Training Log Archive: Lori

Running with Presto from my apartment to the river and then did the Eliot St.-River St. loop. It was kind of cold but felt pretty good. There were a lot of people down by the river for Head of the Charles, so there was a decent amount of weaving around people and running off of the sidewalk to stay out of people's way.

Running with Presto from my apartment to lab to set up an experiment, then to the river to do the JFK-River St. loop, and then back to my apartment. It is definitely starting to get cold here. There weren't many other runners out, although there were plenty of rowers getting ready for Head of the Charles.

Knee lifts, butt kicks, Russian kicks, backwards running, bounds, grapevines, lunges, and 1 legged and 2 legged toe-raises out by the Charles. The people walking their dogs were giving me strange looks.

Tuck-ups, crunches, side crunches, bicycles, rotating flutter kicks, boat rocks, and twisty-things back at my apartment.

Running from the T stop to Hammond Pond with a backpack.

Dog bone score-O at Hammond Pond set by Ross. The point of this exercise was to focus on attackpoints. I did that pretty well, although in some cases I found the control before my attackpoint because my light is amazing at lighting up the reflectors and mediocre at lighting up the woods. Unfortunately the T failed me, and it took me much longer to get to Hammond Pond than I had hoped, so I started 25 minutes late...grumble... Luckily no one was waiting for me, so this just meant I had less time to run, which was irritating but not that big of a deal. Dinner at Ross and Sam's was, of course, awesome!

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