Training Log Archive: Bash

I met up with my ESAR teammates for a snowshoe outing in spectacular late afternoon light. Hurtn, Damuhl and I carried backpacks loaded with weight for extra training value. The boys are preparing for a trip in the Arctic this summer, so their packs were a lot heavier than my 10 kg load. We climbed and descended some steep hills, bushwhacked through coniferous and deciduous forest, and followed a lovely stream. This was all behind Hurtn's house, just a short distance from our place. I love exploring new parts of the Caledon Hills!



There was lots of snow! Damuhl has maintained a good training schedule this winter, most of it indoors because he's a city boy. He was impressed by what a good workout snowshoeing can be.



We had a couple of challenging creek crossings with our heavy packs, and we helped our teammates out by carefully aiming our cameras in case of disaster.



Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for the entertainment value of this log, all of our stream crossings went just fine.



It turns out that Hurtn has had some practice snowshoeing along streams.

Great photos of our outing on Hurtn's log. He carried a big camera, since he'll have to do that in the Arctic, so it's part of his training.
http://www.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp/user_3590/p...

More Snowshoe Raid pics here... thank you Mique!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24232244@N08/sets/721...

5 times up Deer Valley Hill with Leanimal, starting from the bottom every 3:30. Our interval times were pretty consistent, maybe a few seconds faster at the end. It seemed easier than last time, and no wonder - it turns out we did 6 hills that time! Oops. Definitely need to do more of this.

Warm-up and cooldown around the streets of B-Town. Rocky drove by and we got to say a quick hello.

Fun! We've decided at the last minute to join the Canadian contingent at the CNYO SnowGaine. It was a great time last year - both the group road trip and the event. This year we'll have 7 people in the Bullfrog along with skis and snowshoes, so it'll be quite a party.

Hard Core Tuesday.
Because 'Bent wimped out on Monday.

A few calf lifts, squats, lunges, etc. Need to do more!

Aacckk - I was going to have another contest for a milestone number of hits on my log, but apparently more people read it this weekend than usual, so the milestone is now behind me. Oh well. Serves me right for not buying dinner for Sherpa yet, as I'd promised for the previous prize.

Caron's Power Yoga for Endurance Athletes Vol.2 with 'Bent.

'Bent and I went to the Outdoor Adventure Show and ran into at least a dozen people we knew, which is always part of the fun. Another part of the fun is discounted clothing - and lots and lots of maps, mostly for free. Yes, I have an addiction.

Some good news is that we had a long chat with Geoff at his booth, and Frontier Adventure Racing *will* be running several adventure races this year. The dates announced so far are all in Ontario, and the next RTN Extreme will be held in Prince Rupert in 2009.

May 3 - Deerhurst adult race (high school race the next day)
Late Summer - Raid The North Sault Ste. Marie
Sept. 27 - Fall Classic

They have a new website, and they'll start taking registrations this Friday for the Deerhurst race - http://www.fastadventures.com/

'Bent and I signed up at the special Show Rate of $350, and anyone e-mailing Geoff over the next day or two could probably arrange to Paypal their entry fee using the Show Rate as well.

We ran into a longtime ARC staff member who guessed (although not 100% sure) that they would not be running any races this year other than the Keen Adventure Sport Games.

Event: Salomon Snowshoe Raid 3 hour Adventure Run
 

If you were there, then you're probably here...

Caledon Navigators members placed 1st overall, 1st Male, 1st Female, 1st Masters and 1st Coed. Not bad for a club whose members don't race much!

Big congrats to my Tree Hugger teammates, 'Bent and Goose, who cleaned the course and finished 5th overall, winning the Masters category with style.

More big congrats to Phatty and AndyCam who pulled off the victory - wow! And thanks to Phatty for all his efforts in helping us build this event to more than 60 teams through our fantastic new Salomon sponsorship.

