Training Log Archive: Bash

'Bent, BulletDog and I intended to do a long slow trail run to Glen Haffy and back. When we got to Gore Road, the wind came up, light rain started, and the sky looked like a tornado watch had probably been declared. So we decided to backtrack home and plan another run when things looked better.

Naturally, as soon as we got home from our shortened run, the weather improved substantially. I needed to postmark my corporate tax return and an adventure race entry with today's date, so our second run of the day was cross-country to the Palgrave post office. It's only 25C, but I was really feeling the heat for some reason. Weird.

The post office staff commented that I looked like I'd been exercising in the heat, but 'Bent didn't. So the only reasonable solution was to make a detour to the place that blends real fruit into frozen yoghurt - yum. It didn't make much difference to the way the heat was bothering me, but at least I was a happier camper. Then we ran home by another route. The loggers had advanced very close to our property line today, so the mess has expanded - although the going is slightly easier with the big logs removed. It's going to take a lot of work to clean that area up. We may have to abandon it except perhaps for snowshoeing.

We are SO proud of our Canadians at Primal Quest!! (Even though we are spending far too much time watching them on the Internet.) Urthbuoy's Team Spirit is holding steady around 30th place on the 6th day of racing. BobTheNavigator's remarkable Team Supplierpipeline has climbed into 4th place, and are only 80 minutes out of 3rd place (currently held by Robyn Benincasa's Merrell/Wigwam team). Check out the Primal Quest web site if you haven't been watching. The top teams are approaching the biggest ropes section in AR history, then the leaders should finish overnight, I'd guess.

Easy run in Palgrave West with ThunderDog, who had an absolutely wonderful time. My heart rate hit level 5 early in the run when we stepped off our property onto our neighbours' property and... where the heck is the forest, let alone the trail?!? We were standing in a swath of forest where trees had been felled, but the logs were still lying there in a tangle of branches and brush. Yikes! It's a managed red pine forest, so thinning it out is actually a good thing to increase biodiversity. I wasn't a fan of the way their beautiful deciduous forest was logged a few months ago, but this makes sense. Anyway, this leaves us without a trail into the conservation area from our place. The first round of logging blocked our usual trail, and now the second trail is toast too. Not a big problem when we're running, but it's not much fun to bikewhack, so I guess we'll have to take the road around for awhile. :-(

While watching the Daily Show. Today's special guest was Al Gore, talking about "An Inconvenient Truth". As Jon Stewart said, the movie was bound to be a winner - combining the popular appeal of climate science with the public's desire to hear Al Gore lecture. Stewart asked Gore whether it gave him any special joy during the part of the movie where Florida gets flooded and disappears...

Note to self: must see movie.

Nice easy run around Palgrave East and West. Trying to get back in the groove of regular training.

Horses have severely damaged some trails in Palgrave East. We are among the few people who do trail work over there, and it bugs me that our brush clearing has made it possible for irresponsible people to come in and trash the trails. It's really disappointing to see the total lack of stewardship exhibited by some trail users. Bottom line: if a trail is wet, you don't ride your horse on it and I won't ride my bike on it. We are lucky to have so much conservation land and so many kilometers of trails around here, but we need to take care of this wonderful place.

Like most so-called "rest" days, this one was anything but restful. A contractor is working in the house (still), loggers have been working noisily on our neighbours' property, and I spent 7 hours at Town Hall to interview candidates for an environmental programme manager position. Phew.

I'm taking stock after two months of racing every weekend. Here's my assessment:

- There are parts of our house that can only be cleared by bulldozer.
- The constant battle with post-race laundry has overwhelmed my capacity to put things away, so the bedroom loveseat overfloweth with clean clothes. ('Bent calls it the Pile Of Doom.)
- There are stacks of unopened mail, including a few important-looking envelopes.
- My right leg looks like I'm suffering from leprosy between the bruises, scratches, itchy patches of poison ivy, and of course the big scar from my swan dive while running with K/O. My left leg looks great, if I do say so myself. I guess I must always lead off with my right!
- I'm mentally fatigued - really glad to NOT be packing to go away this weekend.
- Although my fitness level hasn't been a problem, I do feel it slipping. You can only maintain a peak so long, and you can only spend so many weeks in race/rest/race/rest mode. It's time to get more structured with my training and build up my fitness again.
- I'm pleased with the results. 1st in two adventure races, 2nd in another. 1st in the Rogaine Champs. All in the female category. Not so pleased with my orienteering results, but I didn't realistically expect anything different racing F-elite with three years of orienteering experience and a decade or two older than the other competitors!
- I'm not sure what comes next. The cancellation of Raid The North has messed up our summer racing plans totally. It was the only thing we had planned for July, since we wanted to taper and recover. Now we are looking at the Endurance Aventure 25-50 hr event in late August, which means I won't be recovered in time for the COCs. I'll do the championship events anyway, but won't have much energy. Oh well, no biggie.

