Training Log Archive: Garrison

Started with the A group and actually felt pretty decent. Got a little too cocky with my pulls though and got dropped at about half way. Legs felt surprisingly good for a reasonably hard effort.

A month late, but finished full blown race report.

Working on an "actual" race report for this one, but here are the basics. Didn't keep track of times at all, borrowed some distances from silkychrome.

6am start

Bike 1: ~15 mile ride from start, pretty uneventful.

Trek1: 10ish mile trek, remembered the challenge of navving in WI. Other than a bobble on 1 was slow but clean.

Bike 2: 35 miles started on amazing single track. Steady pace, I crashed in the rocks which immediately deleted any ability I had to ride in rocks for about 30 miniutes. Keith (our rookie, yeah, first race ever was a 30 hour) had some heat issues after the single track but we helped him out and he refused to quit. Rolled into Cable and restocked on Gatorades and ate. Cruised last few miles to TA, Keith bounced back strong.

TA: Frantic TA trying to plot ahead of the storm. No UTM grids made for a little extra challenge. Just finished prior to all hell breaking loose.

Paddle: ?? miles We launched in the thick of the storm. Sideways rain, lightning, all the good stuff. Not smart but we got lucky and are still alive. No issues on the paddling points, but burned 45 minutes of our "paddled in the lightning" time on a mid paddle mini-trek because I misplotted C5. Very frustrating as we had a "check sheet" to confirm CP locations. (On the up side, I'm confident that we went right to the point that I plotted on the first try.) Dropped the 3 southern most points as we knew a monster 23 CP trek was ahead. Better CP density.

Trek 2: Advertised as 11 miles, felt like 20. Tough way to get my night nav skills de-rusted. Subtle terrain, darkness, thick bush, leg sucking swamps, prehistoric volumes of mosquitoes. Other than 19 stayed mostly connected to the map (with LOTS of recoveries) but was very slow and deliberate. Too slow. Conditions and (unneeded) concerns about the ankle had the brain going too many directions at once so I didn't operate with enough urgency. But, we still got more points than any other team. Part of our strategy since Keith's "undercarriage" was only prepared for direct ride to finish.

Bike 3: 12 miles to finish on pavement. I almost fell asleep at the handlebars twice. Once I disengaged the nav brain the mental fatigue punched me in the head. Hard.

Third place overall. Not bad for a team with a pure AR rookie (who was amazing) and a rusty dinged up navigator. Ankle actually did great and felt better after the race than before. I was crazy clumsy in the woods tripping everywhere, but I think that will be out of my system now that I trust it again. 30 hours of racing is effective for scar tissue removal apparently. The whole race gave me a lot of confidence going in to CT in 2 weeks.

Felt great to get back out there despite some brutal conditions at times!

C • Happy you're back! 4

Event: Stubborn Mule 30-Hr AR
 

Event: North Central Sprint Event II
 

Warm up before running the sprint courses. Legs are definitely tired from yesterday, bit not as bad as I expected.

Advanced course 1

Advanced course 2

Advanced Course 1 - Splits

Advanced Course 2 - Splits

Found a 90ish mostly gravel ride online that starts with the ride I've been doing. Pretty cool route for a lot of flat Indiana corn fields. Just my luck the wind picked up from the east making for a nice solid head wind starting around mile 60 or so. Had to cut a little out to get home on time.

Legs were tired but did ok for my longest ride in a while.

Legs were a bit tired from the ride yesterday. Run was slow awkward and generally uncomfortable, but it was my first trail run with no brace since December. Pretty much the last box to tick other than just getting stronger and faster.

Posted race summary. New record for turn around time on race report/summary and first one I've done in a few years.

C • Link? 4

Aggressive ROM stuff again and some dynamic motion stuff too. Jump squats, lunges with twist etc. Anything to force me into the front of the ankle.

Intervals. Ouch.

Not pretty but got it done.

Never hit my knee with the bar until I have a bruise on it. Hit it about 6 times tonight. ?!?!?!

Event: Adventure Race 6 hr at Carter Caves SP by 361
 

Race map with really rough route marked in

Actual race report with pics and everything

First race back from the ankle with Heather (scallywagz) and Tyler Sgro. Course layout and rules were simple. Any points, any order, any mode. One bonus point was available for anyone that got a paddle point due to the burly portage required. Bikes and boats must finish at TA (Which was different than S/F). That was it. Crusty old purists will scoff, but it made for a nice beginner friendly setup, and still provided some route selection challenge for the more experienced racers.

We opted to hit the boats first to get 13, 14, 15, and 21-24. That would be 8 points right out of the gate thanks to the burly portage CP. The portage was indeed burly but I stuck Tyler (25 and fit) in crappy front/downhill position of carrying the boat over our heads. Heather carried all the paddling gear and looked like one of those crazy people on a shopping game shows from the 80’s and 90’s.

Paddle was simple for 21-24, Tyler was being a goof (kind of his thing) and poor Heather was a champ sitting in the bottom of the boat while trying to paddle. Shortest person on the floor in the fattest part of the boat. Might not have been good strategy there. After clearing the paddle points we beached the boat at E end of lake. Grabbed 14 then 13. On the way east to 15 I got a little twitchy and climbed up too soon but realized it before we even reached the ridge. Kept moving past a couple other mildly perplexed teams to 15. Tried to go direct back to the boats on the long spur N of 14 but got cliffed. Should have known better on that one. I may have let the adrenaline take over a bit on this section. Heather thought my surgery scar was just a tattoo and Tyler realized he wouldn’t have as much time to be comic relief.

