Training Log Archive: Bash

Had to be very efficient today - not much time because we had to tidy up for a public open house to demonstrate our home solar system. 'Bent, BulletDog and I ran to Glen Haffy via the Bruce Trail Side Trail, including the long, steady K2 climb. We spent a short time running a hilly section of the main Bruce Trail, then returned home. The trail was icy in many places and muddy in others. Should have worn spikes, but I got fooled (yet again) by how dry and snow-free it looked from our living room window. I think we can expect some slippery running in the Giant's Rib Raid.

As the winner of Urthbuoy's photo contest, my prize is the honour of hosting the *next* Attackpoint photo contest. I'm going to stick with the theme from the original contest, so just include a photo of yourself training in your log, and put a comment on my log to let me know about it. Entries must be received by next Fri. March 30 at midnight. The winner will get prestige - and possibly a little more.

To insert a photo from another website into your log, surround the following with these < > .

img src="http://www.your_springtime_tulip_dance.jpg" width="400" height="300" border="0" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10"

Looking forward to seeing y'all!

Thomass Eliminator - Mount Nemo

This year's Thomass winter orienteering series extended into spring by a few days, and Mother Nature was so displeased that she pelted us with cold rain. The eliminator format consists of three sprints with short breaks in between - a few minutes at most. Since it's a Thomass event, the sprints are handicapped, with elite runners visiting more controls. After the 1st sprint, everyone gets to continue on to the 2nd sprint, but only the top 16 finishers are still in the running. After the 2nd sprint, only the top 8 finishers are in contention for the championship, and the other participants start a few minutes behind.

I was fortunate to win the 1st round overall, and 'Bent was also in the top 16. It turned out that for my handicap, it was possible to do most of the 2nd sprint as the reverse of the 1st sprint, so that's what I did, making slightly better route choices along the way. All 3 sprints made good use of a small map, and it was never obvious which controls would be the best ones to drop. I won the 2nd round as well - woo hoo! 'Bent also made the top 8 for the final - good for him.

Then my luck ran out - or more accurately, my brain ran out. It's not that I wasn't thinking hard in the 3rd round. The problem was my thoughts, which rotated through the following sequence over and over:

1) Rain is fogging my glasses (which I wear to keep sticks out of my eyes, not for vision correction). Can't see. Better take them off.
2) Gaacck!! Now that I can see the map again, I realize that I have made a horrible mistake. Must run fast to recover lost time.
3) Hmmm, not comfortable running without eye protection. Put foggy glasses back on.
4) Crap, now I can't see the slippery, mossy, rocky ground well enough, and I'm worried about re-spraining my ankle before the GRR. Remove foggy glasses.
5) Gaaacckk!! Now that I can see the map again, I realize that I read it wrong - again.
6) Repeat thoughts #1-5 above.

Needless to say, this wasn't conducive to good navigation, but what really bugs me is that I let these distractions kill my focus for close to 5 minutes, and I should be able to do better than that. Out of six legs in the race, there are only two legs where I wouldn't be embarrassed to show someone the actual route I travelled.

I guess I need to be prepared to do some woods running without eye protection on rainy days, rather than let this happen again - but it really makes me squeamish. My eyes seem to have a natural attraction for foreign objects any time I'm outdoors.

Oh, and Barbie said that after races, I should always identify some things I did well, and not just my screw-ups, so I think I ran well today, by my standards. There were a couple of times when I felt that Thursday's speed intervals had made a difference, since my body seems just a tiny bit more willing to put on short bursts of speed even after just one session. Bizarre and interesting.

In spite of today's implosion on the 3rd race course, I was awarded the prestigious Thomass Toque as the top woman in the 2006/07 winter O race series. The Duke was the top man. Lucky me, I really needed a dry toque after today's event! (For the benefit of my American friends, this is a toque.)

OK, Urthbuoy/Mjolnir wasn't happy with my first entry in the photo contest, so here's another attempt. This time it really is a photo of me training - yeah, just thought I'd go for a little walk around the 'hood. Is THIS the kind of thing the judges want to see?

Minor home crisis. After years of hiding behind different surnames in our married life, Mountain Equipment Co-op finally figured it out and sent us just one summer catalogue "to save paper and preserve the environment". Aackk! Now the truth is, 'Bent and I are all for the environment. It's one of our favourite things. But as much as we've worked at reducing duplicate mailings from every other source, we aren't sure whether ten years of marriage has prepared us to share, dog-ear, and annotate a single MEC catalogue for an entire season. A trip to the Toronto store before they run out of extra copies might be in order.

C3 training. Tonight I did about 8 hill intervals and around 2.5 km of fartlek, alternating fast/slow every time I passed a street lamp. Usually I run while chatting with friends who are a bit slower, but none of them came tonight, so it was a good opportunity to focus and push harder. No way I was catching the speedy guys though, especially the faster-than-a-speeding-bullet high school kid. 'Bent was looking pretty good, and managed to stay up near the front - although nobody came close to catching The Kid.

This is the speedy/hilly part of the intervals. I almost never do speedwork, and there aren't many fast twitch fibres left to recruit after all my endurance training, but I managed to find a few laggards that hadn't escaped yet.

Core conditioning class. Tonight was all obliques, all the time. Usually, I find oblique exercises to be pretty easy in comparison to other core work, but if you do enough of anything, it eventually gets HARD.

Tonight was Yin-Yang Yoga. We would move through a series of poses slowly, holding them for awhile. Then we'd move through the same series of poses faster, and then we'd take a minute's break in a stretching/relaxing pose. Lots of good balance work, which I think has helped my bum ankle. (Not that I'm planning to stop wearing the brace for orienteering anytime soon.)

Sorry, Kissy - 36 minutes ahead for the week. (But that just means you're faster.)

Here's my entry into the Attackpoint photo contest being run by the Athlete Formerly Known As Urthbuoy. Yes, I know it's supposed to be a photo of me training. But I've decided that training can only get me so far, and my best chance for success is to choose my teammates wisely.

Thought For The Day - from the Fast Trax Run and Ski Shop website:

"In the end, you will be judged not by your wealth, your knowledge or your commitment to mankind, but by how hard you train. [OK, probably not, but train hard anyway, just to be safe.]"

While watching the Daily Show.

First Caledon G-TNT (Girlz Tuesday Noon Training) group event. Leanimal, Crash and I headed out on the Humber Valley Trail in bright sunshine and surprisingly cold temperatures that kept us moving. Usually when I do trail races, I pass people on the hills, and they leave me in the dust on the flats. Not with these experienced off-road runners! I could keep up on the flats, although it was faster than my normal pace - which was great. But they didn't slow down on the steep uphills like most people do, so I had to push hard to catch them after crossing the river. We did have to slow down in a few places where the trail had turned into an ice rink. We all have big plans for the next few weeks, and nobody wants to get injured! Looking forward to getting out there again, and hopefully SlowRunner can join us next time. And maybe Rocky can take a long lunch!

After the run, I thought I'd stop by Bolton's new Winners store, which just opened today. It was obviously a brilliant idea, since all 57,000 people in Caledon decided to do the same thing. It was pretty cool to see Ralph Lauren sheets, Adidas tank tops and Liz Claiborne suits for sale in our little town, but there were big city line-ups for the change rooms and cashiers, so I decided to give up my coveted parking space to the next lucky shopper and try it another day.

Hard Core Monday. It's ba-a-a-a-ack!!