Training Log Archive: jtorranc

MCRRC Frozen Slopes XC - 9:00am at Lake Needwood - hopefully not an excessive warmup for the QOC Score-O at the University of Maryland

Running from Rockville Metro to Lake Needwood for x-country race. Used to live in Rockville but shouldn't have relied on my memory of how far the Lake was from the Metro. I'd have been late if they'd started the race on time. As it was, I registered at 8:58 for the theoretical 9:00 start and just had time to pin on my number, visit a port-a-pottie and switch into my old Silva Pro-Lites before they started.

MCRRC Frozen Slopes X-Country - seeded myself slightly back but the lead pack swiftly pared itself down to 3 then to the eventual winner and I. Passed Pat Zerfas acting as a race marshal 1.5 to 2K in. Took the lead a little past the halfway mark and tried to put a gap on second but the winner had quite good closing speed and beat me in by 3 seconds.

QOC University of Maryland Score-O. 45 point score course with one hour time limit and one point lost per part of minute overtime. Some control placement problems and I have to agree that we should have drawn parts of the stadium with pass-throughs to accomodate Dan's placement of controls inside the building under the top level of bleachers but the course worked well in making it difficult to gather all the controls efficiently. I neglected to start my stopwatch as I began so I only had the knowledge that I'd started close to 1:02 on my watch as well as meet time to go by - very lucky to have made it in with 15 seconds to spare.

Right knee felt sore by the end of this; left knee felt pretty much fine. Took some ibuprofen in the evening as an experiment. Got a lift across campus from Peggy and Nadim (I'm so lazy) then walked to Metro and arrived downtown five to ten minutes into the documentary about Evelyne Glennie (quite famous deaf percussionist) the National Gallery was showing.

St. Patrick's Day 10K - very heavy weekend of racing if I do everything planned but I would like to see what my 10K performance is at the end of the winter.

- Update - I'm scrubbing myself from this. That really would be an excessive plan for the weekend and I'd rather do the cross country race.

Warmup and cooldown.

Attempt at a T run. Haven't actually run a time trial on this stretch where I do intervals (had forgotten that 1000m isn't one of the distances in Daniels for establishing VDot so I'd have to do a bit more measuring to decide on a 1500m or 3000m course) but extrapolating from my intervals to a 1500m suggests proper T pace woula have been painfully slow - somewhere around 25 minutes. Not sure I believe that.

First class since... January? One benefit of doing long runs mid-week - I don't feel obliged to run long on Saturday mornings and miss dancing.

Cycling to dance class, library, National Gallery for an afternoon of Agnes Varda films and food shopping thereafter.

Run home through Rock Creek Park again. Same route as last Tuesday except I stayed on the west side of the creek from the DC line to Pierce Mill.

Commute in and then onward to catch a ride with David Onkst to the BOD meeting. Tired enough on returning that I took Metro home from there.

Took it easier on the way home. Plus the wind supposedly gusting to 45 mph was generally a tailwind.

Warmup/cooldown, A's, B's, bum kicks, bounding, 2 sets of vertical leaps and threw in some lunges as well - I hope I won't pay too high a price in unaccustomed soreness for those. Muscles didn't feel quite fully over the weekend's exertions but Wednesday night is given over to the QOC BOD meeting so delaying training for a day wasn't on.

Normal commute - one problem with trying to cycle slowly is that one is frequently in a hurry when cycling for utilitarian reasons. In this case, I could have taken my time since the Red Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble didn't start their performance until almost 25 minutes after the advertised beginning time. Adding another bit to the continuing accumulation of evidence that a stunning preponderance of Americans are yobs, they were playing to at best a 40% full house (I'll concede it was an enormous concert hall but they haven't visited the US in 15 years and they're the Red Army Chorus, for heaven's sake!) Not that I'll complain about how easy it was to move from my cheap seat to the center of the orchestra section.