Training Log Archive: Bash

Leg strength routine. This was the first time that it hurt my knee to do it. What the heck did I do to myself yesterday? :-((

Trail run at Glen Haffy with Bent and BulletDog - final long run before Raid The Hammer. Other than the Wine Classic, this was my only long run in the past couple of months - and it didn't even end up being very long because my knee became quite painful after the first hour. [Expletive deleted!] This was possibly the result of my new super-bionic knee brace, or perhaps the smaller arch support I'd added to my lighter weight Salomon shoes. Or maybe it's because I went biking yesterday. Or because I'm a week older than I was at the Wine Classic. Too many variables to know which one to blame.

The other problem was that I was utterly without energy today. I'd love to know... where does it come from? Where does it go? How do I get it back? On Thursday I was flying (by my standards), and today I felt like I was dragging a sack of bricks up every hill. I'm not that good at morning training, so there is probably something to be learned about appropriate timing of a breakfast including specific foods and drinks. A lot of races start in the morning, so it would be worth figuring out what my body wants at that time of day. I'd be much more successful if all races started at 5 p.m.

Other than those problems, it was a wonderful autumn day with cool sunshine and brilliant yellow leaves covering the trees and the trails. Even though I didn't feel 100%, I wouldn't have wanted to do anything different today. :-)

Today was a rare, sunny, gorgeous autumn day - perfect for biking. Foolishly, Bent and I spent until 3 p.m. trapped in the basement, cleaning out our grimy outdoor gear storage room. Then we made a break for it and rode mostly on trails to Caledon East to do some shopping. Bent really flies on his new recumbent bike! I tried to take it easy because pedalling is not a happy motion for my "warranty expired" kneecap cartilage. I won't be racing on a bike until late January, so this is a good time to stick to light base training for cycling.

Leg strength routine

Running with Bent, BulletDog and ThunderDog (for the first loop) in Palgrave West. Bent pushed me up to a good pace, and I ran up all the hills. Woo hoo! The autumn forest is bee-yoo-ti-full. I wore my Adidas gear in honour of Team Adidas Canada, our friends and sponsors, who finished 3rd in Beast of the East this morning. Good for them!

Trail run around Palgrave West. I've been feeling "creaky" since running 13 km on Sunday, so didn't expect a good run today. But as soon as I got out there, I felt energetic, so I decided to do my time trial loop. I set a new PB by running up every single hill! :-) I tested out the combination of a bulkier knee brace and a less bulky arch support. I am turning into the Bionic Woman - except that the new parts don't make me "better than I was".

Leg strength training routine - with considerable "assistance" from two 70-lb Lab Retrievers who love it when a human lies on the floor.

Oooh, my ankle hurts after turning it in yesterday's race.

On the bright side, I am pleased to report that I have finally removed all the burrs from all the clothing that I wore on Day 2 at the Ontario Champs. (It took about 3 hours of TV watching over a week.) Unfortunately, yesterday's race at Bronte Creek gave me a whole new batch of clothing to de-burr.

Wine Sprint at Bronte Creek Park. It was a chilly, damp day to be outside, but it was a great day of orienteering nonetheless. The sprint was our first chance to check out the brand new map of the area, and it is really interesting. Not a lot of forested area or big contours, but really detailed vegetation mapping. It should be mandatory for all intermediate orienteers to come to Bronte Creek and practise navigating using vegetation almost exclusively. It was interesting for me because I know I could learn to rely on vegetation more than I do.

Oh yes, the sprint. Well, I had one of my "where's the start triangle?" idiot-moments, so I dallied awhile at the beginning. After that, things went fairly smoothly, with the exception of #10 where I was shrewdly looking around the northeast thicket, proud of my recent memorization of most IOF symbols - except I didn't refer back to the map, so I had the wrong two thickets.

I'm not sure if I should even call this race a level 4, because I took it easy to protect my knee for the longer race. Just as well - there were some great places to get injured in those rough open fields. The women's category was small, but I did win the bottle of wine, and just made it into the top 50% of the field overall. Fantastic race by Sudden, who did the Sprint in just over half the time that I took. Wow.

