Training Log Archive: Lori

Lowlander at Harriman. I decided to continue my slow but accurate plan, which worked quite well for this. I was never moving particularly quickly, but I was also never moving in the incorrect direction and virtually never standing still in confusion. At the start some people ran off, and I briefly thought about tearing after them but decided I would rather navigate than blindly follow, so I set off to number 8 (first control for the Lowlander). I over shot it by about 10m and was looking at the next clump of cliffs thinking they were too far away but seeing lots of people over there when I heard lots of people shuffling right behind me and turned around to see the control. I then went off to 9 and was now with a reasonably slow group, so I tried to pull ahead. At this point I started seeing people who had overshot number 8 running back towards me looking confused, and I started feeling pretty good about my going slowly decision. I found number 9 with a group again and continued on to 10 with the group. The group was too high, but I was looking around and saw the control and trotted over to it with like half the Lowlanders following me. I went along the side of the ridge and used the reentrants to find 11, which worked well. 12 was the first control I really should have gotten lost at. I was looking for a trail, which I had to cross but never saw it. I knew I had gone past the trail but by then wasn't sure where I was. Luckily Janet Tryson knew exactly where we were and led me into it. The next couple of controls were pretty close together and all went fine. We met up with a huge group of people at the water control and all trouped off all the way across the map to 16. Theirry passed us right at control 16 and ran into it before us, but we were headed straight for it anyway. Control 17 was the first where the pack kind of hurt me. I knew where we were and that we were to the left of the control, but the pack seemed really sure we were to the right of the control. I stood there in indecision for a couple of seconds before seeing some other people start running towards the control where I thought it should be. I contoured to 18 and saw the building down the hill to know without a doubt where I was. 19 was the map exchange and went fine. I ate some food and a gu and went off on the second map. I thought about going along the road to 20, but I wasn't sure I would notice where to get off the road, so I just went straight, which worked well. 21 was fine. 22 we were a bit high but saw it right before thinking "the control should be here". 23 was fine as well. The group was high, but I knew were we were. I thought about breaking away from the group and running along the road to 24, but ended up going straight again, which worked fine. I think this was the best decision because when we drove by that area on the way home, it did not look like getting to the parking lot would be very easy. 25 was a very long trail run, and I finally decided to start actually running and break away. This worked quite well (especially as the group apparently made a mistake here), and I ended up having Nadim and Nikolay come up behind me to keep me moving. I then went straight over the hill to 26 and ran into the finish.

Lowlander - Splits

Brisk warm-up jog at the Harriman training camp. During the uphill intervals, I managed to fall and hit my knee on a log *again*, so that hurt for most of the morning relay exercise.

Butt kicks, knee lifts, Russian high kick thingies, grapevine, bounds, running backwards, and windmills (with arms) under the direction of the French team.

"Relay" at Harriman with each person running 4 legs each. I was paired with Linda Kohn, and we were instructed to not actually wait to tag off to each other, so my experience was more like a series of short loops separated by some very small amount of time.

My first loop was one of the longer ones and went terribly. Controls 1 and 2 went really well. I spiked both of them and was feeling pretty good. Control 3 was a much longer leg and I knew I was going to have some trouble. Unfortunately, I was trying to go faster than I could navigate. I got a bit off track and wasn't exactly sure where I was anymore and slowed down A LOT. I then found a control, in the correct general area for control 3. Things didn't look exactly right to me, but Harriman is the sort of place where it is easy to force things to match up with the map in my head, so I figured all was well. A couple of minutes lost - not good, but not terrible and went off to number 4. Unfortunately it turned out that I had not in fact found number 3, but rather a control for the afternoon exercise, so when I went off in search of number 4, I was not attacking from the correct location. I started getting more and more confused and things started not matching up to the point that even I couldn't convince myself that they were correct until I relocated off a marsh. I then found the real 3, but by this point wasn't really confident about anything, so I went unnecessarily slowly to 4, 5, and the finish, still feeling really unsure of where I was.

I got to the finish moments before Linda came back from her first loop (turns out she was on one of the shorter loops but I didn't realize this at the time and felt even worse about my loop), so without a chance to grab some water or rest at all, I immediately left on my second loop. This loop went much better, but I still screwed up one control. I tried to contour around a hill and in an effort not to go too low, ended up too high. I searched around a bunch of different groups of rocks for the control and was on my way to a far away marsh to reattack when I came upon the control much lower than I expected. This time, when I got back I drank a bit of water and rested for about a minute before starting out on loop 3.

This was the short loop. I screwed up the first control a bit. I went one group of cliffs too far. (Apparently several other people made the same mistake because the moss around this cliff was really torn up.) I started hunting around at other cliffs and found the control sort of hidden down in the blueberries. (I may have had help from one of the French guys coming through and finding this control while I was looking around. I honestly don't remember.) The rest of the loop went well if slowly.

I got back and more or less immediately headed out on the last loop. I decided to move slowly and not make stupid mistakes, which worked well. I found Alex sitting on the ground injured part way through and stopped to help her for about a minute, but she told me she was fine, so I continued on and finished.

This started out quite badly but ended pretty well. I started out trying to run faster than I could successfully navigate, which was I think the big issue. I got stuck in some green on the way to number 1. I floundered my way out of it and immediately found the control at about the same time as Ross (who started 2 minutes after me). I then, in a moment of extreme stupidity, decided to see how long I could keep Ross in sight. This went terribly and while I didn't go the wrong direction to number 2, I had a lot of hesitation when I realized I wasn't exactly sure where I was. (Needless to say I did not keep Ross in sight for very long.) I did pretty well going to number 3, but 4 was a complete disaster. I had to reattack twice for this control. I think I lost about 15 minutes in controls 1, 2, and 4. After this I decided if I wanted to actually finish the course I better get my head on straight and start navigating. 5, 6, and 7 all went well. Going to 8, I'm not sure I took the best route choice (seeing as I got stuck in some green stuff), but I executed it technically ok, if not quickly. 9-12 went really well. This was in an absolutely gorgeous area of Harriman, and I actually felt like I could both run and navigate at the same time, which was nice :-). 13 was mostly fine, but I got screwed up with the vegetation (which I'm pretty sure has changed a bit) and lost a bit of time in the circle. The same happened with 14, which I felt especially stupid about, but it turns out I actually did pretty well comparatively here since everyone was confused with the vegetation. I then proceeded to run towards the large group of people in the center of the field instead of the actual finish (oops...) and had to correct in the "chute".

Easy run with Presto to see how my knee is feeling. We ran from my apartment to lab so I could set up my experiment for the day and then from lab to PetSmart to get some things for Presto. My knee was hurting for the first 3-5minutes and then again at the end but was feeling ok in the middle. It is still a bit swollen and quite painful to the touch but MUCH better than earlier in the week.