Training Log Archive: BrandNewMe

To work.

Bad day. Painful foot less of a worry than the need for mental release. Work, crags, radical road and home. Feeling :( though this helped.

Laurence's first running session today. CAAC. 6-7pm at Saughton. I run across the meadows to after school club to pick them up (one mile) and wonder why my bag is so jiggly. Hmm. I realise half way that I forgot to zip it up and things are flying out all over the meadows. Whoops.

Laurence is in the running group, and Lucy is too young, but I want to give her some running so we jog a mile around the track before heading to the play park / skate park with our scooters. None of the above counts as training though. I wore my trainers all day today and my foot was better for it.

Ray and I both got the bank holiday - the kids didn't. We were supposed to use the day doing serious chores - paint the exterior woodwork, fix Luxy's bike, do some gardening, tidy the garage, go computer shopping - but, well, that's just too boring.

We went on a bike ride instead. About 30 miles. Lots of disused railways, pretty much all the way to Saturday's orienteering area and back, then the Espy in portobello for pub lunch and the Portobello Turkish baths, before a panic sprint back up the hill to school, responsibilities etc etc.

Both surprisingly pooped.

Very pleasant run in the pentlands with Graeme.

I went out with a friend last night. This friend is a functioning alcoholic. Bad move - we drank so much. It was a fairly restrained night for him. Any foot pain this morning was the least of my problems.

I'd been saving up my 'wreck my foot again' running for the weekend, and this took us to an ELO event at Saltoun and Humbie. The forest wasn't great, just like anywhere in England outside the lakes, but I was in the mood for some fun. All went smoothly apart from some lace tying at 8 and 9, and number 11. Number 11 was not where is ought to have been. I ran to the middle of the circle, in which there was neither a feature or control. After jogging around a bit making sure, I saw that the description was a shallow reentrant so I went to the shallow reentrant about 50-100m west of the centre of the circle and found it.

Ray had less luck, and milled around until he found it, then set off to number 12, navigating from the centre of number 11, which was not where he was in the forest so got confused. He dropped 5 mins, I dropped a minute or so. Managed to avoid getting Rachel Browned, as did he by a few secs. Phew! The majority of competitors didn't have a problem with 11 which makes you wonder what their usual navigation technique is. Go in the direction that sort of feels right for a distance that sort of feels right, then sweep search the terrain???

All good clean fun, with, juice, cake, balloons and stickers at the end. Top notch hosting.

C • No 11 4

Tempted to go running after work sent us home at 3:30 (it's a sunny day and it's a bank holiday on Monday so leave when you like) but still a bit crippled so picked the kids up early instead.

Yesterday was fun but my foot is too f*ed now as a result. Lucy has a raised bed, and last night I had to play tooth fairy, and it took me ages to work out how my crippled body could climb up high enough without waking her. I don't seem to have been fitted with wings.

It makes it easier to look at the woc long courses without getting jealous when you can't walk accross a room. The courses looked fun enough - I loathe long legs like that at the start though - total brain overload. The terrain was better than the middle, but why did the map disintegrate? I thought we had to have map bags at woc? And all of the trains forming was ridiculous. The fun of long for me is the solitude. The world cups in Sweden / Norway last year were in cool terrain, and had there been a selection race in Norway a few weeks ago I would have rocked up and tried to make the team (hahaha!), but no regrets. That didn't look such fun.

C • The print hadn't fused at a hugh enough temperature 12

Cycle to work in the morning, then at lunch time do some jobs on the bike, drop it back home, and run back to work through the meadows. It is v handy working in town.

Run to the orienteering, and home, with a nice little chat with Tessa.

Orienteering around Steils. Great fun. I felt ok and was going well. I think I run best when not wearing compression socks, but they definately help, so race without them, run with.

Tessa beat me, as did Ackkers - not Graeme but James. What a great series - thanks Graeme and Paul and all that put events on. The hosts of tonight's event, the Amblers, really did well today. A cup of tea and home baking at the finish. I would have lingered and eaten more cake had I not had to race back to let Ray go out running. And I didn't get to stay for the prize giving - all to play for tonight.

C • Prizegiving 3

Along the canal to HP, up past Myreside then along and up Morningside Road, doing a few errands.

A mighty fine race at Yellowcraigs as part of a HBT party. I felt good for once, and ran well. Foot was ok during the race. Not good, but not terrible. Teams all handicapped with the aim of fairness. Lozza, me, Manny Gorman. We were a respectable 4th out of 25 teams - Laurence was chuffed.

Drop kids and Ray at Yellowcraigs, drop the van in N Berwick and run back to the race start at Yellowcraigs. My foot has been sore doing anything all morning, and was v sore the first mile out on a road (v bad surface for it). I couldn't jack and start walking as I needed to get to the start and Lozza was in my relay team. Ploughed on. It eased. Jogged back to N Berwick with Sarah O'Neill after the race. V nice indeed.

