Training Log Archive: Bash

Early morning run in the Cootes Paradise area, just before the excitement began for the GHO School Adventure Challenge. Absolutely beautiful day!



My running companion was Slice - the current leader in the 5 Peaks Trail Running Series. Fortunately, she went slowly so that I could keep up. Great chance to chat and catch up.

I hung most of my assigned controls while sipping on a wonderful coffee that Slice had picked up on a Second Cup run. Toward the end, I did a bit of running.

It was exciting to be involved in what we believe was the largest-ever orienteering event in Ontario history! Close to 900 students from grades 6-12 came out for the Hamilton School Adventure Challenge. Honestly, the papparazzi were driving us nuts after awhile!





With the media out in force, it's a good thing we were all properly attired!



Ray Kitowski deserves to take a huge bow for another successful school meet. He is impeccably organized, and it is surprisingly relaxing and pleasurable to volunteer for this huge event.

Visited some, um, places near Barrie while course setting for the Salomon Navstock Raid. It's going to be hilly. There are still big piles of snow wherever it's a bit shady. Can't say much more than that...

April will be over in a few days, but today we awoke to wet snow falling rather heavily. Not sure when it started, but it lasted for several hours, sticking to the ground and trees. It melted in the afternoon. Now I'm sorry that I took the duvet off the bed recently, but at least we've got a big fire going tonight!

I was sooooo unmotivated today, which is a little unusual. I managed to convince myself to get dressed to go for a 30-minute run, and then I remembered... hey, I'm an engineer! If we make this experience geekier, I'll have more fun! So I grabbed my Forerunner and decided to measure a time trial loop on trails behind our place. This of course gave me the nerdy thrill of checking my instantaneous pace, etc. It turns out that one of my regular hilly trail loops is exactly 5K long, which was a good discovery. It went faster than my recent 5K on our dirt road, which makes me think that the road run (measured with my car) must really be a bit longer.

Route - Front door, long way through F&M's property, Poison Ivy Trail to Bruce Junction, into Koturbash and clockwise around Charlevoix, cross-country trail to meet the Bruce, then Swamp Trail, Hawk Hill, Thinker's Hill (to the bench), then home via the short route through F&M's, past the front and down the driveway to the "Beware of Dog" sign.

Hard Core Monday. Phatty and Leanimal have been doing a lot of trash talking before this weekend's adventure race, but I think they've only made it all the way through this DVD once or twice. Sure, you guys will beat us on the running and biking, but If one of the disciplines happens to be sit-ups, you guys are soooo going DOWN. (Um, and up, then down, then up, then down...)

Hammer and I hit the trails at Hilton Falls on a fantastic spring morning. It's hard to believe how different it looks from the Salomon Giant's Rib Raid just two weeks ago!





We stayed mostly on fire roads, keeping a nice, steady pace in rolling terrain. To add a little adventure, we went down a few rockier trails, but my plan today was just to pedal hard and keep the muscles working in preparation for next weekend's race. I didn't want to focus too much on the technical stuff.

Hammer and I had just been talking about the fact that neither of us had seen a trillium yet this season - and then we found one! There were lots more where this one came from. (No, Hammer didn't pick it!)



I think this is the nicest time of year at Hilton Falls. It looks like a Lord of the Rings movie.

Somehow, without intending beforehand to do so, I ended up volunteering to sit on the Orienteering Ontario Board at today's AGM. The other people who put their names forward for the Board will all be excellent to work with, so I'm optimistic that this will be a much more positive experience than my last stint, and hopefully we'll accomplish some good stuff together!

We had a terrific opportunity today! Margus Hallik of Estonia, one of the world's top mountain bike orienteers (4th place in the World Champs), put on an instructional clinic at our place for interested orienteers. His friends in Europe want to race in Canada in future, so they told him that they wanted him to help get the sport started here. (His wife Kati is here on a diplomatic assignment which is wrapping up shortly.)



He explained the different trail markings that are used in MTB-O vs. regular orienteering. They provide information about the trail width and rideability.



He brought a number of maps from events that he has done. Some of the trail networks are really intricate, and racers have to read their maps at top speed while watching for ruts, roots and rocks.



Top MTB orienteers are skilled at determining the shortest route between two points on a trail network. Margus explained that people often experience optical illusions when estimating the relative lengths of different trail routes. We need to work on our geometry skills!



Unfortunately, I had to head out of town before the training ride, but I'm told that it was amazing to watch Margus riding at full speed on twisty singletrack while staying fully in contact with the map.

