Training Log Archive: Sandy

Event: West Point A-meet
 

Brown middle at West Point. Very nicely set course by Hannah. I didn't do it justice.

Drove up in the morning and just didn't have my head into orienteering and so lost it on the first control. Half way there I stopped and realized I had not been paying attention, I did not really know where I was, I was not thinking about orienteering at all. I managed to relocate and make my way to #1 but I'd already given away 3-4 minutes. Slow to #2 because I'm rattled but navigate fine. Good to 3-4-5. A small bobble at #6 since there was a lot more rock than mapped but the control was by the second one I checked - the really big one - so not too bad. I had a good general plan to #7 and knew where I was at all times, but did not look carefully enough at the contour lines and didn't go down when I should have and got trapped on top of a cliff. Slowly scrambled down and was fine to the rest of the controls, although sloppy on the last one since I couldn't focus on the small details of the map anymore.

C • Not into it 2

Middle Brown - Splits

I've slacked off on the pushups. At first I just kept forgetting to do them. Now, with knees and ankles making them uncomfortable, I'm just going to wait and start afresh next week sometime. I've been doing situps sort of randomly and I intend to do those regularly as well.

I'm in a bit of a funk, feeling sorry for myself. It seems that whenever I get going on training, I get hurt. Hard to know if I just need to push through this in order to make progress or if I should back off and give my joints some peace.

C • hurt....... 3

Tried to run the trail loop but about a half of the way in I wasn't having any fun and so just walked the rest. Ankle tender but better. Allergies not so great.

Tried to run the trail loop but my ankle was sore so I bailed after a bit and walked home.

TNT - Indian loop with Sandy and Bob. They finished strong - I had to walk from the meadows. Ankle was sort of okay but not really.

Good class. Worked up a good sweat but there was nothing that bothered my ankle that I couldn't back off a bit. Finally figured out a way to do pigeon that doesn't bother my knees and boy could I feel the stretch.

7 sets of 20

It's hard to do push-ups when one ankle is sore and the other knee is sore.

Lots of yard work. Good thing I like yard work in general.

Event: DVOA White Clay Creek
 

Brown course at White Clay Creek. It was probably was not a good idea to go out on my ankle but since I was driving by the park on the way home from Valerie's and I knew that the person running the computer had not used the new software and would most likely need a little help getting going I decided to stop. And once there, it stopped raining and was pleasant out and so I decided to give it a go.

The ankle was okay - not great, but the taping I did made it so I could run (jog) without it hurting. Not a great outing - nothing major wrong, but several sloppy legs and two route choices that I would do differently - but not a good one as I clearly was tired from Friday.

Brown - Splits

PWF training #2 with Valerie. Valerie designed a 14.2 km course (370m climb, 38 controls) using the permanent controls and a few streamered controls from a previous training and we set out around 9:30. It rained a bit off and on but never really hard so it wasn't too bad. Valerie will eventually post the map and details...

Highlights:
- We did the 14.2 km course in 3:20
- We spent an extra 40 minutes trying to determine if a permanent control had gone missing. I actually made a navigational error here but because there was no control to correct to, I was never 100% sure about where we were on the first pass. So we didn't find the next control either. We stopped our watches and did some futzing around and relocated to a really obvious feature and then went looking for the first control but still could not find the permanent control marker. But this time hit the next control fine. Other than a couple of other small errors that I corrected quickly on, this was the only place we had any trouble. I had even said on the way to this control that I was having trouble concentrating and was getting mentally tired and was getting sloppy but it didn't sound the alarm bells loud enough to force a safer route.
- Twisted my ankle at about the 2 hour mark. We had been moving pretty well and I was really upset and cussed a good deal since it hurt quite a bit but after about 5 minutes the pain subsided and I decided that I could finish the course. Valerie was excellent - volunteering to go get the car and meet me at the nearest road point - but after the first excruciating few minutes it felt considerably better and I was psyched that we had been making such good time so wanted to finish.
- Didn't really get too tired and was able to jog quite a bit (until the ankle debacle). Only felt the the long uphill at around the 2:20 mark and the final uphill to the finish.

An excellent training outing.

C • Great training 1

With all the new trails coming and going in the Wissahickon, I have now settled on a standard "short hill loop". There are 5 significant hills and today I had to walk the last little bit of the first one, all of the second one, none of the third one (it's the shortest and least steep), all of the fourth and none of the last (the road part home). So the goal is to whittle away at the other hill sections one by one until I can run the whole thing.

My son and his fiance have a website for their wedding! Who knew?
http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/EmilyMerola&Denn...

C • That is cool. 3

My backyard has been interesting today. I saw the fox go trotting across early on and then a raccoon - not very big but not a baby either. A little later two of the neighborhood cats were in the yard and they had corralled the fox under one of the bushes. There was a bunch of quick darting around on the part of all three of them and then the cats started hissing and the fox made a run for it. I would have expected the cats to be prey for the fox but it sure looked the other way around. And then the raccoon came sauntering through in the other direction a little later.

C • Film at 11? 4

4 sets of 30; two before tnt and two after so lots of rest in between!

The running part of the work-out.

TNT - workout on the drive with Sandy. I decided I needed to start trying to run again so we hiked down to the drive, ran a mile, walked half, ran half and then hiked back up. The first mile was 525 plus 510 and the last half was 441. But was pretty beat at the end of the mile and definitely at the end of the half. But, as has been said elsewhere, you gotta start somewhere.