Stress. Tired. Sore foot. I went to work early only to have my cat-loving colleague that sits next to me tell me all morning about what her cat did this morning, how her cat gets on with other cats, when to get a new cat, how the vet treated her cats diabetes etc etc etc. For hours! I mean, diabetes!!! How do they even know. The cat gets grumpy? What's new? The cat has bad breath? Again, what's new? I just don't get it. Why not shoot it, have a nice cat stew, and get a new version of cat that costs less in vet bills? I didn't ask this, tho I got close. I also got close to screaming "shut the duck up" but that might not be 'teamy'. I now see why they get the new girl to sit next to the work nutter. Loads of work on, couldn't think of anything other than cat sandwiches, cat pie, cat fricassee...

So I set off with my sore foot to run to the school, pick Laurence up, take him to guitar (through all of the festival crowds), head to the seat for 30 mins, back, take him to after school club (through all of the festival crowds) and back to work. I really wish all of the festival people would just go away. Why have a festival in Edinburgh? We have students and tourist, lots of both. Our hotels are always full anyway. We don't need the business. Why not have a festival somewhere horrid that noone wants to visit like Birmingham? Then we'd see how many of the appalling boden-clad braying masses really are interested in contemporary Mongolian dance.

Pain makes me less tolerant than usual. Thoroughly :-(

Good luck to the Britisb team at WOC.

C • Duck? 1

A thoroughly miserable day. PF sorer than ever this morning, and it wasn't going away. For those unfamiliar with this sort of pain, it's like having a pea-sized ball bearing taped to your heel. This doesn't sound too bad but it is relentless. Whenever you walk anywhere it's pain. I nearly had to go home from work mid afternoon cause I went to make a cup of tea and it was so sore I couldn't think straight after. I managed to sit it out until 3:45 when I had to leave to go to get my face drilled off (it felt like that) by the dentist. It was quite funny. She gave me a dental anaesthetic which seemed to paralyse my cheek and eyelid too, which made cycling to pick the kids up interesting. Either she accidentally gave me a double dose, or it's a new innovation in anaesthetics. Either way, the injection itself didn't hurt at all, and they usually do, so it's good.

Spent the evening mostly lying down eating chocolate feeling sorry for myself, which cheered me up. Also more proactively called my new health insurance people to ask for pf inspiration.

C • Mudge 5

Meadows and Bruntsfield, doing jobs.

Does anyone have any plantar fasciitis tips? I have had it since the JK long at Bigland, and it is painful every day. I'd quite like to be able to enjoy running again sometime soon. Currently trying my Achilles / pf night splint (good for morning pain), pf flip flops for in the house (again, good to help manage it) and pf compression socks (not convinced). Interested to heave if anyone has tried Fitflips for PF. They are said to be quite effective.

C • pf 2

From work to kb, then kb to home

Kb sprintelope

Graeme had taken a professional attitude to planning, and put in lots of temporary fences. He even whacked up some scaffolding and building work for fun. All well mapped though, and it made the area that we all know so well much more interesting. I was feeling v lethargic, and was in no mood to rush anything, so punted round, procrastinating by looking at each leg carefully before setting off as a means of putting off the running.

Then caught up with Laurence at the midway point on the short, and went round with him. The oo and bubo has really helped his orienteering. He was a bit ill though, and a bodily fluid-related incident of the worse possible kind meant that we had to cut the course short, and rush off home to get a shower. I've never dettol'ed a dibber and a compass before, and I have never washed the little elasticy bits before.

Got the train to N Queensferry and got off and ran back from there on the coastal path. Great. Lovely evening. Calves not 100% but not terrible. Compression socks helping I think. Running with my new flip belt,

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=flipbelt&sou...

which was brilliant.

Ill Ward family. Cold, fluey and the kids are asthmatic which = no sleep.

Braids and blackford. Trying out compression sock to help my calf problems. They did well I think. Pf is the worst ever though, and I seem to be unable to run fast right now. Onwards and upwards.

Out and about. Sore calf.

From work to DVC to Blackford pond.

Sarah O'Neill is trotter captain, so leads training every Thursday. This week was a medley theme. 4 x 6 mins continual reps with 2min rec. The first 2 mins were on road, next 2 were on trail, and then it was 1min uphill, and 1 min downhill.

Great fun, it broke up the long session nicely. I was shite though. Just felt shite. Not dizzy which was good, just weak. Not sure how to stop myself feeling shite. Plough on with training and try to run out of it, or take time off? Hmm.

Jog to work. After that exertion, my garmin reccomends I take 14 hours to recover.

