Training Log Archive: barb

Lame. biked to kids' school. danced w/Is.

Lame. Ran a bit; biked a little; walked home from Central Square with David.

OK, trying to get back in the saddle. 3 mile Bridge circuit Smoot-BU.

Workout class in which I was the only student.

Double commute

Target races:
1. Three rogaines in May and June
2. Swiss O week in July

Preparation goals:
* "Run" blue at the NEOC and West Point meets. My target time is twice the winning time; 1.95w is my stretch goal.
* Get at least 30 minutes aerobic exercise every day. One forest trail run a week; I'm picturing biking to the Fells to run. Maybe climb Monadnock once or twice - is there snow on it, I suppose?
* Classes, machines, calisthenics for strength and balance, 3 times a week.
* Another 50-plus-jogging-mile week, the first week of May.
* Weight. Hm. Target: G; stretch goal: 130. I waffle about how much to focus on this, vs just getting the daily exercise in. Let me go get a candy bar and think about it.

C • dry year 4

Total of about 2.5 miles

Event: USOF Junior Training Camp
 

Hung the last of the controls and shadowed Isabel on a 3.6k course.

Got up early and worked in OCAD and Powerpoint instead of going running. Went to the woods with 12 kids and 3 other adults in the morning, after giving my presentation about map symbols and especially contour lines. One set of slides started with a map of the area we were going to focus on in the woods, except with no black or vegetation features - just water and topography. I had them pick out in their mind a hilltop, then advanced to the next slide which was the same except with a lot of hilltops marked with a red dot. This was effective at getting a reaction as they saw "their" hill get dotted. Then we did the same with reentrants and saddles.

In the woods the idea was to get more white course practice, but also to get off-trail and pay attention to contour lines in particular. We started with a game where four teams each had a territory where they planted controls, and then they retrieved controls from another team's territory. The kids liked having their territory to explore; I think it was more fun than walking on trails, and I think they were reading the contours.

After that we did part of a white course. All but one of the teams went with no shadow. Isabel and Rachael were the fastest. Izzy told me later that they worked well together as a team. The first 2 controls, Rachael punched while Isabel read the map. Rachael did a quick check of the map heading out of the control to confirm Isabel's direction. On the way to 3, with Rachael in the lead, she dropped the punch card. "You know what to do!" she called back to Isabel, and they continued at full speed; Isabel picked up the card. Moments later Rachael twisted her ankle a bit and fell behind. Isabel ran on and punched, and Rachael caught up. Then they both looked at their map at the same time, looked up at the same time, and headed the same direction. Isabel laughed and commented on it. It occurred to her then that they might make a good rogaine team. :-) I know all this from Isabel telling me afterward, and I like that she's able to remember and recount the experience - she can "burn in" what worked, and hold onto that feeling of flow. Isabel and Rachael play on the same soccer team; if they can communicate and just know what each other is doing on the soccer field, they'd be pretty powerful together.

Yesterday James' dad told me he'd asked James the secret of his team's success at Fresh Pond last Saturday. (James teamed up with Henry, who'd never orienteered before, and they came in first on the yellow course that most teams didn't finish.) James told his dad that they used their strengths: James read the map while Henry ran to the controls and punched.

So there's a lot of good teamwork developing. I thought I was trying to get kids into orienteering, but maybe I'm getting them into rogaining.

Being outdoors today was a lot more relaxed than being in an enclosed indoor space with idle kids who finish an exercise before other kids. There's always something for a kid to do in the woods.

A reputation started to crumble last night, with "disafforest" and "quenelle".

v~

3 mile bridge circuit. Went fast across the bridges. Stopped to stretch a bit.

commute.

c-

I don't like running.

I wonder if I should try Ambien, to see if I could sleep-run, to avoid experiencing the discomfort of it. I'd probably be like everyone else and just eat.

I passed a bunch of guys in tights getting ready to board a crew shell. This got me thinking about "baltering" which is a term I do not yet grok, though tights seem to be a component.

C • hate running 2

"Boot camp" at the gym with some gimmickry (step, ball).

Later, discovered, via dailykos, an awesome source for really cool science articles.

Thought about how to respond to God. After all these years of wishing I could give him/her a piece of my mind, I find myself speechless when actually presented with the opportunity. Well, maybe something will come to me.

~

7 mile bridge loop. Had to walk .5 mi. Rainy; got to feel how fleece works in the rain.

Thought about how one might augment AP for rogaine splits. I could use AP as-is, but only one team could put in splits for one "race" b/c of the different routes. So the idea would be to allow any legs to be entered; you tag each leg with the order in which your team did it. Then you could compare your times on a given leg with others who had entered a time for that leg. Of course, it could be that no one would care to enter rogaine splits on AP, so this could all be silly. Another thing I'd want is to be able to enter rest minutes on each leg. And overall pace could be computed with or without rest minutes.

