Training Log Archive: mintore

Family run.

Round two with Aidan.

Run to see the ponies.

Team Event

We needed a name with our club in it so….go Team pICO Bunnies! (our mascots supersized by 3x10E10 times ran amok on the lawn of our flat at Hill House). Mass start: I ran long, Brenda medium and Aidan short. The legs were 3.3 km/120; 3.0; and 2.5 km. The first to finish ran a final 1.6 km leg. We had about a 2 min of viewing time while waiting for the start, so I was able to plan most of my route choices and then just try to do them. I had a decent run, the best of the week but it was across another subset of the same area. 2-3 I made a bit of a deviation that left me a bit confused as I didn’t see the small strip of land separating two legs so I didn’t move as fast as I needed to. My bushwacked route to 10 was slow as the light green was a shade darker than mapped. A run that put me in the middle of the pack, which I was quite happy with (17th of 42), had me return about 8 minutes after Aidan had taken off with the final map (his first run was 7th of 40 for all classes running the B short course). Aidan and Brenda returned and we had lunch in the sun at the canteen; a nice way to finish the weekend.

Trail O

Our first trail-Os. It was harder than I had expected but this I did not realize until the results were posted. We walked backwards through the course comparing our results and felt pretty good about them, but after reading the very thoughtfully posted key to the course by EBOR, I now see a few of the controls were tricker than they appeared on the face. 6 of 8 and 1 of 2 timed controls. Aidan did well and won the Junior trail O and brought home a nice mug (he was 4th on every event this weekend, M-12 for the two std races and YJM for the specialty races.

Day 2 Short Brown Classic 5.0k/300m
The harder of the two days. Used the same map as day 1 but made good use of different directions and features making it feel almost new. The first two controls I benefited from having visited nearby features the previous day so I could confidently attack the controls running in green mode essentially to the attackpoint.

Started in the middle of the trail and cut nearly immediately down a debris-covered 20m hillside. There were a number of controls that I found hard; a vegetation boundary that seemed clear from the opposite approach but not the direction I was running (C3); a dot knoll in a section of rough open w s/t that again required using vegetation to locate it (C9) and disturbingly a pit on a hillside seemingly surrounded by features that could be used to locate it -- a stream heads, a pond, fence corner, trail and lots of other pits and distinct trees (C7). My first pass I stopped 10 m short of the pit not recognizing that it was behind a very low dirt pile, climbed to the fence, back to the trail and tried again, only after a third time did I get it. I never used the pond or saw it on my map (it was very small) until I was on my way to #8. There were good things; my route choice to #10 was good and it involved 125 m running on a bearing which was clean and #14 was quickly approached by running directly to a small trail without being badly messed up by the missed earth bank and ride (there was a small break in the bank that I must have hit). A bit better day.