Training Log Archive: RJM

Today didn't work as planned. My 13 year old greyhound has a swollen jaw, and after an emergency room visit and some xrays, combined with past evidence, it looks like she has terminal bone cancer (which we suspected but didn't confirm as the cause of her leg amputation 9 months ago). We'll get confirmation tomorrow, but since the xray shows that her jaw is literally broken and eroded on one side, and she's not done anything violent to the jaw, no matter what we're probably facing euthanasia since she can't really eat or heal. Sadness throughout the family.
All this on the first real spring day - 70F, first real visits to crocus by apis, time outside... I am reasonably sore in quads and butt, but not too bad. Still, a quick step or two said 'no running' today. Decided to stretch the legs on the road bike, and was amazed to see that i had no soreness for biking (except a little on climbs). So, toured the neighborhood in the 60" gear, and felt really nice (probably could have gone on a 20 miler at an easy pace, though I discovered that my back wasn't used to these handlbars after half an hour).

Event: The Lepregaine
 

Lepregaine, with Sherpes as teammate. 6 hr event, salt fork state park. 50F, sunny for first half (which we ran about half of). cooler and cloudy second half (which we progressively walked more of). With only one map between us (rules), it was a less than satisfying orienteering experience, but the navigation was simple, and a good excuse to practice memory-o. We made several bonehead errors, probably losing half an hour or 45 minutes on them (at walking pace they tend to be big). Got all but 3 controls (and also found a 'pot of gold' control (map at a normal control to a nearby control not on the map), but were beat by 3 seconds to the gold there!). The Hartmann's won (all but one control), and kept up a very steady but slightly slower pace than us - but they navigated much cleaner (shows what happens when a team has worked together before!). Map was usgs 1:24, and better than i'd feared, but not as good as it should be. It's a great venue - we should consider mapping it properly for the club. Good ride down with the lost pole, and great conversation. Fun event, warts and all. I am not nearly as sore afterwards as I feared I would be.

Later: Alexis figured distance on gmaps, and posted a blog entry on it. He estimates 37k actual travel distance, and I VERY roughly estimate the crow-fly distance as 25k. Elevation gain wildly estimated from gmaps. Since we only got one map and Alexis has ours, it's hard to postmortem this.

Even later: we took 4/35 or so teams, well out of third (2 controls at least), and only 10 points ahead of 5th. This is much better than i expected.

C • Shoes 2

Things I learned from this rogaine.
1) I really want to have a map next time
2) I need to work a lot more on memory-o. I should have been able to remember upcoming features and control locations a lot better. My feeble attempts at improving on this in the past haven't been productive, and i think this may require more than just me making up little memory games now and then.
3) 6 hours isn't as scary as I thought it would be. I could do this again, and might even be able to run most of it, given some more training.
4) Even more than before, i need to work on hill-climbing. I consistently lost ground, even when walking. This might be helped if I was at fighting weight instead of my old-man normal weight. 175 would be about right.
5) I need to work a little on running downhill off trail with reckless abandon. Alexis definitely has me there as well. I am less optimistic about this - downhill running in a road (and even trail) race is one of my strengths, so I know i can get the speed, but my height, low vegetation, and a healthy self-preservation instinct prevent me from doing that. I may let this one slide.

More lousy nights of sleep lately. ugh.
New shoes arrived in time for the saturday race, so gave them a trial run to look for hotspots and problems. None, though I think next time I should get 14's (no 13.5 available).