Training Log Archive: Bash

Spent the afternoon looking over the Wilderness Traverse race course with Getawaystix, and NO, I won't be giving any hints. I will spill the beans just enough to say that it will be an awesome way to explore a beautiful area. Very disappointed to miss it!

Glorious day! I did an easy run around the Palgraves with BulletDog to see how my cold is doing. Lungs are fine, throat still a little sore - especially since I had to yell "Mocha!" every couple of minutes since she got distracted by all the spring smells. Trails are sooo muddy right now! Decided it was time to take my colourful new SLAB-2s into some goop. They were great.

I'm having too much geeky fun with my Forerunner these days. Here's the Palgrave East portion of my run. (To make it larger, click on it then click on the little magnifying glass in the upper right. Click and drag to move around map.)

Near Futile Quest for Tiny Cell Phone (Needle) in Big Woods (Haystack).

'Bent lost his toque and cell phone while doing some orienteering practice yesterday. The phone was turned off so we couldn't call the number and listen for the forest to start ringing. He found the toque near control #2 before work today, then e-mailed a map with the rest of his route drawn on and an arrow pointing to a suspicious area where he'd bushwhacked through thicker brush.

I'd planned to stick to the Great Indoors on this grey day to recover from my cold, but because I am a devoted wife - the kind of wife who is willing to put her husband's carelessness with "zippered" pockets ahead of her own health - the kind of wife who is satisfied with nothing more than a fire in the hearth, a quiet evening with my family and, oh, say, a Salomon XT Wings softshell jacket size Medium in Atol Blue - well, of course, I headed out into the chilly, wet woods to help my husband.

After scouting the forest floor for several kilometers and seeing nothing but animal poop, mud and dead leaves, I discovered 'Bent's phone lying open (?) by a rotten log in the midst of some thick conifers. I'd really thought it was a lost cause so this was a happy surprise. Looks like it will recover from its night out in the rain.

Thanks also to Crash and Skyerocket for searching along the trails in Palgrave West!

Achoo. :-(

Dontgetlost.ca Hard Rock at Rockcliffe Trails in Waterdown. I had 4 hrs of sleep after arriving home late last night to find poor ThunderDog stressed from a torn toenail; her bloody footprints covered the main floor of the house. 'Bent patched her up and planned to take her to the vet in the morning instead of using his Hard Rock entry. I did the clean-up so it was a late night. Since I'd been assigned to coach newbies in today's mini-nav clinic, I had to get to Waterdown - about 75 minutes each way.

I never really "checked in" today. I'm not good with newbies so that part would have been tough anyway. Then I got out on the Rockcliffe Trails map where there was lots of rock, moss and mud - not a good place for someone who was physically and mentally tired. I stopped in a few places to answer questions and give tips to some of the people from my clinic. I'd twisted my ankle yesterday so the rocky sections were scary, and then I slipped a couple of times on steep, muddy slopes and managed to wrench my bad knee on the other leg. As much as I hate to quit anything, the Giant's Rib Raid is just two weeks away and we already have one teammate with a bad knee. So I bailed without finishing the course. In spite of my bad day, it was a fun course - many thanks to Sudden for his hard work.

After spending Earth Hour at home with candlelight and Scrabble for a couple of years, 'Bent and I decided to hike to the nearest village (Palgrave) for a community get-together organized by the local church. The 4H Club youth had spent 6 weeks honing their pizza-making skills so they put on a fundraising dinner which also included Albion Hills maple syrup on ice cream - yum.

There were conversations and board games before Earth Hour, then we went outside for a campfire with dark hot chocolate, marshmallows, guitars and rousing songs led by an enthusiastic group of teenagers. (Who tried to limit their texting during Earth Hour.) As the end of the Hour approached, the kids slowed it down with Amazing Grace. As excellent harmonies rose into the night sky, someone inside happened to turn the church lights back on when we hit the line, "...was blind but now I see". A fun evening - we only knew about a third of the people but that was fine. Nice night hike home BUT I have a sore throat now. I think my immune system is not happy about last night.

