Lafayette ridge

The day after the Mt. Washington race, I'd scheduled an adventure run with some of the CSU junior ladies, and two other coaches, Sue and Kathy.  We ran over the Lafayette ridge, up the skookumchuk trail and down falling waters, and it was a perfect mountain day.  This put me back into a happy spot, I love running in the mountains.  We ended the run with some ice cream, the proper reaction to running in mountains.

Looking toward Garfield.

A fine lookin' group of ladies atop Lafayette

My favorite ridge.

Lafayette, from Lincoln.

Sue and Kathy.  We've all three determined that we need to stop hanging out with each other, because clearly, we just encourage each other's craziness!

Sonya taking in the view.

Shining rock!

Tempted to slide, if it didn't end in a waterfall...

How many photos do I have of myself over the years in this same spot?

Kathy, post head-dunking.  this is why we get along.

From there, I headed southwest, and landed in Peekskill NY, for a low-key week of orienteering training based out of my friend Neil's house.  The first two days I was joined by a Finnish couple, on holiday to NYC, who really wanted to run at Harriman.  They were crazy fast.  After they left I stayed on for another few days, finally leaving on Thursday, having racked up something like 19 hours of orienteering.  It is so great to have such awesome technical terrain within driving distance!  Or in Neil's case, within walking distance - he lives ON the Blue Mountain map!  This did make it a lot easier to get in a solid couple hours of work in between trainings, which was a prerequisite of going down there.  

Blue Mountain is a pretty technical place... take away all the features except contours, and it gets nigh on impossible.  Yikes!

Some more technical training on Polebrook, in Harriman.  A control pick, followed by a line, that eventually I bailed on because I got sick of the rocks.  Then more controls.  

Longer route-choice-y training on Hoegencamp map, this one with the Finns.  Saw lots of snakes on this map!  I was convinced they were all poisonous and definitely hungry for some human flesh.  They were THIIIIIIIIIIS big!

And some speedwork - O'tervals!  Definitely managed to outrun my brain - check out the wanderings around #7.  Oops.

The final exercise, on Rockhouse Mountain.  All the white woods were super thick with high blueberries, which made it tough to run through.  This was also the first day where it got stupid hot, so that lake was a welcome sight on my jog back to the car!

Back in Boston-land now, attempting to not melt in the heat as I futz with model variables.  At least when you're running you get a slight breeze...