Leanimal and Slice took a commanding win in the Female category and were one of the top teams overall - but they could easily have done even better. I'm sure they'll explain the sad story in their logs.

Kudos to Rocky for having the courage - as a relatively new orienteer - to team up with Nick, who has raced in at least 10 World Orienteering Championships. And congrats to them both for taking the Coed win.

Scooby had an awesome top ten result too!

And although he isn't a CN member, he is a regular Attackpointer, so congrats also to FB and The Lad for winning the Family category. Honourable mention goes to the team of Hammer and AdventureGirl! who were not far back in 3rd, with AdventureGirl! (my 10-year-old friend) doing almost all the navigating herself.

I went up to Horseshoe Resort today and hung the 42 flags in the northern section of the Salomon Snowshoe Raid course while BobTheNavigator hung even more flags in the southern section of the map. Everyone should be careful near #35 because the ice on the pond is thin, and the alligators are sticking their noses out.
;-)

It was a bluebird day - clear skies and bright snow. I took my jacket off in the first 20 minutes and never put it back on. The first XC skier who noticed me bashing through the woods called down, "You look like a *real orienteer*!" I admitted that she had guessed right, and after we chatted a bit, she asked if she could enter tomorrow's event, but unfortunately it's too late. I gave her our new, easy-to-remember website <http://www.adventurerunning.ca>, and she sounded keen. I need a pocket full of our GHO promotional postcards whenever I hang courses because people I meet often want to know more.

The racers are going to have a blast tomorrow!!

And for dessert... I rewarded myself with a skate ski, even though it meant buying a $16 trail ticket for less than an hour of skiing. I went around the expert trail in the Horseshoe western trail system and had the place to myself after the first kilometer. It was a good reminder of why I need to do more skate skiing. It's impossible not to use a lot of muscles - and a lot of heart rate - if you're going to skate ski up hills. I was feeling a little rusty and wishing that Coach LD or Goose was with me - until Katy's Climb, when I was profoundly grateful that no one was watching!

By the time I headed out, it was only 50 minutes until the end-of-day deadline when "search procedures will be invoked". BobbyTN's car was still in the parking lot, so I hope he made it back in time.

Total Lunar Eclipse

RY's Power Yoga for Flexibility - with 'Bent

Would have done more, but ThunderDog had an ultrasound around dinnertime, and we had to go pick her up when she was done. Turns out our senior pooch is doing just fine - phew!!! I was trying not to let myself get too nervous, but my stomach was in a knot when the vet finally called with the good news.

Coach LD, Leanimal and I headed out onto the Humber River again this morning, but it was a completely different experience from last week! There was less open water - but still plenty, and it looked COLD - and virtually no snow on the ice. Neither my wax nor my poles were capable of controlling my motion predictably on the ice - except when I got to sections of white ice where I broke through to a harder layer - or down to slush. There were a couple of times when I wondered if my out-of-control skis would slide right into the water, taking me with them.

My wonky knee gets unhappy when it doesn't know where my feet are going next, so it started to twinge. Hating to be a princess, I waited about 20 minutes before deciding that I was going to have to turn around. Coach LD suggested that we move up to the floodplain, and that made a huge difference. Mostly we skied on the big loops of land between the river bends, bushwhacking and collecting burrs on our tights. Whenever the river looped toward a steep bank on our side we'd ski down onto the river and climb up the other bank, then continue on that piece of land until we could go no farther. This was much better for my bad knee, my grip and my psyche. I started noticing the fantastic scenery and enjoying conversation again. A really beautiful winter outing - and interesting to see that the character of the river was so different this time. It would be fun to go back and snowshoe in the valley with 'Bent sometime.

Counting the people who entered the Salomon Snowshoe Raid offline, including 14 high school teams, we're now up to 62 teams - well above our estimate. Wow!!

Don't forget tonight's total lunar eclipse.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/13feb_luna...

