Training Log Archive: Bash

Coach LD, Leanimal, 'Bent and I headed over to check out Mono Nordic in Orangeville. Nice little place! We're going to buy memberships, since they cost almost nothing, and I'd like to support the volunteers who run this community club. At first it was a high intensity workout as I chased Coach LD on her skate skis, with 'Bent running to keep up with her on his new waxless skis and Leanimal on nice waxless racing skis. I talked 'Bent into switching skis, and then *he* was the one who had to pole down hills, while I had to start herringboning up hills. He was nice enough to keep my slow skis, which gave him a great workout. Coach LD set us up with some no-poles drills where we made an effort to transfer our bounding skills to the snow. Fun!

And then the snowstorm started. Great big snowflakes the size of toonies. We're supposed to get up to 15 cm of wet snow with 50 kph winds, so the odds of a blackout in our rural area are high. We refreshed all our jugs of drinking water, turned the thermostat up a bit, brought in an extra load of firewood, showered, recharged our backup power unit, and ate snacks from the fridge (verboten once the power goes out).

Treadmill run at Boston pace. Boooring! I think this is my record longest treadmill run, since I usually find myself counting the seconds until I finally give up. I lasted a little longer this time because I was watching a movie that started out with trail runners in the credits - great! I clicked the "Info" button, and it said that the movie was about a wild animal attacking people on the Appalachian Trail. Given the bear and cougar sightings around here, I figured that ought to hold my interest. But the animal stalking people in this movie turned out to be - wait for it - a *tiger*. Lucky I wasn't planning to watch the whole thing.

Midday run on the snowy Humber Valley Trail with Slowrunner, Rocky and Leanimal. It was a nice easy pace, and in spite of feeling fatigued for the last couple of days, I felt good. I knew that the others were setting a manageable, chatty pace out of pity for my fatigue, but our running times were surprisingly good considering how easy it felt. Slowrunner carried on farther - only 4 months till her 50-miler!

Hard Core Live with Caron. A cruel amount of back work tonight.

Yoga class - 5 reps of a whole bunch of different pose changes. My bad knee keeps getting in the way of stretching other parts of my bad leg - the parts that probably need more stretching because of my bad knee. :-(

Feeling fatigued today, so I didn't run even though I'd planned to. I've had a higher-than-usual training volume over the past few weeks, I haven't been eating meals regularly, and I've always been bad about getting enough sleep.

Given that I've paid for plane tickets, hotel and rental car for next weekend's trip to Tucson, this is dumb. So... I'm making this commitment for the next 11 days until the marathon, and you are all invited to bug me about it, including 'Bent, who will have the best insight into how I'm doing:

1) In bed by 11:30 except for this Saturday, when we're having a party.
2) Three nutritious meals a day and lots of hydration in between
3) Limit training. It's too late to make much difference anyway.

Vetted the Thomass Sprint and Chase courses at Bronte Creek Park. Tiny has done a nice job of setting interesting courses! Boy, that park is stupid-expensive - $14 to get into a place that was a little spooky because it was nearly deserted and all the facilities were closed. Well, except for one conveniently placed "Jerry On The Job". I hyper-extended my knee in one of those fields with hummocks. I thought of Hammer's injury and swore loudly (no one to hear me, after all). Hope it doesn't turn into anything.

I've finally created a new category for Ski Bounding - it isn't like anything else. This was 'Bent's first night out with the Bounding Babes - KD, Rocky, Leanimal and Coach LD. It was a great session, and I think it will really help my pathetic skate skiing. 'Bent was feeling under the weather, but that didn't prevent him from getting ultra-competitive in the relay portion of the evening. We were doing well until Coach LD added a cartwheel to the mix, and after that, the only thing that kept our team in the competition was the fact that everyone was laughing so hard at 'Bent's cartwheel attempts that it was hard for them to run. Fun!

