Training Log Archive: Bash

Another hot day so 'Bent and I returned to Island Lake, this time with kayaks for the first time this year. Due to 'Bent's knee injury, I'm racing solo at Logs Rocks and Steel, and today was my first serious paddle in 'Bent's Wavemaster kayak that I plan to use. It's not a racing boat - just a faster, lighter sea kayak than mine. It will take some practice to get used to the toe-operated rudder but I think it will work well if I can avoid smashing this delicate thing into smithereens on rocks.

Tsk tsk, I had to twist 'Bent's arm to do an extra 2 km after we'd completed the 8 km loop of the lake. It's not like him to be so lazy! A post-paddle all-you-can-eat sushi buffet followed by a DQ hot fudge sundae more than offset any calories that may have been burned. In a continuing downward spiral, we spent the next few hours basking in the TV's glow watching le Tour de France.

After our cycling fix, we went through some trial and error to devise a kayak portaging system for me. It is definitely not an option to drag 'Bent's boat along the trails as I've seen some racers do!

P.S. Congrats to STORM on winning the 50K event at the Creemore Vertical Challenge. Awesome job!

Creemore Vertical Challenge 25K trail race - lots of hills!

(Garmin measured 24.5 km but it underestimates the distance of twisty trail, especially in the forest.)

After watching Charlotte V run 60-90 km/day for the past couple of weeks, I was inspired to do my first long trail race since last year's Creemore race. 'Bent finished near the top last year but sadly his knee won't let him do that right now, so I was on my own. :-(

It was a gorgeous, sunny day, although a high of 28C is not the best weather for a winter loving person like me. Oh well, gotta learn to suck it up, right?

It was great to spend a few minutes catching up with STORM. He did the 50K today, i.e. two of the loops that I did. Click on the little earth if you haven't looked at Garmin tracks on Attackpoint before.

Although the race is about 50% gravel roads, Creemore is not known as a fast course - the top woman finished in 2:11 today. Last year my goal was to break 3 hours and I was happy with 2:55. This year I aimed to improve on last year's time and was thrilled to drop 18 minutes, running it in 2:37 and finishing 2nd in my age group, 9th of about 55 women overall. The prizes are awesome and totally appropriate for Creemore. I came away with a bag of Creemore Coffee, a bottle of maple syrup and a custom pottery mug handmade by the race director's wife. All the finishers got handmade pottery medals - so cool.

If anything, I didn't feel like I pushed as hard as I did last year. It was just too darned hot and sunny for that. It probably helps that I've got less weight to drag around. One big change was that I did a better job of ignoring people who were walking up hills this time. I did walk up the steepest ones but I tried to run or at least run/walk the types of hills that we would normally run around here. Slowrunner has trained me to feel guilty about too much walking! Also, some of the people who walk the uphills and technical downhills are faster on flat roads, but I don't have a lot of different gears so I need to keep on chugging.

Just like last year, I loved the two steep-sided creek crossings 1 km from the end. One of them has a rope to help runners manage the steep terrain. Here's where my adventure racing and orienteering background comes in handy. In each case, I ignored the rope and leapt off the edge, skidded crazily down to the creek and used saplings to drag myself up the other side. I passed the 3 men who had been just ahead of me for the past couple of kilometers and stayed ahead till the finish - yeehaw! :-) Then I went and sat in the cold Mad River with some of the other racers. Not quite an ice bath but wonderfully refreshing - especially the part where I filled my hat with water and put it back on. Mmmm...

Nice to hang out with Tarno and Jackie and cheer as Tarno was awarded 1st place in his age category (3rd overall in the race).

Gear notes:
1) I usually wear a tank top for hot weather running but I tried a super-light Salomon XT Wings II SmartSkin technical T-shirt instead. Worked really well! I didn't have to worry about my pack rubbing the wrong way and I actually felt cooler with less skin in the sun.
2) Trav and Baloney introduced me to the miracle of Leukotape last weekend when they were here working on Charlotte's feet. It is amazing stuff and I will be buying a whole bunch of it.

Physical notes: What the heck was that creaky pain in my right hip from 15-25 km?? It felt like it arose from an asymmetry in my gait. Gotta figure that out before racing 50 km in October!

Congratulations to the amazing Charlotte Vasarhelyi for setting a new record for a solo runner completing the Bruce Trail. She finished at Queenston Heights this afternoon after running 894 km in a time of 13 days 11 hours, beating the old record by 23 hours. I'm told the trail was 66 km shorter when the previous record was set but that's not relevant to the record since the length of the Bruce Trail is constantly changing.

She was on fire today! She ran at a good pace and barely stopped at support points (other than to grill us on the exact number of kilometers left!) She always ran off with food in her hand, and her bladder was sometimes changed before she reached the support crew by a runner who ran down the trail and retrieved her pack. It was a great finish.

'Bent tested his bad knee by pacing Char for 27 km - no serious pain so far. I'm racing tomorrow so I drove the support vehicle with the pooches. (Bringing them along was the only way we could be away from home for so long!) BulletDog ran the final 7 km with Char. Great fun, wonderful people, lots of excitement!

