Training Log Archive: Bash

Several more portages to get back to Johnnie Lake.

Kayak paddling on Johnnie Lake at a good intensity due to wind, rain and occasional threatening rumbles of thunder in the distance. Luckily, the lightning never came in our direction, so we were able to make it back to our van in time for a Herbert's fish & chips lunch in downtown Killarney!

Logging some of today's paddling with canoe paddles.

3 km portage from Great Mountain Lake to David Lake for our final night on the trip. Pack was slightly lighter and temperature was a bit lower, so this wasn't quite as tough as the portages we did on Friday.

An hour of training on David Lake with kayak paddles, plus about half of the paddling we did to move to our scenic new campsite tonight. Nice view of Silver Peak once the clouds finally rolled away!

White quartz ridge hike with 'Bent and the pooches. Many, many blueberries to eat. We could see that a bear had been up there recently enjoying the blueberries as well.

Lousy weather today, but we assembled our kayak paddles and went out for a spin around the lake. Also did some canoe paddling to get to Little Mountain Lake where we could access the backpacking trail. Pooches don't like the kayak paddles in a canoe, as they get splashed. Funny how they go swimming all the time, but get miffed if you dare to fling a few drops of water their way.

Hiked awhile on the La Cloche Silhouette backpacking trail. Wow, is quartz ever slippery when it gets wet! I would hate to be carrying a heavy backpack on this trail after a rain. We hit a steep section where the rock scrambling was a bit too much for the dogs, so had to go the other direction instead. Even on a cloudy day, the views were impressive. After 3 months, my twisted ankle still feels disappointingly fragile. I'm wearing the Active Ankle brace for biking, running and trekking, but I don't feel confident when I hit really uneven ground or wear an especially heavy pack.

Always tough to figure out how or if I should count activity on wilderness trips as training, but there is no question that today's 6 portages, including one of 3 km in length, were really hard work! Because of 'Bent's recent back problems, I carried a lot of weight on our one-trip portages - somewhere around 40 kg, I'd guess. We had some heavy food treats, like a small apple a day and cheese for lunch, and I carried our SRS kayak paddles as well as our canoe paddles, so it wasn't a super-lightweight trip.

This is about half the time we actually paddled, travelling from Johnnie Lake to Great Mountain Lake on a hot day, then exploring Great Mountain Lake to find the best campsite. It's a big lake with only 3 campsites, which is really nice. ThunderDog and BulletDog went swimming about 20 bazillion times today. At one point we were held up by an unflappable Mama moose and her mooselet, who were guarding a big portage. We got into the campsite around dinnertime, and it felt great to jump in the lake!

As always, this so-called "rest day" wasn't restful at all. It was already going to be a busy week, and it got busier with the unexpected changes to our Endurance Aventure plans, so I got to sleep at 2:30 a.m. on two consecutive nights. Met my Sideroads Magazine deadline today - feature article and photos on the new Caledon Navigators orienteering club. Then I purchased and packed food for our 4-day canoe trip, keeping quantities flexible until the last couple of hours when we confirmed that Knobless and Gorgeous would have to cancel due to illness. We'll miss them! Drove up to Grundy Lake tonight, stopping for the rare treat of a Licks Homeburger.

Mostly Albion Hills single track, with some roads and other trails. Trails were in great hard-packed condition after last night's big hailstorm, which strangely I remember nothing about, even though 'Bent claims we talked about it in the night. Because I was facing several urgent deadlines at the same time that the you-know-what hit the fan for our AR team, I was up till 2:30 a.m. playing catch-up. I guess I must have been so tired that I was sleep-talking to 'Bent! Anyway, I think everything will be well in hand by the time we leave for Killarney tomorrow evening. Yahoo - 4 days in the backcountry!

Another Attackpoint milestone - I passed 5000 hits today. They're probably all thinking the same thing: "After so much training, when is that girl ever going to speed up??"

