Training Log Archive: jtorranc

Work commute.

Warmup/cooldown.

Silly walks and 8 uphill sprints.

Cycling home after picking up my no longer mechanically pathetic bike from the bike shop.

Another ski outing on another section of the Mer Bleue, this time with Dan and my parents.

Hike with Dan out to and around Hogsback Park. Lovely day and much warmer than the first snowshoe.

Classic skiing with and not quite with (see yesterday's entry) Dan in the Mer Bleue. Saw many adorable chickadees and a couple of red squirrels too.

Classic skiing in Stony Swamp intermittently with, skiing away from and skiing back towards Dan. Had close brushes by two deer or the same deer twice.

Short hike with Dan (her first time on snowshoes) all confined to a very topographically interesting ridge next to the parking at Asticou - if I had a clue where my maps from the mid-90s were, I'd pull out a copy of the Gatineau Mines map to see just how interesting. Bitterly cold by my recent standards and pretty cold even by my historic standards, though people from Winnipeg would not have been impressed.

Long ski in Gatineau Park in the afternoon between my morning flight landing and Dan's evening flight landing. Didn't push hard at all in deference to the lengthy duration and it being my first time skiing this season. Left wrist was a bit unhappy for the first hour. Nice conditions with new snow. Stuck almost entirely to the backcountry trails, which the NCC wasn't recommending since they hadn't been groomed at all. Fortunately, there'd been enough people breaking trail for it not to have been a slog.

Cycling to work.

Ran from work through Rock Creek Park to the Cleveland Park Library to get some things to read over the holidays. The deer made themselves scarce again. I heard but didn't quite see what may well have been the same beaver as I saw last time - didn't quite catch him on land but he must have been at least at the edge of the water and the sound of a beaver making an emergency dive is pretty unmistakable.

Abdominal stuff. Got to get back into the habit or risk pain after the Winterlude Triathlon.

Cycling commute, going by the aquatic center on the way home.

Short flutterkicking session in hopes of helping my hamstrings feel better sooner.

Cycling commute.

Event: QOC: Meadowood
 

Event: Jingle All the Way 10K
 

Cycling to and from the 10K and from Franconia-Springfield to Meadowood. Mercifully, Peggy and Nadim gave me a lift in their van to Bethesda, sparing my wiped self the trial of limping back to FS.

Jingle All The Way 10K - Kenny's log entry describes the race well enough, though I naturally had a better view of his back pulling steadily further ahead of me than he had of my front falling further behind him after the turnaround. Apparently, I'm not in such good shape to run 10K as I was in November 2007 or February of this year - whether I should read much into that, I don't know. Still managed third in my age group, not counting the one 35-39 year old man who made it into the separate awards for the top then overall males.

QOC Meadowood Blue - managed to stumble to a victory on Blue despite the aftereffects of the 10K earlier in the day, though the soreness in my hamstrings was terrible. Winsplits says Nadim would have beat me if clean and Jon Pifer would have beat us both. Also, Dan Quinn smoked me by about six minutes on the subset of the Blue course that was the red course. Something of an encouraging signpost for the distant future though - I may well be able to run faster than this at least as long as my joints will allow me to run at all.

Newly mapped woods were nice, as promised. Sad that we didn't greedily take all the military LiDAR data that was available while they were still giving it away - the contours could have been much better.

Slow and easy round trip to Peggy and Nadim's open house and street-O.

Longest available street-O option in Peggy and Nadim's neighbourhood. Didn't kill myself but wanted to give my body a wakeup call before the 10K the next morning.

Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Kennedy Center, 8pm.

C • Congratulations 1

Cycling to work, to the Kennedy Center then home.

Cycling home by way of the aquatic center.

Short flutterkicking session - didn't feel like doing much other than get home.

Abdominal stuff.

Cycling to work.

Martha Graham Dance Company at the Kennedy Center, 8pm.

Cycling to work. Home by way of the Silver Spring TPSS.

Event: QOC: Great Falls, MD
 

Complete mini-Japanese film series with Fine, Totally Fine at the Freer at 2pm. Tightish timing - will have to arrive early and won't be able to linger after the QOC Great Falls event.

Cycling along the C&O canal out to Great Falls, then back to town from there to see Fine, Totally Fine at the Freer Gallery (most utterly charming film I can remember seeing all year), plus home from there late in the evening after meeting up with my parents after the film.

Riding out to Great Falls was definitely somewhat higher effort than level 2 since there is no justice in the universe and I faced very strong headwinds heading out which subsided into much weaker tailwinds on the way home. Lest any think that was an illusion, I saw a lot of leaves being blown across ice on the canal surface on the way out but none on the way back.

QOC Great Falls Advanced course - I don't recall for certain whether I've ever won an O race by 1 second before. Just barely - Eddie apparently took six seconds out of my lead running in the 125 meters from the go control. Lovely terrain with great runnability and visibility and much lovely contour detail to run through and look at - so nice to get back into even something verging on half the mapped terrain after our exclusion these past few years. No big errors but off to the left twenty to thirty meters a couple of times (9,11) and had one near crisis of second guessing standing above a reentrant looking up and down the whole thing and not seeing the bag due to a tree in the way (5) - fortunately wasn't silly enough to actually leave and check out other reentrants without going down into it for a better look. I wonder if Sam intentionally used relatively faded bags.... not really plausible given that they were mostly in numerical sequence, unless he started swapping numbers between the available bags. Pretty sure none of them had any blue, at least - probably just as well to avoid making things too easy given the awesome visibility. Though Sam did about as good a job as possible of planning legs on which one couldn't simply see the bag from 200 meters away on the optimal route.

C • Great Falls 6

Advanced - Splits

Grave of the Fireflies, 2pm, also at the Freer Gallery. A very restful day physically.

The Mourning Forest at the Freer Gallery - not actually going to make it to this as it turns out :(

Cycling to work then home by way of the aquatic center.

Did Pimsleur Hungarian lesson two and the first part of lesson three again and the remainder of lesson three plus lesson four for the first time. Can now exchange pleasantries about nationality, what languages people speak and how well, the weather and where streets and squares happen to be in relation to myself and my interlocutors.

C • very good 2

Cycling commute.

Ran home through Rock Creek Park. This time I seem to have frightened all the deer away since I saw nary a one but it was a banner night for wildlife sightings as I came upon a beaver on land about 50 meters north of the district line (got within a couple of meters, it was that close to the path which was hugging the creek's edge pretty well at that point) and a little later, inside the District, a large owl flew across my path just over head height about 10 meters ahead of me.

Cycling to work and back.

Home by way of the Silver Spring TPSS.

Warmup/cooldown.

Silly walks and 8 hill sprints.

Abdominal stuff while watching Prison Break.