Training Log Archive: Bash

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