Road and trail running around Palgrave after a long day with my laptop, trying to work on three things at once. (As a result, I'm about to start a long night with my laptop!) There are a lot of big trees down across trails from last week's storm. I hope some friend of the trails owns a chainsaw, otherwise it's going to be a lousy ski season.

What a difference a day makes! After yesterday's hassles, things are looking up. Tiny generously agreed to join the Tree Huggers on short notice, thus making our team much stronger than it was! And PeteD has stepped up to the plate to support us - a very experienced support crew member and a strong adventure racer in his own right. We still need one more support crew member, but Gazette said she would do it if we're really stuck.

Suddenly, things are working like they should! Gazelle phoned from the airport enroute to his vacation with some info. The rest of us got more race planning accomplished via e-mail in 2 hours than I've been able to get done in the past month.

Good. I won't have to take up drinking after all. ;-)

Warning, this is a rant! The teammate who was supposedly arranging support crew for our Endurance Aventure race hadn't been answering e-mails over the past few weeks, and today he dropped out of the race with 23 days to go. Apparently he's too busy, hasn't trained enough, etc. Considering that we agreed to do this race less than 4 weeks ago, it's surprising that his life could have changed in such unanticipated ways in such a short time.

'Bent and I are heading into the wilderness for 4 days later this week, so it's lousy timing to suddenly be stuck with looking for a teammate and support crew for a 50-hr race in Quebec. Our 3rd teammate is in New Brunswick until Aug. 4. I didn't know the "dropout" guy well enough to realize that he could be so irresponsible. I will never again make the mistake of paying $1200 for a race without being certain that every team member makes commitments thoughtfully AND knows how to use the "reply" function on his or her e-mail software. End of Rant.

Oh yeah, and it was Hard Core Monday. Nothing like a little anger to make those sit-ups really count!

Hiked with 'Bent and the pooches for a couple of hours. Nice to see 'Bent's back starting to improve. I'm glad he's been able to restrain himself from training too much and re-injuring it. Once we got past all the berry patches on today's hike, we kept up a good pace, so it's worth logging part of it. I'm not feeling too sore, even though my knee and hip twinged during yesterday's 25K run. I did a LOT of stretching afterward because I had time to spare while waiting for friends to finish the 50K. Whaddaya know? Apparently, stretching works.

Damn Tuff Ruff Bluff 25K trail run - Owen Sound

25 km trail race. This wasn't so much a race as a way to force myself to do some long distance training at a reasonably high intensity. I started off "pacing" ThreePinJim, who planned to do the 50 km race in double my planned time for the 25 km. We stuck together for 3 km, then he felt so good that he took off and finished in 5:08, taking 70 minutes off his PB!!

We did two 12.5 km laps, with the first 4.5 km getting us to the top of the escarpment, including some sections of the Bruce Trail where it was a steep, muddy, rocky scramble. After that, the rest of the lap was relatively easy, with nice flat forest trails on top of the escarpment, and 1 km of our descent taking place on a paved road.

Unlike almost any race of any kind I've ever done, people passed me right up till the end, and I didn't pass many people after the first few km. Usually it's the other way around. All I can guess is that I must have started out too quickly, even though it sure didn't feel that way. Or maybe these ultra-runners are all just better at pacing themselves than most of the people I usually race against. In the words of Paul Sherwen, I C-R-R-RACKED during the climb on the 2nd lap, but I dug deep into my suitcase of courage and pulled out a raspberry gel, which got me to the finish. :-)

Finished just ahead of mid-pack overall, and the same in my division. Compared with last year's 32K Iroquoia Trail Test, I didn't feel as good, but the ratio of my times is about the same as the ratio of the times for Tarno, who won both races. Very impressed with Tarno winning the 25K with a herniated disk, TVP coming 3rd in the 50K, ThreePinJim's amazing new PB, and Charlotte's relaxed 50K "training run" for next week's Jay Peak Marathon.

Rest day before 25 km trail race tomorrow. My hotel room in Owen Sound has high-speed Internet - something I can't get at home - so I may not get enough sleep before my 8 a.m. race.

