NEOC local meets

There were two local meets last weekend, one at Estabrook woods in Concord, and one in Nobscott reservation in Sudbury. The Estabrook woods map is just about ready to be either retired or completely redone - even the contours are wrong. Lining up a GPS track afterward was quite difficult, since the trails don't even line up on the map. However, if you treated the map as a rogaine-quality map, i.e. bad, the event wasn't too bad. There was the section of stone wall that was completely submerged, damn beavers, but if you read the course notes you could avoid that part.

I started out with a fair bit of zip, but it was super hot and humid, and I just felt worn down after about 5 minutes of running. Of course, the slower I went, the more mosquitoes and deer flies could latch on to me, so that was obnoxious. It was frustrating to feel so tired and sluggish when the navigation was so easy - I just had to move faster to get to the points faster, but I couldn't. Even on the downhill bits, I was barely stumbling along. Ugh.



That was unpleasant, so I showed up to the meet Sunday hoping for a happier experience. Luckily Nobscott's map is in much better condition than the Estabrook map, so it made for much more interesting running. It is also considerably more hilly at Nobscott, which I wasn't too happy about, because my oomph didn't seem to have returned overnight. I was less whiny about the temperature Sunday, because it had rained overnight, which meant that the woods were still pretty wet, and that was doing a good job keeping my core temperature in a happier place. I still wasn't moving very fast, but there were some good bits where I was running well. And then I'd slow down again. No real mistakes, though, other than some weaving around on the way to 8, and getting off my line and almost getting lost on the way to 10 - luckily I caught that one. I'd crossed the big trail, thinking it was the little trail, and for whatever reason I didn't want to believe my compass when it said to go more to my right. Whoops.

Unfortunately, going that slow on a technically not-too-challenging course meant I got my butt whooped. Both days. Saturday's result put me in the top half, if barely, but Sunday I was way off the pace. Sunday had also been a very ankle-rolly day; I managed to roll my good ankle once, and the bad ankle twice, and the first time I did it it was sudden enough to make me fall down, into a patch of poison ivy. I wasn't too happy about that. I think I was just so tired and sluggish that I couldn't control my feet, hence the tripping and ankle abusing.



I think it might be time for a day off or two... but there is a track workout tonight! I'm sort of addicted to these track workouts, they fit with my OCD personality so well... its all so controlled, and I do love running fast sometimes.