Training Log Archive: Bash

Go Canada!!!! 'Bent, Slowrunner, Toby and BulletDog were among the 5 humans and 5 canines who cheered our team to two gold medals in 10 minutes yesterday. Note that 'Bent is using the iPhone Cowbell app instead of a real bell - sooo high-tech. More cheering needed today!

Great ski with 'Bent and BulletDog in Palgrave East. Fast conditions, lots of snow. We ran into PGB and Rick on the Green trail. The trails were more active than usual because everyone wanted to get out early before the Big Game.

OK, time to cheer on our cross-country skiers - one of the two Olympic events I got tickets to in the lottery. Goose and Gosling have them now and we're watching for them on TV. What's happened to poor Ivan? George and Devon are looking great but it's still a looong race.

Pretty cool to hear our national anthem played 5 times in 24 hours! :-)

(Although not so good for my training...)

Finally - a real snowstorm! Our whole family went snowshoeing behind our place to celebrate.

Yahoooo! This is why we wanted to live here - so we could ski out the door on perfect, snowy days! Temperature was -7C so the skis were fast on the trails that we've "track set" over the past couple of days. BulletDog was a great ski buddy. Light snow started falling in the afternoon and is still coming down. Hope it doesn't warm up too soon so we can enjoy it.

Joannie Rochette, your Mom would be so proud of your courage. Well done.

Sure, the U.S. team is having a great Olympics, but...
http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2010/...

(Thanks, Cristina!)

A little more snow overnight = another fantastic day in Palgrave West. With the temperature above freezing, the fluffy new snow in yesterday's tracks was sticking to the bottom of my skis. After 2 km, I gave up on the tracks and detoured into the woods to bushwhack along wildlife tracks, climb big hills and whiz out of control through skinny saplings. Fun!

It was beautiful in there and when I came out at the Charlevoix trail, someone ('Bent, I assumed) had been skiing with a dog, and the tracks were fast now that someone had skied on them. Nice! It looked like two skiers had been there together - a very rare occurrence on this quiet property. Then I rounded the bend to an awesome surprise - 'Bent and BulletDog skiing with VO2Max, home for a short flight stopover enroute from Italy to Alberta. It was great to catch up on his European ski racing tour and hear a couple of background stories from the Olympics. We undoubtedly ruined his workout though - oh well!

We got 12+ cm of awesome powder snow yesterday afternoon and overnight. About time! It's an awesome wintry scene with big Group of Seven blobs of snow weighing down tree boughs. It's above freezing, and who knows how long it will last, so I went out for a good ski around Palgrave West. Lots of trail breaking, lots of fun!

So excited for Virtue and Moir, the first North American Olympic gold medalists in ice dance. I've been watching figure skating since I was a kid watching it with my Mom, and I remember years when Canada wasn't good enough and later years when the judging system wouldn't allow Canadian ice dance teams - or anyone young - to win, no matter how talented they were. Major progress!

And *wow*, those Canadian male cross-country skiers! If there was ever any doubt, when our young friends VO2Max and BrittWeb compete in North America, they are racing against some of the best skiers in the world. Great stuff.

Great job by VO2Max in a 42 km skate ski race in northern Italy today. Just to give us all something to work toward, his time was 1:31:56. That's 27.4 km/hr maintained for 1.5 hrs!

While watching Olympic men's ski cross. Oh... Canada. Sooo close but 4th again.

Falling way behind on my strength training goals. That's mostly because it has been so nice outdoors, so I'm not feeling too badly about it. But definitely weaker.

Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Snowshoe Raid with Coach LD. Great event organization and race course by Getawaystix as usual, and an awesome team of volunteers that included STORM.





Conditions were perfect - right around freezing and plenty of snow. We knew we wouldn't reach the northeast quadrant of the course since we're not a strong running team, and we wouldn't split up for the Matrix since Coach LD is a new navigator, so we focused on everything else.

Things went according to plan and, for once, there are really no stories to tell! We had map chats along the way, did some running, did some trail breaking, did some steep climbs and had a good day. We survived a snowball attack by Etoile and AdventureGirl! on the course, but the race director refused to penalize them.

