Training Log Archive: Bash

Ran around Palgrave West with ThunderDog, who has suddenly become an Exercise Animal. After a few weeks of uncertainty, it's looking like her back surgery has restored most of her former abilities, and she is clearly thrilled about it!

Today I worked on running up and over the tops of hills, which is starting to feel very natural. We had a couple of slow sections where ThunderDog paused to bathe and roll in muddy Katrina-puddles (on the same day the white kitchen floor was washed - oh well). In spite of that, my time on the loop was pretty good, so maybe, just maybe, I'm finally getting a bit faster on my feet.

No wildlife, but we have plenty of awesome fungi growing around here because of all the wet weather lately. On our lawn, there are several puffball mushrooms the size of a skull. Bent has seen some that are closer to soccer ball size.

No, I haven't disappeared off the face of the earth, even though my training program has. Last week, my recovery from the 32 km trail run blended right into the tapering for my parents' 50th anniversary celebration, but I'm back on the trails now.

I biked to and around Albion Hills, much of it with Bent, Gazelle and Gazette. We focused on double track with steep hills, which made it a great test for my brand new birthday present HRM, the Polar 625x. I've just taken it out of the box, so haven't figured out any of the new features yet. It looks cool, but is made for people with arms the size of Douglas firs. I hate to take scissors to the strap of a $400 watch, but unless Polar sells a separate ladies' watch strap, that may be necessary.

We practised bike towing in an empty parking lot in near-darkness. Gazelle and Gazette are off to Tajikistan this weekend, and the RTN Champs will start 3 days after they return!

In a training context, I suppose this is a rest week. However, given the mad preparations for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary events, it hasn't been very restful at all. Bedtime has been 2 or 3 a.m. for the past few nights.

BulletDog, ThunderDog and I ran on trails to Bent's office to pick up his van so that Gorgeous and I can drive up to the theatre in Orillia tonight in air conditioned comfort. As often happens when I have taken what seems like too much time off, I felt very strong - as if racing 32 km on Saturday had somehow turned me into a better runner. However, my knee was twinging slightly, reminding me that I'm not REALLY a runner, and I shouldn't let any of this go to my head!

I've got a small patch of poison ivy from the ultra-run, but otherwise am surprisingly undamaged - not so much as a blister. I love my new Montrail Hardrocks!

Ooooh, the legs hurt today. Actually, they started to hurt during yesterday's race, which has never happened to me, so I knew that today would be no picnic. Anyway, we rode around Albion Hills to see the finish line excitement at the Hot August Nights 24-Hour Mountain Bike Race. Congrrats to Tiny for placing 4th of 28 solo racers!! Several of our other friends had great races as well, so we were glad that we made the trip to do some cheering. Our bodies aren't good for much else today!

Iroquoia Trail Test, 32 km trail running race

Iroquoia Trail Test 32 km ultra-run on the Bruce Trail between Burlington and Milton: On the liability waiver form, I had to agree that I had "trained appropriately for this event". So I lied. I've never run anywhere close to that distance without significant walking breaks, and my training this year has been quite diverse - which is a good thing for a multi-sport athlete, but not ideal for a running event that takes most people the same time that they would take to do a marathon.

My first impression when we arrived was... wow, these REAL runners are built totally differently from us. Long, lean and light. But they were super-friendly, and the race swag was awesome, considering the $49 entry free. It included a huge fleece blanket that was being sold separately for $30.

Bent wasn't planning to do the race after re-injuring his rib muscles last night, which made it hurt to breathe. But he got caught up in the excitement and couldn't resist giving it a shot. We headed out at 7 a.m. and did an 8 km loop south of Kilbride School, then passed back through the school and went north and east for 12 km, then turned around and came back to the finish.

I'd assumed that trail running would be pretty tame compared to adventure racing - and I suppose it is. But it is a lot tougher than I expected. The organizers had us do a couple of ankle-deep river crossings near the start to make sure that nobody's feet were dry, and later there were sections where we were scrambling up and down big boulders. After the deluge of rain on Friday, the rocks were slippery-slimy, so it felt very kamikaze to run on rocky sections of trail. I launched into the air several times, but - fortunately - always landed on my feet. I noted that the real runners would pull away from me on the flat, easy sections, then I would catch up on the steep downhills or in the rocky areas. Obviously, I would do pretty badly in a marathon because I'm lousy at running on smooth surfaces with no obstacles.