More good news from "The Lore of Running". A number of studies have shown that endurance athletes outlive sprinters, and there is some evidence that this may be linked to having a higher percentage of slow-twitch fibres. Woo hoo! People with a higher % of slow-twitch fibres are more likely to participate in physical activity throughout their lives. They tend to have higher HDL (good cholesterol) and less body fat. All of this reduces their (our!) risk of developing heart problems.

Rode over to the Palgrave post office to mail in my tax return. I've gotta be on time this year because I owe money - drat! I toured some single track on the way there, then I had to heave my bike over the big new fence to get into the Reddington subdivision - grrr. After leaving town, I bike-whacked to get back onto the trails at the southeast corner where the fence begins. I rode double track toward home until I noticed Crash and Skye running out of the woods - the only people I've met in Palgrave over my past few visits! (And technically, Skye is actually a dog.) Nice to have a break to chat before we both continued on our way. In my case, that meant a trip along Duffy's Lane, where I stopped to wade thigh-deep into a cold swamp with a soft bottom (the swamp's bottom, not mine). I rescued SI control #133, which had spent the winter lying forlornly underwater until eagle-eyed Crash spotted it - along with its flag and stand. OOA says that it might be possible to revive it, so I'll take it to the AGM this weekend.

Hard Core Live with substitute teacher Carrie. It wasn't as hard as some weeks, mostly because she mixes yoga in with the core more.

Good class. A bit shorter than usual, with a longer relaxation portion (which I don't count). I heard someone snoring lightly in the dark during the relaxation. 'Bent didn't hear it, and come to think of it, he actually doesn't remember much of the relaxation. Hmm...

At last, I've found some cheery news for me in "The Lore of Running". Over the age of 40, the best runners tend to be those who did NOT run competitively when they were young. So if you run a great half-marathon when you're 25, you'll probably lose at age 45 to some guy who started running at 35. Yesss!!

There are different theories as to why this is so, but it seems to boil down to some version of... "your body only has so much running in it - especially racing".

No training today in spite of moderately good intentions. I went shopping for a dress for Bender & Venus' wedding - oh, how I hate trying on clothes! Especially fancy ones, because I look like such an impostor in them. It was hilarious to see the difference in sizes depending on dress price. At the Jones of New York designer outlet, the size 4 dress was a little loose around the waist. At Winner's, the size 8 dresses were snug. I mean, who is fooled by *that*?! Oh, and I bought the JNY dress. Of course.

Gorgeous day, so I snuck out to Palgrave for a lunch break. All the single track in the south half is perfectly dry, and it was soooo much fun! I arrived at some shady double track that had a good stretch of ice and ankle-deep snow, but I didn't see mud or water on the trails anywhere. Let's hear it for that nice, well-drained sand of the Oak Ridges Moraine! I'm guessing that the north half of Palgrave would still be too wet for biking though.

An interesting diversion was a trip along Duffy's Lane to check out Crash's discovery from this morning - an SI control, complete with stand and flag, submerged in a swamp. Later today, I was able to find out the event in which this particular control number disappeared last fall (it was stolen during the event). The good news is that apparently the expensive SI unit may still work in spite of spending the winter underwater, so I will need to return with fishing equipment to extract it and send it home.

Slowrunner is trying to help me fight my genetic deficit in the running department, which means that - sigh - I need to do more intervals. Slowrunner, Rocky, Leanimal, Scooby and I did 3 X 2K intervals around a quiet Bolton subdivision, with breaks in between to do some whining. (8:35, 8:55, 8:55) (That's for the running. I didn't use a stopwatch on our whining.) Good company - definitely nothing to whine about there!

We ran together for the warm-up/cooldown laps, and given that all these people are faster runners than I am, my pace on these laps wasn't wildly different from my interval pace. Fun night - hard work!

Wild turkey hunting season starts on Friday, so the large gobbling visitors to our yard had better stay put for awhile! A hunter came to the door to ask permission to shoot turkeys on our property. I thanked him for asking, but our turkeys will be happy to know that they can continue preening outside our window in total safety. If you're going to be in the woods between 6:30 a.m. and sunset before May 31 in southern Ontario, and if you aren't sure that you're in a "no hunting" area, be sure to wear bright colours and make some noise.

Had an 8 a.m. meeting near the Wellness Centre, so I headed in to play with the machines once more. I really need to try a spin class before my 1-month membership expires, just to say I've done one once in my life.