Trail run in Palgrave West with BulletDog, who is now sleeping very contentedly.

Trail run around Palgrave West, checking out some of the devastation from Monday's storm. Huge leafy trees were pushed over as if they were toothpicks. Most trails are blocked in one or two places. There are places where I won't feel safe off-trail until we've had a few more good windstorms - and preferably a heavy snowfall. There are lots of damaged trees and limbs that don't look like they're quite finished plummeting to earth. Crash was almost taken out by one of those yesterday. Other than that, I enjoyed the slightly cooler temperature (i.e. below 30C), and it actually felt good to run.

Hiked with 'Bent and pooches to Crash's place, since we couldn't reach her by phone with the power out. We toured her beautiful new professional kitchen in a renovated barn. Wow! We had high hopes that she would be experiencing a crisis situation where huge pans of brownies thawing in the freezer would need to be eaten after 34 hours without electricity, but unfortunately, it wasn't our lucky day.

Our power came back on at mid-day after more than 36 hours without electricity. It was moderately adventurous for a little while, but it got old fast. In the country, no electricity also means no running water, which means no showers and only one flush per toilet. The biggest issue is keeping the fridge cold, so that was the main reason we turned on our generator from time to time. Both 'Bent and Crash lost income because dentists and chefs can't do much without electricity.

We never know if an outage will be 2 hrs or 40 hrs, so we spend a lot of time waiting around to do things, assuming that the power will come back on shortly. Our security system and various detectors kept beeping and emitting alarms at regular intervals to let us know that their battery power was fading. This meant that the pooches - especially ThunderDog - were highly stressed, and we didn't want to leave them here alone while we went to a movie theatre or something. I was feeling stressed too, because I'm working to a deadline this week, and I needed my computer. Yesterday was Alpe d'Huez, which added insult to injury, but we did see the race eventually.

I love living without electricity on canoe or backpacking trips, but I'm glad to have the lights back on at home!

Trail run in Palgrave West - Charlevoix Loop. I am awarding myself a gold star for heading out when the thermometer read 33C, especially given my current ambivalence toward outdoor training in the heat. However, it will have to be a very small gold star, because I was clock-watching the whole time I was out, and I stopped running the moment I reached my planned time of 30 minutes. Black and red raspberries are at their peak right now, so I took my time hiking home. Wildlife report: One wild turkey in the raspberry patch.

Hard Core Monday

Road, rail trail and a bit of off-road trail riding in Glen Haffy with 'Bent, who probably shouldn't have tempted fate while his back is recovering. Very little traffic on the roads, and nice hills to keep the heart rate up. My bike has a lot of new parts after its expensive trip to the shop, but it is still running ragged in the back chain ring. 'Bent has played with a few settings, and we're hoping my next ride will go more smoothly on the steep uphills. Nice to get out before the temperature hits 35C later today - yikes!!

While watching le Tour

I'm feeling unmotivated in this hot weather. Environment Canada has officially declared the first half of 2006 to be the hottest weather in Canada since they started keeping records.

I've entered next weekend's 25 km trail race in Owen Sound - the Damn Tuff Ruff Bluff Run. Hopefully that will give me some short-term inspiration. With my bike in the shop and 'Bent's back too bent to paddle, I've been limited to running and strength exercises lately.

Spent a couple of hours splashing around my parents' swimming pool with 'Bent, BulletDog and ThunderDog (only logged a bit of it). The pooches thought it was absolutely the best thing we'd ever done. BulletDog learned how to fling herself off the side of the pool in a doggie belly flop as she competed with ThunderDog for their floating toy. ThunderDog wisely ran around to the pool steps every time we threw the toy, thus minimizing the risk of getting her nose under water, which she hates.

I tested out the swim training fins that Gazette lent me for the upcoming Endurance Aventure race, which has a discipline called "adventure swimming". The fins work really well, but it's tough to plan how we are going to approach that section of the race until we see the course. Pack rafts and collapsible paddles are also an option. Whatever aids we use, we have to carry with us on our trek.

