Training Log Archive: Bash

Girls' morning out! Mrs. Gally, Rocky, Slowrunner, "Cindy" and I ran from Bolton's Green P parking lot up the Humber Valley Trail to the wind chimes and back. (Slowrunner joined us at the trailhead so she's not in the official starting line photo.) At 6 months pregnant, Mrs. Gally is temporarily running at a speed I can handle - or maybe she was just going easy on us! Cindy went a little farther than we did just to show off. Excellent company, chatty pace and fantastic to be outside in the chilly sunshine. We joined the long line-up at Timmy's afterward and felt mildly horrified at the trail of dirt we left behind when we got up from our table.

Worked on my skinny toothpick arms! Runny nose that started yesterday afternoon is getting worse. Rats. I don't feel sick otherwise but it's annoying.

Leanimal, Phatty, Goose, Cindy, Son of Cindy, 'Bent and I met at Leanimal's folks' place in Orillia after a truly nasty drive north through blowing rain, sleet and snow. We headed out on Lake Couchiching in canoes and kayaks anyway and were rewarded with pretty nice paddling conditions for mid-April - even a good dose of sunshine!







We were hit by some blowing snow (if you look really closely) but everyone was dressed for it.



Well, maybe Phatty was a little chilly. Otherwise, it's hard to explain why he insisted on doing a set of 100 one-armed push-ups at every rest stop.



Lots of fun! Nice scenery and excellent company. It was great to get the kayak paddling muscles working again - including the lower back, which clearly needs more paddling practice. Thanks so much to the Mueller clan for letting us invade and feeding us yummy post-paddling snacks by a roaring fire - mmm.

I ran around the narrow block of conservation land where the Bruce Trail runs between Humber Station and Gore Roads. Other than a few forays to find wild apple trees in autumn, we've usually stayed on the Bruce through there. It's convenient to home and it would be nice to run a loop, so I decided to try to run all the trails and make a map with my GPS. This involved some backtracking and repeating, and I hit a couple of dead ends, including someone's driveway - oops.

A few of the tracks on the map aren't really trails - some of them turned out to be faint animal tracks through rough open land where the thorny bushes were a little unpleasant on bare legs. I'm not 100% sure where the boundary between conservation authority land and private land is, so I'll have to figure that out, but there is definitely a worthwhile short running loop in there.

Argghh - just learned that the evening we picked more than 6 months ago to teach orienteering to Cub Scouts at Albion Hills will also be the "ride and register" night for the Chico Tuesday night mountain bike races. We'd asked the park super about that and he said April 27 would be too early in the season for bike racing. So... time for a quick change of plans to Palgrave since we can't have little kids wandering across trails during a MTB event. The Palgrave map isn't as friendly to beginners and there won't be any facilities for the kids - no washrooms, no garbage pails, nada. As if I wasn't already nervous enough about working with a gaggle of 8-10 year old boys!!

Gorgeous warm and sunny day! Sadly, I spent almost all of it in a windowless room at a tense Region of Peel Council meeting. :-( At least our solar panels were able to take advantage of the nice weather, generating almost 11 kilowatt-hrs of electricity - more than we'll use today. Just wait till the days get longer!

Fantastic way to start the day! I rode from home to Albion Hills where I met 'Bent (who had dropped off his computer at work), Leanimal and VO2Max for a fun ride around the single track. I'm still getting back into biking for the year - not always taking the best line on the trails, getting too close to trees and hitting a few roots at the wrong angle. But my climbing legs feel pretty good from doing more early season running, so I mostly have to work on my coordination! After the trail ride, Leanimal and I rode the rail trail and had lattes on the new Palgrave Cafe patio before riding to our respective homes.

Here's where we went in the Albion Hills part of our ride. (Yeah, the novelty will wear off eventually but I'm still having fun with QuickRoute!) Click on the map, then click on the magnifying glass to make it bigger.


My bike computer measured 1.5 km more distance than the Forerunner which gives an indication of how much the FR under-measures single track. In a recent test on 20 km of open rail trail, the bike computer and FR were only about 20 meters different.

I claimed my prize today - about half a roast chicken with frozen dark chocolate yoghurt and berries for dessert, yum. Now back to being well-behaved again.

Aieeee - here's some incredibly unhealthy fast food. And people think we adventure racers are the ones taking risks with our lives?!?

Ran to the northwest corner of Palgrave East to spend time on different trails and run some of the usual trails in the opposite direction. Surprising how different it felt! Fantastic weather - cool and sunny. Lots of happy frogs in the wetlands.

I surprised The Archer and half a dozen other mountain bikers on some twisty single track. I knew they were coming so I stepped off to wait but the first guy looked a little startled. It's rare to meet anyone in Palgrave, let alone someone who suddenly appears out of the thick brush just a few meters away.

When I got home, I tried a new recovery drink - a greens smoothie with some high protein powder mixed in. Yecchh. Back to my chocolate milk!

Just for the geeks and orienteers in the crowd (and for those rare people who are both)... Here's where I went during the Palgrave East portion of the run. Click on the map, then click on the little magnifying glass to make it legible. Green is faster and red is slower. As Hammer pointed out, I'm way too slow on the corners! :-)

Caron's Power Yoga DVD #1. Managed to get through all the upper body stuff without any splats due to my toothpick arms. Small victories.

30 years ago today, Terry Fox began his Marathon of Hope to raise $1 million for cancer. The total currently stands at half a billion dollars. Tonight the CBC Radio show "As It Happens" played part of an interview between Terry and the late Barbara Frum after his cancer had returned, just nine months before his death. Powerful stuff.