Less than 30 minutes from the end, something in Coach LD's leg went "YOW", but we still managed to pick up one Matrix control on our way in. Too bad it didn't occur to us that Coach LD could have legally waited for me at the finish line rather than exacerbating her pain by coming down (and up) the ski hill, and maybe we could have picked up an extra Matrix control to chick the Abdominal Snowmen. But we made it to the finish line with just under 2 minutes to spare, and that's what matters. Luckily it wasn't as scary a finish as last year's race with Hammer!

We took the silver in the female category behind the unbeatable Leanimal and PGB, just back from Ecuador. 'Bent and Eugenius took the bronze in a very tough Masters category. Overall winners were Griz and Turbo from the Masters category. Tiny and Nicole won Coed, Sudden and Dang won Male, Mr. & Mrs. GHOSlow won SuperMasters, Etoile & AdventureGirl! won Family, and the Steele kids won Junior. Congrats to all!

Here's our team. For some reason, we look like we're posing for catalogue photos!







And here are some other shots from the day including many Attackpointers. (Sorry Hutspot, you were avoiding me.) Thanks to William Young for sharing his awesome pics from the race course.

Wonder what it takes for Shaun White to own the podium in snowboard halfpipe? Would you believe a secret private half-pipe funded by Red Bull?!

Urthbuoy's recent project reminded me that I completed my 2-week food diary a month ago today. By Jan. 18, I'd lost 8 lb and 3% body fat from the start of the year. One month after stopping the calorie count, I'm down another 1-2 lb, depending on the day, and another 1% body fat. That's close to the target, although another lb would be good.

The good news is, I haven't felt deprived. I've eaten chocolate every single day and we've had a couple of pig-out restaurant meals. Some of the bigger changes have been:

- Breakfast is usually oatmeal or low-fat cold cereal with fruit. (I used to have a daily bagel.)
- Drinking more water and herbal tea instead of juice
- More yoghurt (lots of protein and feels like a treat)
- Sneaking extra protein into my diet while living with a non-meat eater, e.g. smoked salmon and pre-cooked chicken slices from the deli department
- More legumes in addition to the ones I was already eating, e.g. snacks of mixed bean salad from the deli and split pea soup
- Going lighter on some of my favourite healthy snacks where it's surprisingly easy to rack up the calories, e.g. flatbreads with hummus, baba ghanouj or fresh avocado. Bean-based dips are lower fat, and veggies are better to dip than flatbreads.
- Smaller servings at dinner, sometimes fooling myself with a smaller plate
- Trying to reach for fruit and veggies when I'm in the mood for a mindless snack. (Yes, it would be nice if I could talk myself out of mindless snacks, but that hasn't worked so far!)

What's cool is that 'Bent lost weight by osmosis over the same period. Now we just need to get his knee fixed so he can run on it with his new lighter body.

After a *lot* of spectating recently, it looks like we can focus on the Olympics (mostly!) Here is some random info from recent events our friends have raced in:

Jen Segger of Breathe Mag reports on Huairasinchi race in Ecuador

Nice quote from PhattyJR on Sleepmonsters after Patagonia: “You can get to pretty remote places back home, but this seems to raise the bar once more,” said the Canadian on the finish line. “For a sport like this you can’t get anything better. It’s just perfect.”

Sleepmonsters also has updates on Huairasinchi and Patagonia.

Update from Brittany Webster at the Olympics (she's sick, unfortunately, and will do only one race)

In honour of the Olympics, the New York Times has published some useful Crib Notes on Canada.

I left my favourite gloves at Mansfield yesterday and someone turned them in, so I went up for a short ski. It was an amazing day - 10 cm of fluffy-looking new snow with twirling flakes drifting down. Trails hadn't been groomed since yesterday morning, so I had the perfect excuse to ski classic instead of skate (yay).

