Training Log Archive: iansmith

I recently went to City Sports to purchase legitimate running equipment. While I now have knickers and gaiters for adverse orienteering terrain, my "light vegetation" and urban sprint gear previously had been a white t-shirt and generic athletic shorts better suited to a basketball game. I now have running shorts and a very comfortable, well ventilated running shirt. I also bought some running socks, which I guess are just shorter, sweat wicking, and well ventilated.

Anyway, I ran in this new gear along the Charles. It feels much less restrictive; the shorts and shirt felt fast. Today's conditions were a bit warm and humid; I felt fatigued and sluggish near the end of the run.

A course set up by Pia at Hammond Pond as part of the CSU summer training regimen. I forgot my compass, which turned out to be more of a liability than I expected. In a moment of foresight, I did bring my flashlight with me out on the course.

I arrived at about 7:40 and met Brendan right before he went out on his run. I ran pretty well as darkness was falling; I overshot 2 by about twenty meters, missed 6 and had to reattack, and repeatedly missed 10 by wandering too far north. On an approach to control 11 - a longish, 500