Training Log Archive: PG

Thursday evening track group. Plan was 2 x 800 on a 4:15 cycle (so if you took 3:10 for the 800, you got 1:05 rest), 2 x 1600 on a 8:30 cycle, and then 2 x 800 on a 4:15 cycle. Warm and very humid.

Did ok -- 3:11, 3:10, 6:30, 6:30, 3:10, and then skipped the last 800, just felt like I had done enough.

I was thinking at the end that part of the benefit of doing these workouts was getting the body used to moving faster, and part of the benefit was remembering how to suffer. It sure seemed like intervals used to hurt more than they do now. Just not pushing myself as much. That will come if I keep at it. I'm serious about that -- it takes confidence to really push yourself, confidence that you will survive, confidence that you can keep going, confidence that you will recover quickly. Get that confidence and then it's easier to go deeper in the red.

So this was progress.

Another rendezvous with Mr. Fox today. Photo coming, I think.

Warmup.

So my friend the fox seems to be establishing residency in the trap on the 16th --



And tame seems to be too mild a word, only after someone getting very close did Mr. Fox stand up, but run off? No way.



It may have something to do with the appearance of a rather large hole just under the lip of the bunker. A foxhole, I believe it is called.

It is all quite weird....

C • perhaps... 4

Ok, it's 4:30 in the morning and I'm up because I have a bad headache and it's better if I do something.....

I spent a bunch of time at this time last year putting together a proposal for a coach for the senior team, including a detailed job description, and making a presentation to the USOF Board in November. I had been advised by the USOF powers that the Board was prioritizing juniors, so it would be better to make it a junior/senior coach, not just a senior coach, so that was done. And the Board actually approved the money, $6,600, but it was clear that it favored it going toward junior development. And it put the money in the budget as a separate item under the control of the USOF VP for competition.

And there it has sat for 10 months. I have inquired more than once as to what was going on, including the following in May:

"Hi Clare,

The Board approved some money in the 2007 budget for coaching for the junior and senior teams. Some of the money, roughly 3K I think, was for Bob Turbyfill?s program, though I am not sure he will use it all, and the rest, roughly 6K I think, was put under your control.

At the Board meeting when this was approved, most of the comments seemed to favor spending money on the juniors rather than the seniors, so I haven?t been trying to claim part of it. Has anything been done? Have the juniors already spent the money? Is there anything in the works? Or is it just sitting there?

Just wondering....

Peter"

---------------------------------------------

It seems like it has been sitting there. Because I had absolutely no reply to any of my inquiries. But, good news! I just got a copy of the following e-mail from our new USOF Prez (formerly the VP for Competition), addressed to our new USOF V-Prez for Competition:

"Bob,

Last year we got about $6,000 approved in the budget for a Jr./Sr. Team
Coach or coaching support of some sort. This has not yet come to
fruition. The money was approved in the general budget and does not
automatically carry over to next year. It needs to be spent or else it
needs to be rebudgeted for next year. I recommend that you start working
with the teams to spend what you can of it and come up with a decent
budget proposal related to this for next year. The budget meeting is
coming up.

Clare"

-----------------------

Yup, we better hurry up and do something because the year is drawing to a close and the budget for next year needs to be done. So I'm going to work up another plan and get support for it and go to a Board meeting and get it approved, and then have it sat on again for, well, it's now been 10 months? Right.

It's too bad. I was feeling so positive about things. I recall working with Don Davis and his team selection committee to get the 2007 team chosen before the first of the year, and Don did a great job and we were all set to announce it last week of December, except it needed the approval of the VP Competition, and that came almost right away, first week of February.... :-)

More positive vibes when WCOC stepped up to offer to hold the Relay Champs this year when no one else was interested, and George got all the sanctioning stuff done in November and the bid was submitted to the Board, and we got that approval in just 3 months, even though they never actually told us, we had to find out via the grapevine.... :-)

I may have to think a while to put some positive spin on the latest. Though perhaps there is some good news. When there is a change in personnel, it's usually nice to have some continuity -- particularly for us old folks, we have a hard time dealing with change -- and we seem to be getting that continuity. Our new VP-Comp has been in office for a month and a half and so far not a word, nothing about the Team, nothing about the Relay Champs, nothing about the fact that we have no Relay Champs or Middle Champs or Classic Champs scheduled for next year. Can someone down in the Lone Star state check to see if there is a pulse?