Ah, I see that at least one score-O is in AP, http://www.attackpoint.org/racesplits.jsp/race_185.... I guess you can do this as is; just have to be clear about how the AP legs correspond to the actual legs?

Finished up my 50 miles of running for this week; the last mile in bits and pieces retrieving kids and so on. This is a pretty big deal for me, even if I did run it slower than many would believe it possible to run. I remember as a kid being mortified watching my beloved father returning from his jogging, because of how slow he was going - I'm at least that slow now.

I'm happy that I'm able to run. The right achilles tendon and knee seem OK. My back sometimes hurts, but stretching seems to make it happy enough. Asthma not an issue. The foot pain that I felt last week has gone away. The weird heartbeat - I think that's getting better.

I credit AP, and having actual rogaine partners lined up, for keeping me going this week. The attractive bar graphs definitely helped. The blogging aspect of AP is a bit weird - someone is looking at my log but I don't know who. I think that mystery is kind of useful. Better the reader I don't know, and can shape to my own purposes; some benevolant teacher/father figure who's proud of me for getting off my duff. Like... God. Only better, because try as I might I just can't bring myself to believe in some sentient uber-being with human sensibilities - but I do have faith in Ken's hit counter. Yeah, this blogging thing is like praying: I believe someone out there is listening, but they're really quite mysterious, and really what I'm doing is talking to myself. Well to be honest I do know one person who has read my log, but the counter suggests the possibility of more...

C • omnipresence 2

sp-

Ran to Danehy Park and removed the flagging tape from yesterday's kids' course. 6 miles.

As I ran, I contemplated an article I read in Science [311:965] last night, "Reproductive Social Behavior: Cooperative Games to Replace Sexual Selection." It's a smack-down of Darwin's perhaps paternalistic/sexist model in which males are passionately profligate with their abundant sperm and females coyly pick out the male likely to generate the fittest offspring. The authors completely reject this model.

We think that the notion of females choosing the genetically best males is mistaken. Studies repeatedly show that females exert choice to increase number, not genetic quality, of offspring and not to express an arbitrary feminine aesthetic. Instead, we suggest that animals cooperate to rear the largest number of offspring possible, because offspring are investments held in common.

In game theory, the players make choices, and the payback/reward to each player is a function of both players' choices. I learned from the paper that what distinguishes cooperative games from competitive games is that you communicate with the other players in cooperative games, but there is no communication in competitive games. Communication includes threats, promises, side payments, and forming of coalitions.

My favorite part of the paper was the examples, particularly this one:

In the Eurasian oyster-catcher (Haematopus ostralegus), a sexually monomorphic wading bird common on mud-flats, some reproductive groups consist of threesomes with one male and two females, whereas most consist of one male and one female. The threesomes occur in two forms, aggressive and cooperative.

In an aggressive threesome, each female defends her own nest, and the male defends a territory encompassing both females. The females lay eggs about two weeks apart. The females attack each other frequently throughout the day. The male contributes most of his parental care to the first-laid eggs, leaving the second nest often unguarded.

In a cooperative threesome, the two females share one nest; both lay eggs in it together, about one day apart; and all three birds defend it together. The females mate with each other frequently during the day, only slightly less often than they do with the male. The females also sit together and preen their feathers together.

"Core & More" class at my new fitness center. I was the only student in the class this morning, and I'm not sure if that was more or less mortifying than having other people in there with me. I used a "stability ball" for the first time and felt just a little silly. It was a tough workout for me. I expect I'll be pretty sore in the next day or two.

Jogged to the gym after feeding the kids breakfast.

Biked to the park to hang controls. I had originally planned to run there, but I was up a bit late last night eating cookie dough and watching Kenneth Branagh's "Much Ado about Nothing" with the kids. And I wanted to get home this morning in time to watch the last hour of the movie before we went to the training. I love it when kids like Shakespeare.

13 kids did the Danehy Park course today. The map, freshly made yesterday by JC, was awesome, and got lots of positive comments. All the kids did well; David & Georgia were faster than Aiury/Gus and Isabel.

7 mile bridge ckt. Started off by running Isabel (on her bike) to MIT for gymnastics practice. Spitting rain.

A little ways beyond Smoot Bridge, I saw a guy catch a fish. And steps beyond was a man with an underwater camera. I stopped and looked in the monitor. I flashed back to those Nessie exhibits along the loch. Then, a fish swam into view. Wow.

Set some streamer-controls at FP for kid training today. Roughly 7 miles round trip.

Self-indulged last night; ate brownies and staying up to watch a movie, "His Girl Friday," which I loved.

To work, Mary's, MIT, FP, home.

