Training Log Archive: iansmith

Brooklyn Boulders with Crystle, who was visiting. The plan was to go orienteering at Lynn Woods this morning. My alarm was set for a luxurious 930 am, but I turned it off, went back to sleep, and overslept. I'm really irritated that I didn't make good on my plans; need to regroup and start actually executing.

After lunch at Zoe's, we did some top roping. Brooklyn Boulders (about 1 km from my apartment) has an excellent assortment of pitches and some neat auto-belayers - which work much like a seatbelt. I did about 7 pitches - 5.6 to 5.8.

Easy hill session on the elliptical to warmup.

4x800 at 3:00 with 3:00 rest.
I decided to do a short interval session on the treadmill. Ken does these, and getting into a light routine for treadmill intervals will be valuable during the cold winter months. I settled on 4x800m, but I found that I had to reduce the intensity to avoid overheating. I aborted my first bout - 800m in 2:45 with a 2% grade - after two minutes. My next four bouts were at easy 3:00 pace with a 1% grade, and they felt really comfortable apart from the heat. The fan on the treadmill was about as powerful as an asthmatic gerbil.

Stationary bike to cool off and get a little more easy cruising in. This seemed useful because my left foot has been hurting a little in the days after the Highlander, with discomfort just behind the ball and on the edge near the little toe.

Five minutes of core and five minutes of playing around with some ten lb barbells. Someone set up a bench press in the squat rack, which is taboo. I had the gym to myself today.

After a glorious night's sleep at Chez Balter (thanks a bunch), I moseyed into Manhattan to hang out with a visiting Peyton and her cousin, Katie. We brunched, ate enormous cookies in Central Park, spent an afternoon at the Museum of Natural History, went out for coffee, walked around the city, and dinnered. A pleasant day, and the legs, while fatigued, rose to the challenge of standing around a museum all day. There were many beasts.

In looking at the Highlander results, I can find much that was adequate about my performance. I picked the far left trail route to 2 and had decent execution despite losing time descending to the trail. I won the split where I caught and passed Charlie. I was competitive with Kenny on many legs, though because we were both running the course somewhat gingerly - in his case to avoid injury, in mine to avoid fatigue, it's inconclusive. I'm most irritated that I didn't pick up the 90s I needed on leg 31 to catch the quartet immediately ahead of me.

Losing ten minutes to Jordan on the trail leg - even with the mandate to run in energy conservation mode - is inexcusable. I need to befriend the Skyline again, for surely running it twenty times before Team Trials is feasible.