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.