Happy news! The pair of poodles who went missing in Palgrave Forest yesterday are safe and did not spend the cold night outside. I was looking out the door for them all evening, and I'd planned a poodle hunt on foot in Palgrave East this morning. There is enough uninhabited land for a dog to get seriously lost around here, so I always get a lump in my throat when I see a "lost pet" sign.

Only time for a quick run before heading into Toronto to check out the spring goodies at the Salomon Store then meet friends for dinner and the Banff Film Festival. (Which had an interesting film about changes to another area of Nepal we've trekked in - seems to be an ongoing theme of the week. This time the changes were happier.)


After a warm-up, I did a moderately hilly run on our country road. (Once again, I had new shoes that I wasn't ready to get muddy!) The dirt road run (from our driveway entrance to Humber Station to Hwy 50 to home) is 5.3K and took 1:15 less than two years ago. I think it may be helping that I have less weight to push up the hills.

In the ongoing challenge to lose 15 lb in 2010, I just noticed this... Liberte organic non-fat yoghurt is the best, but our grocery store only carries strawberry and raspberry, so I sometimes buy Silhouette non-fat, non-aspartame yoghurt to get different flavours. I thought I was mainly sacrificing "organic", but in the fine print I see that Liberte has twice the calories, twice the protein and more than twice the carbs of Silhouette. More calories but also more actual nutrition that doesn't come from fat. Its ingredients are all recognizable to me as food, which isn't true of Silhouette. Guess it's a good thing I like strawberry and raspberry.

Kbomb and Tizzle were doing some Death Race training in the Hockley Valley and I joined them. Poor Tizzle wrenched her ankle on some ice about 15 minutes into the run so we took the pace a little easier, but she was a real trooper, sticking it out to complete her longest and hilliest run to date. She even proposed the first "everyone try to run non-stop to the top of that big hill" dare.

Kbomb is an expert Hockley Valley runner by now, anticipating every twist in the route and providing reports on other trails in the area whenever we passed a junction with one. Our only wildlife spotting was a suspected male model - a 30-something rugged outdoor type with long, flowing blonde hair who smiled at us as he stood by a creek and we ran across the bridge. (Ladies, if anyone wants directions, I'll be happy to steer you to his creek!)

We'd planned on doing the Hockley Loop but a phone call from Tizzle's workplace necessitated a quicker return to the car by road after we'd completed the north part of the loop. No matter - it was a glorious morning to be out in the forest and HILLS. (Anyone who knows Hockley will agree those hills deserve block caps.) With no leaves on the trees yet, the views were scenic everywhere. Great way to start the day - thanks Kbomb and Tizzle!

Some brisk trekking along part of our route - eating snacks, resting twisted ankles, etc. I turned off the GPS for this, so the distance for the run above isn't quite as long as the normal distance for the North Hockley half-loop.

I was saddened to read this New York Times article on the Annapurna Circuit. Until now, the Circuit would have been on my short list of top trips to recommend to travelers. (Ignoring the fact that it was the most horrific trip we've ever taken due to a tropical cyclone-induced blizzard that wreaked havoc across the country, killing 100 people including a man in our group.)

In 1995, the trek was 150 miles ascending from 3,000' to almost 18,000' and back down again, usually taking about 2.5 weeks to allow for acclimatization and exploration. Back then, we were told Nepal had already been totally changed by tourism - but it turns out that was nothing. Whereas we only walked past a public telephone twice during our trek, there are now Internet cafes in roadless villages. Teahouses have been built along remote sections of trail. Worst of all (for trekkers, but not for Nepalis), roads have been built that will reduce this incredible trek to a mere long weekend by 2012. Great news for Nepal (except for the tourist industry) - bad news for trekkers.

People always talk about visiting third world places before they change, and this is a wake-up call that huge changes can take place in a short time. Guess it's time to write down a life list and identify the places that need to be visited sooner rather than later!

