Training Log Archive: Ari-o

Goaded in to doing so by several people, I have signed up for a cyclocross race tomorrow.

C • Excellent! 2

Interesting weekend. Saturday I misplaced a control at an old piece of flagging and reset that during the race, and then had not much fun, then went up to New Hampshire in time to climb most of the Old Bridle Path twice, with a carryout in between.

And Sunday I didn't do much other than a recovery walk with my parents. Not quite what I'd planned for, but an interesting weekend nonetheless.

Went for a short run in the mist and felt AWFUL. Like I was getting a cold and stomach problems all at the same time. Paused for some pull ups and then ran home slowly. Not happy. But not every run can be great. Could be hangover from Saturday.

Much less today than hoped for, but really dead after yesterday. Some GI issues on the way down, and then a slow, unloggable but very nice hike with my parents later. Good practice running downhill, though!

Ran out to put out controls. But what if I eff it up? "It's easy," said Alex, "you just find the streamer. So I found the streamers, then found Alex, who put out the wrong controls, and then ran back to the start. Easy, peasy.

And then, the race. Started well, took trails and spiked the first control ahead of people. Did fine for 2 and 3, then Alex got stung by a bee and I ran through greenbriar and lost contact and went to the wrong outcrop, and it took me a while to find 4. And 5, when I couldn't find the stone wall.

6 I knew where it was from setting, and 7 as well, so I orienteered right from 6 to 7 and … there was no control there. There was a streamer, sure, but no control. The streamer had a number written on it. It looked new. It was at a rock. No control. I would have crushed the control, but it wasn't there.

There were some short coursers looking for it too, so I explained that it should be here, that I put it in, and then I triangulated off of the outcrop and a rock and hilltop. The streamer was in the right place. The control wasn't.

I figured the rest of the starters had just run past it (most had, someone found it in the wrong place) and went to look for it. I'd remembered more green to the north of it when I set it out. I wandered around for a while, and almost reattached from where I'd attached when setting it out, and found the control. Right under a streamer. I picked it up and marched it angrily to the right location and then ran off, having lost 10 minutes, and frazzled. Someone hadn't taken down last year's streamers, and someone assured me that all I'd have to do is find the streamers, and they were maybe 50m apart, but through dense green and since it was the first I put out the route to the correct location went right by the incorrect one. Great.

8 was a mistake partially because I ran left and partially because I punched and then relocated the control. 9 was easy on trails. 10 I ran towards 11 and then back to 10 and then got lost in the green and then relocated down the stone wall. 11 and 12 was good O using landmarks and a compass. Not fast at this point. But in approximately the right direction. 13 I lost contact for a long while, and wandered for 10 minutes, finally finding the big rock (3m!) the control was behind. Not that the size was on my clue sheet because I'd borrowed Ed's arm band and didn't get the penciled in clues. Then I ran to the end and had a childish temper tantrum, sort of, in jest.

A croo member of mine from Lakes last fall was short-staffed at Greenleaf and I went up to help. Putting something in the fridge at Lonesome I saw the Lone* croo with a litter, having just carried a 260 pound guy down the trail there. Back on the other side the litter party had relocated to carry a woman with an ankle injury down the OBP. And it was 80 degrees and foliage: everyone was hiking, cars down the highway half a mile, and 1000 goofers on the ridge. 5 SARs in the Pemi alone.

Ran up to help out, either on the carry or at the hut. Johannes was also helping out at the hut or, as it turned out, carrying a woman down the mountain. I offered a hand and they had her splinted and packaged and we (me, Johannes, Elliot from the hut, a 20-year-old Dartmouth Crew kid and 15 Pemi SAR and Fish and Game guys and gals) carried the woman down.

It wasn't the worst carry. It was light out. It was dry, and the trail was relatively wide. Most of the hikers had gotten by before the carry, which meant that only 15 or 20 would come by when we stopped and there was space, not 100. Johannes was on top of things, he'd been the initial respondent and the woman was very helpful (and Johannes very reassuring). A 120 pound cooperative patient makes for a carry that goes more than 1 mph, especially downhill!

Always amazed at how much volunteer manpower it takes to carry a litter down a trail. Good on the Pemi SAR and F&G guys for a busy day.

And back up to the hut. 1.5 headlamps for three people. I had my overnight pack with beer, Johannes the SAR bag and Elliot the litter on a packboard, so we made up a motley crew. The over-under on the number of people we'd see on the trail (set by Johannes) was 50, and we almost made it. 46 People coming down after dark. Jeebus.

We had enough light to move at a decent pace, with one or two crumps, and made it up for dinner leftovers. Mmm. Dinner leftovers. And beer.

