Training Log Archive: Wyatt

A loop along the edge and out along some minor trails from a city park in Great Valley corporate center area. Could make a reasonable White/Sprint map. A bit small but at least that maps it easy to map.

Test run and apparently I'm healthy just fine today. As usual, the 2nd run of the day didn't materialize.

Malaise, GI issues, didn't respond to simply trying to have a normal morning, so took two 1-2 hour naps, and was more or less fine by evening, definitely fine by next day. Heard of someone in CA with same symptoms on Monday. Odd, but quick at least. No training though.

Great Valley nature center a loop around the horseshoe trail and a loop on a paved road. Not great running location - the HS trail, when a trail, is pretty overgrown for shorts, and >50% of the run was on roads which rarely had a runnable shoulder.

Easy loop around Chesterbrook with only a few steep bits. Knee better than anytime in the last few days - less limp, no pain that I'd notice if I weren't paying close attention to it. The new housing around Summerhill seems to have stopped construction after the forest clearing & lot-levelling process. Weeds are growing high...

Warmup on a cool, cloudy day, worried about my L-knee (patellar tendon) which was a bit sore on the warmup (and during the race) quite unaware I was about to embark on the scariest orienteering race I've ever done...

About 20 minutes after I started Blue @ Mt. Penn, I began to hear some far away rumbling of thunder, no problem as long as the rumbling stayed quite far away.

At about 60 minutes, with the rumbling getting a bit louder, the sky began to darken, and darken, and darken, to the point where seeing the map required nearly stopping, and seeing one's footing in the rocky forests of Mt. Penn became rather tricky. A point where I might have gotten had it been about 45 minutes after sunset... My navigation began to be affected as checking the map & compass was getting difficult and I had a 300m attack to do. A bit creepy, but this was only stage 1.

Not surprisingly, it then began to rain. Fortunately this was mostly noise in the forest as the leaves above were holding the water just fine. For about 2 minutes. The rain continued to get heavier (still in the dusk-light), and I proceed to slightly miss my control to the west, with the darkness and heavy rain making it more difficult. And then the hail started. Very cool at first to see these marble sized hail stones hitting the ground, and in the midst of that and increasingly loud thunder, I managed to loop back uphill and find my control.

2 more to go, then I can hide in the car... Or should I simply hide now? You see, the hail had become heavier and larger and was starting to hurt, esp. when it clocked me on the top of the head. My running up a trail now included a hand over my head, and when I saw one half-golf-ball hail piece hit the ground in front of me - by far the largest I've ever seen - I began looking for a flat rock I could use as a helmet, but quickly gave up and began hiding against trees during the heaviest spells. And yet the worst was still to come.

As the hail began to subside, the increasingly loud thunder, which I'd been wishfully thinking was cloud-to-cloud, began to make itself visible with flashes of bright sky. Counting seconds from the flash to the boom (3 per km), I could tell the lightening was still 2-4km away, but as it varied in that range, the possibility of nearer lightning getting scary as I ran into a semi-clearing to get the 2nd to last control.

The best route to the final control was up a trail on the top ridge line of Mt. Penn, to the GO control on a local hill top on Mt. Penn. Not exactly the place to be during a lightning storm. So I took and around route hoping the lightning would get further away before I got to the control. And then flash, 1, crack-boom.... 300m away to the southeast, something just got hit. At which point I looked for a local depression and laid down in it to keep my profile low. As I laid there for about 15 minutes I counted 5 more strikes within a km, including one 150m away to the Northeast. Finally about 5 minutes after the last strike within a km I had counted, as Sandy Ahlswede came by, I got up to run to the last control and in - my car was just past those so I might as well punch them on the way.

The daytime-darkness and hail were pretty cool, but the non-trivial possibility of getting struck by lightning is not something I'd like to repeat...

As for the course, it was pretty nice for Mt. Penn, albeit a bit long. As usual for the summer it was fairly hot (until the hail came... :) My knee was strapped, and sore enough on the hills (up or down) that I was clealry favoring it, but it was pretty good afterwards giving me little pain on the stairs at home (I've been taping it since Thursday with a SalonPas patch thing which seems to help.) Time above is from the 95% of the course until I finally completely paused competiting to hide from the lightning.

C • that does sound scary! 1

Knees strapped tried a slightly longer run. Knees little better, but not worse than Thursday.

