Training Log Archive: Bash

Some minor excitement around here... When I was cut off in Coast to Coast, the volunteer was required to strip me of my bib so I wouldn't attempt to continue as part of the race. I wasn't nearly as cheerful as the photo looks but I put on a good show. After all, the poor guy was just doing his job.



New Zealanders have had more important things to worry about lately so I wasn't going to mention it.... but look what race organizers put in the mail the day before the Christchurch earthquake! (They are fine, by the way.)



In other news, we have "Flat Stanley" visiting us this week, courtesy of a 6-year-old friend doing a kindergarten project in Australia. He is supposed to have a few typical Canadian adventures while he is here then we mail him back home with stories and photographic evidence.

Tarno - with help from Jackie, Sudden, Hammer, Etoile and (I think) Pat-hetic - put on a Ski-O event at Highlands Nordic today. For such a low key event, there was a good turnout including skier families from Highlands, orienteers and adventure racers.

Because of Coast to Coast, I hadn't skate skied in two months so *that* was a shock to the system. There were opportunities to go cross-country between trails, which was allowed in this event - a little more challenging on skate skis. Fun!

I did the Enduro course which consisted of two different courses on separate maps, both covering the same area. Things were going well until minutes from the end when I was debating a route option that would avoid a small amount of climb vs. a route I could do with my eyes closed. Getawaystix flew by at that moment and hit me hard in the head, knocking all the sense out of me.

OK, the truth is that we just exchanged quick greetings but the effect was the same. I turned left one junction too early and ended up doing a really stupid detour with some bushwhacking, a huge climb and not nearly enough reference to my compass. Duh. Thanks to Garmin, I know that it cost me 8 minutes. Coach LD was far enough ahead that I couldn't have caught her for the female win anyway. Great job, Coach! Congrats also to Getawaystix on the overall win.

It was in The Star today so I guess it's official... 'Bent has been chosen to receive this year's Green Hero Award at the annual Earth Hour Lantern Walk in Woodbridge.

He's been at this for awhile. A few years ago, he got a Bullfrog Power Splash Award (presented by the one and only Hansel) and before that he was selected as the Caledon Environmentalist of the Year for starting the first municipal battery recycling program in Ontario.

Very proud of you - congratulations! :)

Outside Magazine - Train Your Brain

Good stuff even if we've heard some of it before.

E.g. A tip for people who are sick of working out indoors: Designate a buzzword and do a 30-second sprint every time you hear it. If you're feeling strong, try "deficit" on CNN.

'Bent and I hooked up with the C3 triathlon club for the first half of their 4+ hour (!!) Saturday morning spin. Most of them are getting ready for Ironman Austria on July 3 so they're doing high volume weeks now.

We all brought our own bikes and trainers. There was music playing and - for inspiration - highlights of the 2003 Tour de France DVD projected on the wall. That's the one where Beloki lost control of his bike on soft tarmac and Armstrong had to ride cross-country to avoid hitting him. This was also the Tour with "The Look".

After a warm-up, Coach Hans led us through 3 X 30 minute sets of medium to high intensity drills with virtually no rests between drills or sets, e.g.

- Alternate 1 minute standing / 1 minute sitting while moving one gear harder every 2 minutes for 12 minutes.

- 6 minutes high cadence (100+) moving gears back and forth as directed.

- 1:45 single leg drills with 15 sec both legs in between.

- "Jumps" - quick changes back and forth between sitting and standing with the goal of making the motion smoother. Pretty hard gear by the end.

Sweat, sweat, sweat! One thing I had to work on was proper technique for standing on pedals (which I seldom do in the real world but should do a little more). Riders have a tendency to lean forward when they stand up but the motion should be vertical with virtually no weight placed on your handlebars. If you put too much weight on the front wheel, it slows you down.

I've never done 1-leg drills longer than a minute so this was the first time I'd realized that I'm a stronger left-legged biker even though I'm a right-handed person. Maybe it has something to do with my right knee having issues in the past. Anyway, I'll have to include these drills in every trainer session. Also do lots of 1-legged squats, etc.

Good bunch of people including friends like Caron, Trent, Thumbs-of-Death and Gary B. 'Bent's recum-bent bike provided lots of smiles in the sea of fancy road bikes, especially his "Lazyboy" 1-legged pedaling technique.The time went by surprisingly quickly.

We've decided to buy a full triathlon membership this year to see if we might take advantage of more local group workouts. (We won't be doing any triathlons though!) It's only $110, i.e. less than $10/month and less than I spend any time I venture in the door of MEC. It'll be nice to have a clean outdoor lake to swim in this summer even though we don't plan to do swim training.

Feeling inspired after our spin so headed straight to the weights for a quick session before lunch.

I'm not going to log my 6 minutes of bike trainer time today but I can report that - thanks to encouragement from Carbon and our C3 triathlete friends - we've ordered a Tacx Flow Ergotrainer that should arrive next week.

The main measurements of interest are wattage, speed and cadence. You can use your own HRM or get one from them (I have one). Once it arrives, I'll need to get tested for different power and HR zones, then I can use them with various training programs including a set of Carmichael DVDs designed around this trainer.

