Training Log Archive: iansmith

Event: NEOC: Breakheart Reservation
 

The Red course of the NEOC meet at Breakheart Reservation in Saugus, MA. The terrain was interesting and stimulating, but there was nontrivial amounts of undergrowth and rocks encumbering footing.

I am fairly pleased with my race - I navigated and moved well in general, but I made two strategic errors: 1) inadequate reading of the map and navigational planning and 2) allowing my time goals to interfere with my tactics. The first is obvious; I started out with 10 good controls and then started erring near the end. Before starting the race, I checked the posted results and noted that Tim Parson was the current leader at 64 minutes. I believed this an attainable goal, and pushed to break it. However, after control 11, my efforts to finish the course as quickly as possible slowed me down due to sloppy route choice, inadequate navigation, and poor decisions. Splits soon.

My shoes are essentially destroyed; the soles are coming off on both shoes, and one lace eyelet on my left shoe has completely ripped out. I will acquire a new pair of trail runners this week, break it in next week, and deploy it on the Blue Hills Traverse (T - 14 days).

In other news, by the time I got back, the leaders had updated significantly; Ian Finlayson, Sam and Jeff Saeger, and the unsinkable Ross Smith had all usurped Tim Parson. Ross in particular had an excellent run - finishing in 42 minutes, 16 minutes faster than the next competitor.

Red - Splits

What was supposed to be a five mile run went awry as I got lost on the return leg of my trip. I now know the northern part of Somerville much better than I did previously. There were many hills near Tufts and in general along the run. My legs feel pretty good after the length, and even though I took an extended detour, I didn't have any muscle difficulty or fatigue along the way. The pace was slower than I expected, but not unreasonable given the distance, the climb, and my training regimen thus far.

T-15 days to the Traverse...

C • Getting lost 1

For my evening run (c. 1 AM), I decided to run a hill - specifically the hill along Lowell St between Summer St and Somerville Ave. The workout was a superposition of a steady, 80% run and intervals. I was always pushing myself, and I never quite ran full out, but I varied my pace up the hill. I know the bounds on the paces I can take up hills steadily, which hopefully will come in handy.

If I read google pedometer's topographic map correctly (and the contours are in meters, which I believe is the case from my observations of the gradient and USGS descriptions), the vertical climb on each pass was 27 meters over 400 meters horizontal.

Uphill
1. 2:53 - warmup
2. 2:26 - four steps per breath
3. 2:10 - three SPB
4. 1:49 - two SPB
5. 2:26 - 3 steps in, 2 steps out
6. 2:35 - 3/2 cooldown

Downhill
1. 2:27
2. 2:06
3. 3:27 (prepping for my fast uphill run)
4. 2:35
5. 2:30
6. 3:05