Not feeling so strong today... The last 3 weekends have featured races involving sleep deprivation, and apparently that matters. I remember being annoyed when my book on periodization training stressed the importance of rest, including lots of sleep, as part of an effective training program. Part of the reason it annoyed me was that I was reading the book after midnight, as I often do. Apparently, the book was right.

Hard Core Monday Reloaded

Lap #2 at 24 Hours of Summer Solstice. Due to a shortage of willing night riders, both of my laps this year were in the dark - boo, hiss. This one was much more pleasant than my first lap. There was much less dust in the air, thanks to the night moisture. There seemed to be fewer riders on the course, and less traffic in the single track. I felt much faster than my first lap, although the time turned out to be only half a minute less - without another helmet light accident. On the second half of the course, only one rider passed me, and I passed a bunch of people, which felt good. It seemed that the fastest riders were demonstrating better etiquette when they passed this year. Not once was I tempted to break the "No profanity" rule (a rule that I broke last year). Well, that's not entirely true - I swore at myself when my bike went down on a dusty corner in the first lap!

One of the reasons I enjoy overnight adventure racing and rogaining is that I love being outside when the world starts to brighten at dawn. I'm not a morning person in regular life, and I don't see many sunrises. But it is a wonderful feeling to be moving through the forest, when suddenly you realize that you can start to see where you're going, then the sky glows brighter, and everything feels cool, damp, fresh and new.

The Tree Huggers always approach this event as a fun social weekend, where new riders are welcome and the race is secondary. This year we had 3 broken chains, a broken derailleur, and a first-time racer with a 2:05 lap time, and we finished 26th of 127 teams. I'm proud of our team! It didn't hurt to have several speedy teenagers onboard - VO2max and Brittany Webster (both on the national XC ski team development squad) and Little Big Guy.

We sure know some amazing women! K/O completed 12 laps as a solo rider, taking 3rd place in the female solo category. Rocky and her partner were leading the tag team category by so much that they were able to quit mid-morning on Sunday. The last time we looked, Crash and her 5-rider female team were in 2nd place. Way to go, all of you! We are proud to know you!

24 Hours of Summer Solstice - mountain bike relay

24 Hours of Summer Solstice mountain bike relay - Lap #1. I took the last lap in our team's rotation, which meant heading out shortly after dark. The trails were so dry and dusty that there was a layer of dust just hanging in the air around the entire course. My bike light made it look like a sandstorm coming at me throughout my lap, and I was loathe to inhale. Afterward, I was coughing and wheezing for several hours, not to mention worrying about what my lungs must look like. One of our team members had such bad chest spasms several hours after her lap that she borrowed an asthma inhaler, which she had never used before.

Compared with other team members, my mishaps were relatively mild. The worst one was coming around a bumpy corner, when suddenly the world went black. My light had bounced out of the helmet mount, and was dangling from a wire at waist level, lighting the ground. I came to a halt, moved carefully to where I thought the side of the trail might be, then started fussing with a red-hot light, trying to maneuver it into a fiddly little track on top of my head. Probably less than a minute wasted. I felt better as the course went on, and it had a wonderful fast finish section for the last 2 km.

If I were to focus on bike racing (which I won't), it's clear what I would have to work on. Mostly, I passed people going up hills or on relatively smooth parts of the trail, i.e. places where aerobic fitness or (later in the lap) endurance take priority. But I'm relatively slower on single track and bumpy downhills, i.e. places where it helps not to be a wimp. I leapfrogged a fellow throughout this lap, and we got to laughing about it, saying "See you later!" whenever one of us passed the other.

This has mostly been a rest week - although a stream of commitments and houseguests made it much less restful than usual. I suppose that most people would recommend active recovery, rather than outright rest, so I hope it doesn't take too long to get back into training. Today is a packing and shopping day for the 24 Hours of Summer Solstice bike relay, then we're off to the campsite tomorrow morning. It's always a good time!

