Training Log Archive: Bash

Spent the weekend with my parents.

Restless night.

'Bent, BazingaDog and I went out for a sunny ski tour around Palgrave. Shortly before we left the house, 'Bent saw someone ski through our back yard using our tracks from yesterday. Huh? He noted that the skier was wearing clothing that looked like MEC circa 1990 so we figured it was someone older, probably not a skiing burglar. (Always a concern in the boonies, except for the skiing part.)

We headed out with BDog on his skijoring harness. Sometimes this meant 'Bent got unfair assistance.



Other times, we ground to a halt when something just *had* to be sniffed.



A kilometer later, we caught up with two skiers and had a nice chat, mostly with Graham Earl, the 82-year-old, very fit president of the Five Winds Backcountry Ski Club. Within the first two sentences, he was trying to sign us up! A couple of years ago, I communicated with the club because Wilderness Traverse was travelling through an area where they have trails. It really would be fun to go up with them some time, especially when they do their big crossover trip - about 5 hours of point-to-point skiing through WT-style wilderness, supported by a bus.

A short distance later, I just about had a yard sale on a steep downhill, and I heard a familiar chuckle; it was Slowrunner, just returning from a run in Palgrave with her Dion snowshoes. She took a rare photo of us all together.



BDog was thrilled to see her and we all compared notes on how fantastic the snow is. It looks like we've only got another day or two before rain washes some of it away.



Once we left 'Bent's commute route, things slowed down considerably as we broke trail through snow that was mid-to-top shin deep. Then we got on the closed section of Duffy's Lane, which was really nice, and back to the trails near our place, which are nicely broken in now. So beautiful. Time deducted for conversations.

We got over 30 cm of snow in Palgrave! I waxed up my touring skis and headed out.

Here's the traditional lawn furniture photo.



And our house.



And side yard.



Although this is logged as skiing because there were skis attached to my feet, most of this didn't feel anything like skiing. It was more like skinning up a mountain in deep powder when I'd forgotten my skins - or snowshoeing with canoes on my feet. 'Bent said it felt a lot like towing Schlep the tire that Spaff had him training with last summer.





Similes aside, it was very hard work in spite of the short distance covered. Even on the downhills, the snow would pile up to the tops of my shins!



When I realized that it wasn't going to be a real ski day, I decided to earn some Good Wife Points by skiing 'Bent's commute route in reverse to the border of Palgrave Forest and Wildlife Area. I could barely see a dimple from his morning commute but this meant he would have tracks for about 75% of his trip home.





Absolutely spectacular stormy winter day!



Time deducted for photography.

Slowrunner's weekly assignment plus some extras. No need for a warm-up today!

You know it's a serious snow day when the snow plow slides off your driveway and down a hill until it gets caught in a tree! I would have felt guilty going skiing so I stuck around to offer sympathy - and take photos for posterity, of course. We'll all laugh about it some day. Not so much today.

I feel sorry for our generous friend who plows our country driveway as a favour. I don't think most towing companies could have rescued the plow but this fellow is amazingly creative when it comes to mechanical problem solving. It's also very handy that he happens to own a backhoe.

Same as last Wednesday: Bruce Side Trail run to Glen Haffy, up Caledon's K2 to the stile, around the main Bruce Trail loop, then back home. I needed a headlamp for the last 2.5 km.

I've felt zippy on my last few runs but today I felt like my body was made of concrete - good training for running on fatigued legs, I guess - not that they have any reason to be *that* fatigued. The weird thing is that I was 7 minutes faster than last time so it turned out to be just my perception.

There was a skiff of crunchy snow/sleet on top of a layer of wet autumn leaves so it was another cautious run, especially on the boardwalks. The next time I do this route, I'll wear Spikecross.

I listened to the TA1 podcast with Rob Preston for awhile, then had the same iPhone problem that BGY had a couple of weeks ago. It kept telling me it was overheating. Nope, not at -5C, it wasn't! I finally figured out that it would work if I put it in my jacket pocket (not my front pack pocket where it usually goes) with the screen turned in toward my body (which is really hot, haha).

This did not happen in winter with my iPhone4, even before I started using the Lifeproof case. Now I have the Lifeproof Nuud; I wonder if that makes it worse or if there is some change in the operating system. Has anyone else seen this? It's not urgent to listen to podcasts but it is urgent that my phone work in an outdoor emergency in winter.

UPDATE: Apple says you shouldn't use an iPhone below 0C (although I have done so many times) but I don't think the error message "iPhone needs to cool down" is supposed to have appeared. That depends on whether Apple and I have the same understanding of the phrase, "exceeds a temperature threshold".
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201678

BazingaDog broke his collar (the one with the defective buckle) and took off into the forest while he and 'Bent were out running this morning. 'Bent phoned me so I could go into Emergency Dog Search Mode - again - arggh. Check the Wikipedia entry for "Extremely Unhappy Wife You Don't Want to Face When You Get Home", and you would have found a picture of me. I threw on warm clothing and sprinkled dog food outside the front door, and was just preparing a peanut butter bone as bait when 'Bent texted to announce that BDog had returned after 6 minutes of running with the deer. This proved yet again that I don't need to exercise to achieve HR max.

Over to Palgrave East and around. A little drizzly at times but it felt great to get out into the woods.

Session #3 with Slowrunner. Cool - instead of just adding more weight as a progression, we're adding difficulty via instability or plyo. I may be imagining it but I feel better already when running.