Training Log Archive: Bash

Don't forget the premiere of Boundless tonight, starring Zoolander and Turbo. It's on the Travel and Escape Channel at 9 p.m.

Skied on my own at first, then 'Bent joined me for a tour around Palgrave West on a bluebird day. It was good Snowgaine training. Most of it was trail breaking with considerable bushwhacking on the K-Bash property (private block of land south of yesterday's race map). We will need an awful lot of money some day to buy this 150 acre property and build a small house on it with VO2Max and Crash as our neighbours on either side. It has everything - hills, trails, forest and the West Humber River.

I checked out Crash's place to make sure it's in good shape after serving as yesterday's race HQ. Great clean-up job by Pat-hectic and the Doctors - absolutely nothing for me to do to make it look tidy before Crash's return.

We met a couple of friendly hikers. They excitedly told us that someone had been making a grid in the woods - perhaps hunters. We told them about yesterday's orienteering race, which explained it all. :)

Event: O-Cup #4 - The IceBreaker
 

O-Cup #4 Icebreaker in Palgrave West. Awesome course design by Pat-hectic. It's a small map so we raced O-Cross style, picking up a new map halfway through. There were four different versions of the race course even though ultimately we all had to visit the same controls - except for the ones some of us could skip due to age/gender handicap. This broke up the crowd quite quickly. I was amazed at how often I was by myself in such a small area. Really well done.

Conditions couldn't have been more perfect for the kids' ARK Snow Day that followed our race. We've lost some of last week's big dump of snow but it has been supplemented with a thick layer of fresh powder over the past two days. This meant that running was *really* hard work, especially when we needed to break trail.

This race was literally in our back yard so 'Bent and I definitely had a local advantage. For some reason, I hadn't used the orienteering map for almost two years so there were a few controls that required some concentration. For the most part though, today's challenge was physical. I knew that Getawaystix, Mick and Bender were very close to me after Loop 1, and I figured they'd hold their pace for Loop 2 but wasn't so sure about my own pace in the deep snow. I managed to hold on and then got to watch the sprint finish where Mick took 2nd just a meter ahead of Getawaystix. Their course was almost 2 km longer than mine. 'Bent was 6th!

Thanks to Dr. Poobuttville, Dr. Chewypoo and Pat-hectic for a fun event! And extra thanks to Crash for allowing us to have the event HQ and bonfire on her property while she was off in Florida doing a 12-hour solo mountain bike race.

We followed up with the inaugural Adventure Race Story Swap at the Toby Jug Pub in Bolton. Big thanks to DoubleDown_on11, Funderstorm and Simpy for their terrific presentations on AR wisdom, and thanks to everyone for coming. The pub liked our group and would be pleased to have us back some time. In fact, one of the bartenders and several of the regular patrons were so interested that they asked me some questions about AR and requested that I leave all of STORM's race post cards so they could pass them on to others. I didn't see that coming! Great to see so many friends today; wish I'd had more time to chat with everyone.

I was meeting Pat-hectic at the Duffy's Lane parking lot this afternoon, and because of the winter road closure, that meant either 1.7 km through the woods or a 7 km drive. No contest - especially on a spectacular sunny day. After providing a brief orientation to tomorrow's O-Cup HQ, I skied back by a slightly longer route.

On the way over, I made the mistake of skiing down Big Hill. In the dense, crusty snow, the narrow, treelined trail was stupid fast. Yikes.

Today's podcast was from CBC Rewind. (It's probably obvious that I'm a CBC Radio-aholic.) This one featured the long career of broadcaster Bill McNeil, whose last shows were "Fresh Air" and "Voice of the Pioneer". They played clips from his interviews with Walter Cronkite and Irving Berlin at the height of their careers. There were also clips from interviews with a couple of young Canadian women hoping to make it big some day - Anne Murray and Karen Kain. It was jarring to hear a CBC broadcaster refer to female colleagues as "girls" and discuss "mentally retarded" people with Jean Vanier, who used the same terminology. But their vocabulary was consistent with the times.

After paddling, I put on a couple of layers over my sweaty clothes and headed outdoors to test different combinations of sleeping bag, bivy bag, tarp and ground insulation in preparation for Tierra Viva. You can't do a proper test of any combination without staying there for at least 20 minutes. I tried 5 or 6 different combos and other than brief indoor breaks to switch things around, I lay in the snow at -4C to -6C for over two hours, returning indoors after it was dark.

As expected, ground insulation was a huge contributor to warmth. Luckily, 'Bent produced a small 62 g mountain marathon sleeping mat for my final test. It's no Thermarest but the impact was significant. I'm undecided on the sleeping bag. but everything else worked just fine.

Hermes texted me during my test and I mentioned where I was. She insisted that I send her a photo.