Turns out appearances were deceptive. It was just over freezing, so I headed out on fast waxless skis first, but they were sticky. After a short loop, I switched to classic racing skis with no new wax, thinking that I'd get an upper body workout, but I sure wouldn't stick. I committed myself to a longer loop, then realized that the problem wasn't with the waxless skis after all. It just happened that conditions were perfect for freezing bricks of snow to the bottom of skis. I stopped and scraped a few times, but the skis gummed up again within minutes.

It was hard work at best but kinda scary on the downhills since I wasn't sure when one ski might stick, causing me to do sudden, unintentional splits. On the bright side, today is the perfect day to build a snowman or a fort, or to throw snowballs at your sibling. Plus I got my gloves back!

New food for adventure racing?

Great morning ski at Mansfield with Phatty and 'Bent pushing the pace. Fantastic, fast conditions! We were among the first people to arrive, and we met almost no one on the trails. By noon, the parking lot was almost full of skiers celebrating the new Family Day holiday. Then it was time for us to watch some awesome Olympic XC skiing!

Yay, Canada!!! 1st gold medal ever on home soil! Looking forward to 2nd, 3rd, 4th... :-)))

There are new photos from yesterday's ski outing if you scroll down.

Great result for Frankenjack in very nasty weather conditions at Coast to Coast in New Zealand! 13th overall in a time of 10:41. The top two guys were under 10 hrs, but 3rd place was 10:21, so he was right in the mix. Given how strong a kayaker he is, the fact that most of the paddling section was removed for weather reasons would have made the race more challenging.
http://results.nz.eventdirector.net/List.asp?Event...

Very few women are listed as "finished" in the results at this time, but Ursula should be on that same list soon.

Another great ski with 'Bent and BulletDog - this time in Palgrave East. There were a few bare or icy patches but mostly it was fast, fun skiing. Given how sunny it is, it's a good thing we went there today, as the trails probably won't hold up much longer. We stopped in to see PGB's Mom and make sure she was getting news about Team Untamed New England in Ecuador. Looks like the Canadians are off to a fine start.

Will the spectating never end? Tomorrow is the start of the 3-day Huairasinchi adventure race in Ecuador - "the highest adventure race in the world". The Milton Basement Racers (captained by Tiny) and the all-female Team Untamed New England (captained by Leanimal and featuring our neighbour formerly known as Crash) have been down there for several days acclimatizing to the altitude. Race briefing and map distribution will happen late this afternoon.

Main Race website

Online coverage - not sure how much English to expect, but at least they are promising "frequent updates"

Sleepmonsters

Twitter

'Bent, BulletDog and I went skiing in Palgrave West in terrific weather. We followed some trails and did some bushwhacking.





Even on the trails, there were some challenges. (BTW, these photos were taken 100 m apart on the same trail.)





Like BulletDog, we had a fun and crazy time.

Ran to and from Palgrave East to meet Coach LD.

This was snowshoe orienteering except that Coach LD was the one doing the orienteering as we took down the ribbons from 'Bent's contours-only training course. She did a great job!

We were both feeling kicked in the gut since we'd just heard the news about Novar Kumaritashvili and were imagining his family and friends being so excited about their 21-year-old loved one heading to his first Olympics, then having it all dashed. So tragic.

I wish they would stop playing the damned video out of respect. We saw it a few minutes after it happened, when the media didn't yet realize how serious the situation was, and I never want to see it again.

Still on a spectating binge and the Olympics aren't even here yet! Frankenjack and Ursula are competing in the Speight's Coast to Coast multisport world championships in New Zealand this Saturday (remember, that starts on Friday in our time zone). Weather is what everyone is talking about. There's rain in the forecast along with "howling nor'wester" winds, which could make it chilly to run trails over the Alps and nervewracking to control a kayak. Wishing happy (and speedy) (and safe) trails to our friends!

Live Coverage - already providing news updates - you can send a shout out to competitors

Various News and Interviews

Sleepmonsters

Hard Core live with Caron. It was one of her Hard, Harder, Hardest theme nights. I swear I could hear 'Bent weeping on the next mat over.