With the world having become an ice rink, Leanimal and I tried something new for our Tuesday workout - we became gym rats! We're outdoor gals at heart, so this all felt a little strange and random, but it was more productive than staying inside and drinking hot chocolate!

We got to chat with Slowrunner, which was an unexpected treat. Conversation is a great way to keep your mind off the boredom of indoor machines.

I limited my time on each activity to keep motivated.

Various blasting machines.

Leg exercises at home

Hard Core Monday with 'Bent was postponed to Tuesday in observance of our new Family Day holiday.

'Bent and I had planned a slightly longer outing, but the gusty wind in the old deciduous forest made us nervous, given that lots of big trees and branches have come down this winter already. Just as well, since the ski conditions were pretty weird after yesterday's heavy rain on top of our deep snow. We don't have an ice crust because it wasn't that cold, but the top half of the snow is very wet and heavy with some ice crystals. It felt more like using a NordicTrack than skiing - none of that feeling of freedom, flying or being at one with the snow. I foresee a lot of snowshoeing this week...

Not feeling great today, and the pouring rain on our beautiful snow didn't make me feel any better. But I figured that I should make at least part of my body do some work!

Since there were still some flags and ribbons in the woods from last weekend's race, and since many of our club members are new to the sport, President KS proposed that we make it a training session as we picked up flags. We had a great turn-out on just two days' notice - about half the adult members of the club! Sid came out to help pick up flags again, solidifying his status as an honorary CN member.

I went out with Goose and Mrs. Gally, who had coincidentally contacted me last night regarding some nav coaching. I can teach math a lot better than sports, so I'm always leery about doing this stuff. Our small group put in a good effort even though I covered a kitchen sink full of concepts in a fairly short session. Oh well, these weren't novices, and who knows when we'll get out again?

The snow is still deep and fluffy 10 days after our last big storm, and we all tumbled down a few times on our snowshoes and rolled around in the powder, laughing. Absolutely *gorgeous* day in the woods!

There were still 3 distant flags left after the training groups returned, so 'Bent and I went back out to collect them. We did some snowshoe running this time, although my legs got tired quickly. So much sun and snow!

I'm loving my new Atlas Race snowshoes that 'Bent gave me.


'Bent used our old running snowshoes, which are pretty good too.


It's hard to imagine *anyone* looking more Canadian than Goose. I heard he brought maple syrup to drink instead of water.

Coach LD called last night to alert me that XC ski conditions on the Humber River were ideal. I'd never tried this before and had asked her to get in touch when it looked good. So we met this morning and headed out for a fun ski. Not many hills for obvious reasons, but a genuine feeling of adventure as we headed north on a winding journey through the deep valley. It's amazing how quickly it feels like wilderness as soon as you leave downtown Bolton. In some places the river was frozen all the way across, and in other places, we skirted frigid water on a narrow shelf. Very cool!

Partial results are posted for Thomass Caledon at:
http://www.orienteering.on.ca/results/Thomass2008/...

We hope to post more detailed results on the Caledon Navigators website shortly.

Apologies to those who may want to provide feedback on the event. The OOA Feedback page was cut off this afternoon, and it is apparently now "Too Far After Event to Provide Feedback".

As of this afternoon, you could still provide feedback on the Gators Thomass on Nov. 25 and the UKR Thomass on Jan. 27, in case you haven't had a chance.

Hard Core Live with Caron. It's feeling pretty good, but I need to work more on my lower back. "Swimming" and plank are still sweat-inducing work.

Power Yoga class. Small, keen group tonight due to Valentine's Day, so Caron made it pretty tough in places. 'Bent did a fine job on the flat-footed squats that give me so much trouble, but if I had big chest muscles and a small bum, I'd find it easier to stay balanced like that too! One young woman had brought her husband to his first yoga class in honour of the occasion. At the end, Caron asked him if yoga was what he expected. "No." "What was different about it?" "It HURTS."