Thomass Kelso - not sure of the exact time, so I'll fix it when results are posted. Beautiful day with a nice amount of snow. MarkyMark had designed an interesting and challenging course, particularly long for the male elite runners (the course that Slice and Leanimal ran). I haven't orienteered enough this year, so I continue to feel rusty every time I go out. It's improving though, and there was really only one place where I wasted time - between E and G. I didn't make a mistake - just spent a little too much time thinking about how to tackle it. The last part of the course was a treat for trail runners, and I felt pretty good there. Just after #5, Mrs. GHOSlo told AdventureGirl! to join up with me. The two of us found the final two controls together, then she dusted me in the finish sprint. Congratulations to my 10-year-old friend for her first Thomass win and for sitting first overall in the series right now! I had to settle for 2nd, but I'll take it. Rocky was less than 3 minutes behind and will earn a lot of points - an impressive run on a day when most people found the course very challenging!

Snowy trail run at dawn with Slowrunner, 'Bent, GB, Vents, Boston Rob and Tina. We went from Coolihan's Sideroad north to 7th Sideroad and back, climbing and descending some really steep and slippery hills! You couldn't ask for more beautiful winter scenery - heavy snow draped on trees, brilliant sunrise and fantastic viewpoints over the landscape to the east. The company was excellent too. Unfortunately, it wasn't a good run for me, even though it had all the right elements to be fantastic. I woke up with the same headache that I'd had for 24 hrs, and I hadn't insulated my Camelbak because I wasn't expecting -13C, so I had no water (but I was carrying the weight of 2L in a Camelbak that was frozen shut). I ate some snow and refused offers to share water bottles because I've been fighting a cold. We often had to push branches aside, and a small piece of a wood flew into my throat (what are the odds?) and got jammed. It scratched for awhile (but it wasn't coming out), then I eventually swallowed it - ouch. The running went OK, but I was unable to keep up with two people who recently ran marathons a little slower than my Boston qualifying time. Maybe the 50/50 odds I've given myself are too optimistic.

Nice relaxed ski at Highlands Nordic with 'Bent and Knobless - first real ski of the season (not counting my 10-minute cruise around our property earlier this week). Mid-season conditions for most of the ski - beautiful, puffy snow on the trees and incredible blue-skied views down to Georgian Bay. Off-trail at the highest point, the snow was about 60-75 cm deep. We skied up the first hill with Sudden, who was just finishing up his day. (Or more accurately, he and 'Bent paced each other up the hill while Knobless and I chatted about the weather far behind them.) We also had a brief chat with Coach LD and Goose, and we ran into Susanne a number of times too. Great outing, and I think our bounding sessions were helpful!

Rest day - ahh.

I'm not sure what the weather is like elsewhere, but here's what our snow looked like as of yesterday. You need knee-high boots if you want dry feet.


And here's the mega-branch that fell off our 150-year-old tree. Before moving to this place, I never owned a tree that was as big as this branch! Glad we were indoors when it happened.

I wasn't feeling zippy today, but Slowrunner patiently put up with me. Even worse, I was the one who suggested that we run around the red trail in Palgrave East. It was a tough day for running anyway, because the snow is loose and 15-20 cm deep. It became even tougher when we saw how many trees are down - or partially down - across trails. We did a lot of ducking as we ran (good core work), and got really good at shoving aside ice laden cedars. The piece de resistance was a section we labelled "army training" where we had to wriggle on our stomachs for 6 meters through a tunnel under a pile of collapsed branches, then we stood up and picked our way across a sea of fallen logs at different heights and angles. (Ironically, I didn't log the logs!) Quite a workout, and it was so hilarious that I actually felt more energetic at the end of our run than when it started. On Saturday, it's Slowrunner's turn to pick the route!

I cooled down from my run on XC skis with ThunderDog leaping around the yard. She is a Bounding Babe! It was fun to be out on skis for the first time this year, but the snow was really sticky. I think it will be skate-ski weather this weekend.

Hard Core with Caron. My bad knee doesn't let me do side plank on the right side, but otherwise I was ready for what she threw at us tonight!

The theme of tonight's class was opening up the shoulders. There were some good balancing sections and some great quad/hammy stretches too. Nice to see 'Bent back in action after several weeks off. Except for some waggling around during the balance poses, he did very well.