To buckstone via Frandy's to belatedly give Rebecca her birthday present.

Sprintelope. Fun. Felt as fresh as one of those dog shits that has been on the pavement so long it has turned white.

And home, and off to watch the judo club's Sally Conway down at the judo club. Exciting. She was totally robbed in the semi. Waiting for the bronze medal match now. Come on Sally!!!
BRONZE!!! WHAT an inspiration. Just amazing!

Busy.

Morning in Amsterdam, evening on the ferry home. Busy busy busy.

The ferry was DFDS. They still have cabins on the deck below the car deck. The sight of the sign alone was enough to turn the stomach. Needless to say I chuck lots of money at cabins on ferries to ensure my kids don't see any things they shouldn't.

For those interested:

The plant pots are still not nailed in place
I managed to resist nicking a duvet / towel
There don't seem to do deckchairs any longer. I wonder why ;-)

Woke up in the van parked up in a service station somewhere near Cologne, after 2.5 hours sleep. We drove to Amsterdam and got there midday, heading into town for the afternoon. It was the middle of gay pride festival. Lots of awkward questions we were too exhausted to address. Too exhausted to walk properly, so running was really out of the question.

Amsterdam is a great city though! I could happily live here. It's clean and friendly and in many ways like Scandinavia, only more kooky and less smug.

Bubo day 4

I compared splits with Kim on the ferry after. The story of the race is I struggled on the first third where is was stoney stoney stoney. I just can't run through that stuff. The middle bit I could run, and took lots of time out of everyone. Then I took a bearing to number 15 and got slightly off line, then hit a big ruined building, and stopped, and thought WTF.... And after a while of thinking I must have missed a control or done a 180 or something similar, I see a funny wall symbol under the number '15' and realised that was how it was mapped, and that I wasn't far offline at all. 2:30-3mins lost. A 1 min lead lost. I punted around the last 1/6th a bit deflated. A fun race though, v well planned on what was a bit of a scrappy area.


Bubo - loved it. Such fun. Cres was special too. Beautiful island.

Things learnt from my first orienteering since April:

I am pretty unfit
I don't seem to have much confidence in my technique. If I did have, then I would have picked up some of my mistakes much sooner.
I can compete in terrain without necessarily damaging myself.
It was fun, I am up for more.

I really liked competing against Kim and Rachael, even if they did bump me off the podium.

Results / splits:
http://orienteeringonline.net/CompetitionBasicInfo...

Into the van, off Cres, through Croatia, through Slovenia, waited 3:15 hours to get through the border to Austria, then on to Germany, driving until 4:30am when we could drive no more. Tired.

Bubo day 3

Laurence vomited everywhere at 11:30 last night. Spent most of the night cleaning up regurgitated calamari. Nice. Note to self - must make sure he chews his food more thoroughly. There were full tentacles that I cleaned up.

Next morning, a forest sprint. What a treat. Shadowed Lucy around W10 first, and was embarrassed to find that my course had the same number 2 as hers. Struggled to get flow, and did a 90 degree error at 14 and missed 18, only realising when I got to 19. FFS. Dropped 3:30-4mins over those 2 controls.

Great little burn up though.

Bubo day 2.

I woke feeling ill and weak and vomity. Not a good start. By the time I had hauled Luxy up to the start in the baking hot weather, I felt really quite shit.

I ran past number one, just can't have seen it at all. Looked in other places that it might have been before turning around and seeing it. Nearly 1 min dropped already. Overshot 4, royally stuffed up 12 (2mins). Getting really got and bothered and miserable now. Dropped 1 min at 15, another at 16. Just couldn't think, too dehydrated and tired and miserable and grumpy. Considering jacking... Took a high speed fall to 17 cutting both knees, then another one out of 17. There was a lot of swearing, loudly. And after the second one many thoughs of jacking. Major grump. Walked to 18, found it easily.

Straight to 19, down through more stoney shite, but it was nice running up the other side. I was so knackered I couldn't find the f*cker. Another 1min + wasted. Just too hot and too tired and too dehydrated to enjoy it. I think I might have some isostar in the van somewhere. Got to dig it out for tomorrow. Still in the mix overall.

Bubo cup day 1 - w21e

In the olive groves of Cres. This means a heck of a lot of stones. Walls, ruined walls, low walls, low long piles of stones, big piles of stones, open rocks.

It was fun as a one off, really entertaining, but I was glad to get to the end as when you were not on stones you were running through thistles, and it got tiresome. Some misses but otherwise ok. 4th, 3rd Brit.

Full on beach bum day for the first time in my kids lives. They loved it, as did I. Snorkel-tastic.

Travelling from bled to Cres, with a few unnecessary detours.