Training Log Archive: Bash

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?)