Training Log Archive: cmorse

Course setting, checking, marking for tomorrows Crandall's 6-Hour Fat Ass Run (& Snowshoe). A very nice snowshoe track already down on the lower part of the hill, so rather than break out fresh tracks up the hill, I am shortening the course to use the existing track which will allow slower runners more frequent passes by the cars to refuel, adjust clothing etc... A bit cold this AM, but gorgeous conditions.

All welcome, Crandalls II in Tolland, CT - 8am-2pm, as many 3.3km laps as you care to do... No fee, no facilities, communal aid table, self-timed (a timing sheet will be at aid table).

C • Fat Ass 9

Event: WMAC Pine Ridge Snowshoe Race
 

Drove out to NY w/ Bruce & Ned for the first WMAC snowshoe race & first time racing snowshoe for both of them. Gary & Vicki also representing for the Striders. Good base & nice groomed course - not firm, but not powder either. Advertised as 6.2km but definitely short, not sure by how much. 3 top 10's with Ned taking 2nd, 8th for me & 10th for Bruce. Not sure on Gary & Vicki. Long ride for a short course, but worth it...

C • Course length 2

definitely not enough, but running around the parking lot to make sure snowshoes working, then about 500m to the start, and 500m run back to parking afterwards

2012 Race Results
	Date	Race	Time	Place
1	01/14	Snowstorm Classic 5k	19:39	5/119
2	01/28	Frozen Fat Ass 25k	2:28:46	10/40
3	02/04	Snowstorm Classic 10k	41:39*	13/122
4	02/11	Snowstorm Classic 5k	19:28*	6/104
5	03/10	Birkhead Classic Gr1	1:05:36	20/61
6	03/11	Birkhead Classic Gr2	49:12	3/57
7	03/18	TARC Spring Thaw	1:50	n/a
8	03/24	Finally Spring 5k(ish)	20:24*	13/232
9	04/01	Eco-Husky 5k	19:28*	4/??
10	04/08	Hoppin Hodges 5k	19:33*	2/20?
11	04/13	US Sprint-O Champs	19:25	3/63
12	04/14	US Long-O Champs	1:16:30	17/66
13	04/15	US Middle-O Champs	55:32	29/64
14	04/19	Summer Sizzler 5k XC	21:06*	5/35
15	04/29	Billygoat XXXIV	2:01:06	22T/100
16	05/05	Bull Pond Middle	37:48	2/29
17	05/05	Camp Natural Bridge Sprint	14:10*	1/23
18	05/06	Turkey Hill Long	1:35:40	10/25
19	05/20	Soapstone Sampler	28:08*	1/59
20	05/26	WM5D #2	40:29	4/29
21	05/26	WM5D #3	18:34	8/45
22	06/13	Summer Sizzler 5k XC	21:03*	4/30?
23	06/17	Summer Solstice 5m	38:50*	13/200+
24	06/20	Bolton XC #1	16:27	14/68
25	07/11	Bolton XC #3 ran but not raced	17:23	20/97
26	07/18	Bolton XC #4 ran but not raced	17:17	12/52
27	07/21-22	CNYO Rogaine XXII w/ Pavel Korneliev	21h48m	6/13
28	07/29	Soapstone Assault	1:04:14	8/21
29	08/04	People's Forest	1:16:14	26/60
30	08/20	Wickham Park XC #5	16:23	41/140
31	08/23	Corn Maze O Champs	22:04 5:08 7:58	13/29 9/26 5/15
34	08/25	Menotomy Sprints x2	18:13 19:55	5/26 5/28
36	08/29	Summer Sizzler 5k XC	21:44*	2/42?
37	09/23	Stratton Brook Green	40:38	1/8
38	10/6	Devil's Den Fell Race	1:02:14*	7/24
39	10/13	Ward Pound Ridge Green	1:23:13	1/8
40	10/19	NAOC Middle	45:51	14/80
41	10/20	NAOC Long	1:19:17	17/88
42	10/21	NAOC Sprint	17:26	17/104
43	10/27	Ghost Train Ultra 60 mile option	13:34:00	9/16
44	11/3	Pond Mountain Red	1:03:58	??
45	11/11	Baldwin Hill Blue	1:00:00	??
46	11/18	Blue Hills Traverse	2:11:17	15/45
47	11/22	Manchester Road Race	30:38	424/15,000
48	11/25	High Rock Red	1:21:59	6/14
49	12/08	Dover Raid	5:25:00	4/34
50	12/25	Scrooge Scramble 5km	20:18*	9/82
51	12/29	Pine Ridge Snowshoe Race	27:40	8/50?
* denotes age group win
OUSA Rankings

