Training Log Archive: Bash

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.