Training Log Archive: Bash

Happy Easter to all! I spent today gaining back all the weight that I'd lost since Christmas. Thanks, Mom and Dad. :-)

Event: Hard Rock Orienteering
 

We totally lucked out with this year's Hard Rock! Fantastic wintry weather, brilliant sunshine, and lots of good friends who came out - some of whom I hadn't talked to for awhile, so it was a real Easter treat. Even Meridian had returned from Alberta wearing his Lululemon down jacket. Another treat was meeting J-Ro in person. I thought she only existed on Attackpoint!

Although the snow was cold and hard at 10 a.m., I decided to wear snowshoes, since the course setters had hit thigh-deep snow the previous afternoon. My new Atlas Race snowshoes are light enough that they don't make me much slower than I already am, and I figured that it would be nice to have the metal teeth for traction. In the end, I was happy with my decision, since it allowed me to go pretty much anywhere I wanted, and most of the time, I barely sank in through the crust at all.

Fun, challenging course set by Bender and Hammer - thanks for your hard work, guys! It was a training event, but I started out in race mode, trying to reach each control by the most efficient method. Then I decided that I should practise different techniques, so for each control, I would focus on some aspect of navigation - landforms or compass bearings, etc. As always happens in the Hilton Falls area, I only had moderate luck when I tried to focus on landforms - but it's good to remind myself of that before the Salomon Giant's Rib Raid!

I didn't see many people out there, but I ran into Goose several times. We are approaching our point of equilibrium - the point where his vastly superior speed will trump my navigation experience. I thought it was going to happen today, but he went for an extra lap of the woods near the end of the race, giving me a reprieve. It's going to happen soon though! The only other person I saw a few times was Dr. Billy - whom we all know as a speedy, competitive individual, but when we arrived at controls close together, he would actually wait and hold the SI control until I got there to punch it. I informed Bender that Dr. Billy deserves a time credit for chivalry.

For the most part, I was pleased with my navigation. Much less sloppy than the Stars Thomass. I had differing levels of accuracy when I used different methods, but that's to be expected. One thing I realized is that this area - which has been a navigational nemesis for me at times - is *much* easier to find your way around at this time of year. Without any vegetation, the subtle contours are easier to pick out, and it was awesome to have all that snow smoothing out the rough, rocky bits. It'll be interesting to see how much it changes over the next 3 weeks before the Giant's Rib Raid. There will still be some snow for sure, and probably some good pockets of chilly slush too. Not a race for princesses!

Phatty graciously invited me to a fantastic Salomon Partner Day at the Alpine Ski Club in Craigleith. I was representing the Salomon Adventure Running Series. (Hmmm.... They've sponsored my event, so now they owe ME a favour?) In order to make a good impression on the Partners, PhattyDude set himself up with a colourful new wardrobe.


Leanimal and I spent a relaxing day as a pair of Salomon Ski Bunnies.


It had been about a decade since I'd last downhill skied. The new skis turn more easily - and go straight less easily! I've had a few joint injuries in recent years which made me pretty cautious out there, but that's OK. One of the fun things about this day was that I truly don't care anymore about getting good at downhill skiing, so I could just relax and enjoy. The view overlooking icy Georgian Bay was spectacular.


We skied for several hours, but I'm only logging half an hour to cover the skate skiing between lifts and the leg muscle effort. Gravity did most of the work!

There was a race, and Phatty tried really hard.


Leanimal and I had just been complaining that downhill skiing didn't involve much strategy compared to our other sports. But the premise of the race was that each of us had to take two runs down the course, and the person whose two times were the closest would be the winner. Leanimal and I made sure we raced against each other, since our speeds are so different (guess who's the slow one!) that our times wouldn't be influenced by swerving to avoid the other racer. We also made sure that we raced on the same side of the course each time. It paid off - Leanimal won the female championship!


Good thing they're getting married. They look *way* too cute together!

Caron's Power Yoga DVD #1

Watched an episode of Michael Palin's "Sahara", which was excellent. Had the usual frustrating time fiddling with things to get the trainer to work properly for my bike instead of 'Bent's. Next year we're getting an upgrade to become a 2-trainer family! Phone rang, then it was dinnertime, so didn't finish the full workout I'd planned.

As of tonight, I've officially switched to my new Dell XPS M1530 laptop, even though it will take weeks to get all my less-used programs and peripherals moved over and tested.

Major Con: No Trackpoint. By comparison, it is sooooo inefficient to use a Touchpad - or even a mouse, on those rare occasions when I'm sitting at a table. My old Dell had a Trackpoint - or to be generic, a "pointing stick". IBM had the right idea, but it hasn't caught on outside of business users.

Major Pro: Uncommon screen resolution - 1440 X 900. It's not quite as high-res as my old laptop, but it's still sharper than most. It's just enough bigger to make photos look better on websites - and I'm not objecting to the slightly larger text.

With rain, ice pellets and/or snow falling all day, this was *definitely* one of those times when I would have started looking for excuses if I hadn't planned to meet Leanimal for a run.

After our warm-up, we did 3 repeats of Deer Valley Hill, 1 repeat of Glasgow Hill (too long and steep for me to push all the way at high intensity) then 2 final repeats of Deer Valley. Good workout - my legs are feeling it now.

Hard Core DVD before a Chamber of Commerce dinner. Mostly a good evening, but since I was attending as a media rep, I had to bite my tongue as a real estate agent explained to our table that all sensible people understand that Caledon will need to grow from its current population of 57,000 to hundreds of thousands. Oh, and it will be great for the community, so it's too bad that people aren't onboard with the idea now. Given that we've been named the greenest community in Ontario and the safest community in Canada, just *imagine* how much more we could accomplish if we had six or seven times as many people! Don't worry - the "pretty" areas like the Oak Ridges Moraine won't be touched. All those houses will be built on that useless flat farmland and along those empty river valleys.

This was particularly annoying after listening to a fine keynote speaker who talked about the business value of corporate sustainability. Guess he should have talked louder.