Training Log Archive: ebuckley

Event: Babler State Park Cold Nose-O
 

Warmup with David Frei. Good to catch up with him a bit - I hardly see the guy anymore.

SLOC meet at Babler (1:15). I very rarely put orienteering at "5" because that designation is reserved for efforts that require extra recovery built into the training schedule and I generally bounce right back from O-meets. However, with the woods pretty open, footing much better than expected, navigation a bit on the easy side, and a 1200m road run right near the end, I managed to trash my legs pretty good on this one. Purists wouldn't think much of this course, but I think that testing fitness every now and then is perfectly legit. It was a blast to go this fast and, despite a couple bad map reading errors, I didn't lose much time because I was able to fix them without having to slow down to figure out what went wrong.

David had a strong run, too, which made the 29-second win all the more gratifying. Jeff Sona and Bill Langton finished around an hour, so it appears that their games are continuing to improve. We also had one of the top local trail runners show up. He enjoyed the orange course and said he's looking forward to do more practicing out at the Rockwoods Trim course. Assuming Anna comes back from Italy with decent form, we could have 6 people running sub-10 minute K's at SLOC meets this time next year. That would be great.

C • if you really want those su... 4

Warmdown with David.

Red - Splits

Just a bit silly really, but I got my Contour Line (SLOC's newsletter) yesterday and it reminded me of just how bad my O results have been lately (the Trot being a notable exception). I decided that I really do care about tomorrow's race. So, with my stabilizing muscles yelping a bit from yesterday's run with such bad footing, I went for an easy jog round the hood completely on roads. Snow is melting quick; the woods will be messy tomorrow.

Got the word from my boss today that I am now officially a telecommuter. I'll still have a desk at the St. Louis campus for a few more months, but I'm technically based out of Minneapolis. I'll have to travel there every so often, but the rest of the time I'll be working from my basement. I'm not sure how flexible my new team will be in terms of schedule, but this could open the possibility for getting in daytime terrain runs/rides 5-6 times a week. I'm trying not to get my hopes too high, but that is a very pleasing prospect.

Certainly didn't mean for yesterdays snow shovelling to be my only workout for the day, but it turned out to be a pretty busy day. Might be just as well as I've got a couple toes that are a bit banged up right now.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I'm more interested in running Babler competitively or getting in the long run, so I left my options open with a maintenance run today. I had a Scotch tasting in Clayton, so I ran from there for a change of venue. Through Wash U to and then about half an hour on the golf course at Forest Park. Sidewalks were about 50/50 shovelled, so about 20 minutes was on pavement.

The tasting featured the new releases from Bruichladdich plus a couple older malts from before the change in 1993 that are no longer available. I was a bit underwhelmed. At each price point, I could think of something considerably cheaper from Highland Park or Bowmore that I liked just as much. Probably just reflects my penchant for heavy peating, which Bruichladdich aschews, but I thought peat was the whole appeal of the Island Scotches. Ah well, my dissappointment saved me the usual anxiety of trying to justify a big purchase and it's not like the stuff was bad. Just pricey.

C • If one were going to run Ba... 14

Scored another work from home day (looks like I'll get 4 this week) as the town is really shut down today. I usually don't bother shovelling snow because it melts in just a few days, but last night's dumping was enough that it will likely be around for a while. Cleared the driveway and walk at a pace that had me breathing fairly hard. Really pretty day and since it's still plenty cold, the snow wasn't too heavy.

In happy news, the G is holding steady just a few pounds high even though I seem to have been eating pretty much constantly for three days now. Not sure what's going on there. Best guess is that whatever was wrong last Thursday depleted me more than I realized and things are just getting righted.

3x7:00@cruise effort 3:00R. HR data is just for the hot sections.