Started with a trail run in Albion Hills to hang a couple of flags for this afternoon's high school nav training session, then I kept running until it was time to meet everyone at the Chalet. Yuck, I'm not used to this heat yet - I was just skiing a couple of weeks ago!

To slow down the speedy Phatty & Leanimal, who were also hanging flags, I gave them maps with no declination marked on them. They were surprisingly gracious about it.

Then we got together with 8 of the 12 high school students who will be doing the high school adventure race at Deerhurst in a couple of weeks. Phatty talked to them about adventure racing in general, and Leanimal talked about the importance of teamwork.



Then we divided the students into 3 groups and each of us took a group out to practise navigating to some checkpoints.



My kids (Jenn, Trish, Alastair) were surprisingly good at understanding contours and staying in contact with the map. For their first session, I think they did really well.

Afterward, we debriefed for awhile in the shade before I headed to the Wheelies' awesome sugaring off party. We're hoping that navigation plays a big role in the high school race because our teams are soooo ready for it!

This is way, WAY too hot for April.

Random Thought #1 for a Friday morning: After last night's Walk The Line session, a high school boy asked me with great enthusiasm, "How often do you guys go out and do this?" And when I think about it, most people show that same joy and excitement after their first adventure race or orienteering adventure, once they've been reminded how much fun it is to play outdoors like little kids again. Why is it that we can't keep these people in our sports - and attract more people like them? No question, marketing needs to be improved, but I wonder if there is more. Developing a local community of outdoor adventure lovers can certainly help. Looking around at the group last night, everybody was connected to someone else in some other way - either they mountain bike together, or they do trail runs or adventure races, or they go to school together, or they follow each other's Attackpoint logs or whatever. We look to each other for ideas, inspiration and good old-fashioned fun - I think that is working well for us in Caledon.

Random Thought #2 - I've been dipping into different chapters of "The Lore of Running", a book that I've owned for a couple of years, but it looked so long and scary and running-specific that I kept putting it off. Surprisingly, I've found it to be a real page-turner. There are some very interesting ideas in there about all kinds of things - overtraining, speedwork, etc. One premise that underlies a lot of it is how some people are just genetically able to run faster, and you shouldn't delude yourself into believing that you can train yourself beyond the gifts that nature has given you. I've always known that I'm not a gifted athlete (outside of some capacity for endurance), and that there are limits I can't move beyond, but a lot of people like to "think positive" and pretend that anyone can become a great athlete through training. This book doesn't sugar-coat it. You can't. But because I've always believed this, it doesn't depress me. That's why I focus on the things that I *can* become good at without speedy athletic genes - like technical paddling skills or navigation. And that's why multi-sport is the sport for me. A lot of great athletes are great in one sport and only good in the others. Add in a bit of navigation, and we can always hope that the great athletes will run really fast in the wrong direction!! :-)

Caledon Navigators training night in the Humber Valley. (Thank you GHO for the map!) Goose and Nick dsC put together a Walk The Line exercise for us, and it was loads of fun. Goose had attached small laminated cards to trees along the line, and we had to write down the letters as we found them. We didn't know how many there were going to be, so we had to stay on our toes. Right after the first sign, I stepped into water that looked mid-calf deep and sunk in up to my waist - quelle surprise!! Not only was the water disgusting and smelly, but my map got completely soaked, so I had to unfold it and wave it around for the next 10 minutes, which is not the easiest way to stay in contact with a map during Walk The Line! Not to mention that some areas on the map became colourful blobs after that. We spread out a lot at first, but a good chunk of our time was spent in small groups, since we tended to bunch up in slower sections. And given the steep slopes of the valley and the thick brush in places, there were definitely some slow sections!

When Goose checked our maps at the end, we learned that we'd all missed control K (the 2nd one), and we strongly suspect that he just made the whole thing up. There was some concern when the deadline passed, and Scooby was still missing. At first we thought he might have run home, but Rocky had his cell phone, so it seemed likely that he'd planned to come back. As we started to contemplate a rescue after dark, he emerged from the woods with a smile. I've seen a lot of orienteers after races, and I have *never* seen anyone so thoroughly muddy from head to toe. Thick, heavy mud that probably made him weigh 20 kg more than usual. He actually lost a shoe in deep mud and had to excavate it! On top of that, the little brown wad of goo that he carried in his hand was the poorest excuse for a map that I've ever seen. It's a good thing he knows the area, because he would have never gotten out otherwise!

Great evening of fun, followed by hearty dinner and drinks at the pub.