Yesterday's Black Feather newsletter promoted a small selection of paddling jewellery that might appeal to some APers who are Christmas shopping. (Yoo hoo, 'Bent?)
http://files.e2ma.net/2238/assets/docs/gifts_2008....

2nd time running with my iPod - this time in a snowstorm on the rail trail, doing an out-and-back from Gore Rd to Brawton Dr in Palgrave. I find the wires distracting, but the music does help. This was a tempo run effort, but there was so much snow on parts of the rail trail that I couldn't always get traction. So the speed wasn't quite as fast as last week's tempo run, but I'm not worried as I'm anticipating much less snow in Arizona!

I tested my new, improved marathon playlist, and all the tunes were appropriately inspiring.

Song that inspired the fastest pace today:
"Rock This Town" by the Stray Cats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHNuY-nptGo

Song least likely to be on anyone else's iPod in Tucson:
"Plenty of Hornpipe" by Stan Rogers
It didn't even make it to YouTube, so I'll post Stan's "White Coller Hollar" instead for those of you who are desk jockeys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzXWt0Tijbw

We have power! It was off for exactly 48 hrs and will probably end up costing us about the same as a high-end mountain bike, but at least we have heat, light, running water and electronics again. Woo hoo!

Ran in the snow in Palgrave West. This was supposed to be longer, but I came home after the same nasty abdominal pain that woke me last night flared up as soon as I started running. Bummer. The good news is that the rest of my body felt fresh and eager to run, so apparently I didn't totally toast myself with Sunday's 4-hr run. Well, not unless that's what caused my pain. I'm wondering about food poisoning, since our fridge didn't stay as cold as usual when our power was out for 2 days. Boo hiss.

Ran to and from the Bolton Bounding Hill with Coach LD, Slice, Leanimal, Rocky and KD.

Bounding training with Coach LD - great stuff! Fun to have Rocky and Slice join us for their first bounding session. There were some different and difficult exercises tonight including uphill cartwheels and bear walking. During the relay race portion of the evening, I had to piggyback Leanimal a short distance uphill. It worked great in our practice, but in the race, I was so bagged by the time I got to that part that I took 3 steps and my leg muscles gave out. Fortunately, I hurled her toward the correct tree as I collapsed.

Rest day while waiting for electricity to be restored. Hopefully. Some day. I'm keeping two wood stoves burning and occasionally turning on the generator to cool the fridge and charge my computer. Once a day we can splurge and run the generator to power the well pump, which allows us to fill our water containers and, ahem, flush the toilets.

I'm a little stiff with a sore glute from yesterday's run, but not too bad, considering how exhausted I was climbing the Grange hill. (But who in Caledon has NOT been exhausted climbing the Grange hill?)

Quote of the day came from 'Bent, the 3:18 marathoner. About 2 km into our 32 km run, I mentioned (gasped, more accurately) that when a long run is at the proper pace, you should be able to maintain a normal conversation. 'Bent cheerfully answered that he was able to talk just fine. Grrr.

Reading a Nutrition Action Newsletter a few days ago, I discovered that I'm probably not getting enough protein on most days - surprise! I guess the last time I did that calculation, I was still commuting to Toronto, so on most days I wasn't eating the same food as 'Bent, who is mostly vegetarian. He's in the habit of making up for it by drinking lots of soy milk, eating more tofu, etc. So I went out on Friday and loaded up on carnivorous goodies - roasted chicken, smoked salmon, two kinds of yoghurt, skim milk, chocolate milk, etc.

And on Saturday, my fridge turned off... :-( I've only had to throw out the meat and fish so far.

Today had been planned for awhile to be my longest run before the marathon 3 weeks away. There were some hurdles to be cleared first...