I represented the Town of Caledon at a Toronto Public Health Air Quality Health Index meeting today, so I figured that I should use public transit. This meant trying the new GO Bus running south from Bolton and meeting the Malton GO Train. This was a great improvement over the old bus, but it still took 2 1/4 hrs to get from home to Yonge & Dundas, including a 15-minute train delay. The trip home was better due to less snow and traffic - just 1 hr 40 min. So that's 3 hrs 55 min to commute back and forth. Whenever I start mumbling about possibly returning to my old consulting life downtown again, please remind me about this log entry. Thank you!!

I went out into Palgrave West just after our latest snowstorm started. I started with a short warm-up loop with ThunderDog, who was absolutely thrilled to get out and play in the snow. Poor BulletDog is still limited to leash walks. She's taking it a lot better than I would!

Lots and lots of snow made it hard work to break trail - and even where there was a trail from another skier (Crash?), the snow was so soft that I still broke through in places. It feels like B.C. around here! But we're not complaining - as long as some snow is being held back for future seasons. This has been the most amazing winter in the decade that we've lived in Caledon.

The only small negative is that I have to be in downtown Toronto tomorrow morning. Should be a fun trip!

Caron's Power Yoga #1 with 'Bent. I have a new yoga tip to share: "Never wash your yoga mat with soap." My yoga mat was getting disgusting, so I cleaned it last week. I was surprised today to feel that it was still damp. Well, it was more than that - the soap hadn't rinsed out of all those little dimples. So some of tonight's workout was WAY harder than usual. A good portion of my effort went toward damage control as I fought to keep my hands and feet from sliding away in random directions on the soap slick. My Downward Dog came *this* close to becoming a spectacular face plant. Hope I've got it fixed now!

Sore throat and sniffles got steadily worse as the day went on. There's no mystery - I did 20 hrs of training in 7 days, then got only 2.5 hrs of sleep on Saturday night between the out-of-town wedding and the orienteering race. My immune system is peeved and I deserve its wrath, but I'm hoping to fight it off with ColdFX, Vitamin C - and one more day off.

If you're racing in the Thomass Eliminator event on March 16 - or even if you're not - please consider attending the Orienteering Ontario Annual General Meeting afterward. There will be a free lunch, and it's always good! These meetings have been poorly attended in recent years, and the sport needs more input from its current participants.

We have some very effective Board members, but they need help to grow and improve our sport. There are currently several vacancies for the 1-year term starting after the AGM. Even if you don't want to run for the Board, please come out and vote for people that you feel will represent your interests at the provincial level. There may be other matters to vote on as well, and your opinion matters.

Here's the meeting agenda:
http://www.orienteering.on.ca/events/OOA/AGM2007.h...

Thomass Glen Haffy - a fun, scenic and interesting course designed by Leanimal. It became more challenging than expected at the last minute after a huge dump of snow on Wednesday night followed by more snow on Saturday. It was a long, strenuous race, but most people came out smiling because mucking around in deep snow brings out the child in all of us.

Some racers used snowshoes, and it seemed like most people I talked with were happy with their decision to either use them or not use them. When I hung the flags on Friday, I used snowshoes, and I wouldn't have done it any other way. But I was breaking trail 100% of the time, which wasn't true for all the racers. As it turned out, half of the top six finishers wore snowshoes and the other half didn't.

Absolutely fantastic post-race buffet put on by Rocky, Scooby, Mrs. Scooby and Crash. Yummy chili, hot chocolate and brownies warmed everyone up - and they were hungry after such a long race! We normally get bottled water and bagged cookies after an orienteering race, so this was amazing. Thanks also to Phatty for the awesome prizes from Salomon. I got a jar of jam for winning the Canadian Orienteering Championship a couple of years ago, but yesterday's Thomass podium winners got a fleece jacket or hydration backpack. We're lucky to have some great members in this new club!