Shortest loop through VF park at 9am. Why short? Well, after two hilly runs in Prague w/o my knee strap, the L-knee Patellar Tendon pain is back. Notably more so this morning after a day off yesterday. So I strapped it and did a short run. It's still sore after, but no worse than before and it didn't get worse during, so I'll try these short runs for a bit (with the strap) and hope that gets it back to the normal of a month ago...

Hilly run in Prague streets, again forgetting the knee strap, which I noticed today esp. after the long hard stone downhills.

Looping around downtown Prague. Started up to the mirror labyrinth hill, then past some churches by the palace, then back down and along the river.

Yesterday we went to the mirror labyrinth. The name sounded pretty cool, but it was rather small. The mirrors were pretty high quality, which allowed the reflections to go pretty far and straight, but other than that, and a large diorama, it wasn't much different from a town-fair hall-of-mirrors attraction.

C • fun house mirrors at the top also fun 1

Hours of walking in Prague. Unusually, by the end of the day, Angelica was the most tired of walking, me 2nd most, and the kids still happy to explore (vs. the morning when it was hard to get them moving.) One of the more unique things we didn't plan on seeing was http://www.reon.cz/astro.php?sekce=3

Misc. running around a beautiful sunny day of spectating at the WOC relay. Awesome to see the British men win a relay Gold, and very nice to see Eric & Sam pull off some impressive first legs, generally in some of the later stages of the slowly breaking train, including Eric 1st of a train of 4 only about 25% back, and Sam only 15% back. Our latter legs weren't quite as good, but I think we still managed to beat Canada by the scoring of 1-1 (Men/Women) with the total-time tie-breaker going, by about 6 minutes out of 6 hours, to the US.

After the Long Final, I went out on another OFest course and again had a decent run. More or less nailed the 'hard' first 4 controls (like the Middle Qual. veg. in medium green), then proceed to lose 2 minutes on an easy control (5) by exitting 4 poorly, then enjoying the fast woods so much that I missed a bag. Made another 2 minutes of mistakes in smaller pieces. Not spectacular, but <10% errors in some fairly new terrain isn't that bad. Again, a day I'd trade for the Middle Qual. I think I should stop thinking about trading days for that. Either way wouldn't get me into a final...

warmup & parts of AJ's course which he did reasonably well on

A much better run today in the day-of-event registration "P8" class at the WOC Public races 'OFest'. Largest mistake was under 1 minute, and total (incl. 5-10 sec. hesitations) was probably about 3 minutes. Clem was 56. Winner was 35 (as of when I left...)

So I ran my first WOC race today. Unfortunately, while the course was very hard, as I was hoping it would be so I could have a chance to out-navigate some people, my navigation was pretty sloppy. I couldn't place in most US A-meets with a run like I had today. Many of the controls required map reading skills that I'm weak at: precise vegetation reading, plus marshes, minor streams and rides, so any chance to out-navigate folks got beaten by that..

Here's the map.

For me, there were 6 really hard controls (usually a vegetation feature inside medium green) and another 4 or so which I'd call hard. Controls where generally well 'tucked' into the feature. If you were spot on the feature, and correct side/edge-of, the control was visible, but if you were just running near the center of the circle looking for orange, you were often out of luck, even from 10-20 meters away.

Of the 18 controls, I spiked about 10 of them, but lost up to 2 minutes on the other 8, for about 8 minutes of total time lost. As a measure of how hard this course was, even the winner of this Qualification heat had almost 3 minutes of mistakes, and I'd guess most of the top 15 (qualifiers) had 4-6 minutes of mistakes. I'd chalk up my difference vs. the best as:
(a) slow in general (e.g. on a track 10k) 30%,
(b) esp. slow in the rain 5-10%,
(c) esp. slow in green 5-10%,
(d) slower navigational skills esp. vegetation, marshes, tiny streams & rides 5%
(e) mistakes: 20% ( 8 - 3 = 5 minutes more than the winner)
for a whopping total of 60% behind the winner.

Qualifying was 15% behind the winner (and is sometimes closer to 10%.) So to qualify, you've got to have your sum of (a)-(e) in the 15% range, something I'm quite far from.
There are days where my (e) is close to 0% (e.g. one race at World Cup Latvia.)
(b), (c) & (d) would need substantial practice to improve to broader my terrain skills for a day like today. Depending on weather and terrain, however, those can also sometimes go close to 0%.
(a) is a big problem. What I don't know is how low this can go - e.g. am I already close to my 'genetic limit', or perhaps I don't train enough, specifically-enough, and/or with good coaching/team-mate/motivation whatever. What I do know is I only have a few more years to push this down. Can I get it to the 10-15% range, which would make it possible (although still quite hard) to make a WOC final? I'm not sure when I?ll have that answered, or even planned one way or another. Not in this post?.