Also with a Hard, Harder, Hardest theme.

For those of us watching Team Untamed New England (Dee, PhattyJR, Harper and Relentless) in the Wenger Patagonian Adventure Race... they're OFF!
(***Updated List of Links***)

Race website

Race course map

Twitter Feed (so far, the only news since the race started with the cancellation of the first paddle section due to 100 kph winds)

Sleepmonsters Updates

Team Untamed New England website / blog

Facebook Fan Page

New National Geographic article about Patagonia

And of course, the main Attackpoint AR discussion forum will be the cool place to chat about it!

Snow!!! Last year we wouldn't have noticed 7-8 cm of fluffy new snow because we were constantly spoiled with 30 cm blizzards. But in the winter of 2010, we have to take what we can get, so I put work aside to hit the trails this morning.

Palgrave West and Palgrave East - sometimes breaking trail and sometimes following ski tracks made by 'Bent (and BulletDog), Aldo? who lives north of Palgrave East, and Mrs. Guy-Who-Hunts-Illegally-on-Conservation-Land. It's fun to live in a place so quiet that I can identify everyone who was out. I missed seeing the usual signs of Crash/PGB, who is away in Ecuador.

Fine snow was drifting down the whole time and it still is! It was soooo nice and wintry out, with lots of animal tracks - strangely, no deer though. It's still a good idea to use rock skis but the bare patches are all gone. Now let's hope for a stretch of cold weather to keep it snowy.

If any of our nearby friends are looking for a place to watch the opening ceremonies, we still have a few couch spaces available for Friday evening. Just let us know! Our Tree Hugger teammate Shifty is one of the TV cameramen, and after a dress rehearsal (about which he is sworn to secrecy), he is advising people to find a place to watch it in HD.

Wishing Goose and Gosling a fantastic, adventurous and safe journey to the Olympics. We are all jealous!

Ugh, food poisoning. And I had to smile and give a presentation to Town Council anyway. Just as I was starting to feel better, I saw these two items at the grocery store:

1) Blue Menu (i.e. "healthy label") breaded & fried chicken nuggets

2) Due to a berry shortage, the usual space was filled with huge chocolate-covered apples on sticks, decorated with coloured icing - bleaagh.

Based on the Nutrifacts, I can probably eat 10% of the food types in the average grocery store without inviting an early death. How the heck do so many other people survive on that junk?

Part of Bryon Kest DVD

Anyone who knows Phatty has heard him announce a "CONTroversy!" Well, here's a website dedicated to controversies. Now you can have an argument - on just about any topic - all by yourself.

I'm not sure whether I should log all this time as orienteering because I botched it up so badly! After our full day yesterday, 'Bent and I weren't expecting great races today, but we thought our problems would be physical, not navigational. Nope.

My race began well. We started in a Thomass Box, and I found my controls easily, then picked up #1 and headed to #2 with a good lead. Surprisingly, it felt great to run. I passed close by #2 without seeing the flag tucked out of sight - and then things totally unravelled as I lost confidence. (Probably much more quickly than I would have if I weren't so tired.) I expected to see the flag at the edge of an open area, and when I didn't see it, I started following up various theories on where I might actually be. Naturally, none of them worked out because I had been in the right location the first time.

The impact of yesterday's activity was mental, not physical. As I tried to relocate, I did a lousy job "feeling" the distance on the 1:7,500 map scale and I had a hard time seeing smaller trails on the map. After finally finding #2, I was slow to #3, then didn't see #4 - even though I was looking - and was very puzzled to run so far from #3 and see people climbing so high to punch #5 - until I read the control code - doh. Back to #4, back to #5, then things went smoothly until the final leg between #9 and the finish where I bushwhacked down to a trail and didn't aim off enough and ended up running a short distance in the wrong direction.

It seemed that a lot of people had a tough time on the course today, but my problems were all with me - not with the course or the map. Oh well, the silver lining is that I felt good running. It bodes well for springtime when I hope to have shed the remaining 2 lb of my 10 lb weight loss goal.