Because of system and OOA-related issues, the Race Director was unable to get a planned e-mail out to participants letting them know about the snow depth, including a suggestion that they consider using snowshoes, and also telling them about the extended race time, which would have enabled them to plan food, drink and clothing better. Thanks to everyone for being good sports about it and giving your best effort on a textbook Canadian winter day!

Sid was an honorary Caledon Navigator for the day, helping us with SI and picking up controls.


We also ran into Slowrunner and her friends heading out for a snowshoe.

Raid International Eco Endurance Aventure sounds really cool this year! Well, except for the stupid inline skating.

Attended Aaron Hoag & Kelly Cadeau's winter wedding today. Outdoor skating party in gently falling snow, then a very nice ceremony and reception at a lovely inn afterward. Congrats!

Back to Glen Haffy on snowshoes to hang flags and SI units for the Thomass race. There were a couple of controls that we hadn't flagged yet, so this involved a little more thinking than expected, but I'll still call it snowshoeing instead of orienteering just to even things out for the week.

WOW, we have a LOT of snow! We will be sending out an e-mail recommending the use of snowshoes for those who have them. It's going to be a very physical race, but Leanimal has definitely designed a fun and scenic course.

After doing long winter orienteering outings on 4 of the past 6 days, I've noticed a couple of things:

1) I hate to say it, but you get immune to the endorphins after awhile. I was euphoric testing the Snowshoe Raid course on Sunday. By today, faced with the task of flagging more than 20 controls, I just felt tired. It was still fun, but it was also work. I was sick for much of January, so I need to build up my endurance again. Also, my mind was dwelling on the unpaid bills, the wedding gift that needs to be wrapped, the house cleaning for the weekend guest, etc. I'm ready for a rest!
2) On the other hand, snowshoeing is awesome long, slow distance training. When I weighed myself this morning, it was the lowest number I'd seen in over 4 months. Yessss!!!

Back to Glen Haffy with Leanimal to visit the Thomass control locations that we missed yesterday. Everything takes soooo much longer in this deep snow. We used snowshoes today, and I think we'll recommend that Thomass racers might want to do the same. It was *fantastic* to be out in the woods today. I spent half an hour taking snow 'n' sunshine photos with my polarizing filter this morning - nice!

Hard Core Live with Caron. A little less time logged tonight because we did one exercise with a partner where we took turns undergoing the torture.

Power Yoga class - a few tough poses tonight involving staying on our toes for a long time or holding the plank position and its variations.

Leanimal and I went out to hang ribbons for Thomass, and the snow was a *lot* deeper than we expected. Snowshoes would have helped, I think, since we didn't spend much time on trails and we plunged into the crusty snow above our knees a bunch of times. It was fun finding the control locations and laughing (bwaaahahahaha!!) at how hard she and Slice are making the M-Elite racers work this time. We didn't get it quite finished, so we'll need to play in the snow some more this week.

With the trails too slushy to make anything much fun out there, Leanimal and I decided to have a TLT hill interval workout in Bolton. We followed a similar format to the C3 running workouts, including a couple of minutes of geeky-looking running drills at the base of the hill after our warm-up run. (Luckily no one drove by.) We did 6 runs up and down between the stop signs on the Deer Valley hill with about 25-30 seconds walking in between. Although I got tired as we went on, it felt strangely like the 5th and 6th intervals were the easiest in a mechanical sense. Hmmm... apparently if your body knows what it feels like to run up a hill, it starts to get better at it. Who knew?

I liked the fact that Leanimal could work out at the same intensity as me without my slower pace holding her back. This was probably intensity level 4.5 for me, but I guess I'll keep it at 4, since that's what I was aiming for. It wasn't fun in the way that running through the Humber Valley scenery is, but we were glad to be doing something that we need to do!

Warm-up and cooldown around the roads of B-Town.

Hard Core Monday with 'Bent - or as Valerie would say... THE DVD.