Looking at the US Men,s WOC team overall, I managed to be 4 people in my heat. Clem beat 5, and Eddie 6, with a much better time of 35 vs. my 44, and the one US man to 'beat Canada' today. Eddie has had several very solid races in tricky terrain in the past few years, this WOC Qualifier and the Team Trials Middle included - he thinks the difference may just be concentrating more. It seems to work.

Physically, the good news is my hips were back to normal, just in time. My L-hip didn't hurt me at all today, not on the warmup, during the race, or afterwards (my R-IT-at-the-knee started hurting again in the evening - another sign that alignment is back to normal.) That's very good news for the general fun of enjoying orienteering, and being able to train for it. Being able to run healthy is a far more important goal to me than how I do at WOC. Perhaps it's a pre-requisite, and thus not a fair comparison, but generally, I suffer far more greatly when I'm injured and unable to compete, than I do by competing slowly instead of quickly. Running in the middle of the pack on the 1st leg of the US relay champs (slowly, just off a knee injury) was pretty fun.

Put a little differently, if I could flip a coin where heads would instantly enhance my fitness to let me run a 29 minute 10k for the next 5 years, and tails would result in me being too injured to run at all for the next 5 years, I wouldn't flip the coin. Even if it were biased 80/20 toward the positive outcome.

? as I?ve diverged into philosophical probabilities, I think I should end this post? Good night readers?

Warmup on the 'warmup area' section of the WOC middle map. Much happier with the quality of this little section of map, and it was notably more accurate that the middle model map across the street.

10 minutes of jogging and an hour of walking on the WOC Middle Model map. Disheartened again by the quality of the map. Fortunately, the real map turned out to be much better.

Spectating at the Long Qualifier. Another disappointing day for the US, but happy to see Louise Oram (CAN) qualify - she was Angelica's rival in WyCo a few years ago.

I was cheering for Clem for a long time and he was about 90 minutes to the winner's 60 so I cheered for a lot of other people shaking the bushes before the glimpse I saw was actually Clem. I wasn't really cheering until 73 minutes, and excitement started to fade at about 85 minutes, as that was the range where I'd hoped to see a very-happy to reasonably-happy Clem finish. Looking at the map and running a bit in the terrain later in the day, I'm not at all surprised at the trouble he had, and wouldn't have expected to do much better myself (just another roll of the dice...) I did learn from him that the vegetation detail and precision of the control location were both very tiny, but based on the results, others were expecting and ready for that.

Controls could basically be hidden in a tight gap between evergreen trees as long as the map and description (e.g. 10m marsh, SW edge) was precise enough to get you into the right clump of vegetation. Knowing this helped in the Middle, as I was carefully looking at the correct side of whatever micro-vegetation feature I was on before decided I wasn't (or was) at the right feature.

Part of the OFest P8 course - parts hard, some very slow/walking as I rest for the Middle. In retrospect, running this whole thing hard, and carefully analyzing mistakes would probably have been better for Middle training. As it was, I still could have used it better by analyzing my mistakes better, but I just did some cursory planning like better angle through green (which was helpful) and general plan for care in reading rides (which wasn't helpful).

One thing I could certainly have benefited more from my Team-mates would have been a detailed talk-through of issues people had and what they did wrong and could have done better, on their trainings during the week as well as their races (e.g. the WOC Final.) When I did seek out such discussion, it was often forthcoming, e.g. from Clem, Eric & Eddie, thanks! - but it didn't seem very common, which I was a bit disappointed at. I think we were all underperforming* our peers and even our hopes of making some A-finals, or at least getting close, so maybe people were shy to talk to each other, because we didn't want to get each other upset or something? Regardless of the cause I'd have liked to have seen more technical discussion and race planning. I suspect having an active coach or two (or more) present, as many teams had, would have helped in that technical preparation and planning.