Wine Classic 10 km Race. I got chilled after the Sprint, then was over-dressed for the next race. Like the Sprint, this was a course where reading the vegetation was really important. Mostly my race went well, with a few minor bobbles and a time-consuming error at #5, where I somehow convinced myself that a tiny blob of dark green on the map was really blue. I found a dry marsh that could be my "pond", but since the dark green blob on the map was actually the thicket I was looking for, much confusion ensued and time was wasted. (I didn't figure this out until after the race.)

A highlight was crossing the river 4 times (following mandatory routes to avoid out-of-bounds), sometimes getting in over my knees in cold water. Yikes, no wonder it took so many hours afterward to stop feeling chilled.

This is the most abuse I've put my body through in the past month, and I was limping a bit after the race when I removed the knee brace and changed to regular shoes. The arch support that holds my knee in the right position has the unfortunate side effect of holding my ankle and hip in an unaccustomed position, and I felt the discomfort more in the longer race. It didn't help that I had a really crunchy ankle turn just before #9. I paused briefly, wondering if my race was done, but luckily, my ankle forgave me this time. It's a bit annoyed now, though.

To finish on a cheerful note, I won the bottle of wine for the Female Masters category, but I'm even more excited to have been only 1:38 away from being the top woman overall! This longer race length is a good fit for me - if I can just keep holding my leg together with paper clips for a few more years.

I'm really proud of Bent, who beat me by almost half an hour, and just missed winning the Men's Masters category. Bob Miller won the event overall in spite of doing no speed training or specific O training. Imagine if he did train!

Event: Beat Hunger Adventure Challenge
 

Volunteered at CP5 in the Beat Hunger Adventure Challenge. We raised $11,000 (including government matching funds) for the Pakistan earthquake. Lots of fun - especially watching the Tree Huggers (led by Bent) win by 45 minutes in a 3-hour race!

Leg strength routine with K/O. I've got a real smorgasbord of exercisese available now, so there will be no chance of getting bored as I work toward making my knee happier. The progression of some of these exercises gets really amusing, as I need to balance one leg on the exercise ball or wobble board, frequently leading the maneuver to a calamitous conclusion - and much excitement for the dogs.

I frequently complain about being a slow runner, but the only time I ever try to run fast is in an orienteering finish chute. (It's my only possible chance to win a split against Sudden, Griz or Hammer.) Since my knee started to crumble, I haven't been doing intervals or long runs, and I feel even slower than usual. So today I tried to run uncomfortably fast for a sprint distance with a few good hills, just to see how it would go. My knee hurt briefly near the start, but mostly it was a mental exercise because my brain kept telling my body, "Don't be ridiculous - slow down!" I made it, but not without wondering if I was going to keel over in our driveway at the end! I'm definitely a slow twitch kind of gal.

Back to Glen Haffy with Bulletdog to do a course that I'd made up by choosing some controls from Courses 5, 6 and 8 in the Ont Champs. We rarely take our dogs along when we're navigating, and today I realized why. After 10 minutes in the woods, as BulletDog and I stood in the cold autumn rain, both of us picking at the several square meters of tiny burrs plastered to our bodies, it occurred to me that it's probably animal abuse to force my pets to orienteer!

Today was not about speed - it was a "back to basics" day. I was trying to read the map and terrain in more detail, read while running, keep my head up and look around farther, and be consistent about how I hold and orient the map. My route took me into areas with some nasty vegetation, but otherwise it was a fun outing. I will be picking burrs out of my clothing for days.

Spent several hours in Palgrave (but I won't count them all), trekking and picking up the final adventure race CPs. It was an unusually social event. Gorgeous is off work celebrating her 40th birthday, so she joined me, along with Bulletdog, Yoli and Sammy. Then Crash came running along the trail with Fuzzy and Pickles, and the birthday party got into full swing.

The wind gusts were insane by the end of our walk. We'll have lots of branches to clear from the trails this weekend. We have no hydro right now, so some tree must have fallen on the wires. Must turn off the laptop now!