P.S. For those who know her, the Canadian occupational therapist referenced in the article is Lenora Delaney.

Hard Core DVD. I tried the technique I read about in Valerie's log, playing the DVD on my computer with no sound while watching something else on TV (and sneaking frequent glances at the computer screen). It's not 100% perfect but I like doing two things at once. I watched The Daily Show and the Colbert Report - shows where you don't need to look at the screen all the time. It would work well with podcasts if I put speakers on my iPod - gotta try that.

I wanted to try my beautiful new red and orange Salomon SLAB-2 XT Wings but I wasn't ready to sacrifice them to the mud gods just yet, so I ran around our hilly country block. Except for a few goopy spots on north Duffy's Lane, it's drier than the trails right now - about 60/40 dirt/pavement.

I worked on the Chi running techniques we learned from Trav & Baloney's book and DVD. (Hey guys, if we ever see you again, we *will* give them back - honest.) I think I've always used Chi running form on the downhills without knowing what it was, which is why I can pass even 'Bent on downhills. I just need to get better at harnessing the power of gravity on the flats and uphills.

I ran this route 18 months ago when I was preparing for my ill-fated marathon. Today's pace was the same - 8 sec/km faster, actually. So that's OK. I don't expect to get much faster as a masters athlete but it would be nice if I don't get a lot slower just yet.

Fyi to Caledon runners who might try this route: Around the block is 9 km even. Our driveway out-and-back adds 300 m. (And by all means, stop in and say hi!)

Thomass Eliminator - 3 sprints in Palgrave East and West using Thomass handicaps. Top 16 from 1st sprint compete in 2nd sprint. Top 8 compete in 3rd sprint. All participants can do all 3 sprints but only the top group in each sprint is competing for the win.

Holy CRAP, it is hard to do a 12-minute forest orienteering race - let alone three in a row with only a few minutes off in between. You can't afford to rest physically or mentally, and there's no time to think your decisions through. I suppose this is what orienteering is always like for people who can run quickly. Going at my pace, I usually have time to think.

Loop 1 was in Palgrave East and went fairly smoothly. It was in the area where 'Bent had set up his contours-only training in December, so it was familiar ground. Loop 2 was in Palgrave West behind our place and - ironically - it's where I did the stupidest stuff. I ran past #2 because I was looking in re-entrants, not on spurs. (No time to read control descriptions.) I only had about 20 seconds to review the map before we started and I see now that I made a really silly choice of which two lettered controls to visit. I was lucky to squeak into 8th place, just making it into the 3rd round.

Loop 3 started with a road run to the start flag that looked as long as the rest of my course. Because we had some strong runners in the group, I was certain that I would place 8th in this round, even though Nick gave us 10 seconds of advance start on the road run for each handicap point. Sure enough, I fell from 1st to 8th place long before we finished the road run, but I did pass one guy on the final steep hill before we turned into the conservation area.

Luckily, I could hit my two lettered controls along the same stretch of trail, which made the O course quicker. I met several people at the 2nd last control and had to stop to rescue my new Salomon toque after it was torn off by a branch. So it was a happy surprise to run over the last hill and into the finish valley to find Nick waiting for the first racer to arrive. Yahoo! Leanimal placed 4th, so the local ladies did our part today. 'Bent volunteered at the race with BulletDog instead of further damaging his knee. Big thanks to Nick for putting together a fun event for us, even though he injured his knee recently too. And thanks to Sid for managing the SI - he's become quite a guru over the past couple of years!

(Time is approximate pending results.)

Rodney Yee Yoga for Flexibility

Caledon Navigators training session focusing on attackpoints. Thanks to Phatty and Goose for putting up a fun course for us. I actually saw a place in Albion Hills that I've never visited before, and that doesn't happen very often!

