides of very steep hills, where I had to struggle to maintain my forward momentum.

Pushed hard the whole race, realizing early on that this was going to be a test of running endurance. Pleased that I was able to run as well as I did. Several small bobbles, but no errors bigger than 30 seconds, so it was a very good run, resulting in a 9+ min margin of victory.

My route on RouteGadget.

1. At first glance, thought going straight would require down-up-down, so ran along the road instead. (In fact, a little contouring and then following the line of trees would have been a better route: 20 sec route choice error.) Followed the road to the junction, took the small trail across the terrace to the road again, went down the reentrant and followed the ditch down. At the end of the small clump of trees, peered into the ditch but didn’t see a flag; took a few more steps, peered in again, and there it was, where I’d looked the first time, but difficult to see because it was in a dark crevice. Additional 10 sec loss.

2. Rough compass up to road. Had planned to continue diagonally up the hillside, but it was too steep, so ran along the road almost to the sharp bend crossing the big reentrant, and then climbed straight up. Paused a few times to recover, and used those moments to plan the long leg to #3.

3. First thought was to go left towards where the big power line crosses the ridge, but there was no marked fence crossing there, so abandoned that idea. Contoured into the reentrant (tough hanging on to the side of the hill) then angled up to the road. (Hat got knocked off at one point, which is way I don’t like to wear a hat even though I should to protect me from the sun.) Forced myself to jog along the upgrade. As I rounded the bend towards the fence, saw Nancy, seemingly poised to cross. I called out to her that that wasn’t a legal crossing point; she said four other people had just crossed there. George told me later that there was actually a 2-meter wide gap in the fence there (which I didn’t see). Does that make it legal to cross? Anyway, continued up the trail to the marked crossing point. Saw Rich Parker heading up towards the saddle, but I had planned to go around the right side to save a few contours, so took the path heading SW and did just that. The hillside was so steep that I couldn’t run without losing my balance. So, this probably wasn’t a faster route, but it did save my legs a little. Diagonally down (steep!) towards the forest where #3 was (pretty easy to identify from these heights). Went around the edge of the big, forested reentrant on the other side of the road instead of going direct, probably a 20 sec route choice error. Contoured towards the control; I was just a little high. Rich was contouring out as I was coming in.

4. ENE to the road, force myself to keep running (passing Rich), all the way to the terrace NNW of the control. Swing around the side of the spur, descending a bit, into the forest - but no control. Realized it was much lower down than I had been thinking, so headed back and down, and saw a rootstock way down towards the bottom, and figured that must be it, and it was, though lower down than it looks on the map (as many people agreed). 20 sec error, giving Rich a chance to catch back up. Despite the error at the end, had a very good split even compared to the Green runners.

5. N along the bottom of the reentrant then take the NE fork up (walking) to the road junction. Take a quick drink at the water stop by the next gate. The road to the right looked tempting, but thought I’d save a couple of contours by contouring on the left side of the hill, and that worked out nicely. Crossed the trail, contoured through the reentrant, around the spur and into the bag in the next reentrant. As I came around the spur, saw Katie heading down the reentrant the control was in towards the bottom of the bigger, W-E reentrant.

6. Before punching 5 had already decided I would contour out rather than drop to the bottom. The sidehill running was a little difficult, but well worth the savings in climb. Crossed over to the hillside with the control, and angled up towards the rocks. Had to walk, but caught up to Katie at the control.

7. Quick exit as I’d had plenty of time to pick at my route on the climb up - didn’t even need to look at my map. Contoured N, caught the little trail, into the saddle, saw the top of the reentrant a little to the right, down to the control.

8. Angled up, W, to the trail I’d left. Trying to run along that trail was no better than being on the hillside, so cut further left and around the N side of the hill. Going down to the road was really steep and treacherous: had to sort of slide from tree to tree, braking myself by grabbing onto the trunks. Got to the road right at the where it meets the bottom of the subtle reentrant, then angled up and around the N side of that hill until I saw the rocks, and then the flag, maybe a half a contour lower.

9. Down the nose of the spur to the trail junction, then try to push it along the trail to the T-intersection. Trying to pick out the map detail in the saddle to come, inadvertently stopped to get a better look - sign of a fading brain! Left at the junction, figuring I’d angle up to the saddle, and lo and behold there was an unmapped trail going exactly where I wanted to go. Forced myself to keep moving up to the saddle. Should’ve been easy from here - just follow the reentrant down - but my fading brain was giving me an uneasy feeling and I probably checked the map a half-dozen times as I descended, finally spotting the control.