The cancellation of the only Raid The North race in eastern Canada this year has meant a lot of e-mails and phone calls over the past day. Our team will do a quick review of other long AR events, possibly in the U.S. There's a cool-sounding 24-hour race in Colorado on the July 23 weekend, but we need to find out if there is enough navigation to make it fun.

While watching The Daily Show. It's been awhile, and I would have thought that my legs were getting a good workout from all our races. However, I noticed decreased strength when I did my exercises today, so I'll need to get on the ball again. (Literally.) I wonder if this explains a knee twinge that has arisen in the past 10 days.

We've just learned that our only scheduled overnight adventure race of the year - Raid The North Fort Coulonge - will be cancelled. There's Quest for a Cure near Ottawa this weekend, but I'm not aware of any other overnight races in Ontario in 2006. These races are supposed to be what we're training for, but it doesn't look like the AR market can sustain them. Rats.

For awhile, I've been saying that this will likely be my last year of training for AR, which means that this might have been my last Raid The North. We had a great team ready to race, but Gazelle and Gazette are moving to Tajikistan in nine weeks, so our time together is running out.

So it's disappointing. :-(

Disappointment #2: Raid The North was the reason I couldn't consider Swiss O Week. But entries are closed for Swiss O Week now, and it would be tough to find two standby places for 'Bent and me. It looks like 'Bent's category, in particular, is very popular. :-(

Leisurely ride of the 24-hr race course at Albion Hills with 'Bent, with a detour to visit the Tree Huggers' assigned campsite, which is going to be awesome!! Anyone in the neighbourhood is invited to visit us for a cold drink and to help cheer passing racers at Down by the River 2, site #368. Spectators need to pay $5 Albion Hills admission fee.

The race course has a totally different feel from other years, and we are doing some sections of trail in reverse for the first time. I agree with Tiny that it is easier this year - less aerobic, more double track for passing, and fewer nasty bits. The average lap times should be faster. Given that Chico's target market for this event includes a lot of people who don't race mountain bikes normally, I think an easier race course is a good idea.

Having said that, there are still plenty of off-camber tree roots that will get slick with night moisture, so I'm going to switch from my AR semi-slicks back to my knobby tires. It's also quite dry right now, so it's easier than usual to slide out on dusty corners. I find that I hate to fall off my bike these days - I already have so many other ways to injure myself in other sports that I'd rather not add biking to the mix. So there is little aggressiveness left in my riding style, which means my lap times probably won't improve much from previous years. That's OK - we've entered this relay with a large team of riders with a wide range of speeds. As usual, we intend to have lots of fun and let the results turn out as they may.

Hard Core Monday - rescheduled for Tuesday because last night we attended an information meeting on Caledon's community wind power project. Good stuff.

It appears that I've dodged the poison ivy bullet from Saturday's race, as I only have a few tiny patches of rash on one lower leg. Considering how much of that stuff we marched through, it could have been much, much worse!

Salomon Adventure Challenge Long Course - Frontenac

It's not easy to sum up this race. It's my 7th consecutive weekend of racing, with a 24-hour event last weekend - and another one next weekend. To be honest, what I really needed was to NOT race. But I love longer race courses, and most of our AR friends were going to be there, and it was the first time that the original Tree Huggers ('Bent, Hingo and I) would adventure race together since last September... so how could I miss it?

We worked on maps until 10:30 p.m., then I could have slept until 2:30 a.m. - except I was too wired to sleep, and there was a loud thunderstorm with heavy rain that continued through the first hour of the race.

We began at 4 a.m. with a trek - 3 km off-road, then a short road run. When we got on our bikes and travelled across the rolling countryside on gravel roads, I realized that my legs had no energy. Usually, I can go into "overdrive" to climb hills, but this morning it felt like pressing on the accelerator of a car that has run out of gas. I expected the usual response, but there was no power. Oh oh, we had a lot of biking ahead. I suppose it wasn't really that slow, since other teams weren't streaming by, but I didn't feel like myself.

