Training Log Archive: markg

Putting out and picking up controls for a Nose Hill club event. Not really much navigational challenge but lots of prickles and mosquitoes. Struggling to raise the motivation for these.

Checking control sites on Nose Hill for my event tomorrow night.

Canadian Team Trials Long at Mt Laurie; 8th place. One of the Smiths won in 1:55. Started slowly and carefully getting the first couple nicely and then blew it with my biggest mistake in a while, a 17min error on number 3. The control was a highpoint on a pretty vague hillside, I chose to attack from a ride that I never found and did a bit of wandering around before finding it. In retrospect I should have relocated at a much earlier stage and gone in on compass. I had a pretty good race after that, just a couple of 1min mistakes in really technical negative terrain. This was very hard to read at 1:15,000, I had to stop to work out a lot of it. I lost about 3min at number 26 but hammered the remainer, downhill, part of the course. A highlight of the race was seeing Brent at controls 3, 8, 12, 23, and 24 even though he was running much quicker than I and only on the short control 4 did we run in sight of each other.

After further analysis I think I made about 26 min of errors! Quite a few little ones but also 2, 3, and 4 min errors. I also recall having to tie my shoelaces twice, on number 21 and somewhere earlier. How amateur!

Event: Moose Creek Splash (Canadian Team Trials West)
 

Canadian Team Trials Middle race; 7th place. I'm pretty happy with this run despite making about 3.5 min of errors because I was reasonably competitive and without I would have been quite close to the Smiths. This means I'm getting faster! It was also a good course on a lovely map on a beautiful day, so hard to be too unhappy!

I started with a conservative route feeling a little unsteady and slow but spiked it, then wasted 30s on 2 checking a control that clearly wasn't mine. Cruised through the next 6 nicely but occasionally lacked a bit of urgency and felt like I should have been moving faster. My HR data shows that I wasn't slacking off though. On 9 I made a stupid parallel error about 100m out from the control, through lack of concentration, and though I relocated fairly well, lost about 1 min. Then on the following, 100m leg, I didn't aim off properly, passed close by the control (in a pit) while looking the other way and lost another minute. Managed to string the next 4 controls together quite well, though ran a bit off-line on 12 and lost a few seconds. Then another mistake on number 15 costing another minute. Brent caught me on the way to 15 and we raced throught the last couple easily.

Canadian Team Trials sprint at Elbow Bluffs; a long way down the order and about 3min off the pace. Not really happy with this run, despite only a couple of things going wrong. Unfortunately, one was the 1st control, which caught out a number of people, and I lost about 40-50s. I then kept it together until number 10 with only a couple of hesitations, then I left 10 thinking I was off to 12 and didn't notice until I'd crossed the fence just out from the control. I picked 11 off okay after that but had lost 25s. Better planning ahead would have avoided this stupid error. The rest of the race was okay though I was really slow up the hill to 12 and was less direct than is desirable on a couple of legs. The main problem was I wasn't running fast enough.

Lunchtime massage. The new massage therapist at work is a genius, I leave her every time with a euphoric glow and a stupid grin on my face.

Warm up, between ints and warm down

6 × 1min with equal floats — wanted a little high intensity work for my 'taper'. Legs felt pretty heavy today but managed to pump these out okay except for the fourth one where I had to stop for a coughing fit.

Picking up controls from FWOC wed night event. Hadn't expected to pick up all the controls, and hadn't expected to do it while it was snowing. Crazy country.

C • crazy Calgary 2

Along the Bow River up to the 10th St bridge and back through Princes Island. Felt quite good today, a lot better than yesterday, and also reasonably fast. Kept my HR a bit lower than for the threshold intervals I was trying in the last few weeks, in fact, the average HR is about my aerobic threshold, but my speed is above my tested anaerobic threshold. Threshold training is paying off?

An easy one to test how my legs were recovering from Inner Limits. Initially I thought not well — they felt really heavy to begin — but after I warmed up I found a bit of a groove and felt better. Pushed the pace a long a little near the end and still felt okay.

Did nothing and slept a lot.