C • That's one loaded scheduled for 2012 11

Awake at 5, but stayed in bed until after 8. No morning run, maybe something later. Had a bit of snow but by time I got up its blown off trees and beat down by rain - perhaps an inch and a half? Rumour has it more snow up in Dionland...

18F to start, just before daybreak on a crystal clear morning with John & Bruce. One of last sections of Shenipsit from Birch Mountain south to Route 2 and back. Nice crunchy film of snow on the trail. Good pace but ran out of steam near the end. No troubles negotiating the neighborhoods, which have given others difficulty.

Race #50 for 2012 is in the books. Didn't feel very energetic and a lot of youngsters running. Good cause (raised over $2000 for the Cornerstone Foundation shelter & kitchen) 9th of 82, 1st M50

Results

My current December stats are within 2 minutes and 2 miles of December 2011, and I've still got a whole week to go!

Geocaching at Crandalls with Jackson. Practiced distance estimation. If GPS said 250m SE, he'd use compass to run on bearing, choosing features in the distance and estimating how far away they were, then we'd run to them and check the GPS to see how far off the estimate was. Seems like it would be useful practice. The caches themselves were pretty simple.

Mansfield Trail Runners group run before heading into work this AM. About 10 folks & 3 dogs out for a loop of the lake. 30ish, mostly clear to start, clouding up towards end of run.

Natchaug Trail End--2-End thru run (North to South) with Eric, Dave S, Hector, Todd, Adam & Sue. Snowing lightly to start (daybreak), some peaks of sun, some flurries. Easy, friendly pace the whole way through. Gorgeous trail, though leaves quite slick in some of the rockier areas. GPS battery died about 3.5 hours in, so truncated track.

Was going to run the 8AM UConn Fun Run this AM - but the weather looks really unappealing and I'm planning on 20 tomorrow AM, so looks like a zero in the books for today already...

Got out of work early, planned on running 90-100 minutes, then got bogged down in stuff and got out the door late. So settled for a fast jaunt down the dirt road. Had to take a call about 4km in, and couldn't get back into it after so only the first 4km were at tempo pace.

Early run w/ John from Case Pond. 4 times up the hill, various trails.

pulse very faint, kept losing it & finally gave up. But I feel good so it must be working :-)

Definitely there now. Too icky to go outside for a run.

Long run with Ken, Dave S & Sadie. North to Belding and a loop around Walker Reservoirs, then back through Belding. Quick stop by cars, then up onto Box Mtn ridgeline, back to Hop River Trail then a new (to me) loop on Mohegan Trail at Bolton Notch. Back through Valley Falls to call it a day. Right around freezing, quite gray overhead and a stiff breeze when exposed.

Nice early run with John, Eric, Mike, Jeff & a new trail runner whose name I've already managed to forget. Was planning on 15ish with John & Eric, but two of the newer runners had to be back sooner, so I opted to break off earlier and head back with them to show them the trail system rather than head into Gay City with John, Eric & Mike. Still a great day to be out and about... Wore the new vest, even though there really wasn't a need on such a short run.

