Training Log Archive: matzah ball

well, since today was the pick day of the week weatherwise, I figured I needed to get some training in. connecting all the dots, to nursing home, to bus, cliff cave, meeting, to bus, from bus. Loaded with huge amount of gear, some of which i used and which minimized but did not eliminate unpleasant effects of freezing rain. Ironically the worst part was the meeting inside an unheated house (freezing hands).

Since it was freezing rain when i got to the 'transition area' at cliff cave, i kept all my biking gear on and just changed into the old icebugs. made for awkward running. just ran on the map aiming for features, but had not had time to find my compass, so when I did get lost, I just kept running until i knew where i was. I am much more relaxed about 'mistakes' in training than i used to be. just moving through the woods is enough training, why spoil it with obsessing about what i did 'wrong'. I think this is more likely to help me do 'right' come race time.

Really wanted to spend more time there, but had to get to the meeting.

am stretch

The other day coming home from the train, sitting on the local bus, i kept obsessing on the nice gloves I had lost on the train. Then i thought about the home i was coming back to, that many of the people i had met at the hostel were really forever on the move. What would it feel like to have to keep going, to sleep on another strange mattress or worse, again, and so forth. And what about people who give their whole lives to others, give everything intentionally. I tried to stop thinking of my gloves, but it still made me sad that I had lost such a fine pair.

C • Hell, I have lost a bunch 2

to bus and back, and to very snowy, slushy, icy unpleasant chubb trail with soaked and freezing feet

trail was so bad I decided to run off trail as much as possible where it was much better, warmed up on trail until i got onto map and then ran to features and controls from previous courses. stocked up on water at the west tyson end. Head for orienteering seems clearer, wonder if the B-12 is reversing the 'brain damage' assuming there was any:). Orienteering at an easy pace is such s suberb way to immerse oneself in the world of the woods.

running stretch/strength drills. pulled rear ankle muscle on ice at home.

slept 12 hours, ate breakfast 1 hour before run. 35 up 33 down.

took bus to mtg by soulard, picked up some broccoli, ran back from metrolink+

C • You are home I see! 3

flex drills

friday nite at the movies

lifting and walking with bike case - loaded with bike, shoes, tools etc. weighs a ton

high points: salute to the sun - gets the kinks out well

walking up canyon road from bus stop and then later to bench in nature preserve for lunch

Ran repeats of the nature preserve trail loop that took me 15+ minutes the other day - rolling, twisty terrain - supposed to be a 1.4 mile loop but seems like more given that I kept shedding gear till I felt i was really booking it.
13:29, 13:03, 12:43

running drills

From nature preserve at 7200' up to Pichacho peak @ 8500, back down to saddle at 8000 or so, and then back up steeply to Atalaya peak @ 9100 or so. Snowy trail on Atalaya. Beuatiful ponderosa pine forest and views of Santa Fe, 10,000 car windshields glittering in the sun and not a soul up here

One of the advantages of not having a car - I didn't have to go back to get it. So I just kept going, my motivator being not having to walk along traffic to the bus stop - my destination had a bus stop right at the trailhead.

jog walk off the peak of Atalaya on the trails that seemed much icier than before, then more normal running as the trail leveled off and became more or less ice free.

mainly to bus station and back

After a short warmup, the Rendija canyon 'red' course generously provided me by New Mexico Orienteering. I found this easier than the 'orange' course a few days ago even though it was twice as long. A rest day and further altitude acclimazation definitely helped, though I could still feel the altitude burden. In addition a lot of the controls though in difficult terrain were a relatively short distance from nearby trails, unusual for a red course. However the constant up and down, rock climbing and advanced agility drill of running over deadfall more than compensated for this. Decided not too bring pack but just fuel belt with water, extra food, gloves and clothing. It was pretty cold, so I was not feeling overdressed until the final run in.

A couple of mistakes and a poor route choice:

1. started off on the wrong,not mapped trail, was at control but did not see nearby mapped rock which distracted me
5. I think I dropped down to trail, redline better here, but hard to say because of so much deadfall from fire 15 or so years ago.
6. not being familiar with terrain, made the huge mistake of following the gully -choked with boulders and fallen trees. I should have climbed up the other side of the gully and followed it above.
7,8 stark landscape with every single tree down from the firestorm but the light snow and snowclouds shading the layers of hills made it quite beautiful
9. bad mistake that turned out ok: climbed the mesa, but followed it in the opposite direction from the control for a bit, then dropped down to the trail and ran back the other way. saw old footprints in the snow around the control.
10. wonder what this would have looked like with the woods in place, as it was I could see all the contours from pretty far away
12. starting to understand terrain, approaching control well, descending between choked gully and rock cliff.
14. glissaded down soft sand slope from 13 along cliff around the corner from 12, then followed low point of drainage - still lots of deadfall, but it looked like less than the hillsides, and I didn't have the legs for ups and downs, the deadfall was more than enough work. drifted east to hit trail and followed trail to just below control.