Nice idea for Valentine's Day but Attackpointers have been doing this for awhile without the press coverage.

No, it's not a mistake. It took 54 minutes to run 6 km at level 4 intensity. This was like breaking trail on a snowshoe run except for short sections on main trails, which were hard-packed and fast, if a little uneven and icy in a few spots. On the untracked trails in Palgrave West and in our back yard, the snow had a thin crust that I broke through with each step, plunging down to ankle or mid-shin depth. Amazing workout! It's been snowing lightly for hours so things are freshening up nicely.

For those who don't know, this is the area where Saturday's O-Cup is happening. I've been a good girl and stayed on the trails here ever since Pat-hectic put out the ribbons, and so far I haven't seen any. (Darn it.) I'm sure that most orienteers will just use running shoes but if someone is planning to do the adult O-Cup course at a hiking pace, they may find snowshoes more pleasant (if they're accustomed to using them). The lead runners will have to do some trail breaking on the lesser-used trails, which will give an advantage to the runners behind. It will be interesting to see how this plays out! Looking forward to welcoming friends to our neck of the woods - literally.

P.S. If you're planning to come, registration closes at midnight tonight. http://dontgetlost.ca/index.php?option=com_content...

What can't astronaut Chris Hadfield do? In case anyone else missed this last week like I did, here he is on the International Space Station playing guitar and singing with the Barenaked Ladies and the Wexford Gleeks.
http://music.cbc.ca/#/concerts/Chris-Hadfield-and-...

RIDE Las Vegas - Valley of Fire DVD: Somehow I always manage to forget that it hits its highest level of intensity with a hard sprint in the last 30 seconds, then I have to cool down on my own after the DVD ends. Lotsa sweat. 164W ave, 84 cadence.

Caron gave us a tough one today! 'Bent dodged it by donating blood upstairs before coming down to the class. I knew they wouldn't want my cold germ-infested blood so I had to do the workout. Speaking of which, I'm going to go out on a limb and declare Cold 3.0 over as of yesterday. Let's hear it for Cold FX and herbal tea!

Lots of shoulders and opening the chest - because your heart should be wide open on Valentine's Day! 'Bent thought I might like to receive a big chocolate heart today - and he was right. :)

5 min warm-up
30 min Endurance zone (ave 137W, 81 cadence)
5 min cooldown

I listened to an Ultrarunner Podcast interview with Mike Foote, who placed 3rd at the shortened UTMB last year. It was interesting; I felt like I could relate better to him than to most top ultrarunners. He wasn't a runner in school. He came into ultrarunning in 2009 from a mountain culture background - backpacking, skiing, climbing, etc. Like Killian, he prefers to do a lot of backcountry skiing in winter instead of running.

For UTMB, he wanted to increase volume without trashing his body so in addition to running, he did many hours of walking - power hiking the uphills and taking it easy on the downhills. He felt that any time on his feet was valuable since he knew he wouldn't be running all of UTMB.

He works at a running store and mentioned that a lot of people come in thinking they have to have a minimalist shoe because that's what they've read about in magazines - and then they end up with Achilles tendinitis because such shoes are not right for everyone. Foote runs in mid-weight shoes with 8 mm drop - very different from the minimalist trend.

When the interviewer asked about the guy who set a course record at JFK this year, Foote laughed and talked about how he tends to think of himself as a trail hack whereas that other guy is a real runner. Although we're on totally different levels, I completely understand what he means by that and have often said similar things about myself. It was very cool to hear that same comment from someone so successful.

Just a little post- bike strength time before dinner. I included teapots in honour of Coach LD's Gatineau Loppet this weekend. Wishing her the best of luck! :)

With Cold 3.0 taking the form of a sinus headache over the past two days, I wanted to focus on strength rather than cardio. I put on my 15 lb pack of golf balls and took BulletDog snowshoeing up and down a bunch of hills. We were mostly bushwhacking and breaking trail in 15-25 cm of snow with a tough, breakable crust. Where the snow is packed down, e.g. our driveway, yesterday's rain has turned our snow into treacherous ice. I can't believe 'Bent thought today would be a good day to ski into work harnessed up to a 90 lb BazingaBeast!

Today's podcast was This American Life on Mapping. It wasn't traditional mapping; the subject was mapping based on each of the five senses, e.g. a sound map of one's workplace.

Saw this tweeted earlier today:
The Pope is hardly the first person to lose interest in his real job so soon after joining Twitter.

Arggh, I don't know how other people end up with nice-looking homes. After the latest screw-up, I'm throwing in the towel on our project. I've been venting my frustrations with some traditional Shakespearian insults. Try it - they work really well.

Legs are jello today! Mild cold still hanging on but not turning into anything that matters. Maybe I'll escape this time. :)