Worked from home as St. Louis was doing it's usual shutdown for even the threat of snow. Not particularly pleasant for most of the day; mix of ice and rain. Track was icey, so the 800's were out. Finally got out after dinner, by which time the precipitation was pretty much all snow and was stacking up on the ground rather quickly. Took the power line cut to CCL and ran the intervals around Mallard Lake. Fun to hammer in the snow like that, but I did go down rather badly on the return trip despite the fact I was wearing my O shoes. Might have jacked up the left wrist again.

Several million years ago lived a mammal who, as was common for the times, had very low body fat. However, this particular mammal, by virtue of some novel mix of genes got REALLY HUNGRY when it got cold. This mammal survived the winter and produce children who also got REALLY HUNGRY when it got cold. Turns out that carrying a bit of extra fat into the winter months actually provided what might be called "selective advantage" and this trait became rather pervasive among surviving species in the phylum. To this particular progenitor, I merely say: FU you, dude. I've been doing just fine on the G all through the holidays, but this cold snap has been too much. I ate everything in sight today and I'm still starving. I'm going to have some remediation to do in March.

Balancing that, I finished reading Once A Runner over the weekend. The writing is clumsy in spots, but if it doesn't make you want to go out and pound out some miles, you might want to think about doing something else with your time, like collecting stamps.

Oh, and BTW, thank you to visitor 20,000, whoever you are. Nice to know that some folks actually read these posts. I can only assume that most enjoy them or they wouldn't keep coming back.

C • Man, that same guy woke up ... 2

Over to CC Lake running on mix of grass and pavement. Then ran the length of the singletrack and down to the lake via the fire road. Along the lake to the unpaved path and out the south end of the park to the powerline back home. I like this loop as it's right out the door and about 80% off-road. Might have to come up with a colorful name for it.

Legs were a bit soft, but had no trouble putting in easy miles. So much so that I wished I hadn't told Kate I'd be back in 90 minutes. Could have gone quite a bit further and got in another long run. Oh well, I've got 800's on Tuesday, distance on Wednesday, and I can't slide them without stepping on the Babler meet Saturday, so it's probably just as well I didn't do too much today.

Woke up at 4AM with my legs hurting quite a bit. I have no idea why, but I knew it wasn't a good sign. Went back to sleep for a couple more hours, but they still felt quite stiff. Got to Forest Park at 8, which was nominally an hour before the start. Of course, this being a Saint Louis Track Club event, I knew I had more time than that. Registered and jogged easy for 15 minutes - legs still felt like crap. It was super cold (around 15F) so I went back inside for a bit. Then back out for another 15 minutes including a few pickups. Couldn't get the pulse to go above 150. Felt OK at the starting line, but I was pretty sure this wasn't going to end well.

In fact, it didn't even start well. Legs simply had nothing. Pulse was barely over 150 but I felt like I couldn't go any faster. Labored through the first two miles at a pace usually reserved for tempo runs on trails and decided that no useful information about fitness was going to be gleaned from this one. Tried to think of the best way to save the workout and decided I could use some practice at marathon pace. Finished the first loop (of two) and quietly left the course. I don't remember my last DNF in a running race - I'm not sure it's ever happened before - but there really was no point in flogging the legs; they had nothing today.

Knew my body would be in no mood for a long run tomorrow, so I went right into a couple laps on the bike path plus three extra miles on roads. Legs wimpered a bit, but they knew they had it coming. Actually felt OK in the last hour. I considered doing another loop to get the run up to marathon distance, but I'd like to get out and do something tomorrow.

When a race goes this badly, I generally just ignore it. If I had been knocking out 6:30's and then blew up at 10 miles, I'd be concerned that the fitness isn't there, but if I can't even hold that for the first mile, well, come on, I run repeats at 6 flat, there's obviously something else wrong. However, there were a couple positives that shouldn't get lost:

1) I got in a 20+ mile run on pavement. Those have been conspicuously absent from my workouts as of late.

2) While my legs were crap, my pulse was exactly where I would expect it to be for marathon pace, so the fitness is probably there.

