Training Log Archive: DWildfogel

Kortum Trail, Sonoma St. Beach. Warmup from Blind Beach parking lot to Sunset Rocks, walking the steeper parts, jogging the rest. Legs feel surprisingly sore, especially quads.

Kortum Trail, Sonoma St. Beach. Sunset Rocks to the near edge of Furlong Gulch and back, with one loop back. Never felt good, slowed on every upgrade. Wanted it to be easy, but even running slowly it wasn't that easy.

Sunset Rocks (1322) Shell Beach (427) loop back (535) Furlong Gulch (538) Shell Beach (1230) Sunset Rocks

Cool down: walk back from Sunset Rocks to Blind Beach parking.

The usual weekly accumulation of morning stretching and strength exercises.

Drove up to our Russian River cabin, stopping for lunch in Petaluma and then driving over to Forestville for dinner.

Trail behind house.

Full sets of theraband and weights. Tried something new with the weights, holding a 4lb dumbbell in my hand in addition to the 15lb one. That got me closer to the 25lbs I usually use at the JCC. Was able to do 3 sets of 16 with each arm for each exercise.

Lake Ranch Reservoir. 50 degrees but really windy, making it rather unpleasant. Legs still feeling tired from Sunday. L got a headstart; took me a mile to catch up, during which I started feeling good. But then troubled by a headache and stomach, so just kept it easy the rest of the way.

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C • Leslie's comment 2

Cool down

Theraband and weight exercises, full reps, but only two sets each.

Finally added my leg-by-leg analysis for the three championship races in KY to my AP log for Mar 27 - 29. There are also links to the course maps and my routes.

Walk the trail behind the house - and the new spur. Sit at the bottom for a while and listen to the wonderful biophony.

Lake Ranch Reservoir. Drive L down so she can run, I go for a relaxing walk. Legs feel fine walking, but a few jogging steps makes it clear that they worked really hard yesterday.

Event: BAOC: Point Pinole
 

Middle course: 3.9km, 70m climb, 17 c in 32:42. 5th of 48, behind (and barely ahead of) only much younger and faster participants. 8:23/km.

Winsplits

Sunny and mild, not much wind. Good day for running. Started the Garmin when I got to the assembly area, and it got a signal right away. By the time of my start, though, it needed to be restarted, which I didn’t remember until the last second, delaying my start a bit.

Checked with George beforehand about how to put on my “active ankle” and discover that what I have is merely a glorified ace bandage compared to the supports he has.

8 minute warm up. Legs feel good.

Planned to really push the running pace to see if I can navigate at a higher speed and also to see how that affects my result.

1. Pushing the pace already. Pick out the correct bush from a distance. Cut through the field instead of running to the trail junction. Nail it.

2. Rough bearing up the hill and across the trail. Had to veer a little right to avoid some very tall grass. over the crest, spot what I hope is the correct hilltop, and it is.

3. Try to stay on the little ridge, but vegetation forces me along the side and my ankle is uncomfortable side-hilling so I have to drop a little. Guess I lost my pace count in the process because I had my eyes on a hilltop in the distance when fortunately I noticed a bag in the top of a reentrant directly to my left and realized it was mine. Lost :15 between the two little problems.

4. Straight. Had to walk a good part of the hill. There are elephant paths. Would have been a more challenging control if the bag wasn’t on the side facing us.

5. Quickly along the edge of the field, onto the trail and to the T-junction. Try to keep going straight without slowing down to take careful bearings. Find myself at the two-knolls-pit-ditch feature due S of the control, that is, a bit off to the left. Momentum carries me to the left of that, then have to go 20m down the trail to get to where I can mount the embankment (and my ankle feels it doing that). Hoping to see the ditch, but soon see the downed tree stretching towards me and the rootstock beyond. Lost :10 - :15.