4-week post-surgical check-up for BulletDog, and the doc thinks she is looking good. Still no running or jumping allowed (in theory), but she has been promoted to climbing stairs on leash. This is a BIG deal because it means we can move back upstairs to sleep in our bedroom. (She would have barked and cried piteously if we'd caged her downstairs while we went upstairs, so we've been sleeping in the main floor guest room where she can keep an eye on us.) Yahoo, one more step toward normality.

Tested the Salomon Snowshoe Raid course at Horseshoe Valley. I'm logging the time as 50% orienteering and 50% snowshoeing so that my training hours reflect both activities, but this was just one long outing.

As I wandered for hours in the wintry forest without seeing anyone, I was pleasantly conscious that my love of the outdoors is a wonderful gift - and the ability to chase down little flags in obscure places makes it even better. I smiled a lot. Not that it was perfect - my feet got cold early on. It turns out that my summer-weight Sealskinz socks are intended to be worn in summer - who knew? But marching up and down (and up and down and up and down) scenic hills in fresh snow was fantastic.

I should offer a warning: Last year a team that reads Attackpoint used my course testing time to help determine their strategy in the race, and it backfired on them. I won't name names, but let's just say that they do some basement racing. :-) Course testing takes a lot longer than racing the same event. When one of Canada's top navigators wants to know if his flags (lots of them!) are in the right place - and he honestly wants the truth - it's a time-consuming job. If a flag is missing, I put a new one up, but I also check adjacent features to make sure the flag wasn't in the wrong place - as opposed to just blowing away in the wind. You're always supposed to see the feature before you see the flag, and in course testing, I try extra hard to do it that way, instead of looking ahead for a fleeting glimpse of orange, like I would in a race. Once I find the flag, I usually take a look at it from a different direction of approach, just to be 100% sure - or to look for any safety or mapping issues. And if I think a flag is in the wrong place, I'll spend a *long* time making sure, given the high skill level of the course setter. (For the record, I only moved one flag 10 meters, so our Race Director is as awesome as advertised.)

Since some Attackpointers are doing the race, I guess I can't go into too much detail. You might want to do some hill intervals and practise running on your snowshoes. I don't know what the snow will be like on the 23rd, but it was fresh and deep yesterday, and almost no one had been out, so I got a great workout. During the race, many of the trails will be broken - with the added bonus of trails leading right to the flags, unless you're the first person in. So for a lot of reasons, you'll be going faster than I was! My other tip would be to practise reading map contours, since you could walk right across a summer trail without seeing it in the terrain, so you don't want to rely on trails to navigate.

I didn't allow quite enough time, so had to make a dash for Horseshoe Valley Road at sunset. I'd found a big VHF radio on a snowmobile trail labelled "Horseshoe Riding Adventures" (extra weight for my workout), so I found a place to turn it in before heading home in the dark. Excellent day!

Should have brought ski poles instead of trekking poles - baskets were too small!

Toured around Mansfield with Knobless and 'Bent in fantastic snowy conditions. Knobless is getting ready for the Canadian Ski Marathon next weekend. When we got to the far end of the Blue trail, 'Bent took us on a Tour of Shame, showing us exactly why it took him so long to find Checkpoint E last weekend, and why 3PinJim and I ended up freezing as we waited and worried at CP6. I offered helpful guidance, explaining why his approach to finding it was FLAWED, and it was clear from the way that his skiing suddenly got faster that my dear husband was really inspired and appreciative of my concern and insight. Although there were lots of skiers near the lodge and in the first kilometer, the trails were mysteriously empty beyond that point - and really beautiful! Nice outing.

Snow day! Even though I don't get a day off school anymore, I still love it when we get a storm. 'Bent and I skied out the door in 15-20 cm of fluffy new snow and spent most of our time in Palgrave East. There is rock-hard ice underneath the snow, so it was hard to get our pole tips to dig in, and it wouldn't have been great to fall, even with the new snow. Avalanche Risk: HIGH