Training Log Archive: Bash

Algonquin Park canoe trip - Day 3

'Bent, BulletDog and I went for a paddle this morning and discovered that an awesome campsite we'd seen yesterday had been vacated early. It was perfect - or so we thought. (Foreshadowing!) We paddled 5 minutes back to our own campsite and threw everything quickly in the boat so we could move up to this "mansion".



There were big rocks to swim from and relax on. Great views.





Nice area for tents and walking.





BulletDog explored everywhere and enjoyed the new smells.



Unlike ThunderDog, we often have to encourage her to swim and cool off. The slippery rocks at water's edge are a little scary for her, we think. A game of "toss the stick" always gets her in though.





After setting up our new camp and eating a snack, we put together our 5-piece kayak paddles and headed out for a training session in a stiff breeze. All our paddling on this trip was done at a good level of intensity to get some training value out of it, particularly the kayak paddling. I ended up with sore muscles.

Nearly all the other canoeists had cleared out by Sunday afternoon on a holiday weekend. Big Trout Lake was deserted. Cool!

Note that BulletDog is the only family member who wears a bear bell. We figure it's only fair to give the bears a chance.





We went up to the Lake La Muir portage (2.6 km) and ran it out and back. BulletDog was getting hot and the FDFs had found us, so we decided against a second trip.









When we got back, we set up the Thermarest chairs. Ahhh, refreshing breeze, wine, books, podcasts.



Then we made dinner and I took the bowl to my chair. About 90 seconds later, a mouse raced across the rock in my peripheral vision, heading straight for me. Normally I'll do anything to avoid injury but in this case, the priority was saving the only dinner I was going to get tonight. I shot out of the chair and dove face first to the side away from the mouse, holding my dinner bowl up like a football player making an amazing catch. I smacked my knee hard on a rock. Ouch. Blood.



Oh, and there was also a blood curdling shriek. I can't deny it. While I'm happy to rappel 200' off a cliff or race in the dark in bear country, I scream like a little girl if mice get too close. It's not as if I'm unfamiliar with them. When I was single, I lived in a log house where I had to set traps and empty them myself, but I'm much happier when mice keep their distance. 'Bent is not fond of my mouse shriek since he feels it should be reserved for *real* danger, like a bear attack.

Since I'd scared the mouse off, I sat down to finish dinner. Within 60 seconds, the evil little guy ran up the back of my chair and down my left arm toward my dinner bowl. Another speedy leap, another shriek. I finished dinner standing up, watching the mouse cruise our kitchen, jump onto the mouthpiece of my water bottle and stand bravely nose-to-nose with my curious, unhelpful "guard dog".

He was a deer mouse and we decided to name him. My first thought was "Dexter the Deer Mouse" but I couldn't do that to Baby Kirikou. Then 'Bent suggested "Darth", which stuck.

I managed to suppress my shrieking for the rest of the evening. If we were going to live with Darth, we'd have to learn how to live in peace. But when I visited the thunderbox after dark, I opened the lid and in my headlamp beam, a mouse scurried out of the hole and shot across the toilet seat. I screamed like I'd been stabbed. Back in the tent, 'Bent sighed mightily and politely asked if I needed help. For the rest of the trip, I always kicked the thunderbox first to let animals know I was there. For some reason, even though we spent two more nights at this campsite, we never saw Darth or his friends again - but we were always watching for them!

Algonquin Park canoe trip Day 2 - McIntosh Lake to Big Trout Lake



For much of today's journey, we travelled along winding rivers and through wetlands filled with frogs on lily pads.



In the middle of Grassy Lake, a large wetland area, I made a 20-minute nav error and took us along the wrong creek until it became unnavigable. (Lots of other people had done this too, which is why the creek stayed navigable for quite a distance.) Funny that I had more trouble with the Algonquin Park canoe routes map this time, largely because I took it more seriously than I used to in the days when I did less navigating in the rest of my life. Some of the info on the map is approximate and often it's best to just go with the most likely looking route in the terrain. We met some other paddlers who had made the same wrong turn using the free Algonquin Map from the Internet. As soon as I looked at their map, I knew where we needed to go. In this case, the Algonquin Map was more accurate than the official canoe route map.

BulletDog tried out a few different things today. For awhile, she waded and swam in the river beside the canoe.



Later, she climbed into the bow and cuddled up.



Big Trout Lake is well into the park and it was surprising to find ourselves in a 4 p.m. rush hour for campsites, as if we were playing musical chairs. We ended up on a small island across a narrow channel from a noisy but happy family. Not what we had in mind but nothing to be upset about. This was Saturday night of the long weekend and by the next morning, almost everyone had gone. After that, Big Trout Lake was like a ghost town!



We sat out in the evening light and went for a sunset paddle. Nice.



Looking up.





Sunset.

Algonquin Park canoe trip - Day 1

'Bent, BulletDog and I headed into the backcountry for a week of peace and relaxation. Well, sort of. We both have races coming up so we planned to do some training, but there was plenty of time for swimming (which doesn't count as training at our skill level), reading, listening to podcasts and just admiring the view.