Then came the monster trek - the crux of the race. It was about 9 km point to point across an area with lots of swamps. We spent ages the night before looking at two route choices, then went with a route that started on a marked ATV trail that was further south than you would go if you were heading cross-country, but we gambled that it might continue on beyond the point where it apparently ended and turn north onto the nice ridge that we were aiming for. Failing that, it would get us to some higher ground, and we would be able to bushwhack from there with only half as many swamps to worry about. It worked like a charm. There was a network of ATV trails in there, and we did very little bushwhacking. I pace counted and watched map features as much as possible, so I always knew roughly where we were. At trail junctions, we picked trails that went approximately on our compass bearing. At one point, we lost the trail and arrived at a long swamp, which we swam at its narrowest point. The trail (obviously a snowmobile trail) started up again right where we came ashore, and became more and more visible until we arrived at the gravel road we were looking for. We ran into Team Hunger there, then had a good 4-5 km road run where we gained several minutes on them. When we arrived at the boats, we had moved from 11th to 2nd place overall! At that point, I declared that if nothing else good happened to us in the race, I would be thrilled just to have aced that trek. Well, it's a good thing I felt that way, because it wasn't much longer before the wheels came off the bus.

We had a decent 11 km paddle. Hingo was starting to feel the heat, and we just held our own - passing one team, and getting passed by another. We had a 10 km road ride to the start of the advanced trekking section, and fortunately, my legs had found some energy once again. I guess I'm not a morning person. Compared to the monster trek, the advanced trek looked easy. Just a few km long, aiming east for a north-south road. What was so advanced about this section? Sure, there were a few swamps, but nothing more than we had already seen. So... we hadn't taken it too seriously. I'd spent about 2 minutes choosing a route that made an arc near the north end of the swamps, allowing us the option of travelling across them, as we had done with little trouble earlier in the day. Well, it turned out that these were not the same friendly swamps. Foot-sucking, log-filled, vegetation-choked, stinky, deep... When we got there, we veered north to avoid the worst of them, but we still spent time labouring through chest-deep swampwater, disentangling sharp lily pad stems from our bodies. When we weren't in swamps, we were pushing through thick bush or lush fields of poison ivy, which I sat in at one point as I slid down a wet, lichen-covered rock. I'm just at the 24-hour mark, and I'm waiting in nervous anticipation to see how much of my body will be affected.

Through all of this, Hingo was travelling more slowly and quietly than usual, which was our first sign of trouble... It turns out that I don't just have a Rogaine Partner Curse - it seems that I have a general Teammate Curse. We scrambled up a 100' cliff and ran a short distance south along it to get a good view of the countryside. Heading east from there, the bushwhacking got easier, which led to a bad error. We had been heading roughly east, but we kept getting sucked north by swampy terrain. So in our heads, we'd been going farther north than we'd intended. So to make it up, I headed somewhat south of east toward the road. However, I didn't think about the fact that we spent a lot of TIME getting sucked north, but not a lot of DISTANCE, since the going was so tough. So we didn't need much correction to our route, especially since I'd been aiming off to arrive on the road north of the CP. Argggh. When we got to the road, I knew I'd cut it too close, and wasn't sure if we were north or south of the CP. Rats. We asked a passing driver if she had seen any activity north of us, and she hadn't seen anything, so we continued south on the road. Finally, we saw a team biking toward us and knew that we had to turn around. Wasted time: 20-25 minutes in extreme heat. Although our swampy route seemed pretty bad, it sounds like most teams ended up swimming or mucking through swamps there, so our route choice had been acceptable until that last bit of rough compass work to the road.

Next we biked 5 km on a snowmobile trail, and Hingo had to take it easy because he was feeling dizzy with a pounding headache. When we made it to a gravel road, he took a rest in the grass while several teams appeared out of nowhere. We still had close to 30 km of biking to go, mostly on gravel roads in bright sunshine. Not good. We took it easy to the next CP, where a kind neighbour allowed racers to use his outdoor tap to fill bottles and pour cold water on their heads. Volunteers gave Hingo salty snacks. We wanted him to rest in the shade, but he said he wanted to get to the finish line and get it over with, so we carried on, feeling worried and guilty. It was a relief to cross the finish line. We probably hung on for 9th or 10th place, but our concern was Hingo, who attracted medics immediately with a racing heart and chest muscle spasms that prevented him from taking a deep breath. Yikes, it was scary, but the medics kept an eye on him, and eventually he felt well enough to crack a few jokes and jump in the cool lake with his clothes on, which made us all feel better.

So... it's hard to categorize this race. Some beautiful scenery, good teamwork, and a great long trek. Excellent food, fun and socializing at the host site. Nice to race with 'Bent again, and he was as strong as ever. On the other hand... some scary medical issues and a silly nav error. Mostly, I'm feeling like I need a break. I've raced too much, and it felt like a chore to pack for the weekend. My body needs a break, and hopefully there will be time to build up to another mini-peak for Raid The North in 4 weeks.