10. Left, contouring around the hill, having trouble making sense of anything (and realizing my brain has had it). Pause a few times, finally get it in my head that the cliff is very near the bottom of the reentrant leading to the Finish, start cutting down and see what looks like the top of the cliff (and Chuck, up considerably higher, looking down), head there and right to the control. Lost maybe 25 secs.

F. Here’s how much my brain was fading: the Finish just didn’t look like a Finish to me, and I started worrying that there was actually one more control to go - even checked my clue sheet to see what the code would be for this one. Finally sorted it out, maybe slowing down a little and costing a second or two. Definitely pushed myself to the limit.

Long, uphill walk/jog to start; starts were delayed by 11 mins, so had to jog around for another 5 mins before actually starting.

Long brown - Splits

Event: Run Black Diamond
 

The usual weekly accumulation of morning stretching. Eased off on pushups and core exercises as the week wore on, resting for the Team Trials A-meet.

Black Diamond Mines. US Team Trials A-meet (hosted by GetLost). Brown Middle, 3.17 km, 155m climb. Start at 3:24 pm. Very warm day. 1st of 13.

Did quite well in unusual terrain. Passed all 11 people who started in front of me (at 2 min intervals). Got a bit dehydrated towards the end (no water on the course) and had trouble focusing, making three 20 - 30 sec errors. No error more than 30 secs on the whole course.


My route on RouteGadget.

1. Took a few seconds at the start triangle to make sense of the vast vista in front of me vs the skinny terrain on the map, and then to make doubly sure that all I had to do was run down the road until under the power line and then cut across. Ran a little past the power line to get around some fight, took a bearing and proceeded. The terrain had many undulations I couldn’t identify on the map, but given how good the visibility was I figured I could ignore all that and just compass and pace count. Soon identified the trees just N of the control, and once through them saw the notch and then the bag. Did this leg nearly a minute faster than anyone else on Brown and 9th fastest out of 32 on Red, only 26 secs behind AliC.

2. Since #3 was so close to #2 and looked easier to get to, decided to head there. Down alongside the spur, making sure to see #5. Debating whether to go out to the road or to try to find my way between the patches of green when I saw a fence in front of me, and then located it on the map. That swung the balance: headed for the corner of the fence and out to the road. Quickly down the road and through a gate, excellent attack point for #3. (Saw Katie and then Janet incorrectly heading N on the road.) Chuck was coming down the hill as I headed up. Nailed #3 no problem. Slow down to navigate carefully for the last 50m. Surprised by a huge mound of dirt. Went up and over it, couldn’t see any contours on the map corresponding to it, but realized it must be the little patch of yellow NW of the cliff. So looked down to the left, saw the top of the cliff and Rich Parker about to go down there (and Rosemary heading past it). I now had a 3:18 lead on Brown, only 9:25 in.

3. Directly back to 3 without going over the mound. Janet and Katie were coming the other way, heading to 2.

4. Down the hill towards the gate I came through earlier, but stayed on the right side, running parallel to the fence, trying to make sense of all the detail in the circle. Surprised (again) when I came to some large dirt mounds, but realized that, like the one near 3, these must be the slim yellow patches on the map. Passed Rich, heading for the green between the mounds. Do I really have to go through that fight? Just then George came from the E and dived in and I went in after him, soon saw the bag and passed him while we were crawling.

5. Out the other end of the fight, quick bearing, recognized the long spur with 5 on it, and began the slog up. Had to walk most of it. Chuck was about 100m ahead.

6. Around the patch of trees, bearing helps me pick out the right hilltop, just a matter of slogging up. Walked, but walked hard, making up ground on Chuck.

7. Now an even bigger slog. No trouble picking out where to go with the huge earth bank ahead. Decided to climb up onto the grassy spur for better footing and shorter distance. Used the lone tree as an attack point, crossed a steep-sided reentrant and went around the little spur to the bag, just as Chuck was punching in.

8. Spent a lot of the climb to 7 looking for a way not to have to continue to climb to get to 8, but I couldn’t spot one. (There was a way, I just didn’t recognized it on the map; perhaps I should have been looking more at the terrain across the way than at the map.) Pushed myself ever upward, having to pause 3 times to rest, but finally got to the top. Around the top of the spur, got my strength back, ran across the first road to the second, then down between the two patches of white, coming around the broad spur below the powerline, descending a little as I went. Got to the top of the long reentrant leading down to the control, verified by the little tree at the bottom of it, and headed down. Probably lost :20 - :30 by the route choice, but executed it very well.

