Training Log Archive: GlenT

Event: DVOA Green Lane Park
 

Brown course at Green Lane on the South part of the map. 3.3k, 75m. This area is the part of Green Lane with lots of rock features. And much of it is light to medium green, so it can be pretty slow going (and occasionally scratchy). The map is aging, so there are unmapped rootstocks and some trails are overgrown.

My run was OK, with hesitations and corrections on several controls. I vetted these control locations about a year ago (so ran non-competitively) but that didn't seem to help much. Familiarity with the map from setting courses a few years ago was probably a bigger factor. The map was printed at 1:10,000 so I had to be at a standstill to pick out trails and decipher the rocks. A bit warmer today than yesterday - 40ish but much less wind (and today there was a heated shelter, making it much more pleasant for the volunteers).

Control pickup at Green Lane. A loop about 2k long with 10 controls.

Brown - Splits

Event: DVOA Green Lane Park
 

Red course at Green Lane, on the north part of the map starting from the Boat Rental parking lot. 5.7k, 125m. The map is 15 years old, so there were many unmapped rootstocks. The green vegetation mapping is still OK except for some substantial areas of blowndown/deadfall, which weren't mapped (they were passable but slow). The course used a couple of the mapped rootstocks as control sites, but they were less prominent than the newer unmapped ones. The map has quite a few dot knolls mapped, most of which are less than 0.5m high and were often obscured by vegetation or deadfall. Overall visibility was very good and much of the undergrowth is in winter mode although some of it is still scratchy.

My run was OK, although I never felt like my navigation was sharp for some reason. Lost 4 or 5 minutes at the third control checking out several unmapped rootstocks north of the control. Missed seeing a leaf covered trail on the way to 5 and hit the stream it was on about 100m to the left (which means my compass work wasn't particularly good either).

It was cold - in the low-mid 30s with a stiff breeze. Not bad in the woods but pretty nasty for the volunteers, so a big Thank You to them for hanging around in the cold so we could play in the woods.

Red - Splits

Preemptive calorie burning - likely not enough. Mid 50s, partly sunny.

Around the neighborhood. Breezy and upper 30s - a taste of winter. Yeah!?