Event: DVOA Springton Manor
 

Green course at the new 1:5000 Springton Manor map. Good course given the park - lots of open fields with a few bits of woods and most of the woods a bit green although not too bad this time of year. A handful of 10 second errors but nothing big - just could have taken better lines to a few controls. And run a whole lot more. And be more aggressive.

I've been taking it a little easy trying to be gentle on my knees but perhaps it's time to think about pushing a bit harder.

The splits say I have no time lost to errors. And that one of my best legs was the long uphill leg and one of the legs where there was a lot of route choice. At least that's some consolation.

C • nice to meet you! 2

6 sets of 25

Green - Splits

Late day hike in the Wissahickon after a good bit of yard work - rearranging some plants.

As I was coming through the covered bridge, a man came in the end I was walking towards and I swear he started to veer towards me. I stared at him and was debating whether I could run by or if I should think about kicking or just go for the pepper spray when he veered back the other way and gave a half smile. So maybe I'm paranoid but better safe than sorry and I took out the pepper spray and carried it in my hand instead of my pocket until I was a good ways away up one of the trails to the meadow and had passed several other people.

C • glad you're ok 2

7 sets of 20

Tried to run the short hill loop but ended up walking more than last time. Just felt really heavy and breathing was tough. Allergies are bad - perhaps that contributed.

TNT - a rare double workout. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to make tnt as there was a meeting I had to attend but the part I needed to be there for was first and while I arrived late, so did everyone else.

I was planning to just hike something leisurely, but the guys were doing hill repeats on the SofA hill and I figured I could at least hike over to the hill and back in the hour we set as the time for the workout. And in fact, I was able to jog a bit here and there and get to the bottom of the hill in about 20 minutes so I did a few repeats. The hill is long and I decided the best workout for me was to pick a number of paces to jog up instead of just walking up to the top. So I did two sets of 60, one 80 and three 100. The good news is that now I have a baseline and I should be able to improve on this. Maybe by the end of the summer I'll be able to jog all the way to the top - probably 250-300 paces. I walked down in between not wanting to stress my knees too much. On the last up I just kept going (walking) and then hiked and jogged back on some trails. Nice evening.

TNT bail. Running or even hiking in the cold rain was not appealing to either Sandy or me so we canceled the gathering. I did 40 minutes on the stair stepper in 4 sets of 10 minutes with 25 pushups in between each set. My feet go numb if I don't take a break every so often so this worked well. I took one minute to do the pushups and wipe the gallons of sweat off before starting the next set.

5 sets of 25, one each before, in between and after the 4 stair stepper sets.

Small class so we kept moving but nothing too advanced.

They've opened a new trail so I explored a little.

C • be careful 7

Event: DVOA Elk Neck State Park (cancelled)
 

Hilly hike in the Wissahickon. I need to do more of these longer hikes.

I think yard work helps me stretch.

Realized I had forgotten to do these last night so did them this morning.
1 set of 40 but could only get to 37 on the second set.

A couple of hours of yard work. And there's barely a dent in what needs doing.

Only had to walk the two really steep sections.

Short outing early in the morning as I knew I wouldn't have time for anything else. Jogged about half - just stopped when I wanted since this is all about trying to enjoy myself.

5 sets of 25
At least it is getting easier to do 25 in a row. Perhaps it will be time to attempt sets of 30 in a few weeks.

Felt completely exhausted all day yesterday and bailed on tnt. Went to bed early and slept for 10 hours. Could easily have slept more but needed to get to work.

Slightly longer hike; the bulldozers were out moving earth again and I went yet another different way.

Morning hike in the Wiss. Had to take a different route (a tad hillier) as the machines were out churning up the area right below the horse stables where I usually take the trail so I did something slightly different. Good to get out.

OK class. It was pretty low-key but probably not a bad thing given the weekend.

Event: DVOA Governor Dick
 

Couldn't get to sleep after the drive home and then remembered I was supposed to do pushups. So got up and did 7 sets of 20, cleaning up all the stuff from the weekend that I just sort of dumped in the middle of the living room in between sets as my rest.

C • Gimme 20 1

Brown course at the Pig. Middle distance although it felt more like a woods sprint given all the trails. Pretty disappointing race. Basically just slow. I was using the magnifier a lot but still not really able to get a mental picture of what I should be seeing so really hesitating a lot and stopping to read. Only one real error - missed a trail junction, so got very turned around and lost about 3 minutes trying to sort out just what I had done, where I was and where I needed to go.

Made the drive home in under 10 hours without getting drowsy. Didn't feel like that bad a drive so all in all a good decision to go out for the weekend.

Sunday Brown - Splits

Ultra Long Green course at the Pig. The hope was to finish in 2:15. This would have happened -and then some - without my major goof at #3 to the tune of about 12 minutes. I'm still not sure why I had so much trouble with that control...

Ran quite a bit more than I thought I would be able to and only felt the hills right near the end.

Saturday UL Green - Splits

Event: OCIN Flying Pig XV & US ULtralong Champs
 

Brown course at the Pig. Some good legs and a couple not so good. Could see #3 but couldn't get there through the green crap - should have gone around. Not the best routes to #8 and #9. Then got within two feet of #10 and thought I looked over the edge of the earth bank far enough to see that there was no control there when in fact it was there which I discovered 6 minutes later when I came back...

10 sets of 15

Friday Brown - Splits