Had a good training with a bunch of kids today. Everyone did the white course fine, and a few kids finished the yellow. Henry, whom we corralled on-site, did really well with James on yellow. Dave coached Rachael, and she was pretty sharp, and quite fast.

7 mile loop.

G(3/9/2006)

I partied last night so I was mildly surprised to find myself outside running at 5:20 am. Even slower than usual.

It turns out that K has just passed the Italian certification examination for teaching orienteering. She has offered to come along and help out with this weekend's kid O training in Cambridge. And she said she'd seen on the web that NEOC is putting on a national meet, and said she'd like to help.

And I am beginning to wonder just how fast she is. It will be interesting to see when she starts orienteering around here (Boojum?). She went out for a jog yesterday; Dave was on his bike and saw her; he said she was going really fast and ran past him. Not sure if they were going the same or opposite directions.

Reading Viktoria's posts convinced me to sign up for the health club in my building and do some classes.

My heartbeat felt irregular.

I experienced a few moments of great good feeling.

Namaste.

7 mile loop plus a 6 minute pit stop detour through MIT's Infinite Corridor.

Foot did not hurt today; felt a shadow of the feeling afterward. I've wondered if it's due to clenching my toes because of shoes with not enough toe space, like my Merrells. I don't think I'll want to wear the Merrells for the rogaines - but then what do I wear?

K, our lovely new Italian orienteer MIT postdoc housemate, said she'd do the PA rogaine wtih me! I mentioned at dinner I was looking for a partner and she said she'd do it. But then she asked how long. I looked at her blankly. 5 hours, 6 hours? she said. I thought, she does not realize what she is getting into. 24, I said. She laughed, ah, I will need to train. No, K, *I* need to train.

K went to the Swiss O Week last year.

It was still dark when I went by the spotlit T Rex outside of the Science Museum. It occurred to me that T Rex has a pretty good orienteering build. Powerful legs for speed. A really big head that you'd think could house a large brain capable of spatial reasoning, though I have the idea that dinosaurs had walnut-sized brains, but if so, what was filling up T Rex' cranium? And of course those ridiculously puny little vestigial-looking arms - no sense building up muscle mass there. Then there's that meaty tail that could balance the head as you duck through the branches.

Passed the dark wet spot on the road at the site of yesterday's accident, and 100 m on a flattened feathery bundle. I saw a number of duck couples and felt sad for yesterday's duck's partner who flew away over the Charles River quacking loudly in distress after the impact.

Biked to get Isabel, and back

7 mile bridge loop.
left foot ball/toes hurt starting after an hour, at the BU bridge. Thought the different shoes might help but no.
I think when I push the pace my heart gets a bit haywire.
I think I've finally figured out what G means. I'd assumed it was in units of distance/time but it turns out it is in units of mass*distance/(time*time), earth weight. And, it is a unit of some interest because I have been way overweight for a year or so, at 143. In AZ/FL I got down to 1G by not drinking enough (I know, bad) and eating not much besides PBJ, except socially, and, well, walking and trotting a lot. Now I'm hovering dangerously between 1G and 1, say, FB=fat Barb. Next I could consider aiming at sub-G levels like when I was young and feckless. But I'm told that's nearly impossible, by other experienced women. I must say I'm surprised that G is dropping; I'd have thought it to be well-disciplined and stable, like the chunks of platinum under glass at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures.
Very disturbed by seeing a car hit a duck - after realizing I could perhaps have prevented it but tried too late (waving at the car who ignored me). Another car came quickly and hit the duck again and I ran on feeling awful and cowardly for not checking to see if I could finish it off somehow, I guess wringing its neck. Later I saw a dead rat in the middle of the sidewalk.

The last kilometer was with milk (held like a football) and eggs (I worked on holding it steady so the eggs didn't even knock around in the carton), for breakfast.

K, the Italian orienteer, arrived last night to stay with us for a couple of months. She is wonderful - and immediately offered to help with the various trainings...

Commute

Commute

Ran while the kids biked.

Managed to get 11 kids and assorted parents to the woods for the Jon Campbell sprint-plus. A very good day for David & Theron, who worked together well - makes me quite optimistic about the junior training camp they'll be attending. A tough day for Isabel & especially Benjamin. Lessons for me: (1) must train parents on how to shadow (& orienteer!); (2) ensure that kids get shadow or partner until they're really ready to go on their own, and (3) proselytize good white course setting practices.

Cold and windy again. Front left foot hurt again 2/3 of the way through. Passed one guy, but he was walking.

Cold. Wind.

I did it! I WENT RUNNING. As usual everyone passed me.
My left foot hurt, from the ball of the foot forward through the toes. Sort of like sore at the end of a rogaine, and sort of like cramping.
I'd hoped that cutting back on caffeine, losing a little weight, and starting to exercise would make that heart flutter go away but I feel it now. I did have some caffeine last night.