Inner Limits 12hr Adventure Race
With Tomas Navratil and Palo Chalupa, finished 3rd in about 8hrs but relegated to 4th after 10min penalty. Amusingly, we were the first all-male team. It was a pretty good result for some debutants. I think we could easily have made 3rd place with out our big mistake but even if we had kept up with the leaders then, we would have faded later.

The race started at 7am at the base of the Calgary Tower with a word puzzle. We got the first part of the puzzle really quickly but struggled with the second for about 5min and were amongst the last starting the run (or walk) up the Tower's fire stair. We passed 3 teams on the way up but with very lactic legs, then had to wait a long time for an elevator to take us back down. Back at the bottom, as we started the first cycling leg, we were about 7min off the leaders.

Immediately I discovered that the cycling was going to kill me today. Palo took off at high speed with Tomas not far behind and I struggled to stay on their wheels. I knuckled down and held on to them, even setting the pace for a few minutes. I think we picked a reasonable route and guess we made up a couple of minutes. Route

The cycling finished at Shouldice Park on the Bow River and the first canoe stage. We started this at the same time as another team and they immediately dropped us, taking a 100m gap. They had a smaller, lighter canoe and the guy sitting in the front was using a kayak paddle. Don't know if that helps much but Tomas and I with our weak runners' shoulders couldn't match the pace. Route

This 2.3km leg canoe finished at Edworthy Park for an orienteering stage. Tomas taking the navigation, we ran down 2 teams, then wasted 5 minutes looking for number 2, which was misplaced. I took the navigation after this and we took a nice lead over the next team into the second paddle.

The second paddle was tedious but mostly uneventful with the team behind us catching up by the end. A portage of about 200m to the curling club car park followed. Route

The next leg was MTB geocaching. Turned out Tomas hadn't learnt to use his GPS so we spent about 10min at the transition area working it out. Turned out the cache was ENE of the top of Nose Hill, Palo picked a clean route and when we got into the vicinity of the cache had the luck to be led into it by the first two teams who had both made mistakes.

A surprise MTB stage on Nose Hill awaited then — we had to visit 5 of the car parks around the park. We decided on an order and took off in 2nd place. Up to Nose Hill we slowly hauled in the 1st place team (Alaric and co), reaching the Berkeley car park first. We swapped the lead with them through the next 2 car parks, but then we made our fatal mistake. Forgetting the instructions for this leg, we mistakenly thought we needed to go to a sixth car park at 19th St. We decided to do this last, and rode straight over Nose Hill to the 64 St car park, then up to Lover's Leap and then over and around to 19th St, where we discovered our mistake and pushed off back to the transition area, now out of touch with the leaders. This ended up being a really long leg and I very nearly broke climbing the last hill on 19th St. Route

A puzzle/running leg on Princes Island followed. We lost a few minutes here missing clues and then struggled to solve the puzzle. We then ran to MEC to climb the overhanging indoor wall there. Palo and I both got up pretty quick (I knew quick was the only way I would manage it) but Tomas fatigued while trying unclip the rope from a couple of intermediate caribiners and didn't make it. This incurred the 10 min time penalty that dropped us to 4th overall. We then ran back to the transition area at the carpark. The C-Train gave us a little much needed rest on both the way to and from MEC.

From the transition area we headed straight into a Score-O above Sunnyside in which both the navigation and route planning was easy.

Another MTB/geocache followed and then a cycle to the final transition area. I had actually recovered my cycling legs somewhat at this point and did much more pace setting and less dropping off Palo's wheel. We arrived at the transition area in equal 3rd place. Route

A final MTB out and back leg (Route) was next and it was pretty uneventful. It was followed by a foot geocache which was cleverly hidden below the Glenmore dam wall — we wasted a couple of minutes checking on top. We dropped the other 3rd placed team at the start of the previous MTB leg and now crossed paths with them as we were climbing back up around the dam wall and they were climbing down. We needed to beat them back by more than 10 min to take 3rd but we were really starting to fade and they came back with 6 min to spare. Route

The best bit of the day followed when I won the adventure racing kit door prize including a swish Gregory Iso pack with bladder and a bunch of other bits and pieces, including a Gerber Clutch multi-tool. I'm pretty damn happy with that!