Woo hoo! Who'd have believed that we could book a 4-day backcountry canoe trip on a couple of our favourite lakes in Killarney with just two weeks notice in mid-summer? :-))

Trail, off-trail, and a bit of country road running in the Glen Haffy area. It was SO hot, and I went up and down the escarpment several times during my run. When I got to Coolihan's Sideroad, I added a 1 km hill interval on the road in honour of the TDF riders going through the Pyrenees today.

I only managed to run through the middle of one poison ivy patch today, but that'll probably be enough to get me banned from donating blood for another month. My ankle didn't feel great in the off-trail sections, even with the brace on. Even with a temperature of 30C, I didn't feel warmed up until I'd been running for 45 minutes. I wish I was a sprinter - it would take a lot less time to train!

Here's something that adventure racers and orienteers might not know... I had an appointment to donate blood yesterday, but they turned me down because of a 2-week-old poison ivy rash that is nearly cleared up. I'm pretty sure that poison ivy has no systemic effects, but perhaps blood donations are rejected because some people scratch their rash and get an infection. So... after my meeting with the nurse in the little private booth, I had to walk the full length of the auditorium to the door past all the nice volunteer ladies, who were probably making secret bets on whether I had eaten too many British (mad) beef pies, obtained a tattoo, or slept with a transsexual.

While Jon Stewart interviewed John Dean about the new Conservatives

Road run to the north end of Palgrave to avoid the logging next door, then a trail run in the conservation area. I made sure BulletDog had a couple of swims in the ponds, and now she is all fluffy, damp, and snoring happily beside me.

The signs have gone up to close the north half of the red trail (and surrounding areas) for logging for the next 2-3 months. Nothing was happening today yet. Good thing, because I ran through that whole area first, then found the sign at the far end.

Hard Core Monday, rescheduled to Tuesday because of last night's post-rogaine debriefing session at Wadd Squad HQ. 'Bent gets to skip this week's Hard Core because of his back problem. He was standing up a lot straighter this morning, and I hope he'll be able to attend next week's Hard Core Monday. It's not as much fun by yourself!

Back to the rogaine session... About a dozen people came and shared their routes, stories and lessons learned from the North Am Rogaine Champs. Lots of fun to see the different approaches. Nev-Monster's Mom's team built a tent out of tarps and slept in the woods for much of the night. Others returned to the Hash House for a pasta dinner, a good sleep, and bacon and eggs in the morning before heading out again. Another team kept going all night and scored one third of their points in the 8 hours of darkness. My partner, Backwoods Girl/Neeno, helped us to have what was probably the lowest amount of elevation gain per point collected. The coed adventure racing team who had the best result from our club did virtually all their navigation in straight lines, just following a bearing between controls. They had the highest number of points per kilometer, but probably set the record for elevation gain.

While watching the Daily Show

I haven't been calling myself "injured" in my log, because I have been quite active, and it would sound silly. However, I first turned my ankle in late April, then I really did it in in mid-May. Since then, I've needed to wear an Active Ankle brace for all trail running and biking. I've occasionally tried to go without it, and something always happens to make my foot hurt, so I know it's not ready for that. I don't like the idea of having this weakness, but the Active Ankle has enabled me to do everything I've wanted to, so far. The only down side is that it is time-consuming to change shoes in adventure races, because I have to move the brace to the new shoe and do it up again. I've been told that ankle injuries can take a really long time to heal. I guess it's time to look for some specialized exercises to strengthen it, in addition to the ones that I'm already doing to keep my knee in line (literally).

'Bent wanted to do some biking that would be similar to what we do in adventure races, and thought that the double track in Dufferin Forest would resemble the chewed-up ATV and snowmobile trails that we often race on. We've never ridden up there, but we have the orienteering map, so we decided to do some MTB-O as we explored the trail system. I'd thought we'd need to be careful to avoid the Mansfield trails, since we didn't have a day pass, but it turns out that Mansfield isn't open to the public for mountain biking anymore. Too bad, the single track was awesome there. You're still not supposed to go on their trails without permission, so we stayed north in the county forest.

