Training Log Archive: Anvil

TNT. Quite an epic session.
6 x 5mins with 2 recovery on the radial trail. Feeling pretty sluggish and about as rugged as a Kiwi, so just tried to maintain a constant pace and not be too concerned that I was getting constantly dropped from the 2nd rep onwards.
Reps were: 1.32km, 1.36, 1.36, 1.32, 1.33, 1.35.
Finished off with the usual stair stuff.

C • Epic 11

A epic core session with the Man himself. Did some new stuff - noticed some major imbalances to work on.

Easy lap of Churchill in the dark. Just enough to get the blood flowing and some of the soreness out of the joints.

Good spaz session. Lots of core-y goodness.

Thomass Kickoff at Kelso.
First real Thomass, they're pretty fun. The first 7 controls in the park was no so interesting, but once we got into the box and the forest it was awesome.
Unfortunately, I've forgotten how to orienteer again, so made a massive whack of mistakes in the first box and lost the pack.
It seems you need to you a map and a compass in conjunction with each other to navigate through the forest. You'll be able to work out what I mean when I post the GPS track.
The second box was cleaner - I was solo for the whole thing and wasn't moving that quickly, but I felt I was quite smoother here.
Took a very nasty fall in the car park from 11 to 12 - not sure if I slipped on some ice or clipped my foot on one of those parking barrier/lumps of concrete, but at one point I was running, the next I was on the ground. Right hip and knee are very tight now.
No problem on the last section back in the park.
Thought it was kind of funny that I was one of the few people in short sleeves. Am I the only one who warms up once they start running?

C • Map 13

smt with pi, trav and trix.
Not feeling the love today. Riding to the meeting point I was seriously considering turning around and going back to bed.
But we got going and it got better once we hit the forest. The ground was pretty hard and crispy in places, which made it fairly easy going. Nice light atmospheric snow helped as well.
Sudden and hammer turned up on bikes for about 30 seconds, general consensus was they went home straight after as it was too cold for them.
K2 was, well, pretty awful. Seems hammer was right about the temperature gradient - I guess that saying about 1000 monkeys on 1000 typewriters will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare is applicable here.
Finally felt good after coming off K2 and the last half hour was pretty nice.
Warm shower and coffee after, whilst watching the heavier snow come down is even better.

C • heavier snow? 3

Ontario drivers license. Check.
Excitement over seeing snow. Check.
Realisation that I won't need a license as I won't be going outside for the next 3 months. Check.

C • 3 months? try 6 12

Cootes Loop. Feeling tired and sluggish all day and the run mirrored this. Brutal icy wind in the first and last 5 mins, but OK once I got into the cover of forest.
Pretty treacherous in places, pretty slippery on a lot of the corners - had a good spill early on.
The boardwalk/bridge behind Mac has a new sign saying closed for renovations until 'hopefully mid Jan'. Shame, I likes it down there.

TNT with Sudden, pi and all the Wadds - though the ladies smartly did their own thing.
Starting from half way down the golf course, long sustained efforts up the hill and stairs, with each successive one going further up the stairs until we climbed the entire mountain.
First rep was about 2 mins and the final about 3:20 with pretty much equal recovery getting back to the starting point. Last 2 were pretty sucky, but managed to double stair it the whole up up. Red lining by the end.

C • haha!!!! 3

Cruise round the Cootes trails to try and wake myself up. Also to check the trails for tonights ARK and clear out any man-deer types and their associates.
Cold, clear and no hint of wind - I could get used to running in these conditions.

C • conditions 5

On the TNT train with a Suddenturbopi.
8x3 mins up and back on the radial trail with about 1 min recovery.
Didn't think I was going to get through it, I just had no energy - especially on the easier, slightly downhill, tailwind ones.
Leg and foot were OK - a little niggly in places, but no constant or acute soreness like on Sunday. Rest, ice and ibuprofen win again.
Only got through 8 of the stair climbs after that, the single step reps were starting to make my Raid boo boo painful.

There was a 5k race starting a block from my place which I was going to do, but I woke up with quite a sore spot on the sole of my right foot. Bearable with shoes on, but I don't want to make it worse.
The bruise from last weeks Raid could do with another rest as well. There's still something odd going on it there that I can't quite put my finger on - in the morning the muscle above the knee is often quite tight and sore and I still can't fully flex the quads.