The times below are educated guesses.

C • AR 6

A run to invigorate the legs … a warm up followed by 4 Osmond's then a couple of other drills, then by 4 downhill run-throughs and a warm down.

Getting some rest before Inner Limits adventure race on Saturday, because I've had such a tough week …

FWOC Middle distance grand prix. This was a bad night: short O-pants, some very spiky terrain, a terribly out-of-date map and some poor navigation.

Planned to go out at a comfortable pace and really concentrate on planning a route and following it through. Well … threw that away at the first control making a small parallel error. I discovered the error pretty quick but lost maybe 45 seconds for extra distance and climb. Lost another minute on the 3rd getting stuck in some green and then not being sure of my location on the other side. Then on 4 I got led astray by a vehicle track that wasn't mapped, did a stack of extra climb and lost maybe 6 min. By this stage I was very scratched up, pretty annoyed, Bill had passed me, and Jonathan was just behind so I put my foot down, managing to lose the latter and overtake the former before the end. A run to forget.

Running distance: 6.72km

I'm still tired from the weekend and legs were really heavy during this run. Wasn't interested in pushing myself at all so stopped and walked a couple of times. Started getting a stitch later on — another remnant from the weekend where I had a semi-permanent stitch as time went on — and had to walk for that too. The only positive was that it is a bumper day today: 17 deg, sunny and almost no wind.

Really tired and feeling pretty poor today.

After another little novelty, warm-up relay, Sunday's training got underway with a corridor exercise on the Horse Creek Ranch map. This map is quite similar to Tigerlily but with even more swamps. We spent a lot of time wading through nearly knee deep water. Apparently there were moose in some of the swamps but I wasn't lucky enough to see one. I got around all the controls comfortably except for 2, where I lost close to 30 min! I — with a bunch of other people — ran off line through a thick swamp and off the visible map to the north. Ran up and down a little track for a while trying to work where I was and eventually a group of us worked it out. Ran well from there and was more careful about checking my compass. Actually, it was Don's compass which I borrowed after leaving mine at the ranch and it was the flippiest compass I've ever seen. I had to come to a complete stop for several seconds before I could check my bearing …

A middle distance race back in the north part of Tigerlily to finish off the weekend. I start off well and by the control 5 was about the same time as Kenneth. Unfortunately, I made a 2 min error on number 6 due to running too fast and concentrating too little. Was fairly clean after that, losing maybe 30 seconds. I was starting to feel pretty fatigued and by the second half didn't have much strength for the hills or thick forest.

Went out to pick up some controls from the middle distance race. I was exhausted.

A novelty 2-person relay where one member had a map that had been altered. I got the altered map but didn't work out what the problem was, until the end of my first leg (which I never really finished), when Kenneth explained. It turned out that he had mirrored the map ... once I held the map up to the sky and read it from behind, everything made sense.

This was at the south end of the Tigerlily map. Tigerlily is interesting and challenging terrain though it is thick and scratchy, and it has lots of marshes. I'm one of the those pansies who tries to avoid getting his feet wet while orienteering but I got over myself pretty quick here.

A second exercise at Tigerlily. This course had certain minor details removed on each leg. During the first half, we were supposed to identify what was missing, and in the second half, try to ignore it. I only noticed what was missing at two controls: the first on control 6 when a decent sized hill was removed causing me to lose about 2 mins and later a cut-line was removed. Lost about 7 mins on control 4 running off line through vague, thick terrain. I saw the splash of a beaver as I ran across its dam.

A middle distance training course in the north part of Tigerlily. The exercise was to stop at each control in the first part of the course while you made a good plan for the next leg. For the rest of the course, you had to make the plan on the run in to each control and not stop. I made a couple of little errors, 1 min at control which was slightly misplaced and then another 1 min at the last control which caught most people out. Felt good technically and the emphasis on planning routes and trying to keep a steady speed without slowing down to navigate really worked for me. I think I will do this more often in future.