So who knows what was wrong? I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. I'll push ahead with the marathon prep and just see what shakes out.

C • good attitude - you've stil... 2

Feeling basically better. With yesterday's involuntary fast depleting my stores, the main challenge now is getting food back in the system without triggering the whole cycle again. Did that by eating about 200-300 calories every couple hours (toast on waking at 5AM, oatmeal at 7, some more toast at 9, and some noodles and beef at 11). By then, I felt up to a light workout at Castlewood. Jogged for about 20 minutes on trails...

... then hit a control picking course on the Castlewood (1:15) flood plain fairly hard. Wouldn't normally put in quite that much effort the day before a road race, but I wanted to see if the GI tract would revolt against the effot. It didn't, so I guess we're on for tomorrow. Then an easy jog to warm down.

Planned rest day, but I would have taken it off anyway. Started feeling not well shortly after dinner last night. I'm pretty sure it was something I ate because there were no symptoms other than GI distress. I'm thinking it might have been the salad dressing (though it didn't smell or taste funny). Expiration date is 9/2009, but it's been open in the fridge for a few months. I may have to be more careful about shelf life if I'm going to get the organic stuff.

Slept OK, but didn't feel any better this morning. Didn't eat until dinner, but drank quite a bit during the day. Missed a pretty nice day outside.

Warmed up by running an old score course at Kirkwood (1:3.75). Ran in control number order again, but this time the control number order wasn't that far from the optimal route.

They've made some real progress at cleaning out the honeysuckle in this park. If they get as much out this summer as they did last summer this will once again be a really fun venue. Even in it's current state there are ample opportunities for cutting through the woods.

C • kirkwood 3

Then jogged over to the High School to do my dial-in for this weekend: 8x400@96 200R. Felt harder than it should have at first but then I realized I was way overstriding. Once I stretched out my gate, it felt fine. Of course, it will probably feel a lot less fine after an hour straight at this speed. Goal is to be under 85 for the half.

Ran an old score course at Laumeier (1:5). To add some distance, I took the controls in numerical order. This was fun for a while since I've never run a long leg at Laumeier and there were some interesting route choices. After a while running back and forth across the tiny park got tedious and I didn't want to go longer than an hour, so I took the last 10 in the quickest order.

Morning run, but not a very early one because Kate and I stayed up late last night. Back is very stiff from the painting. Last mile or so felt OK.

Includes the course from the Queeny Trail Run at tempo effort (28:08). Somewhat nostalgic as this was the venue for one of my rare outright wins in a running race, but more on that in a bit.

I ground my teeth about it for a while and went as far as doing some touch up work to avoid a 2nd coat on the living room walls, but finally decided that I'd end up regretting it. So, another couple hours with the roller which left my back feeling none too good. Decided that laps at Queeny would at least keep me close enough to the car that if it really acted up, I wouldn't be stranded on some far off trail.

Physically, a good workout but a little tough on the psyche. During the tempo portion some high school cross country boys came the other way. They gave the universal nod and grunt indicating respect for the fact that I was giving it some gas while being quite unimpressed with the resulting 6:40 pace. Sort of a "not bad for an old guy" vibe.

Just after finishing the tempo, I came upon one of the finer examples of the female form. Managed to wipe the snot off my face and put some sort of stride together before we passed but, depsite the friendly smile and wave, there was no deluding myself into thinking the answer would be anything other than, "No way, not ever."

Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm a happily married guy and I don't run trails in hopes of picking up girls half my age. It's just that, at that point I suddenly felt very past my prime. It's not like I was ever a particularly good runner; I usually only get thoughts like this when I'm cycling. It's just a little sad to realize that this is as fast as I'll ever be, and it's not very fast.

Which brings us to the marathon. I've been sort of blowing it off figuring that I probably won't be ready this spring, but that's OK, I'll break 3 in the fall. I'm not so confident about that anymore. If I ever want to be a sub-3 marathoner, I'd better start acting (and training) like one because time is running out. The idea that I'll still be setting PR's, even at long distances, in my late 40's is, well, optimistic at best.