*In the grand scheme of things, almost everybody at WOC is underperforming their goals - several athletes have a strong goal of Gold, well over 3 have a goal of a Medal, and nearly everyone there is hoping for an especially clean run, and very few of those goals are fully realized. Striving for a hard goal is what gets us all motivated, and we should continue to do so even when that goal is hard and even when it's a rare then to accomplish. That makes it both especially great when a goal is met, and also makes a near miss a reasonable success. Hopefully we can all continue to work toward those goals, and help each other toward them, with the understanding that we won't always make our goals. I'm sure Minna was very disappointed by her Long result, yet she studied what she did wrong, refocussed, and had a stunning result on the next day's relay. At her level, disappointment and great success are a different level than what we're aiming for, but the active technical refocussing process is valid at any level...

WOC Public "O-Fest" races. As a WOC runner, I was allowed day-of-event entry to the P8 category, which I decided to take. We got there a bit late, and event logistics were quite crowded, with rain threatening and no one to leave the kids with, so we decided on split starts. However it was a 2 km uphill walk/run from the finish to the start, and Angelica's assigned F21E start was in the middle of the window. So we decided she'd run and I'd take the kids on White. Unfortunately, taking the kids on White took a long time and it wasn't looking like I'd make it back in time for a course.

Then to make matters much worse, after AJ got bored walked at Oriana speed, I sent him ahead to go get 3 and 4 and I'd meet him at 5. Oriana & I shortcut to 5, without a map but successfully. And waited there for 30 minutes, after which point we hoped AJ had gotten 2-3-4-5 faster than Oriana & I had gotten 2-5 - possible but unlikely - and we headed back to the finish. Despite our lack of a map, we made it - following the hordes back was pretty easy. Getting there we found Angelica, and learned AJ hadn't yet finished, so I took off back up the hill to 5 to look for AJ. I ran what I thought was the course backwards to before 2 (without finding 4), calling out of AJ, then bailed back to the finish, and there was still no sign of AJ. There were a number of trails out there that were grassy and hard to see, as well as 'elephant tracks' from the 1000+ orienteers our there which looked like trails, so I imagine it was easy for AJ to get lost.

Anyway, I got back after my unsuccessful search, found someone with an H10 map from which I planned another loop to go search for him, and then I was about to go run another loop when AJ showed up. Apparently he'd gotten to 4, then gotten lost, then backtracked all the way to the start, and found an organizer to help him get back to the finish, from which he found his way through the 1000 camped orienteers to our pile of stuff at which Angelica was nervously waiting. And AJ's first words to her were to ask her help to find # 5 on White so he could go find Wyatt & Oriana who were waiting there for him! Very nice to see his concern for us, even in his own crisis of getting lost, and getting unknown official-looking adult help (in Czech) to find us again.

Phew...

C • missed this story 2

20 minutes during the WOC Sprint Final, running along the women's course (at least the routes of some women), spectating and cheering. Those women run really fast. I tried re-running the first leg of this course later, and I was on pace for a 4:30 1st leg - the best women's splits were in the upper 3's...

I also ran 10 minutes or so in the evening, as my hip seemed to get a little better after every time I ran and stretched the heck out of my L IT band.

WOC Middle training, on the model map across the street from where the WOC middle will be held.

Map detail was a little inconsistently high. Some knolls mapped in really lumpy terrain. Some rootstocks mapped. Contours were off from the precision I prefer - some slope changes were more gradual than mapped, and some little contour features that weren't really visible in the terrain, and general spur shapes and terrace widths not quite matching what I saw in the terrain. Definitely fine for route choice, not great for detail navigation or relocation.

Rocky parts of the terrain were much like DVOA - hard to really move fast through - but often easier visibility to decide what's what.

Trails (many), rides, lines of yellow, plus compass/pace from those seemed pretty reliable, and will probably be the best for primary navigation, with rock (esp. the bigger pieces) helpful when available.

Hip is getting better, although not via hip realignment - footstrikes are still symmetric. The IT band rubbing on the L-femur is still occasionally painful, sometimes even kinda sharp, but certainly not building up to debilitating as it was before the 10k and for a few days thereafter. On slow jogging on flat and downhill it's barely noticable. It's still painful on steep uphills, although in those cases, the R-leg is compensating and I'm mostly lung limited anyway. Sometimes in the bumpy forest fear of landing wrong and tweaking it is limiting the aggressiveness through which I can thrash through stuff which is currently an actual drag on speed. It would be great if that cleared up by Thursday. Still doing a lot of misc. stretching largely on the L-IT. Should probalby hit it (and L-lower back) with some pineapple now...