No lunchtime run today because Megan and I had an appointment for our first ultrasound! Everything looks good and and it was confirmed that she is just under 13 weeks so our family doctor's initial estimate of a 21 Nov birth is still on. It moved around a lot, making it difficult for the radiologist, and it was just amazing to watch. A very cool moment.

A note for the training geeks: it's HR was 153, down from 178 when first measured a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure this is a good sign, it's already improving it's cardiovascular fitness (probably from all that kicking and twisting) and will no doubt be a fine athlete ;)

Drove from Calgary to Fort Assiniboine (5hrs of boredom) in the evening for the AOA Spring Training camp with Kenneth Buch. I'm really excited to work with one of Scandinavia's best coaches.

Arrived at the camp at midnight (after driving around lost for 1/2 an hour thanks to bad instructions) after everyone was asleep and not knowing which cabin I was supposed to be in I decided to sleep in the car. Needless to say, this was a bad idea, mainly because I didn't have any warm clothes and I had this nagging fear that a bear would come into camp and try to break into the car for my food!

21 min warm up with Gary, jogging between intervals and the 5:44 warm down back to work.

6 of the Bluff Park hills. Took these a little easier than last time but reduced the rest to 30s to 1:00. Was a pretty easy workout actually, but it made me feel good, so who cares …

Ride home. Took it nice and easy, and enjoyed the good weather and the nice views from the bluff above Sunnyside.

Planned to go orienteering but the club was running a beginners event and I spent all evening helping some talkative guy around a very short and easy course, leaving no time for me go out.

Commute to work. Had a bad traffic day so was a bit slow. My legs felt a bit fatigued from yesterdays ride and run.

23 min warm up including 6 × Osmonds and a little stretching; 2:31 between tempo efforts and 12:16 warm down.

2 tempo efforts (6:35 and 5:28) during my run. Felt really fatigued during the warm up but decided to push myself a bit. Felt okay for the first few minutes up then tired pretty badly. Despite that I accidentally ran longer than the target 6 min and then couldn't finish the second effort. Riding to work is obviously taking it out of me and the heat today (only 22 deg but I'm not used to it any more!) was affecting me too. Had half a gel before I left, as an experiment, but I can't say that it helped.

Commute to work and home on my mtb.

Short jog after riding home, just wanted to put a few km on my legs after not running much last week.

Had a 1 hr massage at lunch, very nice. Nearly fell asleep. She could have used a little more force on the ol' legs.

A couple of hours in a canoe with Palo and Thomas trying to get our stuff together before the Inner Limits adventure race in a fortnight. Man, my arms and shoulders are not used to this sort of abuse! I think I'll have to visit the gym a couple of times this week.

I need to make my long runs longer than this but today I just couldn't be bothered. It was a pretty nice day too, though a little windy, and I took full opportunity walking a few times and stopping to enjoy the views along the Bow River including a nice little sit down while I had a gu, which I didn't need but thought may have given me a little enthusiasm. Not a bad route though - down past Market Mall and then west along the Bow, following some little single track up and down along the bluff. Will have to do it again when I'm more interested.

Had a lunchtime meeting today and it's still a bit wet so I'm making this an easy week in retrospect.

To work and back. Only took 30min on the way in so I've managed to shorten it a little more. I took 40min on the way home though because it was freezing bloody cold, raining and there was a headwind the whole way.

6 × Osmonds, some high knees and butt kicks and was feeling terrible so I had a little sit down before forcing myself to finish on 2 run-throughs which felt really slow.

Warm up sprint. Took it easy, practising flow through controls.

Sprint at SAIT/Riley Park. First Sprint Series of the season and a better field than usual for a Calgary race with Alaric turning up. Felt good, was able to push including up the couple of hills and finished pretty strongly. Unfortunately, there was a railroad crossing and I had to wait maybe 15-20s for the train. Finished 1st about 20s ahead of Alaric.

Ride to work and home. First time I've tried this and think I will have to find a better route. 12.7km on the way in, 12.2km on the way back. Probably still some room for improvement, but it depends on how badly I want to ride through downtown.