Training Log Archive: cporter

Flying Pig, Sprint

Flying Pig, Relay - since I was running the orange leg, I was the one running the mass start which I was a little bit nervous for - but overall found really exciting. All the excitement went a little to my head though and I made a pretty dumb error on my way to the first control. I actually ran to the wrong control first, which was thankfully not really out of my way, but still I knew better. The plus side is that running to that control (it was the yellow leg's #1) pulled me down to a trail which I ran and avoided a lot of the deadfall that all the other orange runners had to run through on the way to our first control. So even with my mistake I still arrived at the control just after Ted Good, the first runner get to #1. From there the orange course was forked so Ted and I took off in slightly different directions, but we met up again a few legs later. I kept him in my sight for another couple legs and was gaining on him - and then I made a another boo-boo. We were running down a trail that ran through a field and then entered the woods, and then forked and from the fork our control was only about 30m into the woods from the fork. So, I wasn't looking at my map terribly hard since I already had my compass set to take the bearing once I hit the fork and I knew I'd hit it head on since it wasn't far off the trail, etc. And so when I hit the fork, I took off into the woods on my bearing and EVEN came to the right feature (a pretty deep depressing/sinkhole/pit thing) just when I expected to, but there was no control there. I just stopped and blinked because I just didn't see how it couldn't be there...till I took a harder look at my map and realized that another trail junction with a much smaller trail (hence why I didn't see it initially) preceeded the junction I wanted. It also just so happened that there was a depression in pretty much the exact same location from the junction that I took as the one I was supposed to take. Thankfully I only lost about a min there, but it still really threw me for a second. The rest of the couse went reasonably well, I took a nasty fall and slid downhill for a few feet face first on my stomach (I've got some nice scrapes all over my abdomen from it), but I recovered from that very quickly. Again, the climb was killer especially toward the end of the course and I had to walk some of it. Its just kind of a bummer that I had that error, cause I was kind of looking forward to a race to the finish with Ted, but he came in about a min ahead of me (which was of course the min I lost) so I had to bust my ass up that hill to hand off to Sandy on my own!

Yay for being the 8pt team Relay Champs! Congrats to all the other winning teams!

Saturday Orange_8pt - Splits

Event: OCIN 25th Anniversary / Flying Pig XIII / Relay Champs
 

Flying Pig, Middle Distance

Friday Middle Red - Splits

Easy run during my lunch and a long stretch afterwards since I'm going to be stuck in the car for the rest of the day and part of tomorrow to get to the Pig.

Run along parts of Paintbranch Trail/UMD campus/surrounding neighborhoods. Since it was a misty and rainy day, I was kinda in the mood for a little mystery - so I ventured into some of the areas surrounding Paintbranch that I haven't run yet. The whole run was really nice because the rain gave this isolating quality to the air everywhere I ran. It was almost soothing. Also, there weren't many people out on the trail because of the weather so that was nice. I did pass two girls running though and overheard a most alarming comment from one of them - they actually stopped running just as I was about to overtake them and I heard one of the girls in between gasps say "Honestly, I think smoking has helped me to breathe better..." What?!?!

Kickboxing stregnth class (aka, bootcamp) - a lot of dynamic exercises and plyometrics with cardio intervals to keep up the HR along with some good old fashioned push-up and sit-ups.

I just wanted to give a HUGE thank you to anyone on AP that volunteered at the start for Ran-It-Granite this weekend. Well, thanks are in order for anyone that volunteered, but as chief of starts I wanted to say to all start volunteers that it was a real pleasure working with you. I learned a tremendous amount from all of you and there is no way I could have done my job without your input and experience. I look forward to working with many of you again in the future!

After a very long hiatus from logging my training (but not from training itself!) I'm going to try and make a more concerted effort to do so again. So, on that note there's actually not much to say about today's run. After the craziness of working as chief of start for Ran-It-Granite and also running all 5 races (I'll post about them in the next day or so) I just wanted to go for a nice relaxed run to losen up some. I did run one very tough hill (took about 3 min and I was working it as hard as I could) because it was shameful how slow I was climbing this weekend so I really need incorporate more hill work into my training - I'll probably my first hill workout in a long time after the Pig next week when I'll have over a week to recover before the next Ameet. Other than that there's not much to say - just a nice run on a nice day! It's good to be back on AP!

Core class.

Ran-It-Granite, Long - I really liked today's course. It started off a bit easy, which I actually kind of like so that I definietly mentally into the race before we get to the tricky stuff. Although "easy" legs can be tricky in that you let your guard down, which is what I did on my way to #6. I had been having a pretty clean run so far and 5-6 was not a terribly long leg, going mostly down hill so I relaxed a bit and opened up my stride planning to just run on a bearing straight to it. Unfortunately, I relaxed a bit too much and wound up getting sucked farther down the side of the hill than I should have been and had that sudden stop, then, ummm, wait a minute something's not right here...oh maybe its just over here, no, ah maybe I haven't gone far enough, but...shit! Things proceeded like that for about the next 3 min too, because that "simple" control was located on a relatively bland hillside with little to relocate off of so I pretty much ran a full circle till I figured out what I did. So 3 min of error there. Ouch. From then on I definitely proceeded more cautiously, but made some pretty conservative (read slower) route choices that I probably didn't need to make. Also, the sun finally came out on my course, but it was just a tad too soon for me - I could literally feel the temp, not-so-gradually creep up to a rather uncomfortable level just as I was coming into #13, which was convienently the last control before the very technical section of the map before the finish. I didn't really blow any of the last 6 controls, but I bobbled several of them - exhaustion, coupled with the heat and the change in techincal difficulty made this bit of the course really tough. I didn't rock it, but I loved the challenge! I think I'm going to have to keep this map in mind for a future training - I've been meaning to replicate a training that I did with Tom Hollowell this summer, but I couldn't think of any terrain close-by that would work well for it. The training would be a one-man sprint relay set with with middle distance level of difficulty controls in technical terrain. Its a hike to get out the map, but maybe a potential summer short series?

C • Congratulations! 1

Red X Day 2 - Splits