Training Log Archive: 'Bent

Workout 1 + kb, foot/kneehab and some core.

Fast run with Bazingadog in the light and quick shoes.

C • MT101 10

Moderate run home in the warmer pm.

Anyone heard of Foss inner tubes?
Self sealing around nails, thorns, and you can patch 'em with a lighter.
Same weight as regular tubes, no heavy slime inside.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-29bEDFT9Xo

I run tubeless, but these sound like da bomb.

C • Neat 1

Great ride down to Albion and around. Bike was great, climbing legs were great, trails were perfect and so was the weather. Life is good.

Wish I'd been riding like this at WT.

Foot/kneehab and some pull-ups. I am pissweak after just a couple of weeks without a specific strength workout.

Anyone want to do the Hockley loop this Saturday?
Bash and Myka are doing it and meeting Eco for lunch after.
I'm interested in doing it but at a slightly quicker pace.

Super, Hansel, Trav, Goose?

C • Hockley Loop Saturday 4

Easy commute with the Bulletdog, her first run to work since her minor surgery and back/knee problem. She was doing helicopter spins she was so excited. We could hear her brother wailing away inside for quite a while as we ran off.

C • Wailing brother 1

Easy commute back, with some Forest Fit pushups thrown in.

Easy run with Bazingadog.
Legs felt a bit heavy to start, but loosened up.

Out with Bash for the first ride since WT, but my rear dérailleur was seized so we rerouted from Albion to Caledon East grocery run. at first I could still feel the muscles that had cramped a full week ago.

Turned out I'd gotten the B-pivot spring wrong when I reassembled it after checking the hanger alignment. Re-cabled the last bit for good measure too, and it seems fine. Grr.

Nice run around Palgrave West with Bash.

Quick spin on the ski while Bash paddled Jake on Pen lake.
Taking the recovery week seriously- cottaging with my bro and family is 24/7 demands for wresting dogs away from retrieving diving kids, or throwing 20kg kids around in the lake, or trying to get battling kids off to sleep...

C • Sounds like a 'tough' week.... 7

Event: Wilderness Traverse
 

Wilderness Traverse. Team Shed Coffee Bar/NHrace
Shedman, Ursula and I lost our teammate Laval a week ago, but after some scrambling were lucky to land Jackson5 (Alex P) as our 4th.

Went into this well trained, well tapered, caught up on sleep and fully packed days in advance, so I had high hopes with a good team. As always, WT has the best pre-race procedure ever, with discipline order /length e-mailed days in advance and pre-plotted maps. Take note, other overnight event RDs!

Paddle: 5hrs
Lemans start to get the primo boats- J5 and Urs took off in the last 100M while us old guys carried the packs. Not a big fan of sprint starts to long AR, but was up with the leaders until then.
On the boats we moved up to 3rd behind Snowpants and Salomon. After a fantastic paddle and lots of scrambling over take-outs and drag-overs, we traded back and forth with Salomon a bit and got off the water just behind them. Urs and I were able to hang with the boys OK, and Shedman helped us manhandle the boats.

Trek: 6hrs
Fast 3 min T/A and we were on the trek. Shedman wasn't feeling good, but solid AR teamwork got him through and kept us moving OK, and with J5 and Urs it felt like we'd been teammates for years. J5's nav was great, and he and I dispensed meds, e-caps, tums, water etc. Urs is an amazon, carrying 2 packs for most of the trek, and Shedman suffered along solidly with cramping and nausea. Beautiful trek with some wonderful open ridges. One swim from CP5 was refreshing, but on the longer swim to the T/A I felt my leg on the verge of cramping.

Bike-: 3.5hrs
Another fast T/A and we were cruising down the road with my aero 'Bent out front. As soon as we hit the first climbs on the singletrack my wheels fell off- it was my turn to cramp up as Shedman flew up the hills and bombed the descents. I felt worse and worse as my legs were shot post-cramping, and I got nauseated and dizzy. Didn't help that my 'Bent doesn't do well on slimy deep mud ruts. The others would ride the narrow bit, but my back wheel would just get sucked into the rut and throw me down. I took about 5 hard falls into the slime, which messed my drivetrain and was hard work to catch up. Shedman gave me some much appreciated pushes up hills. Even in my pathetic state we passed Salomon with a mechanical, but that was temporary. I was too sick to get much food down, and could barely hold it on the road until we got to the T/A, shockingly still in 5th. Worst bike leg ever for me.