9/27/14 - long - Splits

Running over in Brookline. There were apples and honey for Rosh Hashanah, and I borrowed my parents' shofar. Everyone said "aren't you out of breath" but the trick is that it doesn't take much air. Circular breathing on a shofar is much easier than through a double reed (less pressure).

Oh, ran too. Fun.

Not that it means anything, but last year my stadium time in October was 27:00, after a month of huge volume (65 hours in four weeks in September) in the huts. This year, less than three days after my first 50k, my time was 28:30, including a couple of minutes stopped and stretching, and some major positive splits. Hopefully this means I'm stronger?

Yesterday midday I verbaled for today's NP. On Twitter. Publicly.

In the evening Alex asked me if I wanted to go run O in the fells in the morning. It seemed like a great idea, but I had verbaled. So I had to go.

Anyway, it was cool, the sun wasn't up; a great day for a PR. Unfortunately my legs were not quite feeling it. I ran the first 10 sections well within a PR time, going down the big steps well, and in time that would shoot me towards 20 minutes (my PR is 25:30 but I run hard up to make it a strength workout which is not the fastest way to go, so there's time to gain both down and up). Cardio-wise, I felt pretty good, but my legs pretty quickly went jello, and I started taking the little stairs down, and then stretched for a while.

Finished respectably. Hopefully end of October will be a good day.

C • Legs feeling it 1

Stretch out run. Still feeling the 50k, but it's not too bad.

Ran up the road and down for a quick warm up. Pretty muggy, mercifully cloudy.

So, 50k. I'd been talking about doing this for a while, and almost begged off when the weather looked warm (Friday, when it was 30 rising to 50, would have been beyond splendid) but I figured I'd grin and bear it, it's not like it was 80 or something stupid. Drove out at 5:45 in rain, blasting along Route 2, listening to Beethoven (I couldn't get anyone to come with me, but not because of that) and playing the fourth movement of the third symphony maybe four times because that seemed like good running music. (It was, and I begrudged people running with headphones. Of course, I always do that.)

Warmed up, real muggy, definitely no shirt, full water bottle, five (5) goos. Took the first mile at 6:51 (whoops) and the next four sub-8, but it's not really trails, so it's doable. Probably too fast? I was with a group of about 5 and we ran together in to the first wall at mile 5.5 (the elevation is sneaky: no big climbs, but lots of climb, also my Garmin elevation was totally janky; at one point I was damn near sea level, and sometimes I'd climb a hill and wind up 500 feet below where I'd started. After a while it gave up the ghost and lost the elevation, although Strava figured it out). As usual, lost them on the downhill in to the feed. Repeated the mantra "run your own race" and "you've never done this before" a few times.

Refilled water bottle. I did this four of five times. Lost count. Small bottle, but probably 2l of water guzzled during the race (I even stopped to pee at one point). It was real sweaty. It was cool for the first 3 hours or so, then warmed up from 66 to 72 which was problematic. Stayed cloudy, Allah be praised, or I would have been in real hurts. Sort-of-paved climb around mile 8 was rough, and I couldn't find much speed after that.

Fed around mile 11 and cinched up one shoe which was feeling blistery in the back. Was in lighter shoes which were fine but probably need to be broken in better. Lots of body glide everywhere, no chafing! And some other guys had nasty blisters, my feet just go straight to calluses. It's pretty great, actually.

Entered the pain room around mile 18, and mostly kept the door open for the flat(ish) loop around the lake. I was mostly running alone, with one fast-on-the-downhills guy hopscotching me and one other guy who tried to keep up with me on an uphill. (He passed me on the last road downhill when my legs were shot. Both headphone dudes. Still bitter. If I am a race director ever I am totally banning headphones. End rant.)

Major hurt around mile 22 to the end. More gatorade. Only had one goo around mile 10 and the caffeine helped, and some Coke around mile 18 (caffeine helped, carbonation less so, but it was so good). Nibbled a banana at mile 22 for cramping, and some dude gave me some "magical pill" for cramping which did nothing. He eats one every four miles. That's basically doping, right? (Also, logging right after a long race when your head is working at about 30% is fun!)

Lost that guy on a climb, walked some not-that-steep uphills, found the legs to run, barely, at like a 10 minute mile, 4:30 was definitely out, but since the course is not-quite 50k 4:45 wasn't, got caught by a guy on the big road downhill, and then I thought I could catch him on the paved uphill but my legs started spasming whenever I tried to run up. That is a problem! (That hasn't really happened since I rollerskied 30k and then packed Tucks last summer, which was so great.) Staggered in to the finish barely under 4:45.

Ate all the food. Wiped all the bugs off my chest. Took off my Team Giggles tiara. No hose, no lake. Sweaty.

