Training Log Archive: 'Bent

Bulletdog and I took the longer route via rail trail, and I threw in some speed intervals. The ice has softened and re-frozen, so it's not as slippery, and the snow was hard enough to run on top.

Bulletdog and I took the rail-trail route back, then an extra loop in Palgrave at a good hard pace.

First run in a while, and it felt OK. Trails were icier than I expected, so I detoured by road on the way in to work.

Rock and Ice Day 3. Cloudy with a nice gentle tailwind today.
Determined not to overheat, I stopped after 10 minutes to de-layer, and skied in my thin liner gloves only once my hands got hot. (I'd put the big mitts on immediately after stops) The hotshots were moving well today, and got about 10 minutes on me by the 20km mark. Snow was hard so I kept up a good stride with occasional skate, but the big boys were skating lots, even with pulks. I could use their tracks until a snowmachine drove over them for 10km. Very nice ski conditions, perfect weather, and didn't see a soul except for the CP staff and safety snowmobiles. Once on the ice road to YK, I tried to skate and flew along for about 20 strokes until my ankle couldn't take it. I met traffic outbound, including my Bro, a couple of km from the finish. I could see the lead skiers had skated the whole way in.
I finished in my usual 6th place overall, but last in my category- I'd picked a hard year for 3-day ski apparently, but did my own thing and had a great time of it. I had time to dash back to Bro's place for dry clothes and a vat of Thai soup for me, and a thermos of it for Bash at the line. I'll let Bash tell her story, but it was great to see her finish.
We saw the 6-day racers in too, who luckily got to go to town for a shower, pizza, and refill their pulks with fresh food and dry clothes.

This is a tough race due to potential weather issues, but the safety and logistics are fantastic, and camp comfort is great. It's an amazingly well run event!

Note- turns out I got some light frostbite on my face the first day under my neoprene mask- go figure! I guess the beard had better stay on, as shaving woudl be brutal.

Rock and Ice Ultra day 2.
Clear bluebird day, with a tailwind and -23C to start.
Off the start the 4 elite skiers, RK and I headed off together until the first CP. RK tried to pass me just ast the photo helicopter flew by at ground level, blowing him over onto a serious cartwheel.
I had to stop and de-layer as I was just cooking, so the big boys left me behind. Gorgeous day. Skiing was 10-11kph on hard packed bits, but much slower in deep soft snow from yesterday's storm.
My mitts got soaked, then froze solid as a rock at a 3 minute water stop when the wind turned into our faces, so I had a lot of hand issues. 5km from the end Scott showed up with thermi of hot OJ, which really helped me as I was pretty bagged. I arrived in camp 6th overall this time, ahead of the elite runners and 45min behind the hotshot skiers, but pretty tired and rapidly cold.
This camp had smaller heated teepees which were great, and I was able to warm up, change and meet Bash with soup at the line. She and Slice came in together closer behind me than yesterday.
About 15 racers had dropped out by now, and the plodders were once again in after 15 hours or so on the trail. We never really got to meet them, as we were fast asleep when the latter half came in, and they tended to start late. We had our clothes all dry and supper cooked on the tent stove long before they hit the last CP.
Note- I'd misplaced my lactose pills, so I couldn't have my Seafood Chowder for dinner. I traded it for some tuna to add to a Ramen noodle soup, and had to suffer with extra Crash Brownies instead. :P
Poor Scott was out chasing wayward racers all hours, when not emptying Honey Buckets. Those of us in the front third of the pack had such a cushy time compared to him!
We had to do some more field repair on Greg's snowshoes today.

Rock and ice Ultra day 1.
Forecast for this day was the worst for the whole event- -25 in the morning with a strong headwind and snow forecast.
The elite skiers and runners set a very fast pace off the start into the wind.
I did my own thing and cruised just behind them at around 9- 10kph.
The trails between lakes were slower going in soft snow. The last 20 km of the day was the crux, a wide open lake straight into the storm. I caught the top runners, including Greg McHale and then the crazy-light Jason with his tiny pulk. Jason was weaving a bit in the whiteout and was pulled off hypothermic and frostbitten. I actually liked pounding into the wind, but was glad to get into camp with Greg and into warm heated tents. We were 7 &8 overall, 55 min behind Thompsen the leader. Phatty jr, Slice and Bash all came in looking good over the next couple of hours, but racers trickled in up to 1AM! The poor safety crew had to cover the whole field.

Note- 10 min before the start I'd noticed the McHales using the same Atlas Race that failed on Bash, and sure enough Greg's were 90% torn. We fixed them up a bit, so hopefully he can repeat his win.

C • Wax issues? 4

Hard and icy on the way to work- I had to wait for Bulletdog, who only has claws and 4WD. Nice running on the crust though.
The way home was a spring run, +10 and sunny.

Note- got our skis waxed beautifully by the now bipedal Goose.