Twelvses Run w/ John. Was supposed to be a 12 miler, but feel like crap this AM, so turned at 2.5m to make it a 5 mile morning, and let John go on for extra mileage solo.

restless, slept lousy

Dover Results but we seem to be shorted 6 points and 8 places in the standings... ouch...

{edit} Results corrected - 57 points, 4th place overall.

Easy pm run with Jackson... Legs felt good, but definitely not fully recharged...

Post mortem analysis:

Although it seems the top teams went a different direction from us, I think our overall plan was a solid one. There were some issues however. Let's start with control #11 - the first one...

#11 - Left with the crowd, as we approached the road I asked Ernst where the punch card was - in his pocket. He checked his pockets and damn, no punch card... Crap, must have dropped it on bus. Beat a hasty back to the start... buses gone... Grant still there though so we begged a replacement and had to attest that we weren't pulling some sort of scam.. 2 minutes lost before the first control...

#13
#12
#18
#19
#21 - fine but had we noted that #22 was very close by we should have grabbed it here, but being on a different map sheet we didn't pick up on that and the overview didn't show control spacing. Ben's Frankenmap shows just how close that was - like 200m each way. Oh well, the perils of dealing with multiple maps in differing scales...

#20 - hit it fine, but trails leaving felt wonky - not an issue as we were going XC.
#17
#16
#14 - got off a bit east in the marshy bit between mapped streams, realized the error when we got close enough to stream bend to see it turn W, back down the hill.. 2 minutes
#15 out through fields to road

#23 - snack break
#24
#25
#26
#27 - headed S through open, then woods, hit trail & river, followed along river and felt like we had gone too far - backtracked to find flag strapped tightly to back side of tree, we must have been within 5 feet of the damn thing. 4 minutes gone
#28 - left maybe 90s as we hopped up over hill to get a view of river and verify position, saw distinct bend and continued on.

#55
#53
#52
#51 - even ran up the hill.
#50
#49 - cut in slightly early, minor hunting on unmapped knolls - 2 minutes
*** Should have cut down and grabbed #47 - not sure where the mental lapse was there
#48 - saw Bob L here
*** should have grabbed #41 here, but opted to leave it for the end
#42 - Ian & Ben at Nemo when we were - about 2:20pm? Kneeling down on floor caused a bit of hamstring cramping, but fine once we got going. Refilled water and snacked.





#40 - chilled after being indoors for the Nemo control, but warmed up quick enough.
#38
*** Might have been advantageous to grab #35 here, but also left it for the return leg and turned east instead
#43 - slipping on hill
#45 - Mr Lux again...
#46 - shoreline looked like crap so our line went roughly between the words Upper and Narrows on the map and it was sheer hell in there - all nature of sharp, pointy vegetation, old garbage (glass, rocks, metal). Not a good time at all. Finally got to the powerline which was nasty, but nearly as bad as the white woods. 15 minutes shot
#44 - up powerlines and through fields
#36
#34 - plan to go through to #37, but tall fence in the way so went N up rail trail and around - probably added 3 minutes
#37 upon leaving we hit more fences along highway access road so had to go all the way up to school and Silver street to get around to cloverleaf - +4 minutes
#30
#29 - took a wrong turn on vaguish trails, probably cost 2 minutes
#31 - back along trails in dark now, crossed just before #30 - trails & contours didn't make much sense - hunted along fencelines for a bit - +2 minutes
#32
#33 - on original plan but skipped it due to clock ticking down. back up and over the cloverleaf - hamstrings complaining, but pushing as hard as possible.
#35
#39 - had to bail on this due to the clock as well
#54 - last one - got back up on rail trail with about 7 minutes on Ernst's watch. Opted to skip #41 on the way in just in case our watch wasn't perfectly sync'd with the race clock.

So it looks like we left about 34 minutes in errors & bobbles - but half of that was fighting the incredible crap enroute to #46. Could have saved some additional time (and gotten the point) by grabbing #22 early and a better control sequence late in the game transitioning between the northeast and southeast maps would have gained us some more time.