Would I do it again? Oh, yes, probably. Maybe on a less-sweaty day (50 would be great). Body Glide again wins. So does carrying a water bottle (especially since it's a pretty not-that-technical course; the worst parts were the ice rink-esque bridges). I may only do one or two of these a year, but I doubt this will be my last.

(I am going to go take a long shower and drown my pain in alcohol.)

C • Congrats!!! 2

Easy, easy bike ride up along the Fells (well, pushed that) and a hill (pushed that too). Then tooled my way back down. Just stretching out the legs for tomorrow.

NP today was 57 sections. I'm still planning to do a 50k this weekend (because I am an idiot) and didn't want to kill myself. So I did 43 sections, the last few sprinting with full recovery.

Also, I was thinking during NP "damn I am not trained for a 50k at all." Then I thought "well, except for running a 15 mile trail race a few weeks back, and a 15 mile hike a couple weeks ago, and some trail climbing and descending this past weekend." We'll see how it goes. I have cash money now to pay for the race, and need to go buy some gels.

C • 50k (is not that far) 5

Ran to NP, and then back.

Not really sure about the group deck. People just made up exercises and times, it seemed. I didn't get asked. And I think if I'd said "toe circles" or "ulvangs" people would have been confused.

Knowing I have a busy week upcoming, I went out for a run because it was so damn nice. Nice breeze, great temperature, and I had veggies roasting in the oven. Went across Longfellow then to the BU Bridge, and dropped a nice 6:45 along the other side of the river. Right. It's not hot anymore. Getting time for a 3000.

Went out for the Lake Loop after having no real interest in rollerskiing (which was too bad, actually, I should have been more on things, but 2500m of climb in 27 hours was draining) so I just did the loop. Didn't feel that fast, either. Oh, well.

So I went to Lonesome for the night. Should have headed up to Greenleaf, but whatever. Long story. I decided not to come empty-handed (or empty-backed) so I grabbed a packboard and 40 pounds of food (eggs, cheese, butter; basically an omelette) and hiked up. In the dark. After midnight.

Lonesome is harder than expected after you've already run up and down hills all day and been up 20 hours, it turns out.

But they croo was nice enough to leave out bunkroom assignments so I knew which were empty to go crash. And had I gone to Flea, I would have had not that much company, so I should have (well, I should have leaned on my roommates to just hike to Greenleaf instead of Cannon, but we didn't know there would be clouds).

Text from Lincoln that he was starting the loop in half an hour. I ran down to try to meet him. Didn't make it, but did have a fast pack out of Lonesome.

On not that much sleep and a bit dehydrated, I ran up to Greenleaf on a busy Saturday. So not my best time, but a good 50 minute hill climb. I ran in to Lincoln on his way down yelling something about 2 hours (he wound up in 2:06 or so) and continued to the hut, where I ate cookies and discussed sourdough.

And then ran down from the hut. Pretty fast considering I had to pass a bunch of people.

Beginning of day: run up and down hills.

And core in between. Also, this is the day that #deckaday ended.

So we went to see the northern lights. We saw nothing. We were 1000 feet low (clouds) and an hour late. An hour earlier and up on Lafayette would have been great. The views from Lakes of the Clouds were. Where was I a year ago? Lakes. Did we see the aurora? No. Not bitter.

Hiking down a gravity ski trail in the dark? Not so much fun.

Another deck. And a crazy day when I couldn't squeeze in anything else. But the weekend awaits, indeed.

40 sections of the stadium with four or five sets of push ups interspersed. Managed to run the 37 sections in 29 minutes, with the push ups, so not bad. Low 60s and humid, so still quite hot; I'm waiting for that first appreciably cool day to come along soon.

And another

C • Decks 2

Strava got all messed up even though it claimed satellites (perhaps running through scaffold messed it up) but a nice tempo for 27 minutes squeezed in amongst other things.

Another Deck

Another deck. A busy, long day.

Another day, another deck.

Exploring some new roads today. Not the greatest pavement, but NO traffic. And a segment called "Sandy River Bitch Slap" which is a nice 12% grade to climb up. Always fun. Some nice cruising downhills, some appropriately grinding uphills.

What do you do after you do core and ride bikes? Rollerski! Find a hill (the Church Road) and ski up it twice. Only about 90m of climb and rolling, but some good transitions and a lot of V2. And some double poling on the steep parts when a couple of cars passed by. Had my watch on bike mode, meaning I got instant speeds. Hit 28 mph on the steeper parts of the hills. Ed's new wheels tracked really well, but my old wheels were pretty janky.

Running back and forth to the car as a warm up. Or a hot up. Hot.