Then walked/rode over to the Baja canyon 1=10:000 map and ran some of the night O controls as a sort of sprint. I was at the far end of the canyon when all of a sudden i felt i had had enough, and walked back. Even this more modest canyon was beautiful, characterized by a mini-canyon/deep rocky gulch that ran down the middle of the much wider larger canyon. Amazing. I could see houses peeking out over the canyon walls here and there, which gave birth to the following aphorism: 'Los Alamos is a quite beautiful city as long as one doesn't see it' or something like that.

running drills after the red course

pushing bike uphill, walking back thru the canyon etc - when all else failed

rest day - need this so bad! I feel like a truck ran over me, but I'm hoping I can keep up the higher base load when i get back to the Lou.

tj/wf

getting ready for another trail day. legs sore. figured out one reason i'm run/walking the uphills - the pack is loaded with water and food for the outing.

Bus went from door of hostel to trailhead, so I left the bike at home. jog/walk into hills

kind of inventing my day as i went along, 36 minutes mostly downhill (almost lost it on an icy stretch of trailo in spite of the icebugs but did sort of a spread eagle self arrest into the mountainside), then ditching the pack and doing a rolling/flat loop at the nature preserve

then hiking back steeply up to the saddle

then back to trailhead, mostly downhill

Running drills after run

about an hour and a half of walking to connect all the dots - not logging, it warmed me up to start then wore me down

Couldn't believe my watch, but it was an agonizing process to find the trailhead. mapped trail did not exist, trailhead was in private resort and not accessible, and the real trailhead was unmarked and reached by winding through a narrow lane with fences on either side. I was afraid the whole process was going to ruin my run, but I had enough left afterwards to pedal passive-agggresively up the huge hill afterwards (that I as trying to avoid by finding a trailhead closer to home) and bomb down into downtown.....ooops, I almost gave it away.

started at the lowest elevation available in these parts, and went consistently but not drastically up along stream drainages. pretty soon the trail was entirely snow, since the ponderosa pine gullies were shielded from the south sun, but it was well packed down by foot traffic. Today i brought my old icebugs and they were fairly comfortable and slip-resistant. I'd run maybe fifty yards, walk a few steps, repeat. After an hour I stopped for lunch at a sunny spot where the snow had melted. I continued a little slower with a full stomach. Wanted to keep going to the SKI AREA, but the trail was becoming more posthole and less runnable, plus I was running low on water so I headed back down.

Run down, but still stopping to catch my breath on the little uphill sections. Tried to run aggressively for a few stretches, but pretty beat.

rest day, of neccesity

local errands. worked out my schedule for the next few days at the public library...was discouraged from running at the national monument by the info person who said that the trails were very icy, and that the backcountry was totally deserted and remote. All that would be fine, but I decided toreturn to the mountains right next to town and get equally stellar and more alpine wilderness at less of a logistical expenditure.

ended up not having to ride much, for which my legs were grateful for once, since there was an intercity bus for 3 bucks and bus service in the destination city to within 1 block of the trailheads. And the bus service was free. This was a very small city where supposedly 95% of the people are millionaires. Ok, this is probably the giveaway - the entire city was a gated government enclave until the mid 50s.

Got off at the 'wrong' trailhead and parked the bike, this gave me an opportunity to map jog/walk to the start of the map my generous virtual hosts had provided. it took less time to walk back because i took a more direct route. Had a really hard time getting into the map, my orienteering is very rusty.

Did a course provided by my kind virtual hosts, in spectacular canyon and butte terrain. Was way too tired from yesterday, and too pre-occupied with map details to run this at race pace, or even run the whole thing period. The course was billed as orange, and while the generalities were often visible from a good way off, the particulars and the terrain were fairly difficult.

Since the map was made, an enormous amount of dead fall from some cataclysmic event and a major trail system have emerged. My nav skills were very rusty. Some control locations were vague, partly because of where they were located on the map (not by a prominent feature) and partly because I was having trouble reading the map. For instance on the way to 6, I could not jive the many rock features with the map depiction.

From 6 to 7, I gave up the idea of running - downhill was all deadfall, and the uphill to the mesa was a rocky scramble. Wonderful terrain!

Looking back from 7 to the rocky promotory nnw of 6, it seemed a little off when I checked it with my compass, it had looked a little off from 6 too - I wonder if it was that mysterious declination that we don't have to worry about in St. Louis.