A little late in the season for it but on slushy days like this, I know it'll be awhile before I can hit the trails. Should be fun!

P.S. Maximum wattage in my short spin was 311 and it would have been hard to hold it for long. Apparently, Dunc can hold more than that for two 8 minute test intervals after training all winter. Wow!

On yet another rainy March day, I'm ready for a mental escape. Here are some addtional course testing photos from the Wilderness Traverse 2011 course. Getawaystix and I were up there in late October.

Continuing our avoidance of today's icky March weather, 'Bent and I did Hard Core Live with Caron. Some new and painful stuff.

More indoor fun with the C3 crew. I'm gonna hurt tomorrow.

I'm a winter-loving gal and I wanted to go for a trail run today in the drizzle, fog and frigid ankle-deep slush. I really did. But, well, it got late and I got curious about the political situation in the U.S. so I hit the paddle trainer for three Daily Shows.

Can't wait to get out on the water. I'm thinking about whether I should get a basic whitewater kayak. (Should I?) Compared to our other boats, they're a bargain. We have a whitewater canoe but I don't have a solo boat that's good for rocky rivers, and as a result I rarely get out on rocky rivers. And I need to get better at that.

Wow, a $20M lawsuit for a young father who suffered brain damage when he went over his handlebars after hitting his brakes in a pack in his first road cycling race. A very sad situation for him and his family. Defendants are the Hamilton Cycling Club and the Ontario Cycling Association.

For those of us involved in event organization - and participation - this is scary. This lawsuit will be an interesting exploration of what legal obligation exists for an athlete to take personal responsibility for his/her own safety and actions in sports events. I expect we'll also learn more about how valuable liability waivers really are; I'm told they carry more weight in Canada than in the U.S.

Endurance athletes who trained and raced the longest and hardest were most likely to show heart damage in this study written up in the NY Times. Boo. :(
<http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/when-exer...>

Here's the abstract of the study. We might need Revy's help to interpret some of this stuff. I'm choosing to cling to little rays of hope, such as the low number of participants in the study and the fact that none of them were women.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21330616

Tour de Palgrave West. There was a sharp contrast between the awesomeness of being out in a blizzard and the crappiness of the skiing. The awesomeness won out but the snow was sticky and I sometimes felt like I was snowshoeing on 185 cm two by fours. I headed off trail for awhile and conditions were a little better when I was bushwhacking, maybe because that snow had never been packed down.

There's a lot of rain in the forecast for the next 24 hours so I'm glad I got out. When March comes, we never know when our last Palgrave ski is going to be!

Coach Troy made me sweat again. Spinervals 3.0 "Suffer-orama". Who gets to name these DVDs? If there's ever a job opening, sign me up. It would be fun.

"Phatty's Revenge"

"Hammer's Lost Breakfast"

"The Harps Crusher"

"Getawaystix Can't Get Away From This"

"The Bender Bender"

"You May Be Tiny But We're Not Afraid To Work Your Little Butt Off"

"Recum-'Bent Nightmares"

"Work Out with Troy or Be Pat-hetic"

And so on... Feel free to add more to the list!

Getawaystix and I met to review the final piece of course design for this summer's Wilderness Traverse. Can't wait to test it out!

It was such a beautiful day that we couldn't spend it all indoors staring at maps, so we headed up to the starting line of January's Dontgetlost.ca Icebreaker event. It was a Score-O and nobody made it to all the controls in less than 1 hour. GStix decided to give it a shot.



My ambitions were less lofty. I just wanted to get to the controls I hadn't visited before, plus any others I might hit along the way. (98-99-100-101-97-96-95-94)



It was a bluebird day. On days like this, I really feel sorry for people who stay indoors all winter, hiding from the cold.

Running on the packed snow trails went fairly quickly but travel off trail was slow as molasses. There is still plenty of snow and the recent rain has made it heavy and crusty in places. Unfortunately for GStix, he didn't take snowshoes and ended up postholing around much of the course in knee deep snow. So for now, Harps remains the IceBreaker course record holder.

I messed around a bit in the northwest of the map. I confess that I was having so much fun skidding down steep slopes and admiring snow laden tree branches that I didn't always stay focused on training my navigation skills. Oh well, we won't have too many more amazing winter days like this so I might as well have fun.

After the final control, I ran off the map (on purpose!) to take the Switchback Trail back to GStix's place. Really nice place for hill training. I should go there to do repeats one day before APEX.

Trail running to the end after the final control.

15 cm of new snow over the weekend = skiing out the back door again. Booyah!



I'd hoped to ski longer until I discovered that my 2-hr meeting at 2 p.m. was actually a 3-hr meeting at 1 p.m. On top of that, ThunderDog was full of beans, batting the door repeatedly with her paw in hopes of getting out to enjoy the great outdoors. At 14.5 years old with arthritis and asthma, she doesn't feel that good every day so a senior pooch-paced hike in the forest became my top priority, followed by a show of admiration as she made a series of dog snow angels in our back field.



When I finally got out into Palgrave West for a quick ski, I ran into Crash and Skye. Crash and I have just booked Aeroplan flights to the Eco-Endurance Challenge 24-hr rogaine in Nova Scotia. Can't wait to eat lobster!