Afterward, we went to see "Race Across the Sky" with MrPither and the WaddSquad. Great movie!

Still waiting to see Slowrunner's results in her 100-mile Rocky Raccoon race in Texas. She must be finished, but ultraruns are usually slow to post results. VO2Max raced well in the OPA XC Ski Tour events in Switzerland this weekend.

'Bent and I used NordicFest - a Get Out There magazine event - as an excuse to go play in the snow in Collingwood. We rarely go there, but we should probably make the effort more often because we had a great time.

NordicFest was hosted at Scenic Caves nordic centre, where we'd never skied before. The trails are really nice, running through a beautiful hardwood forest on the escarpment. The grooming was perfect when we got there and new snow started falling in late morning.



It was chilly enough to freeze my hair.



The Scenic Caves trail network would be awesome for ski orienteering. Lots of junctions, wide trails (thus less danger from 2-way skiing), moderate hills (ditto) and skating permitted almost everywhere. It would be nice if there were more trails because it doesn't take long to get around all of them, but they've done an amazing job in a small space.

Needless to say, it is "Scenic".



And there are "Caves".



This might have been the first time this season when I could say that I truly had fun skate-skiing and wasn't counting the kilometers until I could switch to classic. 'Bent had more fun than usual too. Maybe it was the combination of gentle slopes and fresh grooming.

After seeing them in the chalet renting ski gear, we looked for Sherpa and SG to no avail. :-(

We switched gear and headed out to do the same route on classic skis - plus a small additional loop to the lookout over Georgian Bay that we'd missed on the first round. Classic skis felt more comfortable but slower - although we were surprised to see that our time wasn't *that* much slower (75 vs 66 minutes), especially since the classic route was slightly longer.

I came close to hugging a tree on a slick downhill hairpin turn where I had an inexperienced skier beside me and didn't want to make any sudden moves. Ouch, the quick, panicked turn I had to make wrenched a few muscles in my back.

Getawaystix had sent me a map with a few controls and snowshoe trails around Craigleith. It was getting late in the day so we only did part of it, but it was loads of fun! We did some steep uphill climbing on packed snowshoe trails (filled with friendly dogs), some snowshoe trail running, some bushwhacking, some tough climbing on powder snow where we had to grab saplings to pull ourselves up, and some fun, fast powdery descents. Thanks, Getawaystix!

This is the part of our outing that I'm counting as navigation.

Ran back on roads from the Alpine Ski Club to our car.

It's a little scary how much planning can be done (and how much money can be spent!) while just sitting in front of the fireplace.

'Bent, ThunderDog, BulletDog and I are heading to a cottage north of Quebec City next month for a week of what we hope will be snowy, doggy winter fun.

And it's official - we're registered in the Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon at a mystery location in the highlands of Scotland. It's known as the "connoisseur's mountain marathon" and was highly recommended by the U.K. winners of the Björkliden Arctic Mountain Marathon. (BTW, for anyone interested in visiting Sweden, the BAMM sounds really good this year with a theme of "From Fjord to Mountain".) We've taken a risk by signing up for the A level course, which is the 2nd most difficult of the 6 courses offered - and might possibly turn out to be a terrible mistake given our lack of mountain marathon experience. It will certainly give us a reason to train hard on hills over the next few months!

We'll round it out with a couple of weeks of exploring Scotland, including hiking and more hiking, with a few castles and museums thrown into the mix. It's one of the few European countries I've never visited, which is wrong, given that my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather emigrated from Scotland.

My knee was twinging, so I gave it a break by running intervals on the treadmill instead of on ice and crust.

So many friends racing all over the world in the next 10 days!

Brittany Webster raced in the 1st of two World Cup Cross-Country Ski races in Canmore today.

Slowrunner is doing the Rocky Raccoon 100-miler in Texas this weekend.

VO2Max is XC ski racing on the OPA Tour in Campra, Switzerland this weekend.

Dee, Harps, Relentless and PhattyJR are off to Patagonia today.

