Training Log Archive: Canadian

warm up before orienteering today

I ran both the LongA and the shortA today to prep for the ultra-long next weekend. It went pretty well but I had almost nothing left by the third time I went up penguin hill - is it ever stupid steep and long!

I started with the LongA (7.4K 13c lots of climb):
I didn't notice a trail on the way to control 3 and while my route was fine and clean I don't think it was as fast as the trail would have been. Leg 4 was from the bottom of the hill to the top and I'm still not sure going straight up (my route) was the best. You also had the option of going all the way around on trail (about twice the distance). Controls 5 and 6 were fine. Control 7 cost me about 15minutes of wander around the control because there was definitely something weird going on there. Everyone had trouble with it and I think it was poorly mapped (there were definitely cliffs and marshes that weren't on the map but should have been).
The rest of hte course was fine and I pushed it just a bit at the end. My dibbler came off when I fell between 8 and 9. I need to remember to attach a new loop to it.

ShortA (5.1k 12c lots of climb):
after downloading and 5 or so minutes of rest I headed out again.
Even at the very beginning of the course my brain and legs were barely working. Not an auspicious start. luckily though all but 3 of the controls were also on the long course and many of the legs were the same. I made a stupid bobble on control 2 and fumbled control 3 (I was to far south and continued further south to the corner of the marsh where the control was supposed to be - it turns out however, that the marsh continues much further south than the control - stupid out of date map!)
Made another tiny mistake to 4, control 6 (LongA's control 7) was fine because I had been to the control already, control 7 was slightly misplaced and the rest of the course was easy and the same as LongA.

mapping for 45 minutes this morning

long adventure of a bike ride. When I pulled my bike out of the garage this morning I noticed that my front tire was completely flat. I find the small hole int he outer tire pump up the tire and feel air coming out the hole. So I replace the tube with my spare and bike to meet the friends that organized the ride at Hog's Back park. When I'm almost there my new front tube pops as well - in the same spot. I realized at this point that there was still a stone lodged into the outer tire there that had caused the second tube to break. I try and call the guys I'm supposed to meet but to no avail. Jack wasn't answering his phone. I call my dad and ask him to pick me up and meanwhile walk to Hog's Back (about 10 minutes of walking with my bike) to at least let my friends know what's going on. I find them there and tell them to go on because I'll be a good half hour before my bike is in riding order again and I may try and catch up with them. (I got the cellphone number of one of the other guys so we could be in touch and I could find out where they were.)
So then my dad shows up and the other guys head off. We drove down to the Cyclery on Bank St where a friend of mine works. He had agreed earlier that he would look at my bike today anyway as my front derailleur was slightly misalinged so it wasn't a big deal. It seems he couldn't do much for the derailleur but once he was done working with some real customers he quickly put a new tube in and trued my front wheel. Roughly 45 minutes and $17 (two tubes and labour costs) after leaving my friends I was on the road again.
These friends I was biking with were very recreational cyclists and when I spoke with them on the phone shortly before leaving the bike shop they were heading to Lac Leamy. The plan was that they would start heading to Gatineau park and I would just meet them there. I call them when I get to the start of the parkway and they tell me that they stopped at the lake to have lunch. They could meet me at the Museum of Civilization in 20 minutes (about a 10 minute ride away for me) or I could just bike all the way to Leamy in roughly 20 minutes. So I head off to Lac Leamy and while I find my way there with not that much difficulty I end up at the wrong end of the lake.
I find myself at the giant parking lot in front of the casino and give them a call. Where exactly are they? Turns out they're at the water front somewhere near the other side of the lake. I was told to get to the bike path going around the lake and go east (they were going to wait for me on the path near some graffitied bridge). I struggle to find my way to the water and eventually end up at the North shore of the lake and head east. So far so good. I continue east and get to a little wooden bridge the bike path goes over. Clearly no graffiti on it but who knows - that and I still haven't been able to find the guys I'm looking for. After several more phone calls back and forth, more biking in all directions, and lots of miscommunication, I eventually find one of friends (the rest of them were significantly slower and decided to head off and let us catch up). It turns out that when I was supposed to go east it was because I was expected to have ended up at the south west shore. I ended up taking the long route around but found hime eventually.
We then bike at a pretty decent pace, catch up with the others and head pretty much directly home.
What a day!

Turns out this was a stupid and mostly useless exercise as the contours were terribly mapped (I've fixed them now though) and the vegitation is so variable and unreliable as to make running without the veg mapped nearly impossible.

timed with my watch

Ran a set of 4 o-tervals in the woods behind my place. The focus was really on running and "galloping" through some of the woods due to deadfall and underbrush because I know the woods so well and I was running on a portion of the map that I redrew in the spring.

It went well though one small area seems a lot slower than I mapped it. Also I messed up my very first control and got confused because I missed a trail I should have crossed on my way there.

time distance (km)
stretch
cool down
stretch
5:24 0.61
2:36 rest
4:15 0.60
2:19 rest
3:53 0.72
2:31 rest
7:07 0.82
4:12 rest
cool down
stretch
(all loops had 2 controls - some were more on trails/ more direct than others)

After finally finding a stretch that helps my ankles I can run again! yay!

C • great news! 1

Seem to have gotten my speed back

took it nice and slow - also crawled behind cars in urn lanes a couple of times

was planning on running a set of o-tervals but it didn't work out because of when dinner was (not enough time beforehand and it got dark fairly soon after). Changed my plan to an easy run while reading a technical map as a map reading exercise.

I decided to take my 2006 Nor-Ams long (Rocky Ridge course 7B) with me. Tried to read as much as I would if I were racing it - a fair bit because it was quite a technical, challenging course. Slowed down to almost a walk to read inside some of the more detailed control circles. I really had trouble folding the map quickly and efficiently.

This is definitely an easy exercise that I want to do more of. I especially need to work on folding the map.

Decided I'd like to see what I can run a 10K in after never doing any serious running training.
Roughly 50min for roughly 10K (distance is based on google maps)
specifically 26:00 out and 23:45 back. It wasn't nearly as fast as I was hoping for. I'm gonna blame that on a combination of heat and cramps for the last quarter of the run and of course the lack of serious training :)
Decent run anyway though despite everything!

C • Negative split 2

I just couldn't get my legs moving this morning. Felt slow and heavy and no matter how hard I tried to build up speed I simply couldn't.

just as slow as this morning. Not a very awake day for me obviously...