A nice tour of the Albion Hills single track with 'Bent, Crash, Knobless and LeAnimal. I wasn't planning to stay for the entire ride, since I'm supposed to be recovering - or tapering, or whatever it is I should be doing. But it was such a beautiful day, and the company was good, and the trails were in perfect condition, so I just kept going. Nice!

This was part of a Backwoods Adventures orienteering skills night. We were together for two hours, but fortunately for me, there wasn't much running. We covered:
- Route selection
- Map memory
- Control picking (not as straightforward with a baseplate compass, we determined)

I should do more map memory exercises around here - that was good.

More post-rogaine musings...

I'm still sleepy today, with some stiff muscles and no desire to walk too far. My sprained ankle is swollen and mildly painful, but the Active Ankle made it possible to trek for 24 hours. At one point, I nearly wrenched it seriously, and I felt the brace catch me from going over. If the ankle is ever going to heal completely, I'm going to need some real down time.

The only painful rogaine injury was yet another divot carved from the same knee that I injured in my swan dive while trail running with K/O last month, then re-injured at the Barebones O meet. I'm amazed there is any actual flesh left on that knee. On the bright side, this is the same knee that was so painful in September that I sometimes cried going down a set of stairs. I thought I might have to give up all sports, especially after an MRI that showed a couple of types of cartilage damage. But I don't have any of that kind of knee pain now, even after the rogaine. Yahoo.

I am regretting that I didn't re-apply sunscreen and lip balm more often in the rogaine. I always carry the stuff, darn it. Why don't I remember to use it? My lips are peeling - ouch.

I wish I could remember some of the silly songs my partner and I made up during the event - mostly extolling the many virtues of our team, "Tree Huggers Don't Get Lost". They kept us amused on the first day.

After 10 consecutive Hard Core Mondays, many of them following tough weekend races, 'Bent and I decided to give this one a miss. We had a house guest who would have laughed uncontrollably at the sight of two sore people doing core exercises for 40 minutes.

We are not just recovering from the rogaine. We are tapering for the Salomon Adventure Challenge Long Course race this weekend. It starts at 4 a.m. on Saturday, which means another weekend with lousy sleep. And then the following weekend is another sleep deprivation event - the 24 Hours of Summer Solstice mountain bike relay race! (But then we're done racing for a few weeks...)

North Am Rogaine Champs, Day 2...

We headed out for our night controls, which went smoothly except in one place where we got fooled by one of the many unmarked streams. Backwoods Girl did an awesome job relocating there, and we only lost 10 minutes or so. She felt like crap, but marched along a bit more slowly, staying in close contact with the map - except on a couple of occasions when she warned me that she wasn't. The deal was, we would get to Camp 12 – a horse camp – and find a place for her to take a longer nap and try to shake off the bug.

We snuck into their dining hall around 3 a.m., and stayed until after 4 a.m. I couldn’t sleep, so I stared at the map looking for alternate routes, but couldn’t find anything better than our original plan. The nap hadn’t cured BG sufficiently to make it seem like a good idea to set off on a 10 km loop with 1800’ feet of climb. So we picked off a few random controls along the main road leading back toward the base camp, not getting too far away in case we had to bail out. BG was suffering because her stomach was empty, and she couldn’t eat or drink, so she was hiking with no fuel. She wanted to continue to be competitive for as long as possible, but finally it became clear that we had to go back and let her rest, so we checked in two hours before the finish. Fortunately, we had done just enough. Our last control was worth 50 points, and that was the margin by which we won the female category of the North American Rogaine Championship!

1st 8 hrs – 710 points
2nd 8 hrs - 410 points
3rd 8 hrs (actually only 6 hrs) – 190 points
Total – 1310 points

If it weren’t for the Bash Rogaine Partner Curse, it would have been cool to see what we could have achieved in the overall standings, but we are happy with how we did in difficult circumstances. It was awesome to race with a navigator I trust so much while remaining heavily involved in the nav myself. BG is mentally and physically tough, and a great partner.

A lot of teams we know had problems, including 'Bent's team, where 3Pin had IT band pain that slowed him down. Most people were smiling though, and hopefully GHO will get another good crowd out for a future rogaine.