ESAR team training! After a brief studio tour at Hurtn's place, we parked at the Gore Road entrance to the rail trail and rode toward Inglewood with the goal of buying a cookie at the General Store. It was a lot warmer than I'd expected, so I ended up carrying extra layers that were definitely not needed today. We had quite a headwind on the way there, so I tried to remember Leanimal's advice about welcoming the wind as a training partner. (But my *real* training partners are friendlier.)

At first the boys pretended that the pace was fast for them, but they were flying once they'd warmed up. When I mentioned to Damuhl that the store sold ice cream, he took off in front and hammered the rest of the way to Inglewood. (He didn't actually have any ice cream, however - probably to impress his teammates with his dedication.) We were speedier on the way back with the tail wind helping us - 41 minutes vs. 50 minutes. We did a few speed intervals along the way and even practised some drafting. Lots of fun, and the longest bike ride of the season so far!

Quick visit to the Wellness Centre for some pre-run upper body work. Presented Slowrunner with her official Tree Hugger bracelet.

Gurlz Run with Leanimal - first time in months that we've gone running on the Humber Trail together, and it felt awesome! We both felt that our hill intervals had made a difference. Brilliant sunshine and fresh, cool air - Leanimal even wore her Salomon shorts. Yes, spring is finally here!

Evening cruise down Duffy's to Albion Hills followed by a very thorough tour of the campground roads. Trails there are still too wet to ride - even the roads had big puddles. Bike legs are feeling pretty good for this early in the season.

Here's a photo of the Salomon Giant's Rib Raid winning navigator - Bender - as he demonstrates his bushwhacking technique in yesterday's rather damp event.

Only 3 weeks until the FAR Deerhurst race, so it's time to get mountain biking outside. 'Bent did a fine job of preparing my bike for spring, and it felt smooth, and my legs felt good. Amazingly, there is still so much snow and ice on the north part of Duffy's Lane that it's tricky riding - or hike-a-bike if you'd rather not risk a fall this early in the season. We still have lots of snow in the woods, some of which is deeper than my hiking boots - I wonder if we'll still have snow around here in May! Fortunately, the rail trail is all melted at last.

We rode out for about half an hour, then turned back. Nice sunny day - too bad we didn't have this great weather for all the SGRR competitors yesterday. On the way back, we met Mrs. Eugene and a couple of their cute kids out for a hike. The kids had found a dead opossum, and since I've never seen a live one, we dropped our bikes for a minute to go take a look. Looks like a giant rat with a Rudolph The Reindeer nose. Apparently we can expect to see them around here more often with the warming climate.

Rodney Yee DVD - Power Yoga for Flexibility. Nice...

Event: Salomon Giant's Rib Raid 25K Adventure Run
 

Salomon Giant's Rib Raid - an excellent event, thanks to the hard work of a whole bunch of volunteers, including the usual creative race course design. And three big cheers for Phatty, who has worked tirelessly to turn the Dontgetlost.ca runs into the Salomon Adventure Running Series, which has attracted the attention of other sponsors and created a tonne of excitement - not to mention the best prize table I've ever seen.

Hingo injured himself a few days before the race, and Slowrunner graciously agreed to join us on short notice, in spite of her well-known aversion to bushwhacking. Good thing she didn't know the race would take place in rainy 8C weather in a forest flooded with icy water!



Actually, we all agreed that the weather was a non-issue. We were dressed properly, and the ice water wading actually felt good on our calves - and our knees - and occasionally even our thighs.

Unfortunately, we got off to a bad start with some nav problems today.



Things went smoothly until we crossed 6th Line, but somehow we wandered off the Bruce Side Trail that we were supposed to be following, and the map was blank other than the trail, so there were no clues as to which direction we'd wandered off it. Normally, we'd have gone back to find the last tree marking, but unfortunately, we were in an area that the Bruce Trail *used* to pass through, so we were able to locate a few other markings, including turns and so on. Soon we realized that we were nowhere near the real Bruce Trail - something that was reinforced when we had to follow a quarry fence for a long distance in a direction that we didn't want to go. By that time, I'd figured out which side of the BT we were on, and we followed a compass bearing that led us to the trail. Sigh. A lesson that I should have learned by now is that things have a higher risk of going wrong at times when I am sure that the navigation is easy, so I get complacent.