Quick paddle back to the boat put-in where Tyler and I hucked the boat up to the TA while Heather resumed her crazy shopper imitation with all the paddling gear. This definitely sucked, but wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Tyler made the mistake of checking our progress less than half way up. That made him sad. He shouldn’t have done that.

Next was to the bikes and it was a series of three points (16, 17, 18) where we rode close, dropped bikes, snagged the CP, then back to the bikes. Then we rode around to the trail head for the jeep road and trekked to 19. Spot on for this one, but drifted a little south on the way to 20. Knew it pretty much right away though and didn’t lose time. Heard cows or dinosaurs near here. Not clear which. I was “rabbitting” the last few meters to each control on this section to kind of test out the legs and ankle. Legs were great, ankle was pretty good.

Tyler was on a park map with all the points transposed to it. This was awesome and we were both on/in the maps really well to this point.

Biking the jeep road started good, then went bad for a bit causing brief concern, then back to good real quick. Hit the gravel then the pavement for a fast ride to CP3. A dreaded “answer the question where the answer is on one of these 300 gravestones” CP was thankfully a piece of cake, they used a grave stone right at the front of the cemetery. (Thanks for that RDs!) Quick food and electrolyte break then we were on our way to the single track.

The multi-use trail started a bit dodgy but transitioned to decent quickly. CP2 was super clean and quick. Opted to trek up to CP1 rather than mess around with the biking. Might have been a wash as the trails weren’t super bad, nor was the climb. Headed up the big spur on bikes to CP4. Jumped the gun way early on CP4 but realized it quickly and corrected. Dropped the bikes near the hill and trekked to 5. An early micro-hill with pond had me baffled but Tyler was spot on and we kept moving to 5. Uncooperative veg on they way to 6 and this is where I tweaked the ankle a bit and planted my face. No permanent damage though. Trailish path on the spur up from 6 so got back to the bike quick.

Stil not sure that trekking from 5 to 6 was the best, but it was nice to get on the bikes and haul all the way to 7 not having to worry about 6. Took a little time with CP7 due to all kinds of parallel error potential but nailed it. Tyler was a big help yet again with the park map.

The ride down to 8 was the most technical trails by far. Loose and rocky. That pretty much made up our minds to drop bikes near 8 and trek to 9 then 10. (Conversation after the race with teams that rode the loop confirmed this choice.) CP9 was relatively clean, just headed south too soon from the main ridge and had to traverse around on the correct spur. CP10 was frustrating in that we almost walked right to it. If we had looked to our right at the correct time we would have seen it. Unfortunately we headed up the ridge first (my call), realized the mistake and headed back down. We stopped about 15 meters from the control so Tyler and I could discuss the strategic elements of how to find the control. Heather chose to point and say “there it is”. Heather’s approach was best.

From there it was a quick trek back to the bikes and then a ride over to what we called the “cyclocross” portion. The red trails were “no part of the bike can touch the trails” trails. It was “only” 300 meters of “easy” trail, or so I said. Turned out that we had to go down a crazy steep ladder/stair thing, then through a rock arch, then make a wrong turn down a stream bed and small cliff for 10 meters (this part was optional and my doing), then through some narrow rocks to more normal trail. By far the most painful part of the race as our bikes repeatedly tried to beat us senseless.

Back at the boat put in it was a quick ride up to the TA to drop the bikes, grab some of the absolute BESTEST watermelon ever, then jog back to the finish with 20 minutes to spare. Cleared the course and managed a first place finish. Better than I had hoped for in the first race back, especially with the heat. Overall we functioned great as a team. Everyone was on the same page and worked really really well together. Had a total blast!

C • That's a great result on wh... 4

Travel day to KY.

Easy run, really tired today though.

Mini-breakthrough with the stride. Instantly became more comfortable to run closer to my normal pace. Dorsiflexion ROM improving every day now, just gotta watch everything else to make sure I don't overwork anything.

C • Nice! 2

Group TT intervals. Motor felt good but legs were flat. Glutes still sore from pistol squats on Saturday. Nice little sprint at the end of the without that felt good though.

Trying to get back in the groove of AM workouts.
Legs sore from the weekend but the running stride continues to make small improvements. Still sticking to slow and easy pace though.

Sore glutes from yesterday but legs still felt decent.
Windy again 18-20mph from the WSW this time. Not the worst, but wouldn't mind this route with no wind at some point.

Got into some jump board stuff and didn't feel too bad. Not a lot of pop, but strength was OK.

Twenty minute warn up
Twenty minutes 4x1 intervals
Fifteen minutes .5 x 1.5 intervals
Cool down
6.5 miles (whatever that means on a step mill)
300 floors

First session on the new toy. Surprisingly good. Altered between using the foot rests and feet on the floor. Feet on the floor felt a little more like paddling a canoe.

Definitely good investment.

C • Erg 15

C • Nice! 1

Had a few extra minutes so i gave the ankle a little test drive. Felt good. Definitely more range.

Ankle feels noticeably better than usual this morning. Cryo cuff is back to being my best friend.

Appointment with surgeon went well. Bone bruise is healed, Microfracture looks good, strength is excellent, only issue is ROM in dorsiflexion (which I knew.) I'm treating his request for a finisher pic from Cowboy Tough as a thumbs up to race.

PT tonight for the final green light!

C • Great news on the thumbs up! 2

Got the all clear from the PT but still getting two more sessions in before CT.
Intense ROM work Full on body sweat by the time he was done. All the balance and strength stuff felt SO much easier, but dorsiflexion ROM is still meh.

Holding off on the running for one more day so 50 minutes on the stepmill instead. Finished with intervals and felt surprisingly good.