Event: North American Rogaine Championships
 

Backwoods Girl and I teamed up for this rogaine in beautiful – and very hilly - Allegany State Park. She taught me to orienteer a few years ago, and I’ve done a number of overnight races in recent years, so I looked forward to blending our respective skills.

Thanks to the practice in our rogaining workshop, the route planning went very smoothly. We put the map on a board and used coloured pins to mark high- and medium-value controls, then wrapped a calibrated string around them to represent our route. We decided to go with a main route of only 50 km, thanks to stories we’d heard about the difficulty of the terrain. We had an optional loop we could add at the end if we got that far. This was by far the most realistic plan I’ve ever made for a rogaine, and that made things go more smoothly on the course. I madly calculated points per kilometer, and made small route adjustments to improve that measurement. Backwoods Girl reviewed the route for elevation gain/loss and made adjustments so the route made more sense in that department. Then we had a brainstorm and decided to do our route in reverse. We would travel through the roadless west side of the park in daylight, then follow a gravel road that would give us nice attackpoints for a series of night controls. Then, in a burst of morning energy, we would do a hilly loop in the southeast quadrant and return to the base camp.

It started out amazingly well. Backwoods Girl and I alternated jogging and walking along the road to get our first control, then headed up the ridge for a long, hilly walk in the woods. We didn’t talk about it – we just started working together efficiently. One of us would announce that we were pace counting, and the other would lead on the bearing, which both of us would take. We’d discuss the features we were seeing and whether we thought we might be drifting, and whenever we both got nervous, we knew we would see the control within 15-20 seconds. During daylight, we only made one error of any size. We were chatting and got distracted, then had to backtrack 6 or 7 minutes through stinging nettles that were so tall we had to lift our arms over our heads as we walked. The flag was right in the middle of them. Ow, ow, OW. Otherwise, we hit everything pretty well. Our goal was to push as hard as we could until darkness on the first day, knowing that our performance would be best during that period.

We got to the water control we’d expected to hit shortly before dark, but there was still so much light that we did another two controls and made it most of the way to a third control. Then we stopped for a break to put on warm clothes and take a half-hour rest. Unfortunately, Backwoods Girl had been hit with the Bash Rogaine Partner Curse, which causes anyone who rogaines with me to fall ill or get severe blisters. Her stomach had started to act up, and we hoped that a time-out would help it.

Checking that all of the flags were still in place for tonight's Caledon Navigators training night. I'm less fatigued than yesterday, but I've got a few sore muscles today. Hope I'm mostly recovered by the time this weekend's rogaine begins! We had a decent turn-out for our training night, and there were some solid efforts by relatively new orienteers doing a challenging course. Much thanks to Rocky for working with me on this. Next time you'll be the one hanging the flags! :-)

In a continuing effort to sabotage my tapering for this weekend's 24-hour rogaine, I went out at 8:30 a.m. for some Albion Hills single track with 'Bent and Gazelle. The first half of today's ride was anaerobic as I pushed to keep up with the guys, then I sent them off ahead as planned, and did a gentler forest loop before returning home. I am now officially exhausted. It turns out that a Tim Horton's ice cap at 4 p.m. is a great way to prepare for an evening race, but the combination of caffeine and adrenaline had me awake till 3:30 a.m. That, plus higher intensity effort than usual in recent days, has wiped me out. I'm going to do as little as possible before Saturday. I've got to check flags on a 4 km O course tomorrow, but I'll go as slowly as the bugs will let me.

Ancaster Old Mill 10K Race.

But Bash doesn't run on pavement, you might say... and you would be right. It's a long story, and the bottom line is that it's Hammer's fault. :-)

I had to search the house for shoes that would be appropriate for a road race, and finally settling on cushioned Reeboks that I've only ever used in indoor fitness centres. It was a bit strange to just dress for the weather, without worrying about long tights to avoid poison ivy or eye protection to fend off sticks. It was a tough call, but I didn't use the Active Ankle either, since I was afraid of new blisters from different shoes.

At the start line, I realized that my heart rate was high just because it felt weird to be there. I had no particular goals and no reason to be nervous, so I did some deep breathing and talked myself into calming down - and right then, the cannon went off right beside me to announce the start and I nearly jumped out of my skin!

The first half of the course is pretty hilly. Until 5 km, I was on track to break 50 minutes, which would have been cool, but I tired myself out and got slower in the second half. At the bottom of the longest hill, Hammer, Meridian, Griz and SuperWes were there to cheer me on, which was great timing, since I needed some inspiration as I looked uphill.