We were going to revisit some of the lakes we paddled on our honeymoon 15 years ago in September. We weren't adventure racers then but we were definitely canoeists. We travelled about 9 hours each day and did 37 portages in 5 days, ranging from a hundred meters to several kilometers. This time we were planning a lighter schedule. After all, BulletDog was with us and we didn't want to be cruel to animals.

We put in at Canoe Lake, one of the busiest access points in the park on the Friday before the long August weekend. Really good thinking, Bash. Naturally, the beach was packed but it was still beautiful. (I didn't start taking photos till we were past the main crowd.)



We got out on the water along with lots of others. Many canoes were fishtailing up the lake with three people flinging their paddles frantically from one side to the other. I couldn't suppress my inner racer and every time we passed a boat (which was often because we were paddling hard), I caught myself thinking, "Ha! There's another coed team." There were boats with coolers and folding chairs, boats with 20-something guys who yelled constantly about nothing just to hear their own voices, and paddlers of both sexes who were exposing far too much skin on a sunny day and would regret it when they portaged tomorrow.

Instead of being turned off by the crowd, I had a feeling of camaraderie since we were all (or mostly) Canadians who had chosen to spend our holiday weekend in a canoe. So in spite of how different we might have seemed from one another in some ways, we had something fundamental in common that brought us all together from different walks of life.

Eventually, we moved away from the crowds.



Joe Lake.





The canoe campsite on Joe Lake where we got married in front of 100 friends and family members, most of them sitting on their PFDs.



Our trip from this point on was going to be a loop that would return to our wedding campsite after 6 days, then we'd head back to Canoe Lake.

BulletDog was an excellent canoe trip companion.



We headed up to Tom Thomson Lake then portaged into Ink Lake. I once read in a backpacking guide that a woman should never carry more than 25% of her body weight in her backpack, and a man should carry a maximum of 30%. Using that rule, we would both need to weigh 360 lb to get all our stuff over the portage in one trip! I carried 90 lb on the first day before we started eating the food. The Ink Lake portage is a tough, rocky, rolling 2.3 km slog and I decided to count portaging as CrossFit-type strength training instead of mere "trekking".

This photo shows my "short, lazy" portage method. For longer portages, I attached everything to the big pack. I can only do one rep of flinging 90 lb onto my back, so it's risky. If it had ever backfired, I would have needed to rest a minute before trying again - although I'd probably have wrecked myself on the first try.



'Bent had about 110 lb including the canoe. Not much fun but we have an inviolable "1-trip portage" rule, sort of like the K2 Rule in Hamilton.



We followed the creek into McIntosh Lake for our first night.



There was a stiff breeze with weird clouds so we grabbed one of the first open campsites we found in case a storm came in.



After dinner, we used some of our precious duct tape to repair our wine. I'd been pleased to find 1L tetrapaks of wine as a luxury item - white for 'Bent and red for me. What I didn't realize is that tetrapaks disintegrate when they get wet, so it was an ongoing battle to preserve the remaining wine. We both lost wine that ran out into our packs over the first two days. It was so frustrating to have to ration myself to a small daily glass when I could smell red wine on everything in my backpack - even the toilet paper! The silver lining is that the wine wasn't very good. And here I would have expected that only the finest vintage would be put into a tetrapak.



The storm didn't come but the west wind kept blowing into the evening and the clouds remained unusual - also very beautiful.





The clouds grew quickly and we witnessed a wild type of weather phenomenon, maybe a gust front. In less than a minute, we went from a stiff breeze from the west to a strong wind blowing from the east. We ran around camp making sure that nothing could blow away. Blackness fell around us as the wall of dark cloud moved across the sky leaving only a little strip of clear sky.



We went to our tent, expecting a thunderstorm to follow since we'd seen some lightning. I had a bad feeling about the strong wind and told 'Bent I wanted to move the tent over a few meters. I didn't like the look of the white pine above us. 'Bent extolled its virtues, pointing out its obvious health and greenery, but I couldn't shake the thought and invoked the "square dance rule". 'Bent agreed to move the tent. This rule in our marriage dates back to the time when we arrived at a community hall for a reunion that included a square dance. As a structural engineer, as soon as I walked into the place, I felt uncomfortable about its structural soundness and the plan to hold a square dance there. 'Bent thought I was being silly - until the floor collapsed during a group photo long before the dancing began. Ever since then, he is more inclined to go along with my instincts, even when he thinks I'm overreacting.

We took out all the tent pegs and started to slide the tent over with all the gear inside. As we did this, I was hit by a small branch that stung more than I would have expected. The process was awkward and slow, and we suddenly heard a huge crack from the tree above. Aaackkk!! We yelled in the darkness, encouraging BulletDog and each other to run away. A huge, deadly branch crashed down a few meters away. We pegged the tent down in its new location but didn't want to go in yet. We stood near smaller trees for a few minutes until the wind faded a little. Then we went into the tent where I couldn't fall asleep for awhile. Ahhh, sweet, relaxing vacation.