First smt in yonkers - since before GLOF I think. With Magnus to begin with, then trav, Ralph and most importantly, trix.
Mark kept sending us off on the Sudden terrain bits while he minced around on the trail. Quick stop in the Hottage for a drink and toilet stop made up for it.
Forest is so open now, K2 would have been a lot easier if GLOF has been now - I can now see the boulder I'd planned on using as my attackpoint to #6, which lead to my 5 min mistake on the middle - damn!
Coffee & just baked muffin outside My Dog Joes after - sitting in the cold, surrounded in a coat of post-run endorphins... perfect!

C • Sudden terrain? I have alwa... 2

So I noticed when I added todays smt I was just short of a 90km week - which would be a record for me. About a mile short....
It was a nice arvo and I was a bit bored, so I figured it would be as good a time as ever to give hammers Killer Mile a test run and get me over the milestone.
So this is my baseline, will never be allowed to do it slower than this!
Splits (taken at the peak of each climb)
2:41
3:09
1:53
2:35
2:17

Sorting out the mile route, checking the way up and down Wonderwall was OK and picking the each peaks 'split' point. Important stuff this.

Sweet Man-Deer loop.
Had to dash out to get a run in while it was still light. Really nice out in the forest - has opened up incredibly is the past few weeks.
Boo boo is improving daily, but not as quickly as I'd like - has become a nice yellow/purple colour.

Hard men only TNT. Turbo showed me the winter rally route, we did 4mins on @ tempo pace on every 5:30.
Took us 6 ints to get round, but the last one was about 5:40 to get to the top of the stairs, so 25:40 for the whole loop, which is 6k I believe? Look forward to doing it next time with actual working batteries in the head torch.
Nancy Green was super muddy and slippery going up - I kind of feel bad for making the ARKers run it the last couple of weeks. Not that bad though.
Frankensteps at the end - was feeling pretty flat by this point, but smashed 'em out.

C • winter rally 15

Usual pre-ARK run - up to Chedoke, 2 climbs of the stairs and along Scenic Drive.
Wasn't feeling the best on the stairs and took a long time to recover, but then felt quite good on the Bruce trail and putting out controls at the end. Except when I forgot one... Sorry Nina!

Aborted TNT. My boo boo was feeling OK on the run out, but as soon as I started climbing up to Chedoke it was feeling less good. Descending was awful.
Met up with Super and turbo the hard men, did a lap of the figure 8 with them, then went back home.
Was the right choice as I was starting to hobble towards the end.
Absolutely minging.

Actually feeling really good, post raid. Almost.
The impact wound on my quad is big, raised, purple and quite sore to walk on - though does improve after a couple of minutes of walking.
My back is also super sore - towards the end of the race I had to modify my running style significantly to stave off the cramp and aforementioned leg soreness. I imagine the style looked pretty ugly (lets just call in hammer-esque) and wasn't friendly to my back.
Ice and ibuprofen has been the order of the day.

C • leg 4

Event: Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Raid the Hammer
 

Raid The Hammer. In team 'Sweet As' with Bender and Dang
What a race - I wasn't expecting it to be that tough!
Started off disgracefully in the individual matrix, dropping about 5 minutes on the first checkpoint - headless chook stuff.
The pace on the first trail run was surprisingly fast. There was a fair bit of banter when we passed 'The Coalition of the Wiling' and about 30 seconds later I picked up my worst injury in a while - running full speed into a small log jutting out of the track at about waist height. Fortunately I was lifting my leg at the time which saved it hitting my crotch, but the force it hit my leg was massive. I could barely run, but there was no way I was going to walk and let the Wiling team pass us. Grit my team and ran through it. It didn't abate for the rest of the race.
Then we hit the The Bullseye. Even with Team Nick and about 5 minutes behind Team Ottawa. I took the reins and off we went. Team Nick started arguing so we snuck away quickly.
I got a handle on the map pretty quickly and got us on track to the first checkpoint. Team Ottawa came out of nowhere here and hopped onto the Sweet As peleton for most of the Bullseye. This section seemed to work well, with me navigating and Dang out in front spotting the flag. Though we weren't flawless, we had the fastest split for this section and coming into the first aid station with me leading 5 Canadians in felt pretty awesome (some may say that's just natural order, I wouldn't, but some would).
Not much to say about the next section - the half pipe was easy nav, just gnarly underfoot with lots of slippery slopes and slipperier rocks. Crossing the river for the last time I took a good tumble and went for a swim. Lucky the weather was relatively warm.
We lost touch with Team Ottawa on the next trail run, they followed the Bruce trail, but Chris noticed it wasn't actually following the trail we were meant to be following so we turned back and followed the map. We thought we'd gotten in front of them here - but they'd worked their mistake out as well and fixed it.
Next section was pretty unspectacular, Team Nick caught up to us here and passed us about three times - fortunately Bender had us ignore them as they did their extended tour of the map.
Not much else left to say about the rest of the course, thinking Ottawa were behind we just played if safe, slow and kept looking behind at each CP. Bender and I both started to cramp up towards the end - I've actually never had cramp like that and I've also never tried to run through any kind of cramp either. I learnt a lot about how much pain my body can take in the final 20% of the race.
Nav was OK in the last part - was happy to nail CP19 which I'd recognised as a danger leg during the briefing and also picked up the fastest split. Unfortunately wasted in on CP20 by taking a horrendous route with double the necessary climb.
Finished comfortably in 3rd place - though I've heard The Coalition of the Wiling surely would have beaten us as they had to wait for about 97 minutes (current estimate) at the train crossing.
Great race, great team and not a bad course at all. It's only taken 24 hours for me to be hungry for more. Now I know what to expect will be much better prepared - first item will defo be to get a good bladder/backpack with lots of accessible pockets. Watch out MEC here I come.