I tried to pick up the speed in the last kilometer in an attempt to pass a couple of women 30 meters ahead, but I had nothing left in the tank. Crossing the finish line, I felt light-headed and even read my time wrong. It was nice to see Bender cheering at the finish, and it was great to see Coach Sudden, who finished an amazing 6th of about 360 runners, just two days after pushing hard in the Barebones long orienteering race.

Results are already posted. I went into this with no expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised to finish 3rd of 24 women in my age category, and 19th of 144 women overall. I still feel like an impostor when surrounded by runners, so I am very happy with those results. All the same, I can't see myself doing another road race any time soon. Too boring!

After the race, a bunch of us went back to Hammer's place for a bender - which in my case consisted of one beer, a slice of pizza and a donut. It was a nice summer night to sit on the deck, relax, and listen to everyone's stories. Nice to see Hammer back in town, if only temporarily.

Hard Core Monday - not feeling energetic today.

After very little sleep on Saturday night and a late bedtime last night after travelling home from Edmonton, I was looking forward to sleeping in this morning, especially since I have a 24-hour rogaine in a few days. Nope. Phone rang at 7:25 a.m. - an in-law who had dialled the wrong number. Argghhh.

I took my ankle in to see ThumbsOfDeath, who tortured me for half an hour. This sprain is taking a lo-o-o-ong time to get better. At least my Active Ankle hasn't given me any new blisters since I moved the lower strap up higher.

I'm about to head out on my first 1:15,000 map and my longest-ever O course (9 km), and I am SO sleepy that I can barely keep my eyes open. I'm sure that when this establishment was originally built, there were good reasons to put rooms right above the tavern, but they certainly weren't put here so that people could sleep through the night. It was almost 2:30 a.m. when I last looked at the clock, still listening to hits from the seventies being blared out by the live band below me and breathing the cigarette smoke that drifted up into my non-smoking room. I feel bad for Sudden and Wil S next door, who have an even longer race today. I barely feel safe to drive, let alone interpret tiny little features on a map for 2.5 hours.

Barebones Long - new White Earth map

I was sleepy going into this race, but quickly woke up because I had to pay close attention in this subtle terrain. My first experience with a 1:15,000 map went fine. I had to force myself to go a bit farther than felt right when I was navigating to the first control, but after that, it felt natural. I guess I do so much nav on 1:50,000 topo maps that this map still seemed wonderful.

This is a great area for orienteering - easy to avoid nasty vegetation, and lots of nice, dry, open woods. The only hazard is deadfall, which covers some of the open ridges, and can really slow you down.

This was my longest orienteering race so far, and I am reasonably content with how I did. My execution was far from perfect in some cases, but I think most of my route choices were good. I stayed closely in contact with the map most of the time, since I really wanted to finish this course and get to the airport for an afternoon flight!

One of the positives to take from this race is improved confidence in my relocation skills (although it's too bad I had to use them!) Typically, I have backtracked to a known place and started out anew. Today there were a couple of times when I knew things weren't right, and I was able to figure out where I was and attack from that point, rather than going back. It sounds simple to experienced orienteers, but usually I am afraid of compounding the problem if I keep moving forward, rather than retreating.

One of the areas that needs improvement is my rough compass work. There were a couple of controls where I wasted time because of this, and there is no excuse for it. I wonder if this will be easier with my new Spectra thumb compass, which should make its O debut after the North American Champs.

I was the last starter of the day, so it was quiet out there - and the awards started right after I finished.

It's been a fun couple of days - good to see everyone, and fun to compete on challenging courses in the toughest field of women I've ever raced against. Not surprisingly, I finished behind most of the younger, more experienced orienteers - which is how it should be. It was a great experience, and it was nice to see that I'm not too, TOO far behind them.

Barebones - Middle Distance - Wahstao

Another map with subtle terrain, but not as hard to understand as I'd feared. For me, this race had some really good parts, one bad control, and one truly horrible control. I spent 30 minutes finding 10 of the controls - and the remaining 32 minutes finding the other 2 controls!! First, to focus on the positives... I felt like I was making good time through the woods. A couple of controls that caused problems for the best women went fine for me. My injured ankle, knee and heavily-taped blisters weren't an issue. I think my route choices were good, but I had some problems with execution on those two controls.