Tiny, Leanimal, PGB and 5 other friends are heading down to race in Ecuador.

Frankenjack and Ursula are racing Coast to Coast in New Zealand.

And the Olympics start next weekend with Brittany Webster racing again.

I'm going to be hoarse from so much cheering!

Hard Core Live with Caron

A lot of this could probably have counted as strength training, so it gets a level 2.

Our thoughts are with all our friends who are leaving for South America within the next 48 hrs to race in Ecuador and Patagonia. Have fun, be safe and race hard! (And the same goes for Slowrunner, who is already in Texas preparing for her 100-miler this weekend.)

Uh oh, tough call for us Canadians. The excellent CNYO Snowgaine is scheduled on the final weekend of the Olympics, which will feature bronze and gold medal hockey games and the long XC ski races. I've already invited people to watch the gold medal game here, assuming that Canada is in it. Choices, choices. To race or to spectate?

Headed to Mansfield and started with a lap around the skate trail because skate skiing is good for me and allows me to eat chocolate. There was 6-8 cm of fluffy new snow on the trail, which ought to be worth some training brownie points. For some reason my professionally waxed -5C skis were sticking a little on downhills at 0C. More training brownie points for the extra double-poling practice! Things went OK; I am not a good skate skier.

Ahhh, classic skiing - back to my comfort zone. Except, to my horror, I caught myself skating up a couple of hills! Maybe it's finally starting to become second nature - a little bit. This was supposed to be a fun ski, enjoying beautiful, deserted, woodland trails while big snowflakes drifted gently down.

It was so nice that I kept heading farther away from the chalet, then I glanced at my watch and realized that I would be hard pressed to make it back to the parking lot before 5 p.m. when the trails closed. One of my pet peeves as an event organizer is when participants stay out past the time limit, forcing tired volunteers to stay late and contemplate a search plan, so I didn't want to be "that person" for the Mansfield crew.

I hadn't brought any kind of map and I haven't skied Mansfield's regular trails this year, so I figured I'd better just keep following the yellow trail signs until I recognized something for sure. Boy, that yellow trail goes a long way through Dufferin Forest without any marked junctions! I skied at race pace for the last half hour, sailing down to the van about 4 minutes late. Too much fun!

Wiarton Willie saw his shadow. 6 more weeks of winter - yahoo!! (Gotta keep hoping - so far, we've barely had a winter - sigh...)

For all you mountain climbing history and literature junkies (unless I'm the only one around here), Scientific American is reporting a possible update in the Mallory and Irvine mystery. I don't believe they summited Everest first... I'm sticking with Conrad Anker's opinion; after doing it himself, he thought they wouldn't have been able to handle the technical climbing to the summit with the gear of the day. But it will be very cool if they find that camera!

Trail run around Palgrave West with BulletDog. It's OK for running with cleats because the surface is mostly rock-hard ice with a skiff of snow on top. But occasionally I would hit a thick crust where one side of my foot would break through, causing my ankle to lurch to one side. We need a snowstorm!

Had to change DVDs partway through because the first one was corrupt. Nothing more relaxing than a yoga routine that starts jumping around all over the place!

"Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it."
~ Terry Pratchett, U.K. novelist

DVD - Hard Core Monday is back! Not sure if it'll become a habit, but it felt worth doing.

While watching The Daily Show - a recorded episode where Bill Gates was the guest. I didn't realize that he'd retired from Microsoft 18 months ago to work fulltime at his charitable foundation. Seemed to have much less ego than a lot of people who get interviewed on TV.

January Report Card on New Year's Resolutions:

Doing well:
- On track for 450 hrs annual training
- Averaged 1 hr strength training per week
- Kept a 2-week food diary and lost most of the unwanted 10 lb
- Planning is well underway for our next mountain marathon (LAMM in Scotland) and I've got the schedule of North American 24-hr rogaines for 2010

Doing not-so-well:
- Not getting to bed before midnight or working out before breakfast very often
- Did intervals once then kinda forgot about them
- Haven't started working on any guitar or piano pieces