I was coaching our new club member, Dorothy. She was educated as an architect and did a lot of hiking with her parents as a kid, so she picked up the skills quickly. She was very polite when I slid on a muddy downhill and just missed landing on my bum on a dead porcupine. Dorothy has no interest in orienteering races - she just likes to orienteer. I wish we had a better way to market the sport to recreational orienteers, especially in Caledon where so many of our club members have no interest in doing O races but just want to learn to navigate.

We'd planned to ride to Inglewood on the rail trail today but snowflakes were falling and 'Bent's cold wasn't improving, so we decided to ride the trainer and watch "Rachel Getting Married". I don't remember why I put this film on my Zip.ca list. I often cruise through the Awards section of the website and look for unusual movies for our ZipList, but we sometimes don't get them for 2 years so I was surprised when a wedding movie arrived in the mail. We haven't finished it yet but it is definitely *not* a girlie romance flick. Much darker than the title suggests. Phew.

P.S. Was the trainer *always* that boring? I didn't use it much this winter.

I dragged 'Bent into a leg strength session too. Gotta work on that knee of his. When it comes to upper body weights, I probably use 25-30% of the weight he uses, but I made him beg for mercy with my leg strength routine. Ha!

I don't run much during winter sports season but it's just a few weeks until the 25K Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Giant's Rib Raid - eek. Most of my racing this year will be on foot so if I can avoid injury, I'll be aiming to do more running than in past years.

Today's workout was inspired by Crash - a trail run to the stile in Glen Haffy where the Bruce Trail meets the Palgrave Side Trail, then back again. Up via the Lookout Trail and down via the Bruce Trail Side Trail. (Forerunner measured equal distances but I'm guessing that it missed some of the twisty turns on the side trail.) Given that the trails were a mix of snow, gloopy mud, puddles and dry earth, I'm happy with my pace at this point in the season. (Even though I have many friends who would slit their wrists if it took them an hour and a half to run 14K on trails.)

Following Slowrunner's good advice, I ran up all the hills. Following Dee's good advice, I told myself, "I love hills". I'd be hard-pressed to say that I was attacking the hills, as per Cristina's good advice, by the time I got to the top of K2. But I tried to do it most of the time!

BulletDog and I ran around Palgrave East - a mix of goopy mud, slick ice and a few nice dry trails. I accidentally locked my key in the house so I needed to run until I was pretty sure 'Bent would be home from work. Not a bad training strategy although it would have been more effective if I'd started running at noon instead of 4:45! (As it turns out, I still beat him home - doh.)

Recent interview with Ian Adamson. I'm hoping the video portion is a little less recent, since it calls him the "Tiger Woods of adventure racing". Ouch.

Thomass Eliminator - 3 short orienteering races in Palgrave this Sunday. Great format for beginners since they don't have to do all races. It's a fundraiser to help cover the hefty maintenance costs on the SportIdent timing equipment we all use. Attendance could really use a boost! Registration is open till Friday night with race day registration available for $3 more.

Congrats to VO2Max, Canadian XC Ski Championship bronze medalist in the 15K Free!

Hard Core DVD - inspired by Phatty.

OK, I am finally done posting reports and photos from Quebec. Because our trip started more than 7 days ago, it's easier to see the 6 days of reports if you use this link (for those who enjoy that sort of thing).

http://www.ar.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp/user_920...

Ran with BulletDog in Palgrave West. Winter is over. Muddy dog foot season is here. :-(

Sentier de la Ligne d'Horizon and Lac Beauport with 'Bent, BulletDog and Knobless. If you look closely, you can see the 3 km skating loop on Lac Beauport. Too bad, we missed it by a week or so!

Awesome!!!! (Although Charles Hamelin has nothing to worry about.)

In case you ever wondered why the Quebecois win all those medals in short track, we saw why. At a large local shopping centre that includes a highly visible rink, several speed skating clubs presented a few hours of racing and opportunities to try the sport, with club information and registration booths set up outside a busy Imax theatre.