C • GO FOR IT! (the marathon, t... 4

With a full day of painting ahead, I got out well before dawn to do some track work. Problem was, my back was still super stiff from painting the ceiling yesterday. I decided to just run until it loosened up, which took over an hour. Felt pretty good after that so I just kept running for a while.

I'm cheap, stubborn, and have an advanced degree in engineering. That's pretty much the perfect storm for home improvement disasters. As a result, I generally don't do such tasks until it's clear that waiting any longer will get really expensive (that is, something will break or Kate will get so fed up she'll hire a professional). While my feeling going into this one was that this was premature (the old paint was old, but there wasn't anything wrong with it), I have to admit that the living and dining rooms look way better now and will presumably look even better after the last coat goes on tomorrow (then again...).

Looks like Bill will be our first guest. He could probably score an upgrade on the wine we'll be serving by saying how nice the room looks.

C • new paint 13

Spent pretty much the whole day getting the living room ready to paint and painting the ceiling. Walls tomorrow. Trim Monday. Was ready to take the day off completely, but my back was pretty stiff after two hours looking up so I went for an easy jog to loosen up.

Expecting the legs to be a bit soft today, I planned to put in some easy miles on the flood plain at Castlewood. That plan would have worked fine if I had brought some heavier clothing. I was dressed for the predicted high of 20F. I don't know what made me think it would be that warm at 10AM. Ambient temp was single digits, but at least it wasn't windy. I had to run up over the ridge a few times to generate some heat.

Even colder than predicted, temp didn't get into the positive side of Dr. Fahrenheit's scale until mid-morning. By afternoon it was a balmy 11F, but other than the cold, it was really nice out. So crew socks, wind brief, poly shorts, subzero tights, poly shirt, fleece, wind shirt, balaclava, gortex hat, lobster gloves, shoes, and I was good to go for an easy jog round the hood.

No power in the legs, but no pain either. Did a lap on the track coming in just to see how ridiculously slow I was going and was surprised to finish it in just under 2 minutes. I guess the bill for yesterday won't come due until tomorrow.

Whacky retort of the day (preceeded by the usual dialog of me telling Yaya to do something and her completely ignoring me):

Me (voice raised): Yaya! Just go upstairs and get a shirt.
Yaya: You're hurting my chin!

WTF!?!

C • Kids' hurting body parts 1

Parked at the horse trailer lot and jogged to/from the trailhead via the bird sanctuary.

Chubb trail. Intended for this to be just a solid 2-hour effort, but right from the outset the legs just felt like goin'. Figured why not let 'em go. Got to the tracks in 28:45 and knew I'd easily be under 2 hours. Got to the Tyson trailhead at 54:54 and realized I had a legit shot at 1:50. Started pushing a bit since the return trip is objectively slower (though I usually run negative splits just because I dawdle the first few miles). Got back to the tracks in 79:10 (holy cow! 24:16!) and realized that this was shaping up to be a PR. Way harder than I need to be running in training, especially the last 28:20 back (a full minute faster than I've ever done that), but a whole bunch of fun. At least now I'll have an excuse for taking an off day during tomorrow's deep freeze.

C • according to the SLUG websi... 2

My usual hill training course at Forest-44 (1:15). Eleven different uphill legs of 90-180 seconds with roughly equal recovery following each.

Despite legs that were more springy than expected, I stuck to the plan of an easy day today and did a Green length course at Babler (1:10) Seems like forever since I ran on 1:10. This navigation thing is so much easier when you can read the map. I may have to quit running Blue simply because I can't read 1:15 on the run anymore.

Then hustled back to watch Yaya's first Tae Kwon Do class. She did a much better job of paying attention than I expected. It might be just the thing for her. She sure did enjoy breaking her first board. White Pine - nature's version of styrofoam.