Trek- 7.5hrs
Had to do the T/A lying on the ground as I couldn't even sit up. Closest I ever came to dropping out of a race- I really didn't think I had anything left, but the guys somehow got me out of the T/A quickly, and back staggering on my feet like a drunken sailor. When we paused at an intersection and Alex found me curled up in a fetal position on the ditch, he gently said "Rich, there's no time for that". Lots of positve encouragement. Alex took some gear, and Urs carried my pack. We had planned a route with more roads, but we'd missed hearing that it was out of bounds...
Once on roads, my legs seemed to remember how to run without using the shot biking muscles and we picked up the pace. I was able to take my full pack back,so Urs took Shedman's pack.
Into the bush, with Alex solidly leading. We met TRL in there, looking a bit wet and cold. Couple more swims, but in the dark we'd gone off bearing and overshot the CP. We'd drybagged our shirts for the swim so we were warm and dry, and J5 located the powerline and got us back to CP12 after about 90 minutes of error.
Salomon had passed us, but no sign of TRL or Beowulf. (TRL had gotten lost and cold, and camped out until dawn. Sadly, Beowulf DNF due to injury in Trek 1)

Bike: 1:30
Still nauseated, but this ride went a lot better. Less clay, more sand and dawn breaking. Glad I was able to recover a bit.

Paddle: 1:01
Back on the boats for a perfect misty calm paddle. We kept the hammer
down in case TRL was hot on our heels. We decided to tour the town on the portage, but even with the long route we still had the fastest final paddle.
At the line we found out we had a 2hr penalty for "crossing private property that wasn't marked out of bounds and didn't confer a significant advantage", which was fair. Bit of a nailbiter as Kinetic Connection was almost exactly 2 hrs behind us, but they had issues too.
We ended up 3rd Co-ed. Congrats to Pentathlon and Salomon (Nothing seems to stop them), and also for Pulllin' Foot, who put in a very solid clean race for 2nd overall.

All in all, a great course. Great team racing, and Urs and J5 were rockstars. I didn't know J5 well before, but he was excellent. Solid nav, real team player, very supportive of ailing teammates, strong in every discipline, well organized. Urs is as nice as she is fast and strong, which says a lot.
Shedman and I both had physical issues, luckily at different times so we could help each other out, and team spirits were always 100% supportive. This was one of the most scenic races I've done in Ontario too.

I still don't know what's wrong with me on the bike- why do I keep cramping up only in multisport racing recently? I really worked on biking for WT, but it turned out to be irrelevant as I had no power after cramping up and getting sick.

C • Congrats!!!! 18

Easy commute with a rather distracted Bazingadog.

Took my "ancient" body out for a quick spin with Bulletdog, who is back in running form and loving it!

Foot seems OK. No liability.

Basically packed for WT.

C • Whoa! 16

Easy run to work with Bazingadog, and tempo back. Testing out the AR shoes without the Barefoot Science insoles, as my left foot is still a bit touchy from running with them in the Brooks True Grit shoes.

Had to hoof it back quickly so as not to miss dinner at 199 with Bash, Crash, Goose and Coach LD.

Easy commute with Bazingadog on the Omega. Forgot that I had the rigid carbon fork, so I had to take it carefully.

Patrolling my section of the BPMR. No broken bikes this year, but a hobbled Chief. Rain held off.

Speed- flagging the trail with Frankenjack after delays for thunderstorms and buckets of rain. It cleared up while we ran.

Core, foothab/kneehab, pushups, every kind of exercise I could devise with canoe straps and a van, at my second CP.

Nice run around the Pinery, followed by some feeble attempts at body surfing.

Coaxed out in the breaking 1M surf. I felt pretty good in the ski going out and bobbing along. I managed to surf a bit coming in, and braced on one wave that tried to broach me then turned back into the waves for a second shot. I saw Bash eject, but I was hanging in there 'til I was hauled out of the boat by a breaker.
Goose was unbelievable solo-ing his monster WW canoe, and stayed dry!

