Training Log Archive: Nadim

Event: QOC: Wheaton
 

QOC: Wheaton Regional Park. While Peggy ran the Red course, Max and I walked and jogged the White course. There was some slight rain at times. Max's concentration is still not really on the map but he enjoyed the running and walking. He has a lot of competitiveness in him. He was able to plan legs between controls when I emphasized it. He did tell a few others that we saw that he was learning to read the map and I think he genuinely did. While going through the course, I did find some features which could have been added to the map including a nice sized boulder off a paved trail.

Warm-up between toilets, the start, epunch registration and my parked car with some repetition due to forgetting to do various things like clear my epunch.

QOC: Wheaton Regional Park, MD. The course was fun and I did get to one area which I hadn't been to before. It was also one year ago when QOC held it's last Spring meet in the park that was the last straw for my knee before needing surgery. Today was much better. For the race last tune-up before the A-meet season begins, I did okay. The park is not that difficult and I'm fairly familiar with it. I was steady though a bit slow. The challenge was in keeping my concentration reading and running. It was good practice for that as well as for practicing good process and technique. I made a clear error on #1 by going more or less straight and being too high but the rootstock may have been off a bit. I was pretty clean through #12 but the mapping is out of date in the area of #13. I got hung up in some green there and had to go past the control and around it to come back to the control. There were a few unmapped features en-route there too. Going to the Go control, I made another error by being too high but I've wondered about the contours and placement of the trails on the map in the area too as they may have contributed to my problem. Some questioned whether the rootstock that the control was on was correct or not. It seemed to line-up with the building at the finish but to be sure, I would have to validate it without being in a rush to finish.

Red - Splits

By playing with Max and lifting him repeatedly to give him a ride (e.g. "ju-jai" style), I did some abdominal work. This was done lying on my back with my knees up like I was going to do situps but Max sat on my ankles and I lifted my legs pivoting at the hips. I sometimes catapulted him (while holding on) over and behind my head too. I could feel the strain of the work with some cramp like pain. Later Max returned the favor by walking on my back and legs. He thought this later part, a massage for me, was great fun because he liked to fall down off of me onto some cushions. A birthday party for one of Max's former classmates took up most of the rest of the day.

I just did a bit of late evening spinning after doing some errands.

Getting home a bit late cascaded so instead of running, I ended up spinning and watching a movie. I felt stronger.

From Northfield Rd. to Maple Ave. with Max in his trailer, then to the Bethesda Metro Station via the Georgetown Branch tunnel. It was a little damp and cloudy and there was a bit of traffic but as I write this and see the sun shining outside, I'm happy to have ridden in.

The dampness was fine all exept for the last 20m. As I was riding over a large, almost unavoidable metro venting grate up a grade to lock up, I noticed my tires feeling mushy. Next I realized they weren't mushy, they were sliding. It was practically dry leading up to the grate and I almost went down on it. I made it safely and instantly recalled a similar experience in western Maryland on a multi-day solo ride in which I zoomed near 40mph down a hill over a slightly foggy steel grated bridge at the bottom. In both instances, I think training on rollers and a lot of time in the saddle saved me.

From the Bethesda Metro station to Maple Ave., then to Northfield Rd. via the Georgetown Branch Trail. I got out of work a bit late so it was starting to get dark on the way home. The winds were picking up enough that I felt the need to pedal downhill.

From the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro Station to Tuckerman Ln., to Rockville Pike to Beach Dr. to the Rock Creek Trail, to Connecticutt Ave. to the Georgetown Branch Trail to Woodmont Ave. to the Bethesda Metro Station at Edgmoore Ln. I was tired all day at work but felt reasonably well going homeward on this run. I did feel I was struggling to keep up a decent pace. I carried some essentials.

The total time is estimated because I pressed the wrong button on my new watch at one point. The watch is okay but not quite as useful for running as my old Accelerator which finally died; the new Casio G-Shock holds more splits (100) but only can record two different runs. I based the time on measured half mile splits, most of which were taken going up a slight grade.

On the segment of the Rock Creek Trail that I ran, they've added a lot of new mile posts. I don't think I'll like them. The old ones were fine; just every mile. The new ones are sequenced every quarter mile but the marker number can only be seen from the trail when looking perpendicularly away. To make it more confusing, there are separate posts used for each direction of travel that are less than 50m apart.