Training Log Archive: Bash

Rode with 'Bent to Albion Hills to meet Coach LD, Goose, Gosling, Phatty and Leanimal for my first single track riding of the season. I felt better than expected, considering that I've done a 10-hr training session and a 5-hr race over the past week, but I bailed early to come home for some post-race laziness. Fantastic day and the trails are in awesome shape. I don't remember Albion ever opening up this early before!

Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Giant's Rib Raid in Milton.

Perfect spring day for an excellent adventure run! This year the Tree Huggers were hobbled by injury ('Bent) and then our substitute teammate (Slowrunner) was also injured. Fortunately, we were able to hook up with our longtime Masters rival DLevine, whose teammates were taking this race off.



Hingo was in fine form. He doth protest too much about his lack of training.



DLevine's orienteering experience gave us some extra firepower.



As usual, my chief role on the team was to take photographs and model Salomon gear.



I looked at the map a little too. I'm glad that our team didn't just stand around mugging for the cameras like these jokers we found hanging out in the woods.



Our route choices weren't all perfect.



And the course setters clearly had a sense of humour.



But the scenery and weather were amazing, the company was good, and we kept up a fairly consistent pace for most of the day and hit most controls pretty well.



I felt great running. I guess more running on dry trails in our early spring has helped, along with the lighter load.



It was a great race course - lots of fun with a different character from other Giant's Rib Raids we've done in Milton. The course design was excellent from a volunteer and safety perspective, returning several times to a central hub that was used by the Raid, Half-Raid and Kids' events. Point-to-point courses are fun - especially in wilderness races - but in a sport that relies so heavily on volunteers and where the abilities of competitors are so different, it's fine to "go loopy" once in awhile.

Hard to believe I've known Hingo for over 20 years now! Nice that he's still making time to go Raiding with the Tree Huggers now that he's got 4 kids keeping him busy.





Finish line - 1st Masters. We had a few stressful minutes after the Matrix as we waited with two members of another Masters team. Fortunately, DLevine was the next man up the hill and we ran off without daring to look back in case they were right on our tail!



Phatty and PhattyJR were 3rd overall. Kirikou is so fast-moving that he eluded the camera.



VO2Max, Leanimal and Goose were 3rd Coed. Nice smiles, eh? I've heard a rumour that they all see the same great dentist. :-)



Big congrats to the overall winners Team WildernessTraverse.com - Getawaystix, Hansel and Nick - another team of longtime rivals working together. Interesting to see that all 9 members of the top 3 teams log their training on Attackpoint. Obviously, it must work!

15.2 lb lost since Jan. 1! :-)))

Some late night excitement, not logged. Crash's sweet dog Skye bolted from home into the darkness toward a rustling in the forest and didn't reappear when Crash spent more than an hour calling her along the trails. After receiving a "911 for Lost Critters" call, 'Bent and I headed into the rainy woods with headlamps, a dog leash and lots of lung power. Fortunately, Crash's Mom had found Skye safe near the road by the time our search reached her place. Phew!!!! Over the years, we've lost ThunderDog a few times for 5-10 minutes each. Doesn't sound like much but I cried like a baby every time. Welcome home, little Skyerocket!

0.2 lb above target weight this morning (stoopid scales with decimal places!!) I can almost taste that roast chicken. :-)

Kinda surprised... Raid The North Extreme returns on Labour Day.

While watching The Daily Show.

After Monday's epic session, I'm content to keep things short this week. I ran Short Bruce Loop (3.1 km via long route through F&M's both ways) then measured a 200 meter distance in our yard - relatively flat for around here. Then I ran five 200 m intervals ranging from 4:29 to 5:07 kms - aiming for what I imagined to be a 3 km race pace. Then did a cooldown around F&M loop. Totally random, I know, but it's time to start *some* sort of intervals as per my New Year's resolutions!

Speaking of which, I didn't do a March review but I have some failing grades. Training hours for the past 12 months are below my goal because we didn't do any long winter races like the Snowgaine or the Rock & Ice Ultra. Strength training has been virtually non-existent. Still no progress on learning guitar and piano music. On the bright side, my running is going well and I'm down 14 lb since Jan. 1 - although it feels like I'll *never* lose that final pound! It's probably because I've promised myself a grocery store hot roast chicken (not the whole thing at once!) when (if) I reach the 15 lb goal. My body knows it wouldn't be good for me so it's not letting me get there. :-(

Discovery of the day: Instapaper.com

"A simple tool to save web pages to read later." As someone who often has 25 tabs open in Firefox, this sounds perfect. Anyone know any reason why I shouldn't use it? I learned about it from CBC Radio.

Now that Wilderness Traverse is over, I can post the GPS track for our course test of Trek #1 and most of the paddle section. (Click on the little globe above to see it.) Getawaystix and I weren't always trying to take the optimum route; there were some trails and areas of forest that we wanted to check out. However, that excuse doesn't cover all our drifting on the first trek. The truth is, we got chatting and didn't pay enough attention to our compasses!

Here's my original log entry:

4 a.m. alarm for a last-minute plan to meet Getawaystix to test the sections of the Wilderness Traverse race course revised in our meeting last week. It's a rare treat on April 5 on the Canadian Shield to be able to paddle ice-free lakes and trek on relatively dry trails. I'm disappointed we'll be away that weekend so it was cool to see what the rest of you will be experiencing.

After starting in rain, we had awesome, sunny weather. The water was seasonably frigid, so we were ultra-careful as we paddled in occasionally gusty winds. It was a fun day of exploration and we proved that even two experienced navigators can drift on their bearing when they chat too much. That's OK - we wouldn't have had the excitement of stumbling on the secret pot farm if we'd taken the direct route.

The toughest part of the day was a long, white knuckle drive (those were GStix's knuckles!) as I negotiated 'Bent's van along a very sketchy logging road for the vehicle shuttle.

This challenging race course lives up to the Wilderness Traverse name and the tradition of backcountry travel and adventure racing. From the time we met, it was 12 hours until we saw another human being - and we were only ambushed by one wild beast!



















Trek time: 3:52
Paddle & Portage time: 6:43

Original log entry without GPS Track. I've kept it to retain the comments.