Early morning run through CC Lake Park. Includes about 20 minutes on the trails (which were in great shape since everything re-froze).

Didn't seem like much at the time, but I appear to have jacked up my left wrist from tripping on a fence at Hawn yesterday. Nothing too serious, but a bit of a bummer because the trails are all perfect right now and I'd love to get out on the mountain bike. However, recent (as in over-40) experience has been that these little bumps are ignored at my own peril, so I'll give it a few days to heal up.

Warmed up with some control picking. Wasn't smooth at all.

Right into the MO Champs course from 2005 at Hawn (1:15) at close to competition effort. Actually, a few minutes faster than the real competition, but that run included some really tragic errors. Was clean today - at least navigationally. As the woods were still smoldering in spots from the annual burns, I finished with quite a few black marks on my yellow wind shirt.

Then warmed down by jogging the model course from the Al Smith meet.

Knew I'd only have to work until around 2PM, so I happily watched the temperature rise into the very comfortable training range. However, when it passed 60F, it was time to reassess plans. Not too often one gets a winery day in January. Figured I could slide my workouts a day with no ill effects, so off we went to Montelle.

About 20 minutes of control picking followed by longer legs at West Tyson (1:10). Forgot to put my jersey in my bag, so I only had my wind shirt to run in. Not a problem, even with today's cool temps and relaxed pace Tyson is hilly enough that feeling underdressed is a temporary condition that preceeds feeling overdressed.

Wash U has posted no trespassing signs along their property line now. I'm not sure if they are in the right spot as they are a good 100m west of the fence along the map boundary. Fortunately, there aren't any good control locations there. Maybe they're getting us back for declining to map East Tyson, but why would we want a map of that? It's exactly the same as West Tyson except that there's no cool flood plain section.

Speaking of the flood plain, it's been quite some time since I've been down there off trail. There was just too much debris after the floods of 2006 to make it any fun and I assumed that this year's flooding made it even worse. I was wrong (yes, I really did just post that statement on the web). I don't know where it all went, but the woods there were really open and fun today.

Also noted that the Chubb Trail was in fine shape. Quite surprising given how bad the trails were just across the river in Castlewood a week ago. Might get the bike out there this weekend.

C • So its not soggy, even for ... 6

14 hours "at work" (this remote stuff rocks) yesterday and another 12 today didn't leave much time for training. Just as well, the left leg is a bit off between the glute and the hamstring. Doesn't feel injured, but it ain't quite right, either. An easy day was in order.

Attended one of the bigger (in terms of profile) merger meetings today. We're 6 weeks from taking all the legacy AG Edwards brokers off the AGE platform and dumping them into the Wachovia Securities trading system. It was amusing to see the title slide come up with the AGE and Wachovia logos knowning that, as of last week, neither of those companies even exist anymore. I still haven't heard what they are going to name the new brokerage under Wells Fargo.

It looks like the extra effort at work is going to get its usual reward: more work. Having just glued together the HR systems for AGE and Wachovia, I'm now being pegged to move it all over to Wells. I'll take it, even if it does mean traveling to Minnesota in Februrary. Why do companies always ship me there in February? This will be the third time that's happened and I've never been there any other month.

8-minute K's through trashy woods left me feeling a bit beat up today. As it was a long day at work (and tomorrow promises more of the same), I settled for an easy jog round the hood.

Red course from the Babler (1:15) meet from 2004. Ran without a warmup, but since the first grunt didn't come until 18 minutes in, I was able to run it at pretty close to competition pace from the get go - about three minutes off the meet run, which I thought was pretty stout at the time.

Apparently, overdue babies grow a lot of hair. As for training today, well, the wiring is done and the TV works. Who knew it would blow a whole weekend?

After yesterday's fiasco, I was hoping to get in some distance today. Fate would not have it that way.

