Training Log Archive: jtorranc

Commute, stopping on the way home to let a machine check my blood pressure. It was slightly high when my doctor measured it on Monday so I'm committed to measuring it half a dozen times over the course of the next two weeks. 126/78 compared to 144/84 on Monday. Also, having pushed and prodded at my knee, she thinks it's just a patellar alignment problem and has prescribed the standard exercises to encourage it to move as it ought. Finding out whether I can blame my May results on the tick I picked up at the Billygoat awaits the results of lab tests on the blood she drew.

Usual long trail run in Rock Creek Park but at slightly higher than LSD pace once I got into the park and really pushing coming south on the gnarliest section of the Valley Trail from where the detour ends back on the east bank of Rock Creek to just north of the zoo. The pace on that section was probably about what I would have done if it had been a trail race. I really ought to try a trail race one of these days.

Class with Deborah - got call from friend earlier in morning so didn't show up in time for any stretching beforehand. Or afterwards since I was then off for an afternoon of films at the National Gallery.

Jogging warmup, cooldown and rests, form exercises and 11 x ~100m strides. I'll declare that that averages out to a 3 rather than make three separate entries.

Navstock Ultra - major screwups on control 2 and 11, 11 being the more embarrassing since I would have been fine if I had managed not to read the control description for 13 as I hit the edge of the circle - it is very difficult to find a control hung beside a small boulder atop a spur when you've convinced yourself the circle has been drawn off center because you're supposed to be looking for the bottom of a reentrant. That aside, I bobbled some others and it felt like an okay rather than good day physically.

Navstock Classic - enormous wander on control 5. After my miss, there was an enormous new clear area that confused my relocation attempts. I actually found control 6 during this but there were no control codes and the boulder it was supposedly hung on was invisible so I ended up relocating by following a massive trail southeast until I was absolutely certain it was one of the ones on the map.

Navstock Sprint - this time my biggish error was on control 3. Totally my fault for trying to attack from the end of a rather too wide spur instead of finding the end of the rock wall slightly south of there and attacking off it. Overshot and had to come back off the corner of the now overgrown clearing on the map.

Early morning hikes to Union Station to catch the MARC train to Baltimore and then from Penn Station to Baltimore light rail system.

Nav-Stock Night score-O - third but embarassingly far behind Mark and Pam. Hard to overstate the importance of precise attack points in the dark. Myriad unmapped mountain bike trails weren't helping. Still, it was my first night-O as a competitor (hung and collected some bags for an Ottawa event once) so I'll forgive myself.

I've no idea why but my knee feels much better than it did last week. If I'm very lucky, in a week and a half I'll have to ask my doctor if she can find anything wrong with a knee that feels perfectly fine.

Normal commute - saw Ballet Frankfurt at the Kennedy Center in the evening.

Cycling commute plus heading downtown after work to finally see "The Twilight Samurai".

QOC Chase/my annual beer drinking incident. Peggy set three loops like last year but with Stumble style windows instead of last year's forking. Lead pack did a mass parallel error to end up on the wrong spur looking for the second control in the first window. I think that strung us out a little bit but one control later I chose to do the remaining four controls in a different order than just about everyone else and lost everyone but Dan Quinn. I lost him on the way back towards the beer when he just kept going past the one control we had to pick up on the way back. Made it out of the beer and a hundred meters away to see Ted, Nadim, Dave and Marek heading in, all in contact though strung out over perhaps 100 meters. Didn't run quite as hard on the second loop but didn't make any stupid errors either. Then totally messed up the first control on the third loop and got passed by Nadim and caught by Ted. The remaining four controls were trivially easy so I just had to outrun Nadim by enough to ensure I'd have time to drink the last beer. The beer was affecting him and I'd just had a nice rest while stumbling around within 20 meters of the first control of the loop so it was a manageable challenge.

BTW, my knee felt great again at the end of the race. Either being warmed up helps or endorphins help or, in this case, the alcohol was having an anasthetic effect. It's feeling pretty tolerable still the next morning. Ought to bode well for my surviving Navstock and making it through the Canadians more of less functional.

Picking up four controls - Peggy had enough volunteers she turned one or two away and still was parcelling them out in very small lots.

Long - Splits

Ran a beginner level O clinic for Greenbelt Park as part of their very lightly attended rescheduled celebration of National Trails Day - first time I've ever set a course for a single person. Though I think there's a pretty good chance he'll come to a future QOC event and there's some solace to be taken in that, on top of the value of some goodwill with the park rangers. This was walking from the College Park metro through the park from the south to Sweetgum, setting up and taking down the course and walking back. Lovely sunny day.

Ran to work. Almost all on pavement. If I lack the willpower to run and cycle on the same day often enough, that leaves trading some cycling for some running. Not terribly difficult to manage the logistics of bringing extra clothes and food on Monday so I only had a feather light backpack to carry,

Return run home, sans backpack. Down into Rock Creek Park, a few of miles largely on grass and dead flat dirt trails following the creek, then onto the Valley Trail as far as its exit from the park at Upshur St. A couple of miles on pavement to get home from there. This was probably a little too much too close to the long run on Sunday - I had zero spring in my step by the end of it. May have to leave running commutes until Wednesday when I do a long run on Sunday or resign myself to running one direction and Metro the other.

Long trail run in Rock Creek Park. The park service seems to have shut off the fountain I usually drink at, probably because of the lead scare in DC. Felt much worse than I should have the rest of the day as a result of the consequent dehydration. Not sure whether I should blame the astonishing soreness in my calves on that or not.

Another first class in some time - four weeks, I believe. Not too clumsy considering.

Strangely, my left knee, which felt fine after NAOC Day 1 as I walked back to my tent (absolutely indistinguishable from how my right knee felt), felt much worse yesterday but significantly better again today. Frustrating, though I'll take this anyday over it feeling awful all the time, even if that would make more sense.

BTW, I just recently noticed Dave Pruden is putting future events in as comments. Rather a good idea that, for practical reasons as well as for a reminder of what I'm training for.

Time to do something weight-bearing again, even if it wasn't much.