1) Big snowstorm. Power went out at 8:30 p.m. last night. Couldn't fill my Camelbak for the run because we lose our well pump when the power goes out - oh well.
2) Power was still out this morning.
3) Neighbour drove over to inform us that a hydro pole and wire was down on our property, i.e. on the wire that leads from the main line to our house.
4) Phoned Hydro's robot phone system and answered "yes" when they asked whether we could see any equipment damage. Was funnelled to a special emergency operator with ONLY a 2-hr wait - woo hoo!
5) Hung up.
6) The robot had mentioned that if you see a wire down, you should call police. Turns out the police have a different phone number for Hydro. Two police cars and a Hydro truck were at our place within 15 minutes.
7) Hydro doesn't fix poles and wires on private property. All they could do was cut us off from the rest of the neighbourhood (who didn't have power either.)
8) Noticed that a huge branch - about a foot in diameter - had fallen from my favourite ancient white pine tree in our yard. Boo.
9) Phoned a power line contractor who said he would come tomorrow and get the job started, but there were a couple of other parties who would need to be involved. At least another couple of days until we get power, most likely. Boo.
10) Aaack - today is supposed to be my long run. Couldn't leave the dogs in a house without heat where weird things eventually happen when power is off, e.g. security system starts beeping at some point. Called the doggie day care place for an emergency play date.
11) 'Bent and I went to Belfountain - finally!

We ran a loop from The Shed Coffee Bar. Bruce Trail most of the way to Olde Baseline Rd, then rail trail to Heritage Rd, then Bruce Trail back to Belfountain. There was a lot of snow on the north part of the route, and the trails were slippery and rocky whether there was snow or not. About 40% of the distance was road or rail trail, so we did have some good sections of steady (but easy) running. On the way back, there were 3 steep escarpment climbs that I walked. Feel pretty good now, but the power is still out!

Felt like an hour, stoopid treadmill! Just wanted to do some running today, since I'm taking a rest day tomorrow before doing my longest pre-marathon run. I'd used up the last bit of daylight taking the pooches for a hike in the woods. They had such a great time that it was worth the trade-off of having to use the treadmill. (No night trail running for me for the next few weeks to avoid ankle injuries.)

Nice to be back on the trails with Slowrunner, who can kick my butt even with a gimpy ankle! Weather was grey and damp, but temperature was surprisingly warm once we got going. We ran the Bruce Trail from Duffy's Lane to Centreville Creek and back. I ran from home to the starting point, then ducked out at Finnerty on the return trip. Managed to keep chatting the whole time - except when Slowrunner kicked up a piece of mud that shot into my mouth and hit the back of my throat, causing a coughing attack. (I hope it wasn't actually horse poop!) Felt pretty good today, although not as zippy as yesterday.

Tough core workout today! At one point, I just *had* to say loudly, "8 more..." to convince Caron to let us off the hook. Fellow class members thanked me.

This wasn't as tough as last week - luckily! Most of tonight's routines started with a nice forward bend followed by downward dog, then we went off in all directions from there. I coddled my bad knee, which meant major cheating on a couple of things.

Another milestone - my first run with an iPod! I didn't want to run with it on a road, and I didn't want to miss hearing the birds and bears in the forest, so I ran on the rail trail from Duffy's Lane to just past Hwy 9 and back again.

This was a test for the marathon, and I was bristling with electronics - headphones, iPod and GPS. It was just a single experiment, but I think it worked. It's the first training run I've done where the average pace was better than my Boston qualifying pace, and that included some road crossings where I had to slow down or stop briefly. I don't do much running on flat surfaces like road or rail trail, so it's not a totally fair comparison, but it still felt pretty quick for me.

I thought that the purpose of the iPod would be to get me running in time to music with a fast beat. I'm told that there are web sites where you can get music with a beat that matches a particular running cadence. But for me, I think the biggest advantage was not being able to hear my breathing. Between songs, I'd hear myself puffing away, and my body instinctively reacted to that sound by feeling tired. When the music was playing, it mostly just mattered that I liked the song - the beat didn't have to match my cadence.

Song that achieved the highest running speed:
"Old Time Rock and Roll"

Song that made me laugh - and will make me laugh in the marathon too.
"I Want to Ride My Bicycle" by Queen

Continuing the good work that Leanimal has started on my knee

I was going to run this afternoon, but I had an unexpected, long conversation with a young friend who lost his wife recently and is now a single Dad of small children. Some things are more important than training.

