Training Log Archive: Bash

Congrats to Slowrunner and Hingo who completed the Sinister 7 trail race this morning in Alberta - 146 km and over 5,000 meters of elevation gain! Slowrunner was 2nd female, finishing in 25 hrs, and Hingo was a few minutes behind her. Awesome job, guys!! :-)

New rule: 'Bent and I don't get to watch le Tour on TV without doing at least an hour of training that day. It is preferred that training be completed before the TV comes on, but if participants prove themselves trustworthy, training done during or after watching le Tour can be counted toward the daily total. Training done on Tour rest days can be carried forward to our own rest day if required. We'll see how it goes...

For some reason, running yesterday's race 50% faster than I did led to 'Bent's legs feeling some fatigue today. I didn't feel fully recovered, of course, but I had more zip in my legs than yesterday. We headed out for an "easy recovery bike ride", according to 'Bent, but I had other plans. We explored lots of single track in Palgrave and Albion, and I worked on pushing hard up the hills - trying to pass 'Bent on uphill sections if he was ahead of me. It was fun and a great workout, and now my legs are seriously pooped!

A shocking discovery before our bike ride... My hair had been temporarily straightened after wearing a pony tail yesterday, and my new SPF 60 sunscreen tinted my face Geisha Girl white. When I put on my big sunglasses and looked in the mirror - yikes, it was a blonde Michael Jackson!

'Bent, Tino, Vents and I headed up to do the 25K course at the Creemore Vertical Challenge, and Glenn met us there. This was a last minute plan by 'Bent and myself, signing up on Thursday afternoon only an hour before registration closed. I'd thought it would be good training to do something tough that I couldn't bail out on partway through.

Creemore is a fun race course - a mix of different types of trails and roads with some steep creek crossings with rope assist. As the name would suggest, there isn't much flat ground - you're almost always climbing or descending, often at a very steep angle, especially on the descents. A purist might say there is too much gravel road to call this a trail race, but I thought the variety was interesting. The weather couldn't have been more perfect - breezy, partly cloudy and relatively cool for July.

In spite of all this general wonderfulness, my legs refused to cooperate. I'd planned to approach this as a training event, so I started off slowly and just chugged along admiring the scenery. My only real effort was in running every part of the course that I thought I *should* run, which meant I didn't walk as many hills as the runners around me, although I did plenty of walking on the steep stuff. In spite of the relaxed pace, my legs felt like lead. I convinced myself that I just needed a long warm-up, but when I still felt like crap after 45 minutes, I realized that wasn't it.

I might have just written it off as a bad day except that things turned around. I looked at my GPS, wondering if I'd made it to the halfway point yet and was thrilled to see that I was already 1 km beyond it. After that, my legs didn't exactly feel zippy, but they felt about as good as they could feel after 90 minutes of pounding up and down hills. In the last 5 km, I got the urge to race a little, and the last part of the course suited me perfectly - big logs across the trail, a couple of steep creek crossings with rope assist and a bog where we had to wait in line to balance our way across a slippery culvert. (No, this 25K wouldn't be anybody's PB!)

I'm not sure why I felt so crapulous for the first 90 minutes, but I'm wondering if my night owl tendencies are the problem. I've been getting to bed after midnight far too often lately, and maybe when the alarm goes off at 5:20 a.m., my body isn't ready for running yet. Also, I only drank half my usual amount of coffee this morning, which seemed like a good idea at the time (avoiding long porta-pottie lines) but maybe wasn't so brilliant.

Trail ultrarunners have always seemed to be some of the nicest people in the world, but today I met the exception who proved the rule. Early in the race, I found myself behind a man who stood out because his shirt and shorts were cotton, and he ran all 25K with a heavy padded jacket under one arm. Periodically, he would toss food wrappers onto the ground - grrrr. I don't think his outfit was freshly laundered, so I passed him to get upwind. But it turned out that he did a series of short, high-speed intervals with near-walking in between. So as soon as he got passed, he would shoot past that runner, then slow down again. So I wasn't free of the aroma for awhile. A little later, someone right behind me screamed "CAR!!" loudly in my ear. I nearly did a swan dive into the ditch and was surprised that I didn't see the vehicle. Later in the race, I was on a twisty, narrow downhill section of road when the same thing happened - an urgent scream of "CAR!!" right in my ear. My heart rate doubled, and I dove off the road again, only to see this same guy grinning, "Ha! I got you again!" Grrr, jerk.

However, the other trail runners were the same nice people I've always met in these events, and there were lots of friendly exchanges that more than made up for Mr. Sense-of-Humour.