Some of the double track was nice, but a lot of it was sandy and loose. Some of it was OK to ride on, but in some places, it was like skiing up and down hills as our bikes skidded around in the sand and deep eroded holes. The only other person we saw was on an ATV (there are big signs prohibiting motorized vehicles). It looks like there are more horses than bikes in there, which makes sense, since the sand wouldn't be as difficult for them to negotiate. We eventually stumbled on some really nice single track, which was the best riding of the day.

The highlight had nothing to do with biking. It was the huge number of ripe red and black raspberries we saw - and consumed. Yum!

I was impressed by the difficulty of mountain bike orienteering. I've done lots of bike nav in adventure racing, but haven't used a detailed 1:10,000 map on a bike before. I wonder what scale they use in MTB-O, because we were able to ride across our map in no time, and kept having to re-fold to see different areas. In AR, with 1:50,000 maps (usually) and long legs between CPs, I don't need to look at the map too often while biking, particularly when I'm riding off-road. It was a big change today when I needed to look at the map frequently. It actually made a good map memory exercise, since I wanted to look at where I was riding, not at the map, so I practised getting a simplified picture in my mind of the map (which I should do all the time in any kind of navigation).

My gears have been deteriorating, and today they were shifting at random all over the place. We made a detour to Caledon Hills Cycling to drop off my bike for some TLC. I suspected a major overhaul might be necessary, and a follow-up phone call has already confirmed that. That's OK - my bike doesn't owe me anything.

5 Peaks Trail Race - Durham Forest

Trail race. Meridian had warned me to run hard for the first 700 m before the race course switched from double track to single track, but I'm never a fast starter. Meridian was right. As soon as I got on the single track behind a long line-up, it was like I was jogging in place. It was impossible to pass when everyone was crammed in so close. Eventually, we got to the highlight of any Oak Ridges Moraine event - hills! That's where the field started to spread out. Like every event I do, people passed me whenever the trail was flat and wide, because they have a fast running gear and I don't. However, I would pass people on the uphills, downhills and twisty sections with big tree roots. Since the latter comprised most of the course, this meant that after the initial 2 km, I passed more people than passed me.

I'm a heat princess, and my legs really felt sluggish at first on this 30+C day. Then when I saw the 8-kilometer mark, I suddenly felt my legs spring to life, and I started tearing past people. Weird - does it really take me 8 km to warm up?? And if it does, should I just give up on doing 11 km races? I noticed G. L. Portuguese just ahead of me with 1 km to go. Since she is in my age category, I thought I'd see if I could move up a rank before the finish. I passed her at an aid station (glad to be one of the few runners with a Camelbak), but she was right behind me a few seconds later. With 100 m to go, it looked like it would be a tie, but then she demonstrated that she has fast-twitch muscles that I definitely do NOT have, so I finished 1 second behind. Great to have her there to inspire me to race hard to the end!

Results weren't all posted when we left, but I think I was around mid-pack overall and 9th in my age group, which was probably top third or so. Not nearly as good as the Old Mill 10K last month, leading 'Bent to make the horrific suggestion that perhaps I am actually destined to be a road runner.

Speaking of 'Bent... when we race separately, it seems that we often run into each other on the course after he or his team has a nav error. During this race, I was thinking that it was nice that it wasn't a possibility today, due to the course being marked clearly with little orange flags and signs. Well, I was wrong... 'Bent managed to have a nav error on a marked trail race! He still had a great race, but just imagine how he will do some day if he only runs the same course length as the other competitors!

Fun morning - nice forest. Great to see Meridian out and about, as he has been in hiding for so long. Now that he's emerged and seen his shadow, he needs to return to his thesis for 6 more weeks, then he can finally join the world again.

