Training Log Archive: Anvil

smt fail. I partially lost a toe nail a while back and trimmed it last week as a lot of ARK related dirt was accumulating underneath.
Woke up this morning with a lot of pain in the toe, suspect it was becoming ingrown. Endured about 3k of agony until I stubbed it on one of those sneaky baby stumps on the braids and it became too excruciating to handle. Thought I was gonna puke from the pain at one point.
Walk of shame back to the Hottage, then went to town on the offending nail with some clippers. More pain, but worth it as it seems I removed the offending piece of nail - we'll see soon, off for round 2.

C • ouch! 2

Having more of a gander around the trails behind CUMIS for Mud Run. Some epics climbs and descents for the older kids.
Taped up toe. Much better.

Quick Tiffany Falls loop to blow out the cobwebs. Crazy busy (but satisfying) week, and became partially Super.
Blister healed up nicely on the days off, a little sore today, but OK.

C • Role model 1

Fun evening MTB with Sarah and Dr. PBV. Easy trails main loop style trails as the single track is still a little wet. Still fun though.

Would have been literally impossible today. Busiest day of the year - the only reason I ate was that food was brought to me - thanks for that Hammer, MammaGHOSLO and the Schools team.
Very proud to see 5 of the 8 categories in the schools race taken out by ARX members, in some cases by considerable margins. Not bad when some categories had 100+ teams. It'll be 8/8 in a few years once these kids get old enough to run the Junior and Senior categories.

C • busy day 2

File this one in the same category as 'Too Windy'
Woke up this morning with pus pouring out of the popped blister I picked up during the Raid. Probably wasn't wise to go straight to pub trivia after ARK last night in shoes soaked in St. Catharines best urban park mud.
Cut all the skin out, cleaned and covered it. Seemed OK during the day.
Planned to run the ARK Attack Tour De Homer Watson course before ARK, but I guess the tape came off - too painful to run on. Thankfully Tiny was there to provide lots of sympathy.

Easy jog round a couple of potential ARK areas in the Pelham region.
One excellent, one needs more of an explore with an aerial photograph.
After being a little shuffle-y to begin with, loosened up OK and felt good by the time ARK rolled round.

Event: 2013 Salomon Giant's Rib Raid
 

Giant's Rib Raid
Awesome fun with D-Bag and Sarah. They were great team mates, both very strong and confident off-trail.
Defo worst navigation performance from me in a Raid. Time lost on #3, #9, #13 and #16, but the blame can be split equally between me and the map (relying too much on trail features that were hard to see or the waterline of the numerous swamps), but an awful one on #21 coming off the trail too early and the controlled blast was a disaster.
Firstly, I got cocky since I updated the map to 1:5000 in Fall of 2011 - but it was a different, totally dry, obvious trail world back then, so I didn't take the time to really get into the map. I was not confident we'd got #24 right (we hadn't) soon after punching it, so then was very, very cautious and slow to #25 after relocating.
I should have done my pre-race plan that if it looked advantageous, to skip the controls and take the penalty - I didn't take the time before the race to see if that was a viable option. I think it definitely would have been.
Shoes fell apart on the final butterfly, thank god for D-Bags first aid tape! Amazed at how quickly they went from totally fine beforehand to simultaneous disintegration - sole pulling off and all the stitching breaking

RIP Inov-8 Oroc's, got 800km out of them - can't complain!

C • Good race! 6