Training Log Archive: jtorranc

SOME Turkey Trot at Freedom Plaza

SOME Trot for Hunger - cold, IIRC partly cloudy, and somewhat windy day. Slightly disappointing time given I was a meaningful amount faster on Saturday. Maybe the wind was enough to account for that - of a certainty, tailwinds don't give back all that headwinds take away. Holding steady in one sense, I was my usual for this race 2nd place M40-49. Less usually, 1st was almost a two minutes faster than me, with a very Kenyan sounding name - it's normally a much closer run thing than that between me and the rest of the top 3 in this age bracket (3rd was 16 seconds behind me).

Right hamstring was complaining a bit during the race and the next day. However, left has been complaining louder since then. I'm taking a mini-break from running to let both of them hopefully sort themselves out - I'd like to feel like I'm running at top speed at this year's Mid-Atlantics, unlike last time at Fair Hill. May do some small amount of running this week before the events at Little Bennett and PWFP.

Event: [Cancelled] QOC Little Bennett
 

PVTC Cranberry Crawl 5k - 3rd overall, 2nd M40-49. Eerily close to my total time for the 5x1000m workout three days previously. Race atmosphere plus not having to accelerate from zero 4 times during the race is worth more compared to getting to rest 4 times than I would have thought. Pleased, obviously, to see 5K race times dropping, as they ought to given how many I've raced recently plus moderately regular attendance at track workouts. Though it seems unlikely that my SOME Trot for Hunger 5K time from last year is under any threat - unlikely I'll speed up by 48 seconds by Thursday - at least I can expect to more or less match my time of 2 years ago if I don't hurt myself between here and the start line. That's assuming I'm right to think that my complaining hamstrings, particularly the right again, though I didn't fall or do anything else specially nasty to it this time, in the aftermath of this race are going to be no issue by then. As of Sunday afternoon, that seems like a good bet.

Keg was racewalking the 5K. Yelled a greeting when we passed each other after I turned around, then we talked for a few minutes after she finished. Apparently she is hip-deep, at least, in long-deferred home maintenance.

Feeling lazy - this is my warmup and cooldown for the Cardozo Crawlers workout logged as though it were all one run, despite differing intensity.

The workout was 5x1000m with 200m jogging plus some waiting for slower people and milling about drinking and whatnot between reps.

Event: QOC Great Falls
 

Casa Chirilagua 5K in Alexandria - time still going in the wrong direction, although I was 4th overall and first M40-49 so one could argue for relative improvement if this hadn't been simply a much smaller race in participant numbers than any other I've done recently. Still, it was a blustery day and the course wasn't dead flat like my last two recent 5Ks. Plus I had to bike more than twice as far to get to this one - thanks to Metro having a section of the blue/yellow line track closed for the weekend with a bus shuttle service to bridge the gap, it would have taken me longer to use public transit to get to this than to bike all the way to Alexndria and then a mile or so west on Eisenhower Ave at an easy pace. Still, I'd better see a trend reversal on my next 5K, planned to be another dead flat one, either next weekend or on Thanksgiving day, or I'll get concerned.

Tweaked, for a change, my right hamstring, probably by falling late in the course when avoiding a big puddle in the path required taking a couple of steps on rough ground to the side of the path. Ironic problem for presumptively the most experienced off-pavement runner in the whole race. I see that the Great Falls pre-registration is still 7 to 32 bodies short of a sellout but I think I'd better skip it regardless and not challenge my hamstring with hard running the day after doing it an injury, however, knock on wood, minor.

Another data point in something I've noticed over the last year or so - there seems to be a large fraction of the population that disagrees with me as to where the boundary between green and yellow lies. Specifically, the race announcer said the guy pushing a stroller who finished less than a minute behind me, who was wearing a shirt of a colour that in my experience is usually sold as something like "high visibility yellow" ,was wearing a neon green shirt. Granted, we're not talking about canary yellow but to my eyes it's only slightly further towards the green section of the spectrum than that.

It is, of course, sad how many people are unnecessarily wrong about things like this (assuming, without evidence, that their afflicted state isn't the result of some specific common form of partial colour-blindness). Perhaps we could organize some government-sponsored colour reeducation camps for these benighted souls.

Event: QOC Quantico Hangman
 

QOC Hangman Tree Blue - happier with this result - winning will do that - though my time lost in the split analysis is greater. Legitimately messed up being insufficiently cautious on 5, then on 6 there was enormously more and thicker deadfall obstructing my chosen route than the map indicated. Also had a stab at making a parallel error attacking 13, losing time going all the way down to the west end of the gully because the 'ditch' above that was incredibly shallow and, somehow not having seen the control at its west end, I couldn't bring myself to believe it was the mapped ditch until I'd gone and looked at the actually ditch-like thing I could see further east/downhill. I see, looking at the splits for the whole field, that AJ would have had me by a minute or so if not for his encounter with concertina wire somewhere on the way to 13. And, for perspective, the best American in the same terrain last November did a 1.3 km longer course about 10 minutes faster.

Woods equally lovely and weather equally glorious as the day before. Only slightly more than half the climb as well, which does wonders for making one feel like one is mostly flying through the woods.

A bit disappointed in one aspect of the course design - the family of near-optimal routes on the first leg clearly all involved more than a kilometer of nearly mindless running along a road when it would have been easy to set a much more interesting leg through the awesome woods

Blue - Splits

Event: QOC Fountainhead Central
 

QOC Fountainhead Blue - a glorious fall day in the beautiful woods, steep though they may often be. Not sure why I was as far back of AJ in particular as I was - I wasn't perfectly clean but neither was I making big mistakes. Route choices on a couple of the longer legs may have been suboptimal enough to matter, even if not enough to show up as errors in AP split analysis. No matter - not worth obsessing over.

Blue - Splits

Warmup/cooldown.

Silly walks and uphill sprints.