On my way back from training Thursday, Kate sent me a text that our TV had blown up - a big pop and then blank screen. We were expecting that; it's been flaky for a while. Not too sad, 13 years from a TV seems reasonable. So, I swung by the Commons and scoped TV's at Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Walmart. All pretty comparable for what I was looking for, I ended up getting a 46" floor model at Best Buy for $998 which seemed like a pretty good deal (Kate did a quick price search on the web and couldn't find anybody selling the same one for less than $1200 except for a Walmart across town that also had an out of the box unit for 1K). While a 16:9 1080p flat screen is a nice step up in quality from our old 27" CRT, this meant that I now needed to do some wiring and mounting because there was no way this sucker is fitting in the old cabinet.

So, today was install day. No biggie, I'll run in the morning. Whoops, Friday we get a call from Kate's freind Tess: the doctor says her kid's been baking too long and her fluid is getting low. Time to take her out with the knife. So, we get her other kid, Ben for the night. That means I have breakfast duties. Ben's dad comes by around 10AM, and I get to work figuring out what I'm going to do to mount this TV. Meanwhile, Kate has both lined up a buyer for the old cabinet and located a new one (that will just hold the DVD, Wii, and cable box) at Target. So, off to Home Depot and target to get appropriate electical boxes, cables, and the new table.

Putting the table together should have been a snap and it almost was until I realized that I had put the drawer runners on backwards and, since that was the VERY FIRST STEP, we basically had to take the whole thing apart and do it over. Done at 4PM, about which time the buyers for the old cabinet show up. I still havent run the electrical and the sun is going down so the power cutoff will have to wait for tomorrow.

After dinner, my back is getting really stiff, so I just pick up the mess in the living room and call it a day. Got out the door for an easy jog around the hood which loosened things up a bit and then did some work that pays real money rather than honey-do points. With the wiring still to go, prospects for a long session tomorrow aren't looking too good either and I'm thinking that a 3-hour marathon in 14 weeks is becoming increasingly unlrealistic.

New category for 2009 - I'm splitting out all my off-road biking and logging it as this. I don't much like the "MTB" designation, but couldn't think of anything better. Suggestions welcome.

Really low motivation today. Not sure why. It sure wasn't the weather (50F, sunny). Drove over to Castlewood with the hardtail figuring I'd get in an easy 60-90 minutes, but just didn't feel like getting out of the car. Ate a Peanut Toffee Buzz Clif Bar because it contains "Natural Caffeine from Green Tea". Didn't help, but at least it tasted good.

Anyway, finally got going and found the flood plain trails were quite goopy, so I headed up the ridge. This was incongruous with the whole "easy" idea, but that's what the 24T ring is for. Actually felt fine climbing on the middle ring, but when I got to the top I was dismayed to find that Roller Coaster was even more of a mess than the lower trails. Not deep mud; just enough to form a nice lubricating layer between the still-frozen ground and the leaves on top.

Now, I'm not complaining about it being slick. Heaven knows I could use some work in those conditions, but the light layer was just sticky enough to pick up the leaves and jam them between the brakes and the tire. After a couple minutes the wheel would basically lock up and I'd have to pull them all out. That got old rather quickly. The derailleur was also getting hopelessly gunked. It was enough to make me wish I had a single-speed 29'er with disc brakes. Oh, wait. Well, that bike was sitting back in my garage so...

C • GUNK IN THE GEARS 6

I finished the ride on roads. Less than inspiring, but the goal for the ride was an easy spin with some technical work - mission accomplished.

8x(750m, 5c) at Babler (1:15) with roughly equal recovery. First two were in the thick stuff, so ran them a bit easier to get warmed up. Next 4 were at competition pace. Last two were in the most open (and most familiar) areas of the park, so I hit them pretty much as hard as I can go in the woods. Fun workout on a day when conditions actually matched the time of year.

I'm on pace for 657 hours of O training with 14600 controls this year!