Training Log Archive: ebuckley

Event: OCIN 25th Anniversary / Flying Pig XIII / Relay Champs
 

Easy morning jog to loosen up for the car trip.

Warmup. With Yaya present, there wasn't much chance for a proper warmup, but the course was sufficiently technical that I wouldn't have taken it out much harder anyway. It might have actually been to my advantage as quite a few folks messed up the first control.

Middle Pig at McFarlan Woods (1:10). Decent run on a fun course. Map contact was generally quite good and I wasn't hesitating much. Footing was bad on the trails, but fine in the woods. I still used the trails a fair bit to get through thick areas. 3rd in M45, about 25 seconds behind Lyons and Voit.

Friday Middle Red - Splits

Easy morning jog round the hood. Legs felt springy and I might have pushed it just a bit harder than I should have; I usually run this loop in 40-41 minutes before a race. No biggie.

Connecting the other two activites on roads.

Midday adult class.

Singletrack at CC Lake. Wasn't sure how well I'd do on the ditch crossings with the full-rigid, but it turns out to be easier because you don't have to worry about the rebound kicking the front wheel off the ground when you come up the other side. After a few tentative dips, I was pretty much hammering through them full speed. The 58 is a bit too much gear for this trail, but I wasn't in any danger of stalling, even on the tight switchbacks. The simplicity of just pedalling and not worrying about gears or shock settings is really liberating. It's funny that, even though the initial reason for getting the bike is now obsolete, it's becoming my most favorite toy.

C • Redline Monocog 2

Restin' up for the Pig. Went to the Banff Mountain Film Festival at the Moolah with David, Yvonne, Ken & Cathy, Karen Holtmann, and the Sonas. Much of it was good, but I was disappointed that the feature film was an eco-plea about some copper mine in Alaska. Seemed like an hour of preaching to the choir. Nobody in the theater thought that building an open pit mine on top of a salmon estuary was a good idea when the film started. I would have rather seen more cool stuff.

Literally running errands at lunchtime. Up the River Valley climb at a pace that was uncomfortable. Everything else was mellow.

Family class with Yaya. Managed to get through all 20 pushups.

Then stayed for the adult class, but nobody else showed. Good part of that was that I didn't have to do more pushups. The better part was that I got a private lesson to work out some of the more difficult transitions in my form. Feels much more natural now.

Yaya has been going on about our "3 day race" incessantly. I guess that's a good thing, though I'm getting tired of saying "no, not today, this weekend."

Rockwoods Test Loop (1:15). Was a bit limited on time so went with no warmup - not the best way to do the test loop. Took it a bit easy at first, loosing a couple minutes to normal Test Loop pace in just the first 4 controls. Continued to loose time after that, but moving better. Nowhere near a PR, but certainly satisfies the "speed in the woods" workout. We'll see how fast I go when it counts this weekend.

Test loop - Splits

Winter landed one last feeble blow, leaving half an inch of snow on the ground this morning. By midday it was mid-40's and sunny and headed higher. Went for an easy spin around west county in the 60. A few small climbs, none taken with vigor.

SLOC "meet" at Beaumont (1:15). I'm not listing this as a race, because it was missing a few things that one typically associates with competition like timing, punching, and results. This is 2 of the last 4 SLOC events that have pegged the bogometer and that's really sad because I used to tell people with a straight face that, despite it's size, SLOC put on some of the best meets in the country. While they still set out some very fine courses on very fine maps, the whole concept of competition seems to have been lost. Not sure what to do about that.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with the club saying they can't handle 14 races a year and converting half of those to informal training events. But if you're going to call something a race, it might make some sense to fairly determine a winner.

Anyway, I was happy enough to treat it as training since I've had so little sleep this week. Nav was good but I had no legs and that's a problem at Beaumont. The slopes were really slick which didn't make the going any easier. Fun outing despite the cold rain.

C • A "club" in name only 16

Control pickup. Thankfully the rain had stopped since 37F and precipitation would have been miserable at this pace.

Dinner at Bill Langton's. Best food and wine I've had since the wine dinner at Harvest. Felt like a bum drinking all his good stuff, but he insisted he likes to share it with people who appreciate it and I sure wasn't going to turn it down.

After dinner Bill and I did some initial planning for the 2010 Grunt/A-meet while Kate and Laura talked about who knows what. Here's our first cut:

Friday March 5 (afternoon): Sprint at Forest Park (A sanctioned)
Saturday March 6 (AM): Middle at Hawn (A sanctioned)
(PM - possibly): Team Fundraiser event at Hawn (sprint relay?)
Sunday March 7: 2nd Gateway Grunt at Hawn (goat, not A-sanctioned)

Meanwhile, we're still looking for a mapper to get Cuivre River updated for a 2011 meet.