Event: Salomon Raid the Hammer 25K Adventure Run
 

Salomon Raid The Hammer with 'Bent and Hingo. This is the same team that we started with in 2002, and now that Hingo is too busy for adventure racing, our adventure runs always feel like a Tree Hugger reunion! In fact, SRTH is a reunion with all kinds of people in the adventure community. This year the race sold out with close to 300 people there - many of them familiar faces.

The day started with a 4:30 a.m. alarm, then we made 5 stops to pick up other Caledon friends who were heading to Hamilton. 'Bent was thrilled, since a 7-person carpool makes him feel less guilty for owning a van.

After years of threats and hints from race directors, the event actually (a) involved school buses, and (b) started at Borer's Falls! Who'd have thunk it?

As always, today's race course was scenic and loads of fun with a variety of navigational challenges and surprises to keep us focused. It was physically tough with more than 1000 meters of climb, but I don't think that explains how awful I felt for a couple of hours in the middle - light-headed and almost sleepy. Picking my way across some rocky sections was difficult and unnerving because I had trouble with balance. I don't know if I hadn't had enough breakfast, or maybe I was dehydrated. After that, I drank a lot and ate as much as I could. It didn't help that I tweaked my knee Thursday, so I was being extremely cautious in the terrain. 'Bent and Hingo were moving pretty quickly while I kept an eye on the maps, so maybe I just tried too hard to keep up early on. Dunno. By the end of the race, I had enough energy to run up the last steep hill, so hopefully there is a simple way to prevent it happening again.

Considering how rusty we all are with our navigation, things went pretty well. The only memorable mistake was when we lost about 5 minutes at the start of the advanced section due to a communication problem. (What I'd *actually* said was "Go north, young man.") But things went smoothly for us in the final section otherwise, and we passed 8 teams between #17 and the finish.

We ended up with a male team on the final hill to the Ancaster Community Centre, and it turned into a dash up the steep hill and across the field to the finish line. They won the race by 6 seconds BUT it turns out that we were 2nd Masters, and there were 3 Masters teams within 90 seconds behind us, so it's a good thing we were running! (In spite of being 2nd, this was one of only 2 splits we won in the Masters category out of 19 splits, which certainly shows that speed is not my forte!)

The 1st place Masters team, repeating from the Salomon Giant's Rib Raid, got us by 19 minutes, so there was not much hope of taking the win. We were 17th of 74 teams overall - not as good as in some years, but the level of competition was super-high, so I'll take it! As usual, we moved up 15 positions after the first 2 hrs. If only if we'd had another 10 hrs of racing! ;-)

Speaking of winning, Slice won her 4th adventure run of the year, including 3 overall victories. In the spring, she was on the first-ever coed team to win an adventure run (Salomon Giant's Rib Raid). In the summer, she and Leanimal were the first female team to win an adventure run overall (Navstock Raid), and now Slice won with a Coed team again - having hooked up with two different guys this time. I just gotta say... WOW!!

Excellent day, and a great crowd of friendly volunteers. Thanks to all!

Hiked around Forks of the Credit on the Bruce Trail with 'Bent, Nikki and Peter, and their friends Carol and Ken. There's some good climb in the Belfountain area! Possibly not the best thing to do a few hours before Salomon Raid The Hammer, but it was a nice afternoon. (Logged 75%)

Hey, this sounds like Zoolander's kind of thing. He knows the territory, and it would be better than working for an oil company, right?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM...

I'm famous! (Actually, I WAS famous. This was published a couple of weeks ago when our local newspaper's web site was being renovated.)
http://mycaledon.ca/caledon/lifestyle/article/5882...

Coached run with C3 - warm-up, drills and around-the-block intervals at 70%. A little girl in the group totally kicked my butt!

Hard Core - classic. Back to the DVD exercises for a few sets, and they were just as hard as the new stuff we've been doing. Need to get back to Hard Core Mondays.

Tough yoga class. The theme was doing 10 repetitions of the same position change - and there were lots of different position changes, most of which required a fair bit of strength. Many whimpers were heard around the room.

Thanks to our American friends, it looks like this program can be put on ice for awhile.... :-)
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid98...