9. Down, then across the sharp reentrant (not difficult knowing it was OK to lose more altitude), head for the trail cutting down towards 9. Faked out a little by an animal trail, realized it wasn’t next to the gully so kept going and got to the actual trail. Down alongside the gully, trying to identify a pit on the map (oops, misinterpreted the clue), but just headed for the lower part of the gully, and when I got there saw Sheila Cotter, the first starter on Brown, heading down. A little puzzled that there was no pit, but it was clearly the correct control.

10. Sheila and an F21 headed down the road, but I thought I’d be clever and avoid going down and up the sides of the broad reentrant in front of #10, so headed for the road junction. (This was a 20 sec route choice mistake: one of the contour lines in the broad reentrant was a form line, so I only saved 5m climb, and went too far out of the way to do that.) NE from the junction on the little trail, but not able to match what I was seeing to the jumble of stuff on the map. Pace count ran out, noticed the (dry) pond on my right, realized I needed to go N over the spur, which I did, getting to the bag right behind Sheila. :20 navigational error (on top of the :20 route choice error), my first nav error of the day (and the first leg on which I didn’t have the fastest Brown split).

11. Knew in advance that the first part of the leg should just be to go straight, so proceeded without hesitation (as I had been able to do up to this point on each of the legs). Used the E-W reentrant and the patches of white in it to guide me to the depression, and hit it right on.

12. This is where the dehydration must have kicked in. Took a bearing and looked ahead, but couldn’t convince myself that what I was seeing was correct - not that anything looked wrong, it was just that I couldn’t make sense of it, so I didn’t move for 15 secs. Finally decided everything was OK, and went a little left of the straight line, crossed the fence and got on top of the N-S elongated knoll. Now I should’ve been on the NNW edge of the circle (I was) and I expected to see woods ahead, but instead I saw the side of spur out in a field. (The map is a bit wrong here.) Again I froze because it just didn’t make sense to my fading brain. Finally saw two F21’s converging from different directions to a spot on the side of the spur just out of my view, so figured that must be where the bag was, and it was.

13. Mounted the spur, struggled my way up to the road and turned left. Plan was to turn right on the heavy trail W of #13. Looked up and saw the two F21’s turning right on a trail, so followed them. There was a gully on the left, but it didn’t look right, so I crossed it hoping things might match up better, but they didn’t. Then realized that the trail we turned on was 150m S of the one I meant to turn on and that we were actually off the map. Headed N, crossed the heavy trail and then the gully, and quickly spotted the bag. Very fortunate that this was only a 30 sec error.

14. Proceeded gingerly down the reentrant (my toes were hurting) to 14, with the two F21’s flying by me in the process.

A rather strange run in that I did so well despite so often seeing things in the terrain that I couldn’t identify on the map. I guess that forced me to simplify the map, which turned out to be a good strategy on this course (but might have been a disaster in the part of the terrain that the other advanced courses went through but Brown didn’t).

On the 4 common legs with Green, averaged about 6th out of 17.

Long uphill walk to the start in the hot sun.

Warm up by jogging down to the cemetery and back and jogging near the start. Didn't want to do too much in the hot sun.

Too tired for a cool down, but did stretch.

Vlad grabbed me to serve on a jury (with Patrick Nuss and Cristina Luis) for a protest about these courses being too long (winning time on Blue was 57 mins).

Middle Brown - Splits

Added links to RouteGadget, QuickRoute and WinSplits to my description of Sunday's race at Pt. Pinole.

Front of house. Just warming up. Knees and shins creaky.

2 loops: 614, 522

Cool down

Event: BAOC: Pt Pinole
 

Pt. Pinole, 4.5km / 40m / 24c. Course were advertised as Middle and Orange (though I would call them advanced) of 3 lengths: Short, Medium (which I ran) and Long.

Projected to 43:30 - 44:00 on Long Orange, which would’ve been good for 9 out of 52, ahead of Werner, Kent, Derek, Steve H., Penny. Dead even with Kent on all the common legs (everything but my #9), 1 - 2 mins ahead of the other 4.

Only extended time loss (:50) was on #15, due mostly to unmapped ditch that looked to me (and Francois, the winner on Long Orange) like a road. Half-dozen bobbles (:05 - :15) totaling about 1 minute loss. Ran pretty well, having to walk only a few times on some of the uphills.