Leg strength exercises

Fast trek in the Palgrave woods with a highly exuberant BulletDog. She and I both love this time of year when the colours are stunning, the air is brisk, and the views are just starting to re-appear as the leaves begin falling. Picked up a few CPs from Saturday's adventure race. The wind was so gusty that I didn't want to stay out too long and risk finding out what happens when a tree falls in the forest.

Leg strength exercises. I didn't do nearly enough of these today, but I had to get to the city for an amazing evening featuring singers Andrea Bocelli and Hayley Westenra, and figure skaters including Kurt Browning, Elvis Stojko and Sale & Pelletier.

At last... I've finally got some culture in my training log. Not enough to begin to rival Jon T, but it's a start.

Discouraged that my knee hurt almost immediately today, even with brace and arch support. Not much else I can do for it.

Ran the Palgrave trek section from Saturday's ARC race. Made a huge 10+ minute error on the 2nd control and nearly gave up and started collecting CP signs instead, which I've agreed to do. Then I took a deep breath and gave it one last try and walked straight through the tangled, chest-deep weeds (and a final bit of scratchy cedar forest) to the CP. I was happy with my speed today, and only made that one nav error. However, since Palgrave is practically my back yard, that's not particularly impressive. Too bad, I'd hoped to give Bent a run for his money! (His time was 58 min.) (And Hammer was 40 min, but who's counting?)

Biking at Albion Hills, including picking up CPs from yesterday's adventure race. The course setter had warned me that the Conservation Authority trail map he'd been given wasn't much good. The first CP was frustrating, but helped us understand which map features were reliable (the existence and intersections of red/blue/yellow trails and roads) and which ones were not (scale, trail direction, extra trails). After that, it was straightforward and we enjoyed a nice ride in the autumn leaves. It doesn't get much prettier around here than it is right now!

A second attempt at my Day 2 course from the Ontario Champs - the one where I got off to such a rotten start. This time I had a much better strategy - I took Hammer along to offer feedback on my route choices and provide a wide variety of tips along the way. Very helpful and lots of fun for me - although probably not much of a workout for Hammer. Bent came along too and practised his nav for next Saturday's Beat Hunger adventure race. He'll be the Tree Huggers' primary navigator for the first time ever, and I will be a volunteer and rest my knee for the Wine Classic the following day.

Just a few of the many things I should work on:
- Rotate my body to get oriented, not my arm and the map.
- Look around and see more of the woods. I'm focusing too close and missing important information, e.g. easier ways through the woods, contours that would tell me exactly where I am (or where I am NOT), etc.
- Fold map along line of travel.
- Use handrail that leads into checkpoint, if one exists.
- Work on precision map reading.
- When crossing trail or creek, turn body briefly and take bearing.
- Look more closely for vegetation boundaries on map and in terrain.
- Get my compass fixed so that it rotates like it used to!!

Did a 3-4 km hike this morning without knee brace or arch support, and was limping by the end. Went grocery shopping and gimped around the store. Even sitting in the car, my knee hurt a LOT at the exact spot where the meniscus is torn. Mope, mope, mope. I thought I'd have to skip orienteering today, but actually I felt great out there with proper shoes and the brace on - and plenty of caution about where I put my feet. I guess I'll have to be more careful in non-athletic activities too.

Leg strength work. K/O came over to make sure that my form is correct and suggest ways to "up the ante" on a couple of exercises that are starting to seem too easy. In light of my MRI results, we're adding even more adductor work. I am motivated!!

The sun just popped out for the first time in days, and I'm keen to go running - but I've got some orienteering planned for the weekend, and it's probably better to give my knee one more day of rest.

I am continuing my quest for a web site that will tell me that running on a torn meniscus is a good idea...

Leg strength exercises - still plugging away to make things easier on my knee.