C • Maps with GPS track 24

Pre Raid loosener with New-Monster and special guest star Super.
Nice and cruisy on the Westdale trails. Saw a big scary man-deer that wasn't afraid of us, so had did a bit of tiptoeing round. Nice arvo for it.

C • sweet as 10

Another quiet TNT. Attempted 2 x Bannisteps, but must have been doing them wrong, cause I was nowhere near the record of 3:50.
Left calf was a bit twingey on the way back, must want a rest before RTH.

C • Friday 4

Up to Chedoke, 2 x steps (1st was 2 up, 1 down, then full ascent - will do LandySteps next time), along Scenic Rd, down other steps and back along Bruce trail. Then put out flags for ARK.
Got very cool very quickly towards the end.

Did some TurboCore with the YellowBlue group at ARK. Scorpions are awesome.

TNT with Sudden, turbo and Greta the Impatient.
6x some cool loop of the Radial trail and a bit of the golf course, about 1.2km. I only went hard on 1, 3 and 5 and that was enough - the guys were disappearing into the dark on those ones as it was.
Quads getting better, actually hurt less on the higher intensity stuff.

The usual. Turbo forgot all the moves and Greta started barking at ghosts so we stopped.

Recovery 'run'.
Actually felt OK when I got out the door. Then hammer pulled over and sledged me and I felt crap after that. Only real pain is in the quads, but there's a lot of it...
2 laps of Churchill, a group of Mac kids were doing some sort of speed session at the same time and made me feel even slower.
Massive stretch after.

Since everyone is doing it again, I'll get back on the bandwagon - now renamed to its new branding.
Repeating week 6, the one I quit on: 32, 30, 30, 26
Only thing that hurt was the forearms... Odd, I don't remember them being the weak point last time.

Event: Road to Hope 1/2 Marathon
 

Road 2 Hope Half Mara
0-5k: The Good
Started off well, felt good on the warm up. The first 5k melted away fairly effortlessly. I wanted to sit on my goal pace, 3:55, in this first section and had to keep slowing myself down as I was going a little to fast. Almost no breeze, chilly and sunny - perfect.

Time Distance Split time
0:03:51 1 3:51
0:07:40 2 3:49
0:11:30 3 3:51
0:15:21 4 3:50
0:19:04 5 3:43

5-10k: The Great
The downhill section, though it's really only the first km that's properly downhill. The plan was just to cruise this without pushing and put any seconds I save in the bank for later, if something goes wrong. The km markers go out of sync with the Garmin here, up to 200m. Allegedly did a 10k PB (36:50) using the markers. Felt fine and I'm thinking sub 80 might be possible.

Time Distance Split time
0:22:34 6 3:30
0:26:11 7 3:37
0:29:55 8 3:44
0:33:41 9 3:47
0:37:29 10 3:48

10-15k: The bad
Pop a gel at the first drink station after the 10k marker and have some water. I know instantly it was a mistake - crippling stitch almost a minute later and my pace drops straight to 4:10 min/km.
I don't panic, I was ahead of schedule and work out I can manage a little over 4min/ks and still finish under 83:00. I passed by about 3 guys here, but I manage to slowly speed up again - though the pain never lessens.

0:41:26 11 3:57
0:45:26 12 4:00
0:49:20 13 3:54
0:53:22 14 4:01
0:57:24 15 4:02

15-20k: The Ugly
This is simply all about hanging on from here on in. The pain slowly gets worse and another guy catches me around 17ks. I'm constantly doing the math in my head and work out I'm ahead of the curve. The kms painfully fall away and come back in line with my GPS. At 19km I go into the basement and find all sorts of useful crap I can use - energy bars, painkillers etc. I catch back up one bloke and pull away on a short but painful incline. There's no 20km marker, but it's spray painted on the bike path. I have 5 minutes to finish - I'm gonna do it!