6. Eyes on the reentrant and hill ahead of me when I see the bag on the hill immediately to my right. Could have been a big error if the bag had been placed a little further N. Not sure why I thought I had one more reentrant-then-hill to go since I knew I’d already crossed one reentrant; guess it was the scale. Lost :10 - :15.

7. Ankle had a bit of tough time getting down the hill and then going through the tall grass to the control. Had no navigation problem, but lost a few seconds.

8. Cross the trail to the right of the junction as planned. Pace count; no control. See the bag on a stump 40m to my right, but when I get there, it’s the wrong code. Check my map and realize I went to the circle for #12. Then, using the embankment as a catching feature, run pretty hard and see the rootstock a bit to my left. Lost a minute between the two errors (going to the wrong circle and being to the left of it).

9. N out into the field. Continue to push the pace; starting to feel tired. Following the compass, but don’t see the gap in the trees I should see, so veer into the gap to the left, then realize I should have kept going straight as I have to make a right turn to get to the bag. Lost :15 - :20.

10. Straight looks too dense, so swing around to the left (should have gone right) where a huge elephant path is going. But then see that I’m close to the road, realize where I am and correct, nailing it from there. Lost :30.

11. Straight. Elephant path towards the end. Really tired now. Been running this like a sprint, it’s been 17 minutes, and I’m about out of gas. Non-trivial tweak of my ankle as I’m coming into the control.

12. Straight, noting the structure in the field to my left, heading for where the ditch enters the forest. Hit it perfectly, see the little hill ahead and to the left. But in the forest I come to an embankment, up then down, that seems to be an old road or something, and don’t see anything like that on the map. (Afterwards, speaking with Steve Gregg about this, realize that it is on the map, one side as a contour line, the other side as a form line, but the latter is partly covered by the line between controls.) That slows me down a little, but proceed on a pace count, but nothing is there. Look around a little, see the control 40m to my left - meaning I’d arrived at the same spot I arrived at when I (mistakenly) tried to get to #12 when I was going to #8. Curious. Lost :45

13. Lots of deadfall and vegetation, tough on my ankle, and tough to move fast with my fading strength. Keep my eyes on the corner of the big field ahead to judge my direction. Suddenly come to the edge of the big ditch (and see Francois do the same 20m to my right), which means I have to turn left, and there’s the bag 20m away. Lost a few seconds due to the 20m and to the difficulty running through the woods. Note: Francois won the combined Middle-Long with a time faster than the total time of the winner of the Middle plus the winner of the Long.

14. Legs are shot. Can barely jog up the gentle slope ahead. Francois passes me and pulls away rapidly. Head generally SE aiming for the second dirt road, but then see I’m very close to the paved road, so take that (and see ahead that Francois had done the same). Slowly jog along the path, cut off the corner to the new bathroom, follow the edge of the forest all the way around to the lone tree.

15. Along the left side of the little hilltop. There’s an elephant path from there to the road. Once across the ditch, realize I’m too far to the left. Use the hilltop just below the line to guide me, nail it. Surprised my split was as good as it was (in comparison to others) as I was struggling to run.

16. Still struggling, breathing hard, but right along the right side of the forest patch and nail it. My highest ranking split of the day. Later, hanging out in the assembly area, see several people go through the forest patch instead of along the edge.

17. Quickly along the contour. Glance at my map, see the circle is in the forest, look up and see the forest is a bit downhill, veer to it. Another very good split.

F. Tough time on the uphill.

Little bobbles on 7 different controls, over 3 minutes lost in all, a bit too much. So did running faster work? Seems to me I lost as much in additional little errors as I gained in running faster, so the (sad) conclusion is that I really can’t navigate well enough to make the additional speed pay off, at least not in the woods (even relatively simple terrain like Pt. Pinole). And in this case, had I run at a more normal pace, I probably would have been faster on the longer legs at the end. Nevertheless, this was good practice for sprint orienteering, where I can navigate well at a faster pace.

5 minute cool down plus stretching.

Warm up (8 mins) and cool down (5 mins).