Case in point: the next section, the Lass-O. The CPs were so close together that we started off on a very rough bearing, figuring that we'd see the first CP so soon that we didn't need to be overly careful. We hadn't accounted for the wide, deep, frigid, branch-tangled marsh that we had to cross, which pushed us too far to the left. Oblivious to the problem, we looked for flags in a couple of wrong places before finally bailing out to a trail and returning to a known junction to start again. Between this error and our Bruce Trail follies, it appears from the splits that we lost about 30 minutes in silly errors early in the race.

Other than that, things went pretty smoothly - other than maybe some loss of the sense of urgency that you feel when you are running closer to the leaders. That's OK though - we had a good time and enjoyed the different challenges that had been posed for us. My personal favourite was the section where the map was blank, and we had only verbal instructions and photographs of features to go on. The photos had been taken when there was still lots of snow, so part of the challenge was trying to imagine what the feature would look like without snow!

Our team worked well together. Slowrunner pushed the pace nicely on the trails - I can see why she would have no trouble with the Canadian Death Race. Even though conditions were especially tough for adventure running today, she never lost her smile. There were numerous slippery, mossy rocks with crevices in the woods, but luckily we all managed to avoid serious injury, even though I slipped and banged my bad knee twice. (The lawsuit is in the mail, Griz.) The only potential issue for me is a wrenched lower back from a towing incident on trail. I've got my fingers crossed that it's just a short-term thing, but I'll have a better idea tomorrow.

Here is 'Bent on one of the trails. As we got here, I called back, "Hey guys - the good news is that we've made it to the big trail. The bad news is, there's a *heck* of a current running along it!"



And here we are at the finish line, still smiling and ready for the BBQ. Thanks to my Tree Hugger teammates for a fun day of splashing around the forest - even if it wasn't the most perfect race we've ever had!



Big congrats to our friends on Team Salomon XT Wings - Bender, Slice and AndyCam - the coed team who won the whole thing! Best result by Caledon Navigators was Team Salomon-Suunto - Phatty & Leanimal + STORM (2nd Coed and 5th overall), then Crash - 3rd Coed and 6th overall. Team Over The Hill - Goose, Rocky & Scooby - made an impressive debut, placing 5th Coed and 9th overall. They really should enter Storm The Trent, since they have the right skills for the MXR Canada competition. Yay, CN!!

Stretched out my hips, legs and injured lower back post-Raid. After a couple of years of yoga, I now crave it when my body feels tight.

By popular demand, here is the GHO Flying Pig MVP award that Sid will take home this year. Hammer plays the role of Vanna White in this photo.



And here is the 2006 winner, MrPither. Ladies, try to control yourselves.

I've often thought that our rolling country road would provide some nice, moderate hill intervals, but it's more fun to run out the back door into the forest, so I've never tried it. I noticed recently that the two blocks of our road west of the highway measure 2.5 km on the car odometer, so that gives me a 5K (approx.) out-and-back-and-out-the-other-way-and-back run to do from the end of our driveway on a relatively quiet dirt road. Today I was just trying to set the base time - the time to beat in future - but I pushed up the hills with a steady pace, which kept the intensity up. Kinda embarrassing to look at my watch afterward, but hey, I never said I was a fast runner.

My new Salomon XT Wings felt great in their first outing, but they now have a fleck of mud on them. I wonder if that's covered under warranty. Phatty...?

Hard Core Live with Caron. She wasn't too evil tonight.

Lots of vinyasas followed by some good stretches.

Quick run while watching the news. Busy with Salomon Giant's Rib Raid registration stuff today. Also, Hingo is injured, so I had to initiate an emergency search for a replacement teammate. There aren't many people you can just call up to do a 25K run through rough terrain on 3 days notice, so 'Bent and I were thrilled when the mighty Slowrunner agreed to join us!!

Beautiful spring day! Trails are still a mix of ice, mud and snow, so Leanimal and I decided to stick to the road for another week. My new Salomon XT Wings just arrived in the mail, and I'm looking forward to hitting the trails to try them out! We did a warm-up around the streets of Bolton, then 3 hill intervals on Deer Valley Rd., 1 painful interval up Glasgow Rd., then 2 more intervals up Deer Valley. Cooled down in a different neighbourhood. Nice day to be out, and good to catch up with Leanimal.

Back to the Wellness Centre for some blasting. My membership only lasts a month, so I need to make the most of it. It's already clear that I'm not cut out for gym workouts, but it's nice to have this chance to get familiar with what's available so that I can go there on a day pass once in awhile. As suspected, the indoor workout shoes that I'd left behind on the day of the evacuation were no longer in the change room. They're in such bad shape that I didn't bother trying to track them down. In fact, if someone at the front desk had held them up when I arrived and asked if they were mine, I probably would have denied it!