I was lucky to end up behind Jackie, Tarno's wife, who runs a bit faster than I would run on my own. For 25 km, I made an effort to keep her in sight, knowing that I would take walking breaks if I didn't have that motivation. Then she dropped back and finished 2 minutes behind, but I really owe a lot to her for inspiring me to keep going.

Anyway, my goal was to break 4 hours, and I came in at 3:52, so I was really pleased. Surprisingly, that put me less than 5 minutes out of first place in the "medium-aged women" category, and I finished 4th/14 competitors. I'm really proud of Bent finishing in 3:06, as well as our speedy friends, Sudden (2:40, 4th overall) and Tarno (2:28, overall winner). I'm not sure if I'd do another ultra-run, but it was cool to try it once and see what it feels like.

A highlight of the day was the post-race visit to Hammer's hot tub. I can see why he does so well. If I could soak for half an hour in a nice hot tub like that after every event, I might start to win races too. :-)

Race pace:

First 8 km (the easiest section of trail): 6:13/km, Arrived 89th/143 runners
Next 12 km till turnaround: 7:26, 82nd/143
Final 12 km to finish: 7:47, 76th/143

Average pace for 32 km: 7:15

One of the best aspects of my spur-of-the-moment decision to enter the Iroquoia Trail Test this weekend is that I have suddenly gone from "ready to seriously ramp up the training" to "tapering for a race". Makes for a much more relaxing day, I have to say. Taper, taper, taper. Must go off and taper some more. :-)

Decided on the spur of the moment to enter a 32 km trail race this Saturday, the Iroquoia Trail Test. Should be an interesting experience. I've always said that I didn't want to do a trail race because I am such a slow runner. I usually figure that my best chance is to do races with navigation, since that slows down at least some of the competition! However, it's my birthday today, and I wanted to try something new. We'll see if I finish within the time limit!

Trail run around Glen Haffy Conservation Area. Nice to explore a different area close to home, and get a chance to practise running on bigger hills than usual. I was surprised to see how empty the park was on a beautiful summer's day. If anyone is looking for a quiet place to finish writing a novel, hold a volleyball tournament (there are outdoor nets), or have a romantic picnic with someone other than your spouse, Glen Haffy appears to be an ideal place. (Don't worry, Bent - I only went running!)

Not much energy today - not sure if it was all the hill climbing, the lack of sleep or the mild headache. This led to an attack of klutziness that was so silly, it eventually became amusing. I nearly killed myself laughing at me nearly killing myself. My most impressive pratfall occurred while crossing a stile over a fence. My foot hit a rung in the wrong place and I was launched unceremoniously into a swan dive, landing on both kneecaps and the palms of my hands. Ouch! The trail race this Saturday takes place entirely on the Bruce Trail, so I will need to deal with stiles and tree roots without grinding my face in the dirt every 500 meters. Better plan on sleeping more for the rest of the week!

Paddling at Island Lake with Bent, Hingo and The Gazelle. Tested different canoe configurations for the RTN Champs. Looks like we can sit wherever we like without any major differences in paddling speed between the two boats. The best configuration based on body weight, stern experience and paddling strength seems to be Bent in stern with The Gazelle in bow, and me in the stern of the other boat with Hingo in bow.

Weight Machine Workout #1. First strength workout since the Tour de France finished. I need to get back into the routine of 3 strength workouts a week, so I'll have to look for something else on TV that will entice me down to the weight room. (I can find a million excuses not to go.)

Nice long ride around Caledon with Bent, mostly on rail trail and single track, with some gravel roads and just a few km of pavement. Started in the rain, taking the rail trail to Inglewood to pick up Knobless, who guided us along his secret (and largely untested) back routes to Forks of the Credit Provincial Park. Then back home again via Inglewood. It turned into a Pedal 'n' Pigout trip, with stops for tart wild apples, chokecherries and ice cream at the Inglewood General Store. Elapsed time was 6.5 hrs, so it was a great day out.

Post-rogaine thoughts:

Things that worked well - Montrail Hardrock shoes (purchased 36 hours earlier - could have been a huge disaster), knee-high XC ski gaiters to fend off seeds and cacti, shin pads beneath pants, trekking poles, quick-dry trekking pants, long-sleeved Coolmax shirt to keep sun off, Brunton 1SJet compass, Pristine water purification to avoid detours to water controls, NiteRider Storm bike light used only when major illumination was required.