Sam, the 9-year-old daughter of our friends Jill and Jeannot, skates several times a week as part of a kids' racing program. The adult nearest to me in this photo is Francois-Olivier Roberge, a long track speed skater at the Vancouver Olympics.



The kids idolize their speed skating heroes. Sam has a poster on her bedroom door with photos of the Canadian Olympic short track team with all their signatures. Charles Hamelin is her sweetie.

Sam is 2nd from the right at the start.



She was faster than the skater who won (a boy) but couldn't get past him in the short race after he won the start. The kids race together according to their best times for certain distances - not according to gender, age or size.



They offered the public a chance to try the sport and Sam got permission to act as my coach. She took her role very seriously.





The skates feel sooooo different from the figure skates that I'm used to. They are angled to make it easier to go counterclockwise, which is all you ever need to do. I thought it would feel impossibly weird but actually it wasn't bad. Those skates *want* to go fast. Once I got comfortable, the biggest problem was avoiding other skaters, since there were a lot of little kids trying the sport for the first time and they did a lot of splats. One of the first things Sam did was take me over to the mattresses on the wall so I could feel what it would be like to skid out and hit the boards. Luckily I stayed upright.

Sam brought in reinforcements to help coach me, some of whom had more English than others. Apparently the ones with less English were skating up to her and giving her advice to pass along to me! She taught me to do crossovers, which were similar to figure skating as long as I remembered that my skates were super long and needed more space.



After Sam saw that I wasn't falling, she tried to teach me some technique - how to blast off the starting line (she won), how to swing my arms when pushing off with the skates. Looking at the photos, I see that I needed to bend over much farther from the waist. I thought I was bent over but I should have noticed that I wasn't dragging my fingertips on the ice. I was wearing the cool special gloves so that would have been fun.



So much fun!! I've always thought that I would have liked to be a long track speed skater (because I have big thighs!) and I still hope to try that one day, but this was an awesome first speed skating experience.



P.S. Notice that I am the only skater going so fast that 'Bent couldn't keep me in focus!

Camp Mercier with 'Bent and Knobless. Another gorgeous day - a little warmer this time, making our glide highly unpredictable as we moved from shade to sunshine on the trails. (Stop start stop start stop start stop start - repeat.)

Our friend Jill is the curator of the Quebec Aquarium and her husband Jeannot works there too. We got a fascinating backstage tour of this indoor/outdoor zoo that is involved in public education, research and animal rescue.



We got to go into the locked back room with the polar bear (behind bars with a red line half a meter from the bars that we weren't allowed to cross). Jeannot was showing us some of the polar bear's training. They don't train animals to provide public entertainment. The primary purpose is to enable the animals to get health-related tests and procedures with little or no sedation. I think this polar bear was one of the animals that would come up to the bars to let someone take a blood sample.



Apparently, their walruses are highly social with humans. (Not what I'd heard when we kayaked in the Arctic!) Their tusks are removed because they are easily broken and infected, leading to a huge root canal - or death when they live in the wild. This is what happens when Knobless spends a weekend away from home - first thing you know, he's snuggling with a Russian lady named Samka.

Most of this was snowshoeing but part of it should be logged as "trekking while carrying snowshoes". 'Bent, BulletDog and I headed up into the hills near Lac Beauport with a compass, no map and a rough idea of local geography.



We learned afterward that two people got lost last summer while following the very well-marked ridgeline trail, and helicopters were called in to search. Instead of following the well-marked trail, we wandered somewhat randomly wherever things looked nice. But I looked at my compass a lot and always had an escape-to-the-road plan. AR and orienteering experience make the outdoor world a lot more fun.

We found different-coloured paint on trees and followed different sets of markings for awhile. Some of them seemed like trails while others seemed more like suggested bushwhacking routes. We finally decided that the red markings were probably property boundaries. Here is part of the "orange" route (if you look hard).



We crossed the main road then climbed partway up the mountain we'd been admiring from our cottage. We hit a snowmobile trail and decided to follow it for awhile. Although there was deep snow on the north side of the mountain, the trail was a little different on the south side.



