Night Nav

Yesterday was another good day of training. I came early again and did an hr trail run at Memorial. I ran into a dog halfway through my run, but was extra cautious because there were reports of coyotes in the park. So I picked up a branch and urged the canine to "go home." I was able to find new trails that I can use in the future--did a little more exploring. Saw two more mtb-ers using blocked off trails...this time I told them they shouldn't be riding there. I would say it turned out to be about 6 mi.

Practice was all land nav. I was paired up with Cynthia and we were supposed to find 3 points. First one was relatively easy, but was a little hard to find because it was already getting dark. We ran to get the second point, the farthest one. It was off of Crestwood and Memorial. It was near a nasty drainage area with all kinds of culverts, trash, and questionable water. Tina and Nick caught up with us there and we swept the area, going down to the drainage area. We had a tough time finding it, but I didn't want to go down too far down that ditch since my pace count put us at about where we were. Finally, Cynthia and I decided to get back up on the ledge and start over again. That's where I found it--we just walked past it.

It was down to the final one which I THOUGHT would be the hardest one since it looked like it was in the middle of nowhere. In reality it was next to the green trail, but we couldn't use the trails since they weren't on the map. So I did pace counts and it led us right to it! We were the first ones to get back by a wide margin...and even 30 min after that we were the only ones who found all of them! I was feeling more confident about my nav skills--especially since it was night time.