C • US WOC Team '08 Blog 1

Loop through Prague - the castle with a beautiful church, some nice hillside park, the pedestrian bridge full of statues, a few of the famous old squares, then a loop back including passing a futuristic/modern greenhouse mixed quite nicely with historic buildings, and a really cool elliptical brick-lined tunnel with just enough space for a stream and a path through the bottom, under one of the narrow-bridge entrances to the castle.

Hip was sore through most of this, and I stopped to stretch the L-IT a few times, but that's a nice improvement over the last few day, I think. Either that or the sightseeing was just fun enough to help me ignore the pain better...

C • Greenhouse and tunnel 1

Event: WOC 2008
 

Hip is a bit better this morning - the 10 minute AM run was slowly getting painful, but not preventing running.

Yesterday I did:
- Hip strength stuff (clock squats, sideways drops, and some simple abduction) - this seemed to make it worse within the hour-ish timeframe...
- Some stretching
- DT pressure, including sitting with hard pressure on my left lower back - this actually seemed to help a lot
- Sleeping with pillow under left lower back (part of the time)

I think the latter two are restoring the old hip orientation and may be useful in that regard. I'll probably do a bit more of the 3rd one at work today...

Hip drops (30, each side) and clock squats (40 each side)

PM run, another 10 minute run in the afternoon, preceeded by some skew kneeling to stretch things out. Worked okay as I wasn't hurting much until the end, and even then it wouldn't have prevented race pace I don't think...

2 sets of clock squats today, and some hip drops too. As often, strength training seems to be making this worse today. Sitting funny is still the best up-to-an-hour pain relief method. Didn't try to run at all today. We'll see how I feel in the morning, and maybe do more funny sitting and a run attempt...

Two attempts to run this morning thwarted by the hip.

Probably around 5am I noticed my hip was sore again. After the first part of the night went by pain free, something apparently slipped back out of whack in the early morning. I was hoping I was imagining that and tried to sleep the last bit of the morning with my legs twisted kinda like I sat last night, and the first few steps this morning were more mixed- not normal like last night, but not clearly bad. But then my attempt to go run on it quickly reproduced the hip pain, so I bailed.

I then tried sitting like I did last night and then going running again, but that didn't work either. Grrrr...

Trying some other sitting positions now...

C • Hip 5

3rd attempt to run this morning. It seems I can now stretch it into near alignment, only for it to slip back, and me to struggle to keep my hips twisted. The foot strikes are now clearly symmetric again, which is bad, as it's not normal. I wonder how I lost the old equilibrium?

If today were the WOC Middle, I could probably warm up through the pain and run okay. Probably. I'd much prefer if this thing would settle back to the no-pain-at-all configuration like I got it back into last night.

Even IF this foot-strike alignment thing is good in the long run, and I just need to work out the hip thing, it's really bad timing for my body to try to make that adjustment...

8PM: I fixed it. I figured out how to sit to reset the hip alignment. So I remember: Start by a symmetric kneeling, then move your butt onto the right side, so you legs are out to the left (knees bent). Put the laptop in front of you and read AP for 25 minutes.... Do this on the couch so it's comfy enough to sit like that for a while.

My R-IT is a little pinched in the knee doing that, but that is just _so_ much better.

C • shh don't tell Merck 1

2 PM. Somewhat shorter ride today. Hip nearly as sore as yesterday. Some of this distance was actually walking to test that out. Not great. My hips and foot-alignment is more symmetric, which my body isn't accustomed too. I need to get it back to the slightly-off-symmetric (normal) alignment, or so I think, to make it better.

A little running during parts of the bike ride. Pretty sore doing this, but perhaps a little better than yesterday.

As the hip wasn't better, I thought about trying a moderate walk, but then I remembered I had a bike and tried that. Felt better biking that walking. Almost no pain seated, and only a little out of saddle. Stretching after that was good.

C • stay healthy! 1

Unfortantely sleeping didn't just push the hip back the right way as I was wishing it would. 600mg IB at 11am. Some DT, lots of stretching. L-Hip still pretty sore just walking around now at 5pm. Some steps are only light pain, then something hurts - still can't figure out how to step w/o a risk of hurting it worse.

C • $100 PHL-DEN for US Champs... 1

So yesterday I was thinking maybe I'd run the 5k to compare with some previous times this Spring, but then Ross came by (AP) and asked me what I'm running, so as I've publicly committed to doing the more Middle-length-relevant 10k, that's what I sign up for.

Unfortunately, my left hip was out of alignment. This has happened about once a month for the past few months - I wake up and it's sore on every step. Once I went back to bed for an hour, sleeping on another side, and all was well. But I didn't have time to try that this morning. So off I went to the event anyway, with plenty of time for a warmup to try to shake off the hip thing.