We veered away from the trail that probably travelled 200 km to Saguenay, reached the mountaintop, then found random snowmobile and snowshoe trails on the west side. We made compass guesses as we descended a beautiful route down to Lac Beauport, avoiding the neighbourhood of fancy mountainside homes. If we'd had a map, it would have been fun to go farther but we could have been stuck with a long road run back, so this would have to be enough outdoor adventure for the day. Part 2 of each day's adventures always involved a Quebecois meal that I wouldn't have wanted to record in my food diary.

On their brochure, the Mont Ste. Anne XC ski centre boasts that it is the top-ranked XC ski centre in Canada and 2nd ranked in North America. (Anyone know who is 1st in NA? Who does the ranking, anyway?) I'm always leery of XC ski centres linked to downhill ski resorts, since the XC skiing is less profitable and often gets a lot less attention. I got even more suspicious when we had to pay $23.70 per person at the main gate, $10 more per person than yesterday. But it was really nice, especially when we climbed up higher to the black diamond trails. I used waxless skis and gave up some speed for grip. 'Bent went with waxables and had a tough job keeping his skis grippy enough. Once again, his knee gave him grief. :-( There was a ton of snow, but nothing recent.

Is this place really the best in Canada? As a longtime classic skier, I love narrow, ungroomed trails like the ones at Kolapore, ON or Larch Hills, BC, so I'd probably give top Canadian ranking to a place like that. But if you're looking for a large, scenic network of wide groomed trails where you can do skate or classic, Mont Ste. Anne is great. Sovereign Lake, BC would be another contender, although I suspect their trail network is smaller if you exclude the Silver Star side of the mountain, which I don't like as much after an encounter with a kamikaze skier.

At Mont Ste. Anne, there are several cabins (Refuges) where you can stay and a small inn that holds 26 people. I'm told that you can also ski a backcountry route to Camp Mercier, which would be really pretty. In the same part of the world, 'Bent and I did the Charlevoix Traverse one time - another highly recommended backcountry ski route with huts and cabins to stay in. We took about 6 days - very challenging skiing with skins necessary in icy conditions - and barely saw anyone.

Note to Phatty: The Mont Ste. Anne ski shop had my favourite Momentum nordic pants for 25% off. I'm all set for next year!

'Bent and I drove 40 minutes north to Camp Mercier near Parc Jacques Cartier in the Reserve Faunique des Laurentides. This is one of those wildlife reserves where the wildlife are protected from many dangers; there's even a big fence lining both sides of the highway like the one in Banff. But if you want to come in and shoot yourself some wildlife, that's perfectly cool as long as you pay the government for a licence.

The elevation is a fair bit higher than Quebec City and there's a great trail network with some nice-looking trailside cabins to rent some day. 'Bent and I did a big loop following all the outermost trails in the network, enjoying some terrific views and stopping for lunch at a heated cabin at the far point. There's lots of snow but they could use some fresh stuff. I used violet wax and needed a lot of upper body to get around, but conditions were pretty decent for mid-March. A little clattery-icy at times with a few soft patches in the sun, but that's to be expected.











Whenever we come here, we always reminisce about our first trip to Camp Mercier together back in our romantic dating days. The night before, we'd gone out in Quebec City and shared one of those fondue dinners for two where you get cheese fondue appetizer, beef fondue main course (this was before 'Bent came out of the closet as a non-meat eater) and chocolate fondue dessert. I got the food poisoning first. When we ski at Camp Mercier now, we always point out landmarks: "Here's the cabin where I collapsed on a bench to try to get my head to stop spinning" and "This is the trail where you threw up into the forest." Ah, sweet memories.

We had to cut our ski short because 'Bent's knee was bothering him, so he was assigned to walk the older ThunderDog when we got back to the cottage. BulletDog and I headed up to the ridgeline trail and explored to the east until the trail began its descent to a road. This involved some running, some walking, some slapstick skidding around on ice, some hill climbing and some off-trail slogging in deep snow.