At 6 p.m., Charlotte Vasarhelyi had 57.6 km left in her end-to-end, 894-km Bruce Trail run. There was talk of going through the night to improve on the new record she is almost assured to set (she has till mid-day Saturday). However, she has chosen to stop when it gets dark tonight so she can enjoy the experience of coming into Queenston tomorrow. 'Bent plans to pace her tomorrow and I'll take my camera and cheer since I'm racing Saturday morning. Go Char, go!!

In honour of Canada Day, 'Bent and I paddled our whitewater canoe (a.k.a. "sail") around Island Lake on a windy day. It's rare to see whitecaps there! We haven't been doing much paddling this year and it's time to get back into it. RockstAR is coming up and I'm doing Logs Rocks and Steel solo, so there are lots of good reasons to hit the water. (Oh yeah, it's fun too!)

BulletDog and I took advantage of the cool weather to run around Palgrave West. I tried to attack the hills to practise for Creemore on Saturday. Too bad we couldn't have this same nice temperature for the race!

Rodney Yee Power Yoga for Flexibility

Ultimate XC results are posted now. Congrats to our friends who braved this tough stage race, with an extra cheer for Getawaystix who took the victory and for Relentless who *just* missed the podium. And for Harps and T. Rex and FB and... oh heck, an extra cheer for them all.

OK, it's for real now. I've registered for the Run for the Toad 50K trail race on Oct. 2. Aieee!! According to their recommended program, I've trained too much this week. So far, so good.

At 11:15 a.m., Charlotte Vasarhelyi is at Clappison's Corners. Without checking the details, I'd guess she's got about 150 km left to the end of the Bruce Trail. She usually travels 4-5 km/hr from now until sunset, including support stops.

Hamilton-area Attackpointers, I'm sure she'd love to have some friendly, supportive visitors along the trail or at roadside stops. I can provide a cell phone # for the support crew if you write me. (But they often don't have signal so it can be easier to go looking for her.)

At 4:00pm Charlotte left Sherman's Falls in Dundas; this is at the 45.9km mark on Map # 8 of the 25th Edition Bruce Trail guide. If anyone wants to come out to offer support, she usually runs till at least 8:30 and often until 9:30.

OK, the Milton Basement Tree Huggers are going. (That's Tiny and me.) Who else is coming to the U.S. 24-hr Rogaining Champs in Watkins Glen, NY on the long August weekend? Price goes up after tomorrow - although it's still really inexpensive. As Canadians, we just have to have our entry postmarked by tomorrow to get the earlybird price; we don't have to pay until we get there. The event director is one of the most experienced rogaine organizers in North America, so it should be good.

After spending 10 hrs on the trails over the past couple of days, I decided to take a break by... going for a trail run. I thought about postponing to rest my feet but Rocky and I had planned it last week, so I went anyway. It was great! Fun and chatty, and I felt really good, maybe because it was so much cooler. I'm also doing the 25K Creemore Vertical Challenge on Saturday. I'm all about the trail running this week! :-)

Last night was our second night of hosting the crew base camp for Charlotte Vasarhelyi's bid to break the Bruce Trail solo run record. Yesterday's alarm went off at 4 a.m. but because she was running in Caledon today, I got to sleep in till 4:30 a.m. before getting up to make coffee and toast bagels for the people sleeping on Thermarests in odd corners of our house.

Goose and Turbo took the first shift of pacing, then Baloney ran through Forks of the Credit. Then Ron Gehl and I took over for the afternoon, starting with the climb up Devil's Pulpit on the Niagara Escarpment, then continuing through mostly rocky, muddy terrain to the far side of Terra Cotta Conservation Area. Char ran more today but the humidity and 27C temperature made her a little queasy by mid-afternoon. At the 50K mark, ThreePinJim, her longtime training partner, took over alone in hopes that the injection of new blood might inspire her to put in some extra kilometers in the evening. It worked - she did 72 km today and got most of the way to Milton. Almost 700 km down, about 200 km to go!

If any Milton/Hamilton trail runners have time available during the day on Tues/Wed of this week, write me for ThreePinJim's cell phone. I think he may be overworked in the next couple of days.

It was fun to meet longtime ultrarunner Ron Gehl. There is absolutely *no* mystery as to how his daughter Laurie McGrath became one of the top ultrarunners in North America. Whereas most people might get to know you by asking things like, "How do you know Charlotte?" or "How long have you lived in Caledon?", one of Ron's first questions to me was, "When are you doing a 100-miler?" I laughed and said that I'm working toward my first 50K. He immediately started discussing the race calendar, recommending a good candidate event and talking about the strategy I should use to run four 20K laps. "Wait a minute, Ron - 4 laps would be a 50-miler. I'm just thinking about a 50K." "Oh, don't bother with that. Once you get going, you might as well just do the 50-miler. And then you should do a 100-miler. And here's how you'll prepare for that..." I get the feeling that it would be virtually impossible to grow up in his household and *not* become an ultrarunner!

Kudos to Char for her amazing effort. She will break the record if she finishes by Saturday morning, and with "only" a little over 200 km left, things are looking very, very good.

A special tip of the hat to Baloney and Trav, whose calm, organized, experienced approach to both the base camps and the trail running contributed hugely to the success of Char's last couple of days. ThreePinJim will be the team leader over the next few days and is doing a bang-up job too.

Here are some random photos showing Char and crew, including Laurie McGrath, Goose, Ron, Baloney, ThreePinJim and me.