Training Log Archive: Bash

Today is 'Bent's birthday so instead of the Thomass Kick-off (where he would have to walk on his bad knee while watching other people run), we went to Hardwood Hills for some craptastic early season skiing. There were only 4 cars in the HH parking lot and the fee had been reduced to $10. After recovering from the initial shock of seeing customers walk in the door, they recommended waxless classic rock skis since it was +3C and 5 cm of wet snow. Great news - our short classic ski didn't bother 'Bent's knee at all. However, the new MEC in Barrie provided much better entertainment than the skiing. Missed seeing our friends at Thomass though!

Got home from Florida after 2 a.m. in blowing snow. 'Bent and I hit the trails this morning with Dave and Melissa from Belleville, who had learned about 'Ben'ts recumbent mountain bike through the adventure race grapevine and also noticed some of our crazy hobbies on Attackpoint.

Like 'Bent, Dave has a neck problem that makes regular bikes too painful, so he has been riding a recumbent road bike for years. Melissa is a strong mountain biker who would love to get him out on the trails. So the four of us headed out on snowy single track in Palgrave East and West with Dave on 'Bent's extra bike. We started out on easy trails, then kept increasing the degree of difficulty as Dave met the challenges of today's tough conditions. It's always great fun to get to know people who love outdoor sports as much as we do!

Rest day after a super-fun warm weather training week. Hung out with my folks and brother in Miami. Now waiting at Fort Lauderdale airport to fly home to 'Bent and our pooches. Someone in our house who rides an unusual bicycle will be celebrating a birthday on Sunday! :-))

Miami Turkey Trot 10K - Tropical Park. Over 4,000 (!!) runners came out on the morning of U.S. Thanksgiving to run 5K or 10K to burn off calories before their big meal.



It was a fun atmosphere but a bit of a zoo with all runners for both distances starting together on a single lane park road and staying together for the first 4K. I was midpack in the starting corral and it took me almost 2 minutes to get across the line! Luckily, this turned out to be a race where they ranked us according to chip time rather than gun time. It took several kilometers before I could just run without constantly weaving back and forth around people who had started out too fast. It wasn't the kind of race where anyone would get a PB unless they started at the front.

It was amazingly hot and humid for a 7:30 a.m. race but otherwise I felt decent in spite of the 270 km multisport warm-up over the past week. The only bad moment was when we entered the stadium and ran under an arch that said "Finish". I was confused that there was no timing mat then realized that we were supposed to keep running. I'd turned off my Forerunner and had to turn it back on (hence a slight discrepancy with the GPS track). I'd relaxed out of race mode when I saw the arch and it was hard to get back into it. I kept looking for the *real* finish arch and it was all the way around the track in sweltering sunshine - a little farther than 10K. Oy!

I finished in the top 10% of women but didn't achieve my goal of top three in age group. Looks like I should stick to long trail runs instead of this road stuff! Fun way to start the day.

I drove to Miami yesterday afternoon to meet my brother Dave and his partner Tim, who live here in winter, and my parents, who are visiting. We went to a theatre to see a show that Dave directed and Tim designed the sets for. Since then, it's been a lot of eating, conversation, eating, walking and eating! I got Princess packed up for the flight home tomorrow night. It was much easier the second time I put her in a bike box.

Daniels Parkway/Treeline ride with Getawaystix.







Fort Myers is probably a scenic place but I'm not really sure because this was my view. (P.S. Thanks for the draft, GStix!)



I've updated the pics and report below for Everglades kayaking Day 2.

More Everglades kayaking with Getawaystix. Today's route made better use of the tides and we spent less time in shallow water. Navigation was trickier since we purposely aimed for some narrow, hard-to-find channels before heading out to the Gulf side of the Ten Thousand Islands. In some ways, it was like navigating in the Thirty Thousand Islands in Georgian Bay. Click on the little globe to see the route, then switch to satellite mode.







GStix planned a complex route but got lazy after a couple of hours and handed the map to me. ;-) It was very cool.



Our lunch stop was on an awesome sand spit that curved around and led to a small island. Most of this would be completely underwater at high tide.



The beachcombing was excellent. GStix pretends to have no interest in gathering seashells. He's lying.





We walked a long way down the spit until we couldn't see our kayak anymore.



This turned out to be a mistake. I'd brought all my stuff with me from the kayak but GStix had opted to travel lighter than me (as usual). He lost some of his best food to a gang of birds who taunted him and pooped on his kayak seat.





The paddle back was fun and fast as the tide rushed back in. We spent 10 minutes watching a dolphin feeding.





We did a hard interval to see if we could get our speed over 15 kph. We topped out at 15.1. Yeehaw!





It was fun and interesting to paddle through this area for a couple of days but we agreed that we wouldn't trade it for paddling in northern Ontario. We're really spoiled at home.

Kayak paddle from Everglades City with Getawaystix.



We put in near low tide so we had to drag our boat out through shoe-grabbing mud.



GStix had mapped out a cool-looking 50 km route that involved going up and down a couple of rivers then paddling back through some islands in the Gulf.





Turns out our time estimates didn't work because they were based on Ontario paddling. With the tide, river current, wind and shallow water working against us as we headed upriver, we were crawling. It seemed smarter to turn around and head into the islands in the Gulf.







We stopped for lunch on Rabbit Key. Great place! There were a lot of huge seashells on the beach.







No alligators but we saw one dolphin, a bunch of jumping fish and birds absolutely everywhere.





After paddling, we drove to Turner River Road where the hotel had assured me that I would see my first alligator in the wild. This wasn't exactly true. We actually saw *21* alligators in about 2 km before we figured that was enough! There were also some cool birds along the Turner River.