Heading up to the ridge, BulletDog spirited me off the trail to avoid an icy section, and I lost sight of it. So I kept the setting sun at my right shoulder with the plan to turn around and bail to the road if the light got too dim. It took 10 minutes of breaking through crust in knee-deep snow to hit the ridgeline trail. (Just me - BulletDog could float on top.) There was beautiful warm evening light on the hills and lake below.

Fantastic discovery! The small city park across the street from our cottage is actually the entrance to a large trail network. That explains the fit-looking group of people we saw wearing snowshoes in the parking lot yesterday. It's a long, slippery climb to the ridgeline - impossible without cleats or Yaktrax - but the walking, running and views of the hilly landscape are excellent once you get there. 'Bent, BulletDog and I did some preliminary exploring.

The local XC ski club, Sentiers du Moulin, had posted that half its trails were open with spring skiing conditions. However, the snow at the trailhead was mushy and tinted brown. 'Bent would have tried it but I couldn't bring myself to buy a pass.

We decided to drive around and explore the area instead, and we stumbled on another ski club - Ski de Fond Charlesbourg. It was just $8 because only a few trails were open. The snow at the trailhead was white, at least, so we headed out.



The first half of the ski was pretty miserable - a mix of ice and major trail debris because they'd been clearing branches and fallen trees with chainsaws.



Then we climbed up to a sunny hillside where several hundred meters of blue tubing connected all the maple trees. The skiing was pleasant enough that we did an extra loop, but we had pretty much exhausted the potential of the area in less than an hour. A month ago, there would have been enough trails to spend all day there.

Looooong family road trip to Lac Beauport, QC, vastly improved by a wide range of CBC podcasts.

You realize you're an adventure racer when... there's a downhill ski resort with well-lit night runs 5 minutes from your rented cottage, and your first thought is, "Cool - I'd love to snowshoe up that thing!"

Minimal Internet access till March 16.

Warning: rant ahead. I am totally blown away at the strength of reaction to Brian McKeever not being selected to race in the Olympic men's 50K classic XC ski race. Cross-Country Canada and the 4 skiers who raced are actually getting hate mail. (!!)

Commenters on the Globe and Mail story vary (as always) from sensible to completely hysterical - and there are a LOT of comments. I'll bet that none of the hysterical people had heard of Devon, Ivan or Brian a few months ago. Isn't it lovely that they have now become experts on the sport?
<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/more-sports/...>

I hope Brian speaks up, as I'm sure he's horrified by the hate mail and I don't think anyone else can make a dent in this public relations disaster for CCC. (Which admittedly, they helped to bring upon themselves by playing up Brian's inspirational story in hopes of getting mega-coverage for their sport before the Olympics, without ever mentioning the wee difference between "making the team" and "being selected to race".)

Brian made the Olympic team fair and square. But even before the Olympic trials, VO2Max told me that the winner of the Olympic trial 50K race wasn't guaranteed to race in the Olympics because the top 4 Canadian guys (who were in Europe racing World Cup since they had already been named to the Olympic team) might do that race, and there were only 4 spots available.

If the coach was going to replace someone from the 50K race to put Brian in, the logical choice might well have been Devon Kershaw, who ended up coming within a hair of a medal. He'd placed 4th of the 4 men in the 30K pursuit; he'd already done a lot of racing at the Olympics; he'd lacked energy in the team relay after racing so hard and so well in the team sprint. The top-ranked Canadian Ivan Babikov would never have been dropped, yet he was the one who had the bad day while Devon had a fantastic race. The coach made the best possible choice, putting out 4 skiers who all had a chance of making the top 10 - or better - on a good day. The two best Canadian skiers on paper didn't have a great day. Luckily, there were two other skiers who did.