Got results from my knee MRI today. It's a good news / bad news report. On the bright side, my stretched ACL is mild enough that it can't be seen on the MRI. The bad news is that I have a torn meniscus and chondromalacia, a rubbing between kneecap and femur that wears away the cartilage. Bottom line is that it doesn't look good for those long Rockies backpacking trips in my golden years. :-(

So far I have found two web sites that say I shouldn't run, and one web site that says I shouldn't walk unless necessary. So I am broadening my search criteria until I find some quack doctor somewhere who will say that long distance running in the woods is the best thing for me.

Crap. :-(((((((

Next step is to see a sports injury doc and get advice on any sports restrictions, whether surgery might help, etc. Until then, I'm going to keep on running - and reading medical literature.

Lower body strength exercises - new routine from K/O. This is lots of work, but I'll try to time it so I can watch the news, and maybe that'll keep me exercising on alternate days, like I'm supposed to. (Yes, I know it's been 4 days since the first time. I'm off to an unimpressive start.)

After 3 days of running in the woods, I'm still able to walk. However, I was less careful yesterday, and my knee was slightly crunchy-painful for the first minute after I got up this morning. Considering what I did to it, I think I got off lightly. I get the MRI report tomorrow. Fingers are tightly crossed that things look reasonably OK.

Thanksgiving O-Cross at Palgrave Conservation Area.

Damp, grey weather, but it was fun to race on home turf. Today's competition had Long, Middle and Short courses. I did the Middle length, which was 3 very similar loops north of the Palgrave pond. We would often see controls for different loops close to the correct control. (Good practice for Micro-O!) After the first loop, it was more of an exercise in trying to find the fastest route between two known points, then there would be some more finely-tuned nav close to the destination. All this emphasis on speed made it obvious that I am *really* out of shape. I was huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf. Even with all the repetition between loops, my biggest mistake was on the final loop. Leaving a control, I didn't bother glancing at my compass, because I knew in my gut that the trail (which I had just left) was "50 meters down there". I was actually going parallel to the trail and ended up tangled in some nasty stuff at the end of a marsh, well below the trail. Oops. Always take a second and look at the compass, Doofus!

With my confidence increasing after the last couple of days, I was less gentle on my knee today, and a slight medial ligament pain is telling me that I didn't successfully keep things aligned - but it's really not bad. My highlight of the day was talking with JD from Quebec, who had a huge knee brace. His ACL is almost completely torn, and after strengthening his muscles enough, he's able to do all kinds of sports, including ultrarunning. He only wears the knee brace for orienteering. Hearing that was absolutely awesome.

Ontario Orienteering Championship - Part 2 of the Long Event

I had a great first 60 seconds in today's race. Found the start triangle right away (unusual for me!) and started running in the right direction. But then things went horribly wrong for awhile, and it took me almost 25 minutes to do the first 3 controls of a 12-control course that I was trying to finish in 50 minutes. By then, I was with people I knew had started behind me, and worse - they looked clean and relatively burr-free.

On #1, I got sucked down the wrong re-entrant on a steep hill. It even had a control in it, but luckily I noticed that it wasn't mine. On #2, I just must have picked a bad route. I haven't had time to look at the map to see what the other options were, but clearly my route sucked. On #3, upon discussing it with another competitor afterward, we think there was a trail mapping issue, but at the time, I just assumed that I was continuing my trend of being a complete idiot today, and wondered if I would ever again have that nice feeling of running straight to a control and finding it exactly where I expected. Actually, that is how the rest of the race went, but unfortunately I will mostly remember this race for my very bad start!

There is always a silver lining - and in my case, it's that I was able to run (OK, sometimes I walked) for 65 minutes through the woods! The terrain was nastier today, and I was less able to protect my bad knee. I twisted the ankle once and I even had a face plant - but I didn't go gimpy after that. When I got home and took off the knee brace, it still felt loose and bizarre, but I'm excited that I seem able to run short distances. This is a big improvement from a month ago!

Oh yes, and there's another silver lining that I almost forgot to mention. While I was out there having a tough time, I guess that some other people were too. Somehow I managed to hang on and win the Ontario Orienteering Champs for my age group. Nice medal and a yummy pie delivered personally to my home through the kindness of Etoile, Hammer and Adventure Girl. (I had to make a post-race dash to host our family Thanksgiving.)