C • When do you guys leave for R&I 3

C • Good Luck! 5

Groan. Bo-o-oring, but last chance before R & I.

Note- we watched VO2max at the 50K Canadian Nationals. Icy at first, and they were absolutely flying downhills. It slowed down as the day warmed up, to a sluggish 2:08 winning time. I got a workout running back and forth along connector trails to watch. Bash got about 3Gb of pictures.

C • Sluggish 2:08 2

Pretty much packed for R&I. A bit of fine tuning left. The dufflebag's fuller than I expected.

(3hrs 50min)
Bash and I needed to practice with the GPS. Took both hounds out for a small hike, then a jog-hike with Bulletdog, 2 GPS units and Bash's Sat locator beacon affectionately known as Spotty.
We couldn't find the first Geocache, but found 2 others, well hidden.
Next Bash realized that Spotty was gone, and we retraced our entire route to no avail. Luckily Spotty was calling for help and Bash got his coordinates on her computer. We were able to find Spotty within 10 minutes of leaving the parking lot this time from Hwy 50.

Much faster run today on the longer route, with some tempo bits. Legs feel good! Hard crust and boilerplate- ice screws mandatory.

Good run back home. Ice was so sheer in spots that Bulletdog had a hard time. Other places are clear or crunchy hard crust.

With Bash watching the 93 world champs. Funny commentary from Phil L as the rookie Lance broke away and won by a huge margin. See Bash's log.

No snow out there, so I'm stuck on the Nordictrack Sport.

Workout #1

Easy recovery run to work and back. Memories of Snowgaine- some postholing, some crust, some bare ground.

Not a lot of zip in the legs, but not too bad.

Day 2. This time we'd planned skis, but chickened out and went with snowshoes. They were a good choice in the deep snow, and we could hook up and trot at a decent speed on trail- until Bash broke *both* her Atlas Race after lots of clumping around on bare ground, mud, deadfall and slush. We managed to fiddle them back together with some of my gadgetry. Met the Fatboys on skis a lot, and ran with the KittensX4 a fair bit too, but they left us behind.
Again we were behind sched due to heavy going, so we dropped a couple of 30 pointers. After some road running Bash wisely decided to drop a 70 pointer too, which gave us enough time to clean up everything else. This was a hard day out for me. As always Bash's nav was great, and her route planning and calculations on the fly were excellent.
MBR was on the same route, but moving fast despite slogging without snowshoes. They dropped only one 30 pointer, but the ferocious kittens all cleaned the course!

We won the Masters and the mighty Kittens won the female (of course), beating all but EMS who came in ahead of them on time.

MBR1 was 2nd male, and MBR2 was second co-ed. Fun outing with a lot of friends!

C • 70 pointer 5

CNYO Snowgaine day 1 with Bash.
We drove down with Phats and LeAnimal, and saw barely a flake of snow the whole way. At the start, the ski trails looked like Palgrave- some hardpack ice and lots of bare ground, so we decided to go with Yaktraks on shoes and leave the skis and snowshoes behind. 15 minutes later we were post-holing to our knees, and regretting the lack of snowshoes. The snowkittens were gliding by on skis. We had to re-plan the route to avoid bushwhacking and maximize running on snowmobile trails, but it was basically a hard slog for the first few hours. I had poles at least, so I could do some towing on trails, but not on the deep post-holing. Luckily, Bash is great at slogging forever and we trucked along OK.

We got behind sched, so we dropped a 40 pointer, but running was faster in the second half and we arrived back early only to discover that they don't record cumulative time, so we could have cleaned the course.
Kudos to MBR (EJ, Tiny and Phats) who cleaned it with 2 hours to spare!
The Kittens also cleaned the course.

Workout #3.

Running a little behind, so no extras today. Oh well, time to start tapering anyway for the Snowgaine.

Felt strong on the run home in the dark with Bulletdog. Mind you, hard to judge in crunchy snow and ice at night.

Another crisp morning. I had a little extra time, so I threw in a race-pace loop on the icy and hilly pond trail. Sections of the trail are such glare ice that even Bulletdog can't get a grip, and has to run on the snow to the side. Ice screws mandatory.

Easy jog-hike home with T-dog. Bash traded dogs with me at work.

Sheesh, running was fast on the ice with my screw-shoes. I'd better add some distance.

Good solid run home. Added extra road and hills.

Out at Highlands with Bash, in surprisingly good and fast condtions.

We did our own loops. I worked hard on the first trip around every inch of the place (EFI for Phatty Jr) in 1:10. That's about 14-15kph, which is a fast ski for me on classic. Second hour was a bit easier, except when I ran into Tarno and Darryl skating and skied with them for a bit. You know the classic conditions are fast when...

We also met up with VO2max. According to him, he and his friends would ski at about 22-24 kph in these conditions. Why do I mention it? Because his friend and teammate Thomsen just signed up in my category for the Rock and Ice Ultra. Now it's a race for second place.

C • r&i.... 6