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

C • team coach 8

Reference my AOWN report of last Friday, 9/21, yesterday I was ready for Mr. Fox when it snuck up close to me on the 18th. My partners were telling me to draw a weapon -- sand wedge again perhaps as I had not yet procured a 9mm -- as Mr. Fox was acting unnaturally friendly and getting very close (10 yards), but instead I pulled out my camera. The light was bad, the sun reflected off the screen and I couldn't see anything, but I pressed what seems to have been the right button and aimed more or less in the right direction, and so I present Mr. Fox ---



You have to look closely, but it definitely is a fox. Not a big one. Not very threatening. I think it just wanted to be friends....

C • Blam blam! 5

C • aown 1

Dave was coming by in the late afternoon to run (he sometimes parks and starts from here, just for a change of scenery), and I figured the only way I'd get out the door was to go with him. It turned out he was going to run some on the trails on Toby, so I thought it would be a nice slow pace, because he always was an extremely cautious trail runner.

But it's been a long time since I ran trails with him, and he's gotten a lot better. Or maybe I was just tired. Whatever, it seemed like hard work, cerainly harder than I expected, except for the downhills where he is still a little careful. But it was nice to have company.

Power line (18:14 -- I started really slow, figuring that would suit him, little did I know), over to the gate (39:10), down to the river and back along Falls Road. Not breathing particularly hard, but legs felt stressed.

Feeling quite wiped today, maybe it was the 36 holes of rogaine practice, the first round starting not much after dawn with my regular old guys group, the second with Gail, and a fine round that was, 75, had thoughts for quite a while that it might be par or better but it was not to be....

But also feeling totally satisfied with the weekend, and that is such a fine feeling, and one that will last for a long, long time.

I'm in the process of writing up something about why the relay courses were set the way they were, may take a couple of days to finish.

And then need to figure out if there is a future for the Sprint Series in 2008.

And if there will be a Relay Champs in 2008.

C • Should there be a ***** in 2008? 8

The WCOC crew (PG, Sandy, Valerie, Jim, Lyn, George, Joe, Rick, Susie) --



Photo by Speedy, click on photo for a larger image (also for more relay photos)

Hanging 11 controls for the relays plus putting out a water stop.

Checking the other 38 controls. Sure glad I had 3 helpers for putting them out. We only had a couple hours, and it takes a lot longer when you have stands and e-boxes to deal with.

Picking up 6 controls and a water stop. Wow, we really had help for this one, including Randy Hall from DVOA and Joe Sackett from CAOC. Had everything out of the woods in about 45 minutes.

Very pleased with the weekend. Everything went as planned/hoped. WCOC sure has a fun and talented group of folks to organize a meet with. And I'm including in that the club's honorary members, Valerie Meyer and Sandy Fillebrown.

So far my major disappointment was forgetting to include in the awards ceremony the presentation of the $10 prize for first person to reach the start triangle in the leg 1 mass start, a distance of maybe 100 meters. The winner -- and he did get his ten bucks -- was Joshua Wiley from West Point. He ended up finishing seventh among 4-point teams on leg 1.

C • Thank you, Peter 8

Event: Sprint Series Final & US Relay Champs
 

Sprint Finals. Went well.

Boy, I'm falling behind on my AOWN reports. The latest was a red fox, spotted as I was nearing the 2nd green, the fox was coming from the woods just west of the green and didn't seem very concerned about my presence. But it seemed so unscared that it made me start to think about what might be wrong with it. And by now I was on the east edge of the green and it was on the south edge and getting quite close to me.

So I thought about my options, and fortunately this is an area where I have lots of experience, namely club selection, and I pulled out a sand wedge. It wasn't an obvious choice. I'd have maximum reach with my driver, the smoking D1, but I'm less accurate with it and under conditions of close combat and high stress I suppose it's conceivable that I might whiff, even though a well-delivered center-of-the-clubhead blow would certainly knock Mr. Fox back a bit. Whereas the sand wedge, I love the sand wedge, really accurate with that, but with the 56 degrees of loft and a heavy flange it's really better suited to, say, beheading copperheads (not that anyone would want to do that). But the sand wedge it was.

And I could see Mr. Fox noticed, because he must have figured I wanted to play -- he trotted into the sand trap, sat down, and scratched himself for a while. I assume he was an elderly male? I still was nervous, still had the wedge out. And after a bit, Mr. Fox trotted around a little more, looked at me for a while, sat down and scratched some more, and then eventually trotted off in the direction of the tee.

My conclusions:

1. If it didn't have rabies, it certainly had fleas.
2. Maybe I should start packing some heat when I head out. I've heard a 9mm is effective, I wouldn't know, the last weapon I fired was about 40 years ago and I think it was a 90mm, it was sticking out the front end of a tank at Fort Knox, and if a 9mm is just 10% (or even 1%) as potent as a 90mm, there wouldn't be anything but a few wisps of fur (and maybe a flea or two) left of Mr. Fox.