I was rather shocked to see not only a very large crowd, but a pretty early very large crowd - hundreds of people milling around at 7am on July 4th a full hour before the start.

Anyway, my warmup hurts the hip so bad I have to stop and stretch for a few minutes, then repeat the cycle again, and I'm trying to decide whether to run. I've already paid my $20, so I decide I'll try to start and see what happens.

Well, it hurts, but apparently the stretching has done enough good that it doesn't get really bad, and eventually, about 15 minutes into the race it faded away. I started the race at what felt (and looked) like a pretty slow pace - HR was still in the 160's at ~10 minutes, but my GPS said I was running 3:54/km or so, which is great - goal was 39 minutes. Unfortunately, the GPS was slightly overestimating my speed - it tends to do this by a lot on rainy days and today was overcast and a little drizzly. (Or maybe the course was actually 5.05km or so, TBD...)

The temperature was only in the upper 70's, and it was overcast. Not too bad conditions for July. Unfortunately, the dew point was also in the upper 70's...

Anyway, as I come toward the end of the 1st lap (of Downingtown streets), I see from the clock that I'm not quite where I wanted to be - fortunately a little push gets me across the line in 20:00 exactly. Better than my runs a few weeks ago when I was finishing a sprint to the end of a 5k in that time.

Unfortunately, it turns out I'm a little dead here too. Not terribly, but either the heat (which is quite noticeable by then), or simply the 3rd fourth of a race hits me and I slow a bit, letting two people go by who I'd passed near the end of the 5k. Fortunately those are the last two people to either pass me, or be passed by me, but I sure feel a bunch slower and they begin to disappear far ahead (in the sea of 5k walkers we are passing.) I'm hoping to simply not be worse than 22 on the 2nd half. A little water on the head at two of the water stops seems to help a bit during that last 5k and I think I actually closed a bit of the gap in the last 4th of the race, finishing in ~40:41, a little better than I'd thought at 7k...

During the warmdown I found the leader of the 15k fighting heavy walker-traffic, and spectate-jogged toward the finish near him. He ran about 53 something, which is, I think 2 minutes slower than last year's winning time. Maybe the high dew point hurt everyone?

No pain at all from the hip in the 2nd half. But about 15 seconds after I stopped it said hello again. It's currently being fought by stretching and ibuprofen, plus some Excedrin and Mt. Dew for the head... Hopefully it'll be better tomorrow (as 'usual', although 'usually' I don't race a 10k on it when it's having a bad day.)

Taper plan is for a mix of 30-60 minute runs, mostly easy, but incl. a 5k XC race on Tuesday evening, leading up to a WOC middle race (or two, if, somehow, my 10k road pace is very close to my in-the-forest pace :) a week from Thu.
http://www.lin-mark.com/gnd10kr08.txt

C • good run! 3

Decided I should start my taper now. Or that I was tired. Or that I wanted to sleep through my alarm. (PM hours are flying home so limited opportunity to run this evening.) At least I planned to do this in the morning:
http://www.goodneighborday.com/raceinfo.html

Campbell/Los Gatos creek trail

C • 5 10 or 15? 2

Hills north of Santa Cruz. Lots of beautiful redwoods. R-leg still sore after the Sunday race (calf mostly, hamstring a bit, patellar tendon a bit...), but not too bad. Should probably wear a strap on the knee again in case it helps.

I'm behind in my training this week. This was planned as a 10 hr. week, followed by a light week next week to recover, followed by a light 1st half of the following week, until July 17th (2 weeks from tomorrow) when I'm intending to navigate & run full speed again.

BAOC's Tuesday Night Training hill workout. But I was the only one there. Strange.

Anyway, while dowing 6x3-minutes hard, both up and down, I noticed that for just the right downslope, I could run 3min/km for quite a while. And it was windy. I imagine at Bobby's 5k pace of 13:40, that wind resistance, and drafting really matter. I used to think that only applied to cycling...

Did 114m in 19 seconds on just the right downslope near the end. Bobby speed...

Max HR was 169 but I felt like I was pushing and there were serious hills. Either I'm a slacker alone, or my legs aren't recovered well enough from Sunday.

C • Windy at 3min/km 1

AM run. Probably pretty slow as I was reading Spin. Was I practicing my reading-while-running skills, or did I get addicted to the book. You decide...