Breathe Magazine came out this week. It features PhattyJR talking about his magical Rohloff hubs, mountain biker Chico's recipe for turkey tacos, and my article on the Coast Raid which mentions Tiny, Pixie, 'Bent, Phatty, Leanimal, PhattyJR and STORM. Looks like it's only available in hard copy, but here's this month's editorial.
http://www.breathemag.ca/wp/?p=71

My father turned 75 today. Four years ago this week, he was diagnosed with a rare, incurable cancer. If you took the statistics to heart, it didn't look good. Today he went golfing, had birthday lunch and birthday dinner with different friends, and probably spent time at the office too, as he does every day. He's stayed very active in the community, joined some new boards of directors since his diagnosis, and was recently elected chair of one. He and Mom just returned from a vacation in Europe. It hasn't all been a bed of roses - not by any means - but he has chosen to live fully instead of worrying about dying. And so far, so good. As an engineer and computer geek, I tend to obsess about numbers and probabilities - I'm not sure I could approach cancer by more or less ignoring its existence between medical appointments. But it sure has worked well for him - there's definitely a life lesson in this. Happy birthday, Dad!

Warm-up and cooldown for Edelweiss Park intervals with Leanimal. The temperature went close to 20C today! The worst part was that the warm weather woke up clouds of little bugs that just hung in the air around face level. As we were running in the park, we had to be careful not to inhale them or get them in our eyes (too much).

1-2-3-4-3-2-1 pyramid intervals in the park. Tough on a hot, buggy day - but if it feels that bad, it must be good.

Run to Humberlea hill and back with Coach LD, Leanimal and Kynyn.

Bounding - not really sure how to classify this, so I'll call it "strength" for now. Coach LD and Kynyn showed the ropes to Leanimal and me - lots of different exercises as we went up and down a slope. My bad knee doesn't like the lateral stress of skate ski bounding very much, but everything else felt pretty good. Fun! It'll be interesting to see what hurts tomorrow.

To and from the village of Palgrave. It motivates me to have a destination when I'm running, and the post office fits the bill. Literally.

Felt pretty good, although I'm one of the few people who liked it better last week when it was cold. I should learn to love it though, since it could get quite warm in Tucson for the marathon.

Note to self: The clocks changed. Either run earlier or run in the dark.

Long sort-of-slow distance run with 'Bent, Rocky, Leanimal and Hingo for the full run to Hwy 9 (almost) and back, and with Phatty & Crash for the first part to Coolihan's. Brilliant sunshine, nice cool temperature, beautiful trails and great company. Thanks to my friends - including the absent, much-missed Slowrunner - for your support in running more slowly than you want to as I train (kind of, a little bit) for my first marathon.

Forerunner Statistics are below. For reference, I need to do a 5:40 pace on pavement to qualify for Boston. LSD training should be slower than that, and this was on trail, so the pace looks OK (maybe even a little high). However... I haven't done any longer runs than this in the past couple of months, which isn't so good. It'll be about 25K next weekend in Salomon Raid The Hammer, then I'll need to do 30K the weekend after that, but that's probably as long as I'll run before the marathon and it's not as long as the training programs recommend.

Oh well, look how well 'Bent and Goose did with no training. I'm sure I'll sail on through just like they did (NOT).

Lap# Distance (km) Pace (Min/km)

Overall: 21.35 km 2:20:52 6:36

1 - Home to Gore - 2.66 5:55
2 - Along Gore + trail to Centreville Creek - 2.10 6:22
3 - Along Centreville + trail to BT junction - 2.32 7:02
4 - BT Junction to Coolihan's - 0.625 7:04
5 - Coolihan's to last trail bend before Hwy 9 - 3.06 6:46
6 - Hwy 9ish to Coolihan's - 3.01 - 7:05
7 - Coolihan's to BT Junction - .622 6:58
8 - BT Junction to Centreville Creek and along road - 2.31 6:36
9 - Centreville Creek to Gore and along road - 2.04 6:18
10 - Gore to Humber Station and home up driveway - 2.60 6:18

Should probably drop a few pounds over the next month, so I started by eating the rest of the yummy chocolate pizza that Rocky and Slowrunner gave me. It was tough to finish it so quickly, but it was my duty to reduce the amount of chocolate temptation in the house. ;-)