Training Log Archive: Ari-o

11:11
1 mile
110 feet of elevaftion

A very binary training session!

Quick warm-up with Alex.

So Alex texted me at about 10 last night if I wanted to go to Baldwin Hill today. I was at a school event (formal, i.e., free drinks) and said sure, extra hour and all. Free Red Line home, bed, woke up about 7:30 (new time) only a little hungover. Email at 8:15 from Alex, I responded yes I want to go. Email at 8:30 from Alex to be at Barb's in 20 minutes.

Well, that escalated quickly. Luckily Barb lives a 4 minute walk away.

Alex also said we were doing Orange and then Red, and that Orange was easy. Orange was not easy. I navigated and ran the first five controls well, attempting to chase Alex, and then from 5 to 6 went a bit too far south (the lots of extra water features today didn't help). Linear features my foot! I made a huge parallel error, looked around for a while somewhere that looked very similar to where I was, went the wrong way, then finally realized my mistake. 8 minutes. And I lost the race to Alex by … 8 minutes.

The rest of the race was fine. And I got to see a lot more of the terrain than I bargained for.

After the orange experience, I was determined to run well on red. (Also, the colors. Ugh.)

Started out with very little cool-down, a couple of minutes after Alex. Ran well to 1, spiked.
Ran low to 2, good route choice, very runnable. Spike.
3, spike.
4, up the hill, maintain contact, spike.
5, using the parallel features from earlier, spike. And I saw Alex running back to the control (she'd gone to 11).
6 I took a weird route through green, and punched just ahead of Alex (navigated the circle well).
7 went low, then came back, using the map well (hill, reentrant, rocks, big rock).
With Alex to 8, mostly, she was using a compass, I was using terrain. We both wound up north a bit and I ran in just ahead of her. (Me: "ugh." Alex: "Make a plan, and follow it."
9 was tough terrain and she led in to the last bit, lots of extra lakes today.
10 I ran well, handrailing off the stone wall to the corner, then using the rocks to lead me to the control. Spike.
11 was a long leg but manageable. Mentioned to Alex that this was the battle of the micro route choices (I want to see her strava track for flyby). I took the stone wall to the end of the bendy part, avoiding most green, then went east. No Alex. Spike. Alex on the way out.
12 Make a plan and follow it. Down the stone wall, cross the stream. Oh, a rocky hill, map contact. Oh, an Alex. And somewhere, a control.
13 Definitely worth dropping down and running along the wall. Super easy attack to the big rock.
14 cross the stream and run the trail. Hesitation to the control (wrong rock)
Bash to finish.

No big mistakes. Only really little mistakes. Contact. Flow. Fun. This is what I want every orienteering session to feel like.

(Oh, I beat Alex by 4 minutes and Vilppu by 1, Alex beat my overall time but we tied on number of races won.)

The Strava flyby of this is amazing.

And after 8 miles of O and one on trails, my IT band only hurts a little.

Orange - Splits

Red - Splits

Rolling over to the 57 for the trip to Littleton via Newton.

Nice ski with Frank and four juniors. Up Oak Hill, down to Harvard, then some discussion of where to go that I missed but I was hoping it was Bare Hill and not Fruitlands and it was. No chip seal! During that discussion someone came to a hard stop at a stop sign because they saw rollerskiers out of the corner of their eye. We laughed at them but they appeared to be laughing too.

So then the cruise down 110, the climb up Bare Hill, and the rest of the way in was nice. That's a real hill up Bare Hill! A few drills, but mostly cruising speed, which was mostly high L1.

30 burpies, 30 box jumps

Ran the front hills pretty hard. Knee mostly felt good, so put in 5 miles. Negative splits: 3:43, 3:35, 3:30, 3:25.

Rest of the hills were more recovery-y, although I did push up the short hills some. Legs felt good enough for a fourth front hill after three full others. Happy with this.

Out to ski the bike path again. Skied down to Central, straight on to a train, and a nice if warm day for skiing out in Arlington. Arlington needs to sweep the path, though; the dry leaves were treacherous, I can't imagine it wet. Lexington was better. Only had time to climb to the top of the hill in Lexington, then back, right on to a train. 1:50 door to door of which 1:12 was skiing (not even including 4 or 5 minutes from my house to and from Central); not bad!

Went to run stairs, hard up, easy down, and felt good, but my knee started having feels after 20 sections.

10 sections, slowly, some sidewise.

Longfellow Loop, breezy but a tail wind along the river. Knee feels okay!