From 8 to 9, I lost it - the trail seemed too close to the one edge of the mesa top so i went to investigate, ofund no other trail and ended up over 100 meters from the promotory point. A good bit of the ground was bare rock here, and might have been helpful as a mapped feature. Perhaps some form lines too. Some mapped impassable rock faces here looked quite passable.

From 9-10 the map had a wonderful tangle of contours which in a race I would have simply disregarded and plunged to the valley floor.

I had some troulbe with 12 right by the (scary) firing range. I found the likely re-entrant but no boulder in indicated location. I looked at it from top and from bottom, but my fatigue and the deadfall in this area discouraged me. EDIT - I think I was having trouble reading the clue, which may have been indicating that the control was 13-15 meters to the side of the boulder?

With some map updates this could be a memorable A meet venue, though a little hemmed in by the canyon walls. So lucky to be able to train here. Thanks, Una.

On the bus back, I saw some very promising subtle draw and wash terrain fanning off the foothills - I understand there may be some future map development here - looking forward to it.

wake up stretch - still trying to uncork my wracked up back muscles

slooooow uphill ride to the trailhead

jog walk on trail up into the hills, strating at 7200 elev.

C • Good practice for May! 20

took a nap in the sun, had some chocolate and continued to summit about 9000 elev. map-reading all the while, then meandered off trail for a bit(not logging) and contoured around the top to meet the trail - high point in all ways of the trip so far, once off the trail pristine wilderness.....ahhhhh

run down the mountain, with a couple of small breaks and some fancy stepping on the icy spots

running drills and more yoga for the back at the trail head

bike back, and some errands, WF, library

bike back, and some errands, WF, library

various errands and scout trips

finally got on some trails. this city for all the pretty pictures and well-meaning gestures is strangled by car-centricity

doing a lot of map reading as a by product of trying to figure out where to go etc.

C • Care to tell...? 2

at station at short layover -feeeling the altitude already

jog walk around town

flat - assumed it was a pinch flat. put in another tube. wrong. run in to home. dig big piece of glass out of tire.

more errands

to metro, from oakville bus turn around to cliff cave, then to meeting off of lemay ferry, and to south county center where i spiked the bus connection back to shrewsbury, by adding the time it started at oakville, and from metro home. Not all that much mileage, but the conditions, gear, and lots of hills got it a 3.

cliff cave was officially closed, but i walked my bike the 100 or so feet past the barricade and then ran an old course. very rusty at first but picked up speed and skill as I went along. I would really like to go out there with whoever mapped this originally and ask them to point out one of the mapped depressions that is supposedly present at the bottom of a certain sinkhole.

Wore my new running gloves that are held together by magnets...you can guess the rest - so I used the noonish sun as a compass. At the job site I melted on of the gloves on a kerosene heater, can't say I'm too upset.

scrabble, snow route

snowbike errands and meanderings - fun to ride in because side streets are packed firm but not icy slick yet, and the spindrift gives it all an alpine flair.

snowy river d.p. w/ icebugs

flex/stregnth drill

jog/walk to meeting

waiting at bike shop

some of the usual rounds

warmed up by easy running up and down stairs, then park/cemetery loop with a little harder running than I have been doing lately, push hills and surges.

strength/flex drills after run

am stretch

took fenton bus and bike fenton hills to jobsite from shrewsbury metro, then connecting all the dots - to chubb trail+, then back to bus stop, hen back from metro. Fenton bus is horribly inefficent -its trying to do the jobof 2 or 3 bus lines as it meanders all over creation. works pretty well down 44, but the rest of the loop is only avoidable if your going easttbound in the morning and westbound in the afternoon, and it never seems to work out that way for me.

on chubb trail, at what I imagined was a 50k pace...

stretch/flex/strength after the run

jog on the local park routes

da drilz

scrabble

am stretch

'Easy' but not easy recovery ride to the hill, tj's. felt a little better towards the end...

early errands, then to nursing home. legs a little heavy.

A lot of runs start 'I'll just run to the track' and then I never make it to the track, but this time i did and alternated 1/4 miles at just below interval pace (1:35- 1:40) with easier laps (2:10-2:15), but no rest. I did 5 of those and then moved on. Calf seems to be pretty much healed.

run drills, flex and strength drills and threw in some pushups and pullups.

am stretch

down gravois to 270 w/ winter gear again into a fierce headwind that made it slow as heck, then back via gravois to grants trail and around.

Hawn State Park loop Slug run real easy, read map a lot of the way - noticed how it was like releasing a parachute on the dragster every time the map came up to my face - also sprinted on hills and a few yo-yo sprints and double backs, to keep in the same zone as my running partner.

flex drills