Event: Ontario Championships
 

Ontario Orienteering Champs - Part 1 of the Long event.

I am SO HAPPY!!!! Not because I did all that well, although I did OK. (I am leading my category, but only by 1:06, so I'll need to be sharper tomorrow.) I am happy because my main issue today was a lack of fitness from not running recently. This realization suddenly hit me about 35 minutes in, and I was thrilled. Yahoo, I'm not running along thinking about my knee hurting - I'm thinking about my lungs hurting. And that's something I can work on.

My nav was reasonably good, if a bit rough around the edges (overrunning a couple of controls and having to run back 60-80 m). Having orienteered less than half an hour since July, it's reasonable to assume that a bit of practice could improve things there too.

I did need to run differently because of my loose knee. I had to place my right foot down deliberately for each step, keeping my knee bent and with complete certainty that I wasn't going to twist an ankle on a rock or in a hole. Eugene said that I looked a lot slower than he remembered when we met on the course. The other thing that was different was that I couldn't read ahead on the map at all, unless I happened to be running on a road. I had to watch my footing too carefully, so I headed off from each control in the direction marked on the map, but I didn't actually look at where the next control was until I had travelled 20 m or so.

YAY! If I can do this - and if I can hike on trails with a full backpack - that is enough to ask. (Assuming that the doctor agrees to these activities when I get my MRI results next week.) If it turns out that I have to give up longer running events, I guess I can deal with that, as long as I can still get out in the woods and do something.

:-)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Ontario Orienteering Champs - Sprint.

Fun course on a beautiful day, with several non-obvious route choices along the way. Winning female time was 14-something, so I'm happy with my result. Sprinting will never be my strong point!

Lower body strength training - aiming to stabilize my loose knee. Personal trainer K/O has worked with my chiropractor to come up with a challenging set of exercises that I can mix and match to avoid boredom. The goal is 20 minutes on alternate days. I am mentioning this in a public forum along with an invitation to hurl well-meaning abuse if I slack off. (Similar to the caring, considerate way in which I keep pointing out that Hammer's weight isn't decreasing.)

Trail run around Palgrave West with BulletDog, who found a huge mud puddle and wallowed in it - yuck. The strength exercises I did earlier had almost immediately produced the usual twinge on the inner edge of the kneecap. The run didn't seem to make things any worse. Things felt pretty good, actually - a bit of bounce and reasonably good cardio, considering how little aerobic exercise I've been getting. Working on muscle strength seems to be helping.

Tomorrow is the first day of the Ontario O Champs, just down the road from our place. Many months ago, when I heard that it would be in our neighbourhood, I'd thought that it would be pretty cool to be in peak condition and use this as the first step to performing well at next year's COCs and NAOCs, both of which are within a 2-hour drive. As it turns out, I don't think I could be more poorly prepared. I've done about 2 hours of slow running in the past four weeks. I've looked at an O map exactly once since the COCs in mid-July - and that was for a sprint race in a city park. I've had mild food poisoning for a week, which has left me svelte, but quite dehydrated. Oh yes, and there's that stooopid knee injury. Here's hoping I don't embarrass myself too much!!

After phoning many places, the earliest date for an MRI on my knee in Ontario would still be two months away. So... today I crossed the border to Buffalo, where you can get an MRI in 2-3 days with a Visa card. It felt faintly unpatriotic until it occurred to me that I had already paid for having an MRI in Ontario, and it was hardly disloyal to pay for a service and then NOT use it. (I recently spent 3 years consulting to the Ministry of Health, so I feel somewhat attached to our healthcare system.) Now I have a CD with scads of scary images of the inside of my knee sliced in every conceivable direction, and I await the radiologist report which should be more understandable.