So this didn't go particularly well. I felt very rusty, didn't feel good about my compass at all, and managed to orienteer about half the course well. The other half? Well, it went not as well. Quick hits:

Ran by a wedding party to 1, then to the wrong reentrant, so that cost a minute or two. Spiked 2. 3 I blame on forgetting my clue holder. I stapled the clues over the map and over the trail route choice, so attempted to blindly navigate. Then I found the trail and blindly ran it for a while and lost contact. I had an idea I was way south and navigated up over the ridge to find Adrian and Kestrel, but had lost a lot of time. Spiked 4. Spiked 5 with Brendan, who wasn't moving fast. Got ahead of Brendan across the isthmus and mostly spiked 6 (went the wrong way around the marsh) and then spiked 7.

So things were going pretty well. But it started getting warm and my brain power started to be seriously diluted. On the way to 8 I somehow didn't see the southern crossing and instead went up and through the reeds, which worked but got my feet wet (creating hot spots later). I'd meant to follow the trail further along but didn't want to climb the hill (can't say why) so hacked along the shore and seeing the marsh looking crossable, I decided, what the heck, and went across. Basically across blue, which was pretty grown in. I think my original plan would have been splendid, follow the trail, cross the brownish/blue stripe area, which I was for some reason reading as a crossable marsh, which it was, and then hit the trail and run up the hill to the control.

Instead I got way off parallel, and Brendan kindly explained where we were. Then it was "oh, I see, let's run up the hill." Spiked 9 with Brendan. Spiked 10 ahead of Brendan, just behind Adrian. On the way to 11 I felt a blister forming, stopped to tie my shoe, and started going slower. It was also quite warm. I took a route across a beaver dam after cutting some trail and going down a reentrant. It worked, but a couple of water crossings certainly added a lot of time. In retrospect, the further NE overland version would have been better.

Then the troubles started. I had mostly spiked 11, but could not find 12. I somehow got turned around and wound up at the lake NE of 11, which didn't have a trail catching feature, and I was very confused. When I recontacted the map, I picked my way along the hillside, figuring I'd find the right features, while at the same time trying to keep my foot blister from getting worse. Coming back, I tried to attack off of a vernal pool but way overcorrected, and wound up well SW of the control. I then went back parallel to where I'd come from and back to a triangular shaped hill when finally the map and the terrain made sense. It's great when you look at your map and the terrain and go "oh, I know right where I am and where I have to go." It sucks when it takes 20 minutes to get to that point. I probably lost 20 minutes on this control.

I was pissed off and slogged to 13, but slogged in a pretty straight line. Spike. I would have done the same thing for 14 but the "crossable marsh" was far less crossable there than the earlier uncrossable marsh. So I went around the marsh, but attacked well to the control, then ran the trail in to the finish.

So, I actually did some good orienteering, but my memory is mostly of 11 and being hot and my mind not wanting to work. Oh well. Kind of a bummer to miss day 2, but kind of nice not to have another day frustration. Fun map, though, not as spastic as Bear Brook. Feels like Lynn Woods, somewhat.

Core. Cooler, but with a full stomach. Need to go faster, but it's still the first week. #deckaday

Saturday Blue - Splits

Three full NP hills. Warm, and I wasn't feeling great. My parents showed up and I walked and chatted with them for a while.

Another hot, sweaty deck.

Morning deck so it's out of the way. Still not that fast, but a pretty epic run of 76 push ups in a row at one point …

Was going to go run to Market Basket, but then a pregnant lady passed out on the bus and I was stupid enough to still have my radio on and got roped in to dealing with that. So Whole Paycheck it was, where salmon was on special. Huzzah!

50 air squats, just because.

Ran 48 sections today. Overheated on the way out, finished a stadium in something dreadful like 34:00, then went and found Alex, did a few with her, then pounded out a few more. I can not wait until it's not 70, especially in the sun it is brutal.

But Alex came! Yesterday she emailed me saying "I think I'm going to come" so of course I was all encouragey and then she did so I didn't have to shame her with a "We Missed You" as some other of my recruits have had occur. She decided that it was good for her, to work on going up steep hills.

I think one of these days we need to bring a map along to read going up the stairs.

Home early enough for an hour on the bike. Undecided where to go so I went out Brattle and around Fresh Pond and up the hill out of Belmont. Then up the narrow sketchy road to Route 2 and Mass Ave, and down Mass Ave and home through the Yerxa underpass. Scariest thing? Kid coming down a hill in Arlington on a bike and turning the wrong way in to the bike lane. Damn bikes!

Still warm for a deck, and pretty slow. Then some stretching.

SO HOT. Drippy sweaty deck. Hopefully the warmest of them. Even with a fan on me, wicked sweaty.

Ugh, very humid (when I went running, humidest part of the day), sunny and I felt SO SLOW. I tried to redeem myself running up the big hill, and sort of did, but still felt blah. Oh, well, I can survive the last bout of summer, I guess.

Deck a day, getting easier and faster.