RouteGadget, QuickRoute, Winsplits.

1. Straight, nailed it.

2. Picked my way around the two white patches, sacrificing a little distance in order to not be slowed by deadfall. Across the big field, tried to pick out thin spot in forest prior to road and keep that on my right while keeping the broad shallow reentrant on my left. Thought I did the well, and nailed the control, but Mikkel Conradi had gotten out in front of me so hard to judge whether watching him helped.

3. Quick bearing, spotted the bag very soon after leaving #2.

4. Able to pick out the small white patch on the other side of the forest and then the lone tree beyond, so nailed it, though again I spotted Mikkel heading towards it, too (though I believe I would’ve nailed it anyway).

5. Undecided when to leave the road, stayed on a bit long and had to back track 15m. Lost :10.

6. Good job of identifying the patches of white and then the rootstock from a long distance.

7. Nailed my attack point, the road-trail intersection. Slowed a little to get a good bearing. Some unmapped brush ahead, thought I’d go around to the left, but spotted Lauren Knight more to the right seeming to punch in, so went around to the right, got to a rootstock but no control. Look at map, figured I had to go just a little SE, turned and spotted the bag - and, surprisingly, Mikkel coming back to it. Lost :12.

8. Wound up on the N side of the hill (maybe I didn’t check the clue) and spotted the control 12m to my left. Lost :05.

9. Felt tired for the first time, had to slow a little on the upgrade. Forced a little to the right by vegetation, hit the road a little to the right of the opening to the big reentrant. Leaving the road, took longer than I expected to get to the clearing, so I slowed a little trying to look around to make sure I hadn’t gone too far before finally spotting it just a little to my left. Joe Huberman (on Long) came from the W and punched in 15 secs ahead of me.

10. Rough compass out to road. Woods looked thick so stayed on the road parallel to the correct direction, spotted the rootstock easily.

11. Rough compass towards corner of big field. Catching up to Lauren Knight and another runner. See they’re headed a bit too far left; nail it.

12. Cautious because this looks tricky. Spot the elevated ground to the left, use that to guide me to the “stand” of rootstocks. Have to stop to check the clue and map to see which one I’m aiming for. Spot the bag from 25m away.

13. Straight. While crossing the road, check that I’m about the right distance from the junction. See the rootstock nearer the broad spur, veer a little right and soon see the desired rootstock.

14. Angle to road, then over to water stop. Don’t drink.

15. Turned into the big reentrant, then ran up the right side, heading for the hill top. Puzzled when an overgrown ditch appeared in front of me. On RouteGadget, I can see that it’s there (as a narrow reentrant), but on the race map, the control circle and connecting line obscure some of the detail. Decided to just head up the hill anyway, and the control was there. Lost :10.

16. Biggest time loss of the day. Contoured around the hill, spotted the building at the top, crossed what I thought was a road (turned out to be an unmapped ditch with parallel “tracks” that could be mistaken for tire tracks - I went out later to check this) and a depression below, so went down there but no control. Puzzled by a couple of ditches I wasn’t expecting. Finally realized that I hadn’t actually crossed the road, so the map now made sense. Crossed over and saw two big mounds with seeming earth banks on their downhill sides. (Realized later that these were mapped as dot knolls, but didn’t figure that out during the race.) There was a ditch between them, so I was hoping that that was the ditch leading to the pit with control; went around the nearer mound, and there was the bag. Lost :50.

17. Aim a little to the right of the big hill, hit the road just left of the junction, soon see the control.

18. Probably a little too cavalier with my compass bearing, but there was crappy vegetation in that direction, so tried to loop around to the right. Fortunately, spotted the bag, more straight ahead rather than a bit to the left as I expected.

19. Uphill (tiring), right next to the man-made objects, straight down, soon see the bag.

20. Straight, staying level. Spot the elongated knoll in front of where I expected the control, contour around it’s right side, right into the bag.

21. Run along the contour, but features aren’t making sense, so I stop. To my surprise, Joe H comes flying by. Realize I’ve been reading the leg to #22 instead of #21, so now things make sense. Lost :15.

22. Use the elongated knoll just S of the depression to guide me.

23. Consider contouring a bit, but realize I’m just about done so I should push it. Cross the road and pass Joe. Try to keep moving and not get drawn off looking behind every bush because the one I want is down by the road. Good job of recognizing it without hesitating.

24. Straight, just left of the crest. On the road for 15 - 20m. Use the woods in the distance as a guide, nail it.

Warm up