Trail run around Palgrave West with BulletDog on a warm and annoyingly smoggy day. This didn't go quite as well as hoped. On the bright side, it felt more like a run than Sunday's outing - with longer, bouncier steps and much less of a sack-of-potatoes feeling. However, I'd awakened with a twinge in my kneecap today. (It seems that sleeping is the activity most likely to aggravate my injury.) If I'm totally honest about it (and I really, really don't want to be), I could feel the twinge while running and perhaps it got just a bit worse by the end. I could definitely feel my hamstrings working harder than usual, and can see why I'll need to strengthen them more to stabilize the knee. It'll be interesting to hear what others think when they watch me - I'm conscious of a limp the entire time, but I suspect that it is only noticeable on downhills. Anyway, I think I'll risk the Ontario O Champs, since I can always stop and walk - especially since nobody else has entered my category yet, so my medal prospects remain strong at any speed. :-)

Lower body strength routine. Bulletdog loves helping me with floor exercises, especially the ones that use the big, fun ball. K/O is dropping by on Friday with a new leg muscle-strengthening routine.

No new knee twinges from yesterday's short run, so I'll give it another try tomorrow. If I'm still OK after that, I will risk entering the Ontario O Champs.

Wildlife watch: Today is one of those "country life" days that isn't for everyone. All the wildlife is indoors - we have simultaneous invasions of ladybugs, flying ants, stink bugs and cluster flies. At least the bats have stayed outdoors so far this year. (Except for the one in Hingo's house.)

Trail work with Bent in the Palgrave Conservation Area on another beautiful fall day. About 3 hours, but I'll call it one. This is great for upper body strength - lots of log hauling and holding the heavy pruner in high, awkward positions to trim branches. We do this each fall in preparation for XC skiing, but the orienteers in next week's farsta may appreciate having slightly fewer thorns in their clothes and skin. Warning: we only completed about 4 km of the trail network, so there are still thorns and raspberries out there!

I went for a run!!!! Who would ever have thought that I'd be so excited about a short jog around the trails of Palgrave West?

I've been reading (and reading and reading) about ACL injuries, and there seem to be three approaches:

1) "Choose a different lifestyle." No details are provided, so maybe I'm supposed to become vegan or gay, not that there's anything wrong with that.

2) "Go under the knife." Not recommended unless you have a complete ACL tear, and not necessarily even then.

3) "Suck it up Princess, and learn to run with an unstable knee, if you can."

Option #3 is what my chiropractor has done with his own ACL injury, so I tried it today after three weeks of not running at all. It felt bizarre and slow with a foam orthotic hurting my foot and a definite limp and the knee rattling around and my body feeling like a sack of potatoes after not running for a few weeks... But I was running!!! :-))) It wasn't long, but so far, no pain. The only bad moment was when the knee accidentally hyperextended - something it's very good at now, with only a floppy ligament holding it together.

Maybe I will be able to do some of the Ontario O Champs after all. So far there is nobody else in my category, so I've got a good chance for a medal. ;-)

Biking mostly on rail trail with some gravel roads. Bent and I were running late, so we had a speedy ride into town to attend the launch of the new book on the history of Palgrave. The book talks about the main street building that Bent owns, in which his dental office is located. It was built around 1885 and has a long, colourful history as a former hotel, town hall and popular bootlegging establishment.

On the way back, Bent turned off into Albion Hills for some single track. In deference to my knee injury, I continued on the rail trail. What an amazing, crisp, sunny autumn day! It's hard to imagine living anywhere except the country on a day like this. I'd planned a very short ride, but just kept going, whizzing past colourful autumn wildflowers, glittering ponds, trees tinged with red leaves, fields of ripe corn, and contented chestnut horses. I felt a bit like Forrest Gump - I just wanted to keep riding and riding. But upon arriving in Caledon East, well beyond my planned turnaround point, I reminded myself that I am actually a "Forest Gimp", so I'd better go home and rest my wounded knee. To celebrate the beautiful day, I stopped by the gourmet food shop and managed to stuff crab cakes and Belgian dark chocolate biscotti into my Camelbak as a surprise for Bent. Today is the final day of Post-Big-Race Eat-Whatever-I-Want week, so I might as well make the most of it.