Things that didn't work well - In spite of my best efforts, I still carried twice as much food as needed. I'm also not that impressed with my Myo5 headlamp anymore. Need to look at alternatives.

After doing three major events in a 3-week period (Canadian O Champs, Raid The North Deerhurst and North American Rogaine Champs), I don't quite know how to start up again with my training. All my regular routines are messed up - I've been in race/recover/travel mode for awhile now. My training this year has been focused on doing my best in those three events, and I hadn't really thought much beyond that. There is a big break from racing - nothing until the Raid The North Champs in late September. But that one is a 72-hour expedition adventure race, so I definitely can't slack off for long! We have a strong team for the Champs, so I need to be fitter and stronger, and I'll especially need to work on my road biking, which is now my weakest discipline. Anyway, I guess today is the first day of the next phase of my training program!

Trail run around Palgrave. Who would ever have thought that 27C would feel like a cool day? But the way this summer has been, today was great. I felt surprisingly good from a cardio perspective, but there were niggling pains in my knee and ankle that gradually faded - probably the result of running on pavement in Vancouver. Although we have no ocean or mountains here, it was great to be back in the Ontario woods with the smell of warm pine needles, the last of the wild raspberries and Monarch butterflies everywhere, glowing with the sun behind their wings. Also, I'm not terribly disappointed that my wildlife report consists of deer and wild turkeys again, rather than bear cubs and their mother. (I did see many shadowy bears in my peripheral vision today, all of which turned out to be fallen trees.) Today I focused on running over the tops of hills, rather than slowing at the brink. It's amazing - if I focus on a tree 5 meters beyond the top of the hill and give myself permission to stop and walk there, most of the time, I don't feel like stopping by the time I get to the tree. So even though I wasn't pushing hard today, I actually had my best-ever time on my time trial route: 39:45. Interesting.

I ran from The Minister's condo along the Sea Wall, then around the perimeter of Stanley Park. It was beautiful scenery with good people-watching to keep things entertaining. My legs were willing to go for a moderately-paced run, but made it clear that I'd better not push my luck. I think that another couple of rest days are in order, then maybe I should focus on bike riding rather than running for the next week.

A sunny morning in Vancouver! :-)) Rented kayaks on Granville Island and paddled to Jericho Beach, then down False Creek a bit, then back to Granville Island. Absolutely beautiful.

North American Rogaine Champs - Day 2

Compared to our previous rogaine, the hours of darkness were extremely unproductive. Honestly, we might as well have curled up for a 3-hour nap. We got 220 of our 1370 points in the dark. Crazy. Normally I enjoy night nav, but this was too tough for me to do well. Looking at the other teams' results after the fact, I guess that nobody was finding the course to be a cakewalk.

At first light, Sherpa and I were on the ball again - finding controls and starting to gather points. We ran into a team who had spent the night at the Hash House and had heard all the discussion about how difficult the course was. That made us feel better.

Then I got greedy. I was pretty sure that we could snag one last 50-pointer further south around 10 a.m., then start our trip back to the Hash House. We had to stop to purify water from a watercourse that we affectionately referred to as the Cow Poo Stream. By the time we got to the area of the control, time was tight. It was supposed to be within 100 meters of a bend in the road, but we didn't see it on our first foray. I wanted to take a bearing and try again, but Sherpa wisely put her foot down. It was time to go back. And boy was she right!

We followed some fences, expecting to be led to the road. We hit a creek and I convinced Sherpa that we should follow it to the road because there was a 70-point control at a bend in the stream. She raised an eyebrow, but agreed. We found the control behind an 8-foot fence in an area that we had thought was out of bounds. And actually, it was. But we naturally thought that we were on the wrong side of the fence, so we climbed over to where the control was, which put us in an area with a bunch of fences, wet areas, and even a bit of B.C. dark green for good measure. So... we hit the road at 11:12 a.m., still quite a way from the Hash House.

For the first time ever, I had to tow. Sherpa hooked up to me and I ran as hard as I could in the sweltering heat. It was my greed for points that had made us late, so I had to get us out of this. Sherpa was amazing - pushing on without complaining in spite of painful blisters, a fluttery stomach, and fatigue after her first-ever 24-hour trek. We kept running and I kept looking at the map and my watch. I lied to her about the remaining distance. "We only need to push as hard as we can for 2 more kilometers!" With less than 2 minutes to go, I spotted vehicles and we gave it one last push as spectators cheered. We made it to the finish control just 11 seconds before the 100 points/minute penalty would have kicked in! Then we collapsed in the finish tent and didn't do much for the next hour or so. Sherpa was surprisingly pleasant about it, but I have (hopefully) learned my lesson for the next rogaine!