It was awesome to cross the finish line - especially since I had turned to start the 2nd loop for the 50K event and needed to be called back. I had purposely avoided monitoring my time vs. any goal, but I'd looked at last year's results (including amazing 2.5 hr finishes by Slowrunner and Rocky) and thought it would be nice to break 3 hrs. So I'm happy with this, but I need to get back to doing more long runs. My last real long run was Sulphur Springs, and when your only long runs are races, you get the results that you deserve.

We do a lot of different types of events, and I have to award a gold star to these race organizers. The venue was perfect - a private property with a large, shaded yard beside the Mad River. A bagpiper played at the start and at one of the early corners of the course. Beer, pizza and other snacks were served post-race. Our finisher's medals were handmade pottery handed out by smiling children who proudly told me they had tied the ribbons on the medals themselves. The prizes were great. First prize got a handmade pottery bowl (or 4 plates) + a pound of Creemore fair trade organic coffee + maple syrup. 2nd and 3rd prize got pottery mugs with their coffee and maple syrup. Almost everyone got a draw prize - except for poor 'Bent, who had an awesome race - 2:02 and 13th place, not far behind Blaze Runners Tarno and Almageddon, and ahead of Bob McG. Glad we decided to go! (Although it'll be interesting to see how my knee feels tomorrow after the downhill pounding.)

Today's run was a very thorough tour of Palgrave West, including out-and-backs near Russell's barn and Wheelie's pond. I was trying to decide whether I could enter Saturday's Creemore Vertical Challenge as a training event, given that I haven't been doing long runs lately, and it will take me 3+ hrs to get around that very hilly course. I felt fine today, especially after the first 20 minutes, and I worked on pushing up the hills. So 'Bent and I are now signed up for the race. It'll be fun to see our friends even though I haven't trained properly. We are supposed to be getting ready for a Mountain Marathon after all!

Happy Canada Day! The weather was on-and-off showers, so 'Bent and I hung out with the pooches for a trainer movie. Today's DVD was "The Cyclist" by an acclaimed Iranian director - one of the few movies I've ever seen in Farsi with subtitles. It wasn't one of those slick, modern Iranian films in Farsi that we all see every day; it was chock full of melodramatic music and over-acting. On the bright side, it's ideal for a trainer movie because it has lots and lots of cycling. Working with a circus promoter, the protagonist tries to bike around the town square non-stop for 7 days and 7 nights to raise money to pay for his sick wife's hospital care. Crowds gather, bets are made, vendors sell food, dishonest people get involved, and the ugly underbelly of humankind is exposed for us all to see. The End.

After the bike ride, 'Bent and I went for a short trail run around Palgrave West before heading to the Inglewood Farmer's Market for some Canada Day fun. I tried my new Salomon Exo 3/4 compression tights, which are supposed to hold all the energy-sapping jiggly thigh bits in place while I run. 'Bent was too much of a gentleman to comment on whether he thought the tights were working, but I liked how they felt. I also tried my new XT Wings shoes. My first pair a year ago gave me blisters and seemed prone to ankle turning, but this year's model worked just fine and felt cushy.

We came home last night to find a big box sitting on our doorstep. Yay, it was some cool Salomon gear to welcome 'Bent and me to the Salomon Flight Crew, a new group of trail runners who will act as ambassadors for the Salomon brand in our communities. Sounds like fun! I've been using their gear for years anyway, so I'm excited to be part of the team. If anyone has good or bad feedback on Salomon products, just e-mail me, and I'll pass it along since that's part of our role.

They are smart, those Salomon people, because naturally I needed some clothes to match the new gear they'd sent me. So today I visited the Salomon Store in Toronto and solved *that* problem. Gotta love those colour names... "Tomato Red" and "Kingfisher Blue" make sense. But Phatty and Cheesesteak need to talk to those European designers about "Autobahn", "Swamp" and "Flea". (Flea?!)

Paddled from Deer Island to the take-out at Chikanishing Creek. The weather was cloudy and sprinkly, but the winds didn't go above 10 knots, so it was fine in the open sections - although a little bouncy at times.



I found a few "channels" between islands that had grown in a fair bit, and some of them defeated us today. Turns out there are a few peninsulas masquerading as islands on the map! In this photo, we were able to pass behind Bateman Island and stay out of the wind.



I could paddle through the weeds for the first bit, then I had to grab weeds in my hands and pull on them to move myself ahead. Finally, I had to wade with my boat until the water got deep and open again. The mosquitoes loved the wading part.

The area has a very different character on a rainy day.



One of today's highlights was watching a bald eagle ignore us from a treetop. As we neared the take-out, we met seven canoes from a camp for teenaged girls. To my surprise, they sang Beatles tunes as they paddled. Considering that even my generation was too young for the Beatles (in real time, that is), I have to wonder why they weren't singing songs from less than 40 years ago!