Brian wasn't the only XC skier selected to Canada's Olympic XC ski team who didn't get to race, and I'm sure there were other Olympians who spent little or no time competing in their sport. To suggest that he should be treated differently from skiers without disabilities is an insult to Brian and to anyone with a disability. On the contrary, I think it's great to know that his coach doesn't see Brian differently from the other skiers, so it didn't occur to him that he should make a selection to favour Brian's disability. Don't get me wrong - it would have been awesome to see him race and he totally deserved his spot on the team. It is inspirational that he qualified for the Olympic team without any asterisks, by winning the Olympic trial 50K classic race.

To suggest that one of the other skiers should have voluntarily given up his spot for Brian is unfair to these young people who have devoted years of their lives to hard training, low incomes and (often) abandoned university educations to give themselves a chance to race at the highest level and represent their (our!) country. How could anyone expect them to back out of the premier XC ski event at a home Olympic games after the coach had selected them? Maybe that's easy to say for the folks whose involvement in sport is limited to using their remote control to toggle between TSN and TSN2 and expressing their superior opinions.

OK, rant over.

Started with a trail loop in Palgrave West with BulletDog. Once again, I mistakenly expected the trails to be packed hard but that didn't happen until close to the Bruce Trail. Near our place, I slogged through dense, calf-deep, crust-topped snow. Oh well, I was looking for a little intensity today and it proved to be easy to find!

After dropping BulletDog off at home, I headed along our country road with a tax information letter that had been delivered to our address by mistake. That added an extra 2.5 km to my run with a long uphill on the way out. Inspiration from Cristina and Dee pushed me up that hill at a good pace! This was the 3rd time this week I've been able to run instead of driving somewhere I needed to go. That doesn't happen often when you live in the boonies. Yay.

TIME's Top 10 Lists of Almost Everything in 2009

Warning: it's hard to stop... "oh, I think I'll click on just one more..."

Hard Core DVD - tough but felt strangely good. A strength workout at last! FB has inspired me to work on developing at least one ab.

Good for Yann Martel! And good for Obama!

What IS Stephen Harper reading anyway?

February Report Card (based on 2010 goals):

Pass:
- Still on track for 450 hrs total annual training.
- Registered for Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon. Reviewed rogaine schedule and selected two likely candidates.
- I've been below my target weight for the past 2 weeks, so I'll count the "lose 10 lb" goal as achieved - but it'll be oh, so easy for someone who loves food as much as I do to screw up. I'm down 13 lb as of today but since I still look fat, I am now aiming for 15.

Borderline:
- The month got off to a great start for strength training, then fell apart when I got sucked into the Olympic vortex. March will be better. Honest.

Fail:
- No speed or hill intervals
- Not a single training session before breakfast.
- Rarely in bed before midnight (I was living in Vancouver's time zone!)
- No piano or guitar practice

I had an evening board meeting to attend and luckily it was along the Bruce Trail, so I headed out with headlamp and Yaktrax. Turns out I guessed wrong about the trail being hard-packed and frozen. With most steps, I was breaking through the crust a few inches. On the bright side, this made me late for the meeting so there was no option to slack off. I got there 7 minutes late and was only the 2nd person to arrive. Phew.

Cross-country trip to and from the Palgrave post office, mostly by snowshoe - about a 9 km return trip. Unfortunately, the post office had been left in the hands of a friend of the owner who was unable to figure out postage rates, couldn't operate the scale, didn't know the GST percentage, couldn't find stamps with face value less than $1, and had no change larger than quarters.

Not really her fault, so after some deep breathing, I searched the post office and located a laminated sheet with postage rates, figured it out, then bought enough $1 stamps to cover the required amount (and then some). Fortunately, I'd weighed and measured the envelope at home because it was within a millimeter of the fine line between an inexpensive large letter and an expensive small parcel.

It was a really tough slog in places! Snow is dense and calf-deep - sometimes like wet mashed potatoes and sometimes with a hard, breakable crust. I earned the yummy dinner 'Bent cooked!

This was the part of the post office trip where I ran on the sidewalk through Palgrave sans snowshoes.