Palgrave West, mostly cross-country. This wasn't really the plan, but I started through our neighbour's property and was halfway across when I heard a logging machine start up and a big tree crack. Yikes - I turned 90 degrees and made a beeline for the far property line. I ended up passing through some private property and other areas that I've never seen in summer. Lots of waist-high weeds and stealth patches of poison ivy, so it took awhile to get started on my trail run.

Palgrave East on trails - much less eventful, thankfully. Not much bounce in the legs today. Hot afternoons zap my energy - and today isn't even that hot. It'll be interesting to see how the trail race goes on Saturday, since it is supposed to be a scorcher.

Fun, twisty trail ride in Palgrave East with some good hill climbs. Sometimes I forget that we have really nice single track just around the corner, right across Duffy's Lane from Krash's Kountry Kitchen.

Horses have been using the single track trails, which I haven't seen before. From a trail damage point of view, that's the best place for them, since a TRCA biologist works with the mountain bikers to locate trails in areas that are not easily damaged. However, it's not fun to ride over big dollops of horse poop on a trail that is only 20 cm wide in places. And it's hard to imagine a safe way for a bike to pass a group of horses on such a tight, narrow trail. However, these trails are designated multi-use, and at least the horses aren't creating any nasty quagmires, as they have done elsewhere in Palgrave.

Planned rest day. 30C weather today, but it will be cooler tomorrow - yahoo!

Went with 'Bent to pick up his new all-wheel-drive Tree Huggermobile. Nice!

Around Palgrave East and West. Only intended to stay out for 45 minutes, but felt surprisingly good in the hot weather. Not sure why running felt like such a chore on Friday.

As someone who normally keeps an eye out for weird-looking strangers when I'm alone in the woods, I'm not sure why I didn't run the other way when I saw a man in a winter parka and fur-lined hat in 30C weather, walking with a large dog on leash. Anyway, he was a nice fellow with an injured ankle from baseball, and he wore his winter clothing to fend off the bugs because he was moving so slowly. Poor guy!

When I got back, I took ThunderDog for a short car ride to go swimming in the Humber River - much too hot for her to go for a walk today.

Registered for my first 5 Peaks trail race this Saturday. Long course is only 11.1 km, so the race will be too fast for me, but it will be good training to run at higher intensity than usual.

Hard Core Monday with 'Bent, relocated to the basement where it was cooler. The wildlife (two Lab Retrievers) really increased the degree of difficulty for some exercises.

Paddled at Island Lake Conservation Area with 'Bent, Gazelle & Gazette. Common wisdom says that it is faster to put the woman in the stern, but in comparing our two boats, and changing our configurations around on a windy day when steering required a lot of muscle power, we found that it was faster to put the stronger person in the stern. That's good news for me, as I got tendinitis in Appalachian Extreme after four hours of steering a canoe down a twisty whitewater river in heavy racer traffic on the first leg of the event. I'm happy enough in stern, but get tired sooner there.

'Bent and I did this ride in three sections:
- From home to Inglewood via forest trail and rail trail. Did some intervals between road crossings on the rail trail. Then bought a sandwich and ice cream at the Inglewood General Store. Mmm... yummy. Dr. Tarno says it's very important to practise eating while you train for AR. I take his advice seriously, especially because I love to eat.
- From Inglewood to Albion Hills to check out the Canada Day celebration. We had a tailwind this time, so we were hot, but the intervals were faster. The weather was still great when we got to Albion, and the place was full of families, with kids swimming at the beach, candy apples for sale, a band ready to play, and fireworks set to launch. Unfortunately, it's raining heavily now. Too bad, since this is the busiest day of the year at Albion, so they count on taking in a fair bit of money.
- From Albion Hills to home via single track, forest trails and a country road.

Fun day - didn't feel like training!

Happy Canada Day to all!

Following the cancellation of Raid The North, our team has entered the 25-50 hour Raid International Eco Endurance Aventure in late August. Thanks to Tiny for drawing this race to our attention. It sounds like lots of fun, although it means I'll be fatigued at the Canadian O Champs.