Out for a paddle with Goose and Bash. We started on Lk Huron, and it was pretty wavy. I felt wobbly and tense in the Wavemaster, especially as my rudder hadn't gone down. Once on the river all was fine, and we had an interesting paddle up into the Pinery on a weedy creek.
Traded for the ski part way back, and it was faster on the river and much more stable in the waves. Even did a little surfing. Bash was fine in the Wavemaster, but I'm not crazy about the stick steering.

Took our heaviest boat for a hike and boatwhack up the steepest hills on the property.

C • Why?! 10

Foot/kneehab, workout 1 + KB.

4-swim run with Bazingadog.
Foot and legs feel good.

Trying to stay motivated for WT after Laval had to drop out injured.

Short run to test out my foot, this time without the Barefoot Science insoles.
Getting better, but not 100%. Also feel my knee.

The dogs and I were surprised to find a huge tree across the little gate on the main access trail to the conservation area. We did a detour through the thick bush and brambles to find a way around, but it's not feasible.

90 min spent cutting a bypass of the fallen tree, including sawing some big downed logs by hand and a lot of heaving and hauling.
Not going near the even bigger parts still in the air. The new route should work, and there's no poison ivy there.

C • Not good 4

Down to Albion and around.
Busy in the campground but the trails were deserted on a perfect day.
I tried to attack all the big hills, and threw in 2 extra Green Monster intervals.
Hoping my bike cramping may go away with more hill training. Never happens on single-sport days.

Foot/kneehab, pullups, most of workout 3.

Tour du Bike Path

I had the Omega 'Bent set up for über-aero position and wanted to test it out.

Poor start when I found my skinny road touring tire sidewall blown out, but I had a spare 26x2.25 monster MTB tire in my tool box. Even with the fat tire the 'bent is *fast*.

With the help of the iPhone bike trail app I was able to ride pretty much from Yonge and Finch to the Humber River, to the waterfront, then to Queens Quay and back. A few km of busy road where I cheated and rode the sidewalk, and the waterfront was buzzing with Caribana startup, but mostly the trails were very quiet due to the stinking' hot weather. I got some good speed up in sections of they hydro corridor trails, but more like intervals as there were a lot of red lights at the bike crossings.

Had a fresh fruit smoothie at one of the Caribana booths, and a DQ on the way home, but legs were done by the end. 32C and very humid.

C • Looped or O'n'back? 2

C • big weekend 3

Great training session with Goose. GPS to follow.
Coach LD dropped us off at the Bruce trail parking lot North  of Highway 9 and we ran home via Glen Haffy and the longest Dingle loop for phase 1. Goose and I kept up a good solid clip. My legs felt good, but the outside of my foot started to hurt in the last half hour or so- I think my special lumpy insole moved. we were done well under 2 hours, which is good for this loop. I felt like I still had more speed in my legs for that distance.

Next, onto bikes, and back to Orangeville via the conservation area North of 9 and an out-and back on the dreaded Hors Categorie 5th line climb out of Hockley Valley with the loose dirt switchbacks.  My legs were cramping a bit again, while Goose flew up the hills.  The climb out of Hockley was a bit of a sufferfest, and I was drenched at the top as Goose waited in the shade. Maybe I need to dial the run back so I have more left for the bike.
Luckily, on the flats and downhills my bike is faster than the Goosecycle, so I had a turn out front. Nice quiet back roads, and some good hills. Hot humid day!

We found a nice back way into Island Lake, picked up the boats and Shedman and did a lake lap. So tempted to jump in for a swim, but it's weedy and full of coliform apparently.
Very nice to paddle the Epic, but I discovered the seat bashed my tailbone to point of drawing blood, so I need to pad it. The new kick-uprudder worked a treat.

Great to have a strong training partner to chase! Thanks to LD for driving the boats out to Island lake, where she paddled then biked home. Complicated plan worked perfectly.

C • Nice! 1

Anyone up for an exploration of the bike paths of Toronto from North York to the lake Saturday AM? I want to test out the latest Roadie version of the Omega, and am in the city.

Bike to work with BZdog and back to pick up Mocha and drive her to work as Bash's off Deathracing.

Easy little run with both dogs today in the cool AM.

Workout 2 + foothab/kneehab and KB + Pull-ups while watching the Olympic TT

Gentle ride in with the Bazingadog.

Easy ride home with BZdog and an AR pack full of veggies from ur CSA farm delivery. Only had to use the Bentblaster for the last bit.