It was so hot in the car today that I wanted to turn on the air conditioner, except I would have felt environmentally guilty. So instead, I made my first visit of the season to Dairy Queen. :-)

'Bent and I had lunch today with two good friends we haven't seen for over a year and a half since they moved to Tajikistan - Gazelle and Gazette! They are back in Canada for a few months to have their first baby, and they will be living in Bolton. Great to see them!! :-)

A couple of post-Pig notes:

- In case you haven't seen Wil Smith's log, he took some excellent photos at the Pig - http://www.orienteering.smugmug.com/

- I found it very instructive to review nav guru PG's routes posted on his log, since he raced the same courses that I did last weekend. I feel a little better after seeing that we both made the same big error on #1 on Sunday. I'm still not happy about it - and I'm sure that he isn't, either - but I feel less silly about it now. However, I still feel really, *really* silly about my monster error on #2!

ThunderDog and I hiked to and from Crash's place, travelling through a forest that was mostly full of soft snow. My hiking boots weren't even close to high enough to keep the snow out, and I kept punching through.

Hard Core DVD with 'Bent. It's only been a week and a half since we last did a Hard Core workout, but I could feel that it was a little harder than usual.

Flying Pig Ultra-Long - KABOOM!! If there was any risk that I'd go home from this weekend harbouring the delusion that it's possible to stay sharp without serious, regular orienteering competition... well, that balloon burst today! In a nutshell, I blew the 1st control, then I totally disintegrated on the 2nd control, punching it almost an hour into the race. The top woman in our age category took less than 10 minutes for the 2nd leg, and I was close to 35 minutes. I can't think of the last time I got myself so spectacularly misplaced. After that, it was just an exercise in staying motivated and focused enough to finish the event and take advantage of this excellent training opportunity. It seems that the curse on my Long races remains firmly in place.

I've stared at the map a lot, and I still haven't distilled the lessons I want to take away from this race. I started off slowly and calmly - but still managed to screw up by not aiming off enough when I hit the north-south trail. I somehow missed seeing the very obvious best route for the 2nd leg, but that isn't a huge worry - it can happen sometimes. I think maybe my map was folded too much, hiding the route I should have taken. I'm much more disturbed by the very poor execution of my chosen routes on the first two race legs. I think maybe I'm not giving long race legs enough respect - that is, I'm not applying the same care and precision I would use in a shorter race. Also, I know that I really used a shoehorn to make the map fit my surroundings at one crucial point - and I know better than to do that. If I'd believed the terrain, I could have relocated much, much earlier.

Other than the minor detail of a disastrous performance, I had a great time today and felt good physically. I love the East Fork State Park terrain and map, and Cedarcreek had designed a fun race course for us. (All 4 Pig events were high quality as usual.) We had brilliant sunshine and warm, spring termperatures - it was a great day to be out in the forest, and I had a smile on my face most of the time. In fact, my race started off *so* badly, that I was laughing at myself after awhile rather than getting stressed. That helped me to salvage the remainder of the race, which didn't go too badly. I was 3rd of 5 people in my category - a whopping 35 minutes out of 1st.

It was a beautiful day. Here's Tiny running to the finish.



All that deep water pool running paid off - Jon Torrance won by almost 4 minutes!



It was a treat to chat with my QuantiGHO Queen Bee teammate Valerie, who very kindly brought me some Reese's peanut butter chocolate Easter bunnies. Yum!



OCIN put a lot of work into providing a fantastic orienteering weekend for us - thanks so much! :-) Thanks also to my travel companions for a fun weekend - and to Eugene for the great restaurant recommendations.

But of course, the Flying Pig is not the main thing that attracted us to Ohio this weekend - it's the fine dining...



The Waffle House waitress looked with concern at Tiny's arms and asked if he had inflicted all those cuts on himself. Then she noticed that Bender's arms looked exactly the same way, and her eyebrows shot way up. Tiny explained our sport, and she was polite, but indicated that she wouldn't be signing up anytime soon. We enjoyed our much anticipated Pig-out on unhealthy food - yum!

Wil Smith took some great O photos on the weekend. Here's one of me in the campus sprint.

Green - Ultra Long - Splits

Flying Pig Sprint #1. We'd been told that the navigational difficulty would be low, and the course would be flat - so we were advised to go fast. Oh, and they also suggested that we devise a strategy for crossing fences made of heavy chains hanging between small posts. I went out on the model map to get used to the sprint mapping symbols, which I haven't seen in awhile. I also got a feel for when I needed to go over the fences with a scissors jump and when I could go under them and fling them out of the way like a low branch. The latter was *much* faster.