I managed to run to #3 before #2 - about 200 meters too far. I was pace counting and knew that I should have arrived already, but I need to recalibrate my pace counting. I've been accustomed to going more slowly in adventure racing - and in orienteering too - and my conversion factor is obviously not accurate anymore, because I wasn't looking for features soon enough.

The second HUGE mistake was also an adventure racer-type goof. One of the things you have to do in AR is "forgive" the map its idiosyncrasies, errors and ambiguity, and today I foolishly forgave the map for depicting a trail's shape incorrectly. If I'd questioned it more, I would have realized that I was at a different trail more than 300 meters away. Looking at it now, I can't believe that I didn't consider the possibility. Anyway, I headed off into the woods from there, and compounded the error - sigh... The split for control #7 was 18:30, which is a heck of a lot for a middle distance event!

Barbie provided some good post-event coaching advice:
1) Don't just analyze the legs where things went wrong to learn how to avoid screw-ups. Analyze the legs where things went right too, and figure out the good things that you want to repeat in future.
2) If you don't live near maps with terrain as subtle as this, you need to play more Catching Features.

Barebones - Sprint 2 - Wahstao

The first leg of this sprint had a lot of people scratching their heads. The best route - I think - was very circuitous, avoiding thick vegetation and marshes. I overran #7 and #9, by 75 m and 125 m respectively, then had to relocate quickly and backtrack. Otherwise, there were no glaring errors - certainly not by this morning's standards! There was the opportunity to go quickly in places, but I felt myself being cautious with my ankle, not wanting to do any further damage. I'm reasonably happy with this race, even though many people went faster. I'm not a sprinter.

Event: Barebones 2006 & Team Trials
 

Flew to Edmonton this morning, then wanted to visit a map on my way to Smoky Lake for the Barebones meet. It was almost 30C, and I didn't like to leave my car parked on the side of a remote road with my computer and luggage in the trunk. So I did some low-speed Car-O along the edge of the Bruderheim map, interspersed with several 10-minute walks along major access trails to get a feel for the terrain. One comment on my first orienteering experience in Alberta... Wild Rose Country sounds really nice on a licence plate, but it's not as much fun when you encounter it in the terrain!

Then I headed for Smoky Lake, which feels like the wild west. My hotel room is in a somewhat seedy city hotel, above a tavern and beside a liquor store. Not the usual tourist experience! Amazingly, it has high-speed Internet, so I decided to stay anyway. (We can't get high-speed out in the boonies where we live.)

I started off the Barebones meet with an awesome middle distance time of 32 minutes! Unfortunately, this race was actually a sprint, which means I was slo-o-o-ow. I got off to a bad start when I thought I was starting behind Pamtastic, so I was keeping an eye on her, rather than the clock, and ended up being late. So... I stressed out, confirmed that I could start a minute late, rushed ahead and only had one minute to get ready. I used that minute to completely forget about the fact that the start triangle was somewhere ELSE. So I got the map and was totally disoriented. Luckily, Pamtastic was still waiting, noticed my predicament and shouted to me to head down the path. Well - I sure couldn't have scripted a more impressive start to my one and only national team trials! :-(

After calming down a bit, the race actually went fine. Not one of those magic races where every control appeared exactly where I expected it, but I was close enough in most cases. I just about blew it all at one point when I went into a depression adjacent to the correct one, and found an orienteering training flag. I touched it and turned to go, then thought "This can't be right" and went back to the other depression where I found the correct SI control - phew.

The terrain that had scared me when I reviewed the old version of this map was surprisingly understandable when I was moving through it. I guess the reason Hilton Falls West confuses me so much is because there are so many flavours of rock, not just because of the 2.5 meter contour intervals, which this map had too.

I managed to gouge a chunk from my knee - the same one that is still recovering from the Swan Dive Incident with K/O over a month ago. It took a couple of hours for the bleeding to stop, and I hope I won't need to remove the dressing until the meet is over, because it'll start again. Owww!!

Hung flags in Palgrave for next week's Caledon Navigators training night, which will be a 4 km adventure run format. (Don't you go snooping around, Crash!) I ran between controls (taking trails more often than I would in a race due to the ankle), then spent time fussing around the controls - ensuring the ribbons were highly visible, moving several controls after checking the terrain, etc. I ran into the middle of a depression filled with thigh-high stinging nettles - that's one of the controls that got moved! Mosquitoes were quite persistent. I sure hope my theory about being immune to West Nile Virus is correct.