Here's the branch when we checked it out near our tent the next morning. Ouch. Yes, that is my "I told you so" look.

How does this always happen...? Up after 3 a.m. packing for canoe trip and cleaning for house sitter. Turns out a week's worth of food weighs a heck of a lot! Who needs strength training when I'm going to be portaging 437 lb for 20 km? Looking forward to it anyway! I'm off the Internet till Thurs. night. Catch you on the other side.

I tweeted with a hashtag for the first time today. I feel soooo cool... ;) I'm finally up to date for 2009.

2011 Tour de France... it had everything!

Exciting, hard fought bike race in gorgeous scenery.



A worthy champion.



Raw emotions. This is Frank Schleck comforting little brother Andy when he was fully spent after the time trial, where he lost the Tour. I love the juxtaposition of the intimate connection between brothers and the swarm of media.



Fabian (le sigh...) ;)



A great collection of pics is at:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/07/2011_tour...

Twilight run in Palgrave West with BulletDog. Once I'd warmed up, this felt really good - maybe a 12K race pace. (Until I'd warmed up, it felt horrid.) For some reason, I was loving the uphills today.

BulletDog and I took a break to pick raspberries - both of us. I had a pang as I remembered all the things Tobler taught her "little sister", including the fine art of gently pulling berries off a stem without getting pricked by thorns.

FDFs cut our berry picking break short.

Looking ahead at the rest of the year, I'm thinking about how to re-jig my training. There are only two more races in my current plans that have biking or paddling - the Bruce Peninsula Multisport Race and Logs Rocks & Steel. They're both solo events so I can choose how hard I want to race based on what else I'm trying to do in the same time period. Everything else is on foot - the CNYO Rogaine in late August, Run for the Toad 50K in early October, Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Raid The Hammer in November, and likely a 50-mile trail running race in the final 3 months of the year. So I guess I should be training to be a runner for a change.

Science supports the belief that cycling has become a cleaner sport. In the Tour de France, racers are riding more slowly than they did a decade ago and - more importantly - within the predicted physiological capacity of humans.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/2...>

(Bike computer time excluding stops and starts.)
Rode around Forks of the Credit Provincial Park to hang flags and punches for today's C3 Day Camp orienteering session.

Attempted to explain the basics of map reading to a gaggle of kids aged 6-11.

Sample conversations:
Bash: Everyone please look at your compass and point toward north.
Kids: Can we start now?
Bash: The black dashed lines on your map are trails.
Kids: Can we start *now*?

The next part of my day involved riding frantically around the same trail sections, herding kids who were travelling at different speeds and making a variety of route choices over the 3 km course. The other adults and teenaged counsellors were on foot so I had allies but they weren't as fast. I turned around a few kids who had started sprinting to the next town along with their counsellor. The camp director had put several bags of candy at each of the three bonus CPs and most kids skipped them once word got out that the candy had all been claimed. (This would have been nice in Equinox Traverse.)

Brief panic at the end because the camp director was expecting 20 kids but we could only account for 18 after what had seemed like careful sweeping and herding of the troops throughout the session. My heart rate reached a new max as I imagined them plunging over Cataract Falls or wandering into the village of Belfountain at the bottom of the escarpment. (Those of us without kids are bigger worriers than actual parents.) Fortunately, one of the counsellors announced that only 18 kids had boarded the bus that morning, so two had stayed home. Phew. The kids did a great job and chattered away afterward, sharing war stories about deadly raspberry thorns and plants over their heads.

Rode around the course one last time to take down flags before rewarding myself with lunch at The Shed. Any excuse for an iced latte. :)

The Might Tiny (is that an oxymoron?) and I teamed up for the CNYO Rogaine last year when his regular partner M&M was off crushing everyone in the Canadian Death Race (7th/418). This year my speedy partner will be JayXC. Watch your backs, Tiny and M&M! Remember Nova Scotia. ;)

P.S. On the off chance you should beat us, we're actually not in your category due to our, um, greater maturity.

Anyone else coming on Aug. 27-28? Not much info posted yet but this is always a good event.
http://cnyo.us.orienteering.orgs

Just booked a 1-week canoe trip in Algonquin Park, revisiting some of the lakes we paddled on our honeymoon 15 years ago. BulletDog hasn't been on as many canoe trips as Tobler so this will be a great experience for her. We're looking forward to some quiet family time and will definitely miss the 75-lb pooch who used to crowd us off our Thermarests on most nights in the tent.

Since we both have races coming up, we are figuring out ways to fit training into a relaxing holiday. We'll bring canoe and kayak paddles so we can do some power paddling after we've set up camp, and we're setting up base camp on a backcountry lake near a 2.6 km portage so we can go trail running. We can do some form of strength training, and lots of swimming is a given. When we get back, Attackpoint will tell the tale of how dedicated we were!