I'm normally not a good sprinter, but I had a good race today - probably my best-ever sprint performance, even though I came 2nd in my category. Right from the start, I remembered to try to go fast because it was a race - something that slipped my mind yesterday! The nav went well, and I tried to read ahead one control at all times - which I seldom have the cycles to do, even though I know I should. It only backfired once when I was leaving a control and it took me a few seconds to realize that I was mistakenly thinking about the way I would leave the *next* control. But overall, I'm very happy. I don't think there is any way I could have gained the extra 46 seconds I would have needed to win - not unless I start working really hard on speed intervals!

Flying Pig Sprint #2 - a totally different beast, and equally fun. This sprint was a mix of fields, trails, bush and mud - a little slower and more navigationally complex than this morning's event. I don't usually push all that hard in races, but I could feel that I'd pushed hard this morning, and there wasn't any extra oomph available at times when I might have liked to call on it. But things went fairly well in this sprint too.

In comparing notes with Sid, who beat me by about 50 seconds, I realized that I could have saved time on two legs that went out and back through the same patch of thick vegetation. We'd been warned that there were evil trolls out there who would steal precious seconds in this section of the race course (I'm quoting from the course setter's notes!), so I ran around the nastiest green vegetation on trails, rather than making my way through it. So my main weakness in this race was that Bash was too chicken to bash. But in the end, I was only 1 second slower than this morning, and I was quite pleased with that. This was enough to win my category for Sprint #2 and for the overall event, which combined the times for today's two sprints. I don't usually think of myself as a sprinter, so I'm a very happy camper! :-)

We tried to represent Canada well today - each in our own way. Bender was stopped by 3 students on the main street of Oxford - a university town. They were doing a scavenger hunt, and they needed a photo of themselves doing a high five with a man in tights. Things were looking a little grim for them until Bender showed up, dressed in his finery for lunch at a nice restaurant.



Other Canadians made a good impression by running fast, as Wil Smith did.



Other Canadians made fashion statements.



But most of us just hung out and chatted in the sunshine, went for a yummy lunch, and enjoyed a couple of great orienteering courses!

Orange/Brown/Green Sprint 1 - Splits

Orange/Brown/Green Sprint 2 - Splits

Event: Flying Pig XII
 

Road trip to Flying Pig.

Flying Pig Middle Distance - It's been a long time since I've done a competitive traditional O race, and it's one of those things that goes more smoothly with practice. Not so much the navigation practice, which I've been doing lately - but racing practice. Mental skills like staying calm enough to read the map more carefully, taking a couple of seconds longer to come up with a strategy that could save me more than a couple of seconds in the execution. Given my lack of recent O racing practice, things actually went fine overall, but I felt like I did "pretty well" on most controls, and seldom did "really well". And of course, there were a couple of sloppy controls, which is to be expected in a 19-control race when I'm out of practice. It wasn't until the end of the race that I remembered to try to go fast - not that I'll ever be one of the speediest runners, but I can go faster if I'm feeling more confident about my route.

Anyway, it was a fun race. I enjoy the excellent Flying Pig maps and the interesting terrain. Lots of mud is guaranteed here, and we had heavy rain for 18 hrs before the race. I was tempted to use snowshoes, since it's been so long since I've orienteered any other way!

Sid and I started close together, and ended up running from #3 to #4 together. In one of my sillier moves, I decided on principle to leave #4 in a different direction from Sid, since I knew we are close enough in ability that we could spend the whole race together, which wouldn't be interesting for either of us. This is one of the times when if I'd looked at my map more closely, I would have seen the nice trails and clearings leading to the next control - instead of bashing through tangled bush and a slick gully just because I wanted to be independent. Oh well... Sid and I had a good chuckle about it afterward.

I won my age category by 10 minutes (with Peggy, Barb and Kissy not here, amongst others), but only won 11 of 20 splits, which backs up my theory that I could use more racing practice! In most cases, I was within a few seconds, but there were two controls where my time was 50% higher than the best split. Oops. There wasn't any mystery - I knew I'd flubbed those ones! Oh well, it's all a great learning experience.

Sudden was the top GHO racer, finishing an impressive 4th in the WRE while suffering from a cold.



I think it's because he had the biggest cheering section. (And that doesn't even count his brother Per, visiting from Sweden.)