Time Distance Split time
1:01:29 16 4:06
1:05:38 17 4:09
1:09:42 18 4:03
1:13:47 19 4:06
1:17:51 20 4:04

20-21.?: The tragedy
The course loops past the assembly field at around 20.2km, I can't be bothered to do the maths any more and I can't see the finish, so I just put in all I've got left. Feels like we go a long way up the bike path, my legs are screaming. Turn and do an awful 100m on a small gravelly path behind a building. The Garmin beeps for the final 21km, I figure I'm gonna turn the corner and see the finish - still on 81 minutes, I'm pretty happy.
But, no finish - just more road. Garmin does the celebration song that I finished the workout under the specified time - it's stopped on 82 something and I still can just see the finish. I see the clock, the seconds are ticking 40, 41... Then I get closer, it's on 84 minutes! WTF! I think I get under the line before it ticks over to 85 - but it doesn't matter any more. Fail.

Time Distance Split time
1:21:46 21 3:55
1:22:07 21.09 0:21

So I have no idea what my official time is going to be and what happened with the course. Normally I'd just blame myself for trusting the Garmin as they do often under measure, but since it was right on track at the 20km marker I have a feeling the course was too long. It did have to be re routed this year due to some road works. I'll be disappointed if I've gone over 83 officially, but I guess shit happens. The real race is next week :)

C • ! 17

Good warm up, 2k easy jogging, dynamic stretchy time and sprints.

Gentle cruise around the Ginger Valley trail and back.
Kept taking less time than planned so a lot of back and forth going on and half a Dang loop required to get over 40 mins.
Wasn't sure if a short sleeve shirt would be OK, but I got by - just. Gloves and beanie were a definite necessity though.

C • toque! not beanie. Get with the program 16

TNT. I didn't get the memo that no one else was going, which was lucky, as a newbie turned up. They were expecting a nav session, so I had to inform them it was rally night - gave them a tour of the loop, but one was enough for them, so I was solo for the rest of it.
Only ended up doing one more loop, in a half hearted attempt at a taper for the half on Sunday - 11:20, slower than last time, though Nancy and Laury were slippery as and I didn't have Coach Sting to lead me on the fastest line through the forest section. Frowny face.
Then had to run home in the rain. Frowny face with lots of frowns the emphasize extra sadness.

C • sorry dude 7

So my Forerunner 405 officially died in Oz. Charged it to full in the evening and the next morning there was nothing showing on the face, though the backlight still worked.
I've been using an old battered 205 I picked up on ebay for $20 (just cause it was so cheap) and it's made me realise how much better the 205/305 set up in compared to the 405's.
All the functions seem easier to get around.
The bigger face and buttons are easier to see and use
The fact it charges and downloads at the same time on the cradle is better than the wireless download/USB charge combo of the 405
The map screen comes in handy when I a) get lost running in a new place, b) am doing terrain runs where it forces you to run in a straight line and c) cheating on butterfly loops.
No bezel going bonkers as soon as you start sweating
So I think I'll be picking up a new 305 soon, now they've dropped to $160 with the newer watches coming out (which don't seem to be any different from the existing ones)

C • Newer Forerunners 5

Run up to Chedoke before ARK.
Was feeling pretty chipper on the run out so bounded up the Frankensteps for a full straight ascent and was decidedly less chipper by the time I reached the top. Did a second ascent, tried to do it in the 2 up/1 down variety but there were too many knobs with Ipods who wouldn't get out of my way, so just did a full climb again.
Came back along the Bruce Trail. The trails a sweet as through here now - all the leaves are on the ground so it's just all orange and you can see the trail snake through it for miles.

Some jogging through the golf course chasing round the ARK Attack kids and periodically acting as a control. Raining.

Back on the TNT train with Sudden, the Griz, turbo and the great-a one.
Accidentally slept most of the day once I got home, so was pretty dopey and flat at the beginning, but started to feel better once the session went on.
Frankensteps were tough.
It was cold.

C • Skydiving? 2

With Mr. T himself while Greta tried to lick our faces at every opportunity

C • It was cold 6

More gym-time killing whilst waiting for flights in LA.
Half hour on the treadie and twenty on the stairs. Went much faster this week with Mr. Poddy tp keep me company.
Many challenged me on both contraptions and I trounced the competition. It's all about running faster and longer than everyone else at the gym, isn't it?
Computer at reception was down so got in for free too - win!