Result: We were awarded 1st prize in the Open Women's division with 1370 points. However, the Super Veteran Women's team led by the amazing Sharon Crawford got 50 more points than we did, so we feel more like silver medalists. Still, we finished 20th/55 teams, ahead of all but one of the mixed teams, so we are very proud! The winning team got 2010 points, so it turns out that nobody came close to getting all the controls. Everyone had planned to do a lot more than they ended up doing. Our guys' team got 1490 points and finished 6th in the Veteran Men's division. Based on their competitors' names, they think they might have been the first North Americans in their division, which isn't a bad showing either.

Anyway, it was lots of fun - but perhaps a few too many bears!!!

Event: 2005 North American Rogaine Championships
 

North American Rogaine Champs - Day 1.

Sherpa and I entered the Open Female category - it was her first rogaine and my second. Bent and Hingo entered as a Veteran Male team. The Hat Creek Valley is a beautiful place with some great views, so we looked forward to our chance to take 24 hours to explore it. Both of our teams chose a similar route - starting in the northeast with a big climb to access some high-valued controls that looked more difficult. Then at night we would travel along a north-south corridor where a line of controls roughly followed a dirt road. By morning, we would be in the southwest quadrant, getting some final high-pointers. We planned to get about 2300 points out of approximately 3600 points available.

How wrong we were!

Right from the start, things went more slowly than expected. I'd forgotten that distances are a lot farther when you climb up or down 200 meters on a steep mountainside. As we approached the third control after a particularly steep climb, Sherpa asked: "What's that by the pond?" I saw a small, dark animal and wondered what she was so concerned about. Then I saw the big Mama bear and both her cubs, romping around about 100 meters beyond the control. Oh oh. Then we noticed Bent and Hingo sitting on a rock about 150 meters away from the control on the opposite side. I called out, "Are you waiting for the bear to leave?" and they didn't seem to hear us. Then Sherpa and I decided that there would be safety in numbers, so we swung wide around the field toward the guys. Before we got there, the guys left. It turned out that Hingo had heard me ask about the bear, but Bent assured him that I was just kidding. They had wondered, however, why we hadn't visited the control yet. Sherpa and I didn't want to give up that easily, so we talked loudly and sang a few choruses of "The Other Day I Saw a Bear, A Great Big Bear Away Out There". Then we took a wide loop around the field and couldn't see the bears, but were still worried because the control was on a little rise and we couldn't see right behind it. Finally, we got our nerve up. I darted over and jammed my SportIdent into the box while Sherpa held her bear spray at the ready. We didn't bother filling in the intention sheet!

From there, the remainder of the afternoon was uneventful, other than the growing realization that we weren't going to end up where we had planned to be before dark. The controls were more difficult than our last rogaine. The flags were low to the ground and some of the features were very small and obscure on a 1:40,000 map, especially given the lack of detail (or incorrect detail, such as misplaced fences) available for choosing attackpoints, etc. A couple of the controls were in dubious locations too, but as an adventure racer, I am used to that. Interestingly, we and our guys' team took turns leapfrogging each other. They ran when they could, but we just walked. We ran into them half a dozen times in the race.

Shortly after dark, we were introduced to "British Columbia dark green". Holy cow. Sherpa and I had to get through 100 meters of the nastiest stuff I've ever seen. There was practically no way through - and our legs would fall through stacks of dead wood into swampy ground, getting trapped so that we couldn't take our next step. A couple of European men arrived and we hoped to follow their path through this crap. We watched surreptitiously as they made some attempts. Then they politely said in a strong accent: "We wish you good luck. We are going back." We eventually crashed through and headed down the road to start our "night corridor". A short distance along the road, we met Bent and Hingo coming toward us. They had just been to our next control, but hadn't punched it. As Bent approached, he had seen not one, but three reflectors. Then two of the reflectors had turned and looked at him - and they were pretty far apart. According to Hingo, it went something like this: "Hey Hingo, I've found the control. Oh oh... Nice bear! Good bear! OK, I'm not going to bother getting this one. Let's go!!!!" Given that the boys were ultimately given credit for this control by the organizers, we are suspicious that they concocted this story to keep us away from a control that looked fairly easy, but at the time, we decided to take their advice and skip that one too.

Continued on Day 2...