I think it was quite possible for Ernst & I to have cleared the course in the 5:30 allotted if we didn't get mired in the green and if we had a slightly better sequence in the southeast map.

C • I was going the other way b... 1

Sore legs, lots of pointy vegetation bits to extricate this AM. Day off me thinks...

Event: RHINO 5
 

Event: Dover Raid Adventure Race
 

Teamed up with Ernst Linder as UNO-DUO

Really only a 5:30 event as there was a 30 minute bus ride to remote start so we actually started at 11:32. Raining & 40ish thought the rain let up to just cold and damp by the end.

Cleaned the first map in a ccw fashion, moved to the nw map (overview map)

Cleaned the overview map segment, then on to the downtown map taking the northern section in a cw fashion. Brain fart led to missing #47 around 2pm. Took a lousy route from 45-46 and wound up ensnared in crappy, thorny vegetation and probably 15 minutes to get there. Double ouch... Clockwise along bottom of map.

Out on the southeast map as it was getting dim. Lost a little time trying to circumvent fence near highway and get over the cloverleaf. Out on the trail as far as 29, let 22 go as time was getting lean. Likewise cut #33 on account of time as well.

Back on the downtown map, dropped #39 on time, hit #35, #54 and had 7 minutes left on the clock at that point so just made a beeline back leaving out #41 which was close, but didn't want to risk a watch discrepancy and be overtime and start bleeding points.

So 57 points out of a total 62, Joe & Jeff cleaned the course, Ian & Ben plus Untamed New England both skipped #23. Not sure if anyone else was between us and the top three, but lots of strong teams so likely we wound up 5th or 6th.

Had a lot of fun, hamstrings pretty argumentative during the last hour or so. Thanks to Jeff & Joe for driving, nice to just chill in the back seat on the ride home..

distance from gmaps, climb from bgallup (our missed controls did not have any climb factor)

GMaps Pedometer Route - http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=5756931 - for some reason I can't get the gpx file to load to AP at the moment. Too late to screw with it...

Ben's FrankenMap - a large 5Mb composite of the 4 different maps we were using (and 4 different map scales as well.)

C • Distance 3

Dover Raid - Splits

Cold & clear this AM. My usual AM running partner down with some sort of ailment, but I wanted to test/adjust new running vest that arrived yesterday before I use it in Saturday's rogaine. So out for a couple easy loops on Horsebarn Hill. But 25F and a moderate breeze up top convinced me that a single loop was sufficient for testing purposes. Vest rides very well (two 20oz bottles up front) and no appreciable bounce, just took a little getting used to the sound of fluids sloshing in the bottles. Big enough to carry rogaine essentials, but nothing more.

AOWN - flushed a couple red fox (might have been coyote, but I think fox more likely) going up horsebarn hill. Pretty close range but they were quickly into deeper grass so after quick initial glimpse I pretty much only saw their heads & glowing eyeballs.

C • Rogaine vest 3

AM run with John & Dave. Speedy as usual. Raining but rather warm - 50ish. I had to back off the pace about halfway rather than overextend myself with a long race coming up Saturday.

Similar to last week, warmup loop on front lawn, then 6 shorter loops with a short hard hill, drills and on the last two I added a 60m or so lawn sprint. Then we headed over the hill past Charter Oak apartments, down to Hunting Lodge and back on the pedestrian path at a pretty good clip.

Foggy morning run in Mansfield with Ken & Adam. Started from Chaffeeville Rd, S on Nipmuck to Mansfield Hollow, after 70 minutes hooked up with Jack, Marc, Rachel & Sarah from Mansfield Trail Runners. Ran with them for 45 minutes or so around the reservoir, then the three of us headed back up toward Coney Rock.

From the Shenipsit Strider End of Season party last night, the 2012 Highlight Reel

Got permission to hold another New Years Fat-Ass at Crandalls on New Year's Day.

C • Crandalls Park 3