My travel companions were smiling at the finish line too. Bender looks happier about his race than he actually was. What do you think, folks - should he keep the beard for his wedding?



Meanwhile, Tiny got into the spirit by dressing up as Captain America.

We played a challenging game today called, "Find the Hampton Inn". The way you do it is by getting Bender to make hotel reservations, but leave the hotel info and confirmation number at home. Then, once you get to Ohio and it's only 1 hour till you need to go to the race starting line, you start phoning Hampton Inns at random (there's one at every freeway interchange, I think) until you are lucky enough to find one who has heard of Bender. Then you drive there as fast as you can, change clothes in 8 minutes and dash back to the race site. Adds some spice to your day!

Green- Short Pig - Splits

Because I totally ignored my 2007 New Year's training resolutions, I'm going to give myself a quarterly report card this year. I was sick for about 10 days in January, which might mess things up a bit, but here goes...

1) Strength training - min. 1 hr/week. Leg, core, upper body.
*** 11.25 hrs for 13 weeks. Not bad, given the sick time.
2) Improve training quality, including speed work.
*** Could do more of this, but am making progress. Leanimal and I have started hill intervals, and I've been doing some speed intervals on treadmill and bike trainer.
3) Improve technical orienteering skills.
*** I've done a lot of orienteering this winter, but not many races. I did some coaching, which is a good way to improve. Tomorrow I'm off to the Flying Pig, which will be my first major traditional orienteering competition since the 2006 North Am Champs.
4) 500 hrs total annual training
*** A little behind on this - down to 474 hrs for the past 12 months, largely because of the reduced number of adventure racing hrs. My sick time in January didn't help either. I need to get out for some long runs and bike rides when the snow melts.
5) Get weight down to target - and stay there.
*** I've lost about half the weight that I was trying to lose. Need to work harder to get rid of the rest of it.
6) Continue to schedule training at specific times - C3, arranging to meet other people, etc. This is the most reliable way to ensure that I get out on busy days.
*** This is going pretty well, and I'm always looking for new ideas here.

Yes, I skied in April. From our back door, even! This was actually two ski outings. I went out for 20 minutes in the morning with the pooches, and it was really tough because the snow was crusty and hard as a rock. Where there were footprints or melted bits, it was bumpy. But hey, it was skiing in April! I'd incorrectly assumed that it would be better early in the day when the temperature was lower, but I went out for another short loop in the afternoon when the snow was softer in above-freezing temperatures, and it was much better. In fact, I've left my skis leaning against the house in hopes of another short ski tomorrow morning before the Flying Pig.

I didn't feel like driving to Bolton today, but I'd left my shoes in the Wellness Centre changeroom yesterday during our evacuation due to a power outage. (My bad luck with electricity continued, as 'Bent and I had no power from dinnertime to bedtime. Earth Hour was easy for us because it happens in the country all the time!)

Anyway... I decided to do a Wellness Centre workout, since that would allow me to look for my shoes. That meant 15 minutes of preparation and half an hour of driving for the return trip. Unbelievably, there was yellow tape across the door, and it was still closed 26 hrs after the original power failure! Argggh.

So I came home and watched the Colbert Report on the trainer - picked up the pace during the commercials. (Boy, I never noticed how many there are!)

Warming up on the recumbent bike. I could see Slowrunner in the corner training a fit-looking young woman who was doing what looked like an "explosive power" workout.

I'm trying out the different things offered at the Wellness Centre, so I headed into a Pilates class today. I know a couple of people fitter than I am who have said that Pilates is a tough workout, so I can only assume that this was a beginner class that wasn't marked as such. Compared to our Thursday Hard Core and Yoga classes, it was a cakewalk - the only challenges were choreography-related, not fitness-related. Maybe it would have become tougher later in the class, but the power went out after 25 minutes, and we were asked to evacuate the Wellness Centre. I'm not sure I'll give it another try, unless I get a recommendation from someone for a particular class.

I ran into Luscious who was evacuating the Centre with Molly. We agreed that we should meet for some strength training before my 1-month membership is over.

Back at home, while watching The Daily Show. I meant to go longer, but I turned the speed up too high and accidentally pulled out the safety cord clipped to my shirt, which cancelled my program. It wasn't a good day for me and electricity! My show was just ending, and I was too bored to start the treadmill up again... I'd intended to go skiing today, but the wind is so strong and gusty that I wouldn't want to go into the forest, which means I would just ski back and forth in our yard. I'm hoping for one final ski tomorrow morning though!