Training Log Archive: Bash

Event: Salomon Raid the Hammer 25K Adventure Run
 

Salomon Raid The Hammer with 'Bent and Hingo. This is the same team that we started with in 2002, and now that Hingo is too busy for adventure racing, our adventure runs always feel like a Tree Hugger reunion! In fact, SRTH is a reunion with all kinds of people in the adventure community. This year the race sold out with close to 300 people there - many of them familiar faces.

The day started with a 4:30 a.m. alarm, then we made 5 stops to pick up other Caledon friends who were heading to Hamilton. 'Bent was thrilled, since a 7-person carpool makes him feel less guilty for owning a van.

After years of threats and hints from race directors, the event actually (a) involved school buses, and (b) started at Borer's Falls! Who'd have thunk it?

As always, today's race course was scenic and loads of fun with a variety of navigational challenges and surprises to keep us focused. It was physically tough with more than 1000 meters of climb, but I don't think that explains how awful I felt for a couple of hours in the middle - light-headed and almost sleepy. Picking my way across some rocky sections was difficult and unnerving because I had trouble with balance. I don't know if I hadn't had enough breakfast, or maybe I was dehydrated. After that, I drank a lot and ate as much as I could. It didn't help that I tweaked my knee Thursday, so I was being extremely cautious in the terrain. 'Bent and Hingo were moving pretty quickly while I kept an eye on the maps, so maybe I just tried too hard to keep up early on. Dunno. By the end of the race, I had enough energy to run up the last steep hill, so hopefully there is a simple way to prevent it happening again.

Considering how rusty we all are with our navigation, things went pretty well. The only memorable mistake was when we lost about 5 minutes at the start of the advanced section due to a communication problem. (What I'd *actually* said was "Go north, young man.") But things went smoothly for us in the final section otherwise, and we passed 8 teams between #17 and the finish.

We ended up with a male team on the final hill to the Ancaster Community Centre, and it turned into a dash up the steep hill and across the field to the finish line. They won the race by 6 seconds BUT it turns out that we were 2nd Masters, and there were 3 Masters teams within 90 seconds behind us, so it's a good thing we were running! (In spite of being 2nd, this was one of only 2 splits we won in the Masters category out of 19 splits, which certainly shows that speed is not my forte!)

The 1st place Masters team, repeating from the Salomon Giant's Rib Raid, got us by 19 minutes, so there was not much hope of taking the win. We were 17th of 74 teams overall - not as good as in some years, but the level of competition was super-high, so I'll take it! As usual, we moved up 15 positions after the first 2 hrs. If only if we'd had another 10 hrs of racing! ;-)

Speaking of winning, Slice won her 4th adventure run of the year, including 3 overall victories. In the spring, she was on the first-ever coed team to win an adventure run (Salomon Giant's Rib Raid). In the summer, she and Leanimal were the first female team to win an adventure run overall (Navstock Raid), and now Slice won with a Coed team again - having hooked up with two different guys this time. I just gotta say... WOW!!

Excellent day, and a great crowd of friendly volunteers. Thanks to all!

Hiked around Forks of the Credit on the Bruce Trail with 'Bent, Nikki and Peter, and their friends Carol and Ken. There's some good climb in the Belfountain area! Possibly not the best thing to do a few hours before Salomon Raid The Hammer, but it was a nice afternoon. (Logged 75%)

Hey, this sounds like Zoolander's kind of thing. He knows the territory, and it would be better than working for an oil company, right?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM...

I'm famous! (Actually, I WAS famous. This was published a couple of weeks ago when our local newspaper's web site was being renovated.)
http://mycaledon.ca/caledon/lifestyle/article/5882...

Coached run with C3 - warm-up, drills and around-the-block intervals at 70%. A little girl in the group totally kicked my butt!

Hard Core - classic. Back to the DVD exercises for a few sets, and they were just as hard as the new stuff we've been doing. Need to get back to Hard Core Mondays.

Tough yoga class. The theme was doing 10 repetitions of the same position change - and there were lots of different position changes, most of which required a fair bit of strength. Many whimpers were heard around the room.

Thanks to our American friends, it looks like this program can be put on ice for awhile.... :-)
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid98...

Breathe Magazine came out this week. It features PhattyJR talking about his magical Rohloff hubs, mountain biker Chico's recipe for turkey tacos, and my article on the Coast Raid which mentions Tiny, Pixie, 'Bent, Phatty, Leanimal, PhattyJR and STORM. Looks like it's only available in hard copy, but here's this month's editorial.
http://www.breathemag.ca/wp/?p=71

My father turned 75 today. Four years ago this week, he was diagnosed with a rare, incurable cancer. If you took the statistics to heart, it didn't look good. Today he went golfing, had birthday lunch and birthday dinner with different friends, and probably spent time at the office too, as he does every day. He's stayed very active in the community, joined some new boards of directors since his diagnosis, and was recently elected chair of one. He and Mom just returned from a vacation in Europe. It hasn't all been a bed of roses - not by any means - but he has chosen to live fully instead of worrying about dying. And so far, so good. As an engineer and computer geek, I tend to obsess about numbers and probabilities - I'm not sure I could approach cancer by more or less ignoring its existence between medical appointments. But it sure has worked well for him - there's definitely a life lesson in this. Happy birthday, Dad!

Warm-up and cooldown for Edelweiss Park intervals with Leanimal. The temperature went close to 20C today! The worst part was that the warm weather woke up clouds of little bugs that just hung in the air around face level. As we were running in the park, we had to be careful not to inhale them or get them in our eyes (too much).

1-2-3-4-3-2-1 pyramid intervals in the park. Tough on a hot, buggy day - but if it feels that bad, it must be good.

Run to Humberlea hill and back with Coach LD, Leanimal and Kynyn.

Bounding - not really sure how to classify this, so I'll call it "strength" for now. Coach LD and Kynyn showed the ropes to Leanimal and me - lots of different exercises as we went up and down a slope. My bad knee doesn't like the lateral stress of skate ski bounding very much, but everything else felt pretty good. Fun! It'll be interesting to see what hurts tomorrow.

To and from the village of Palgrave. It motivates me to have a destination when I'm running, and the post office fits the bill. Literally.

Felt pretty good, although I'm one of the few people who liked it better last week when it was cold. I should learn to love it though, since it could get quite warm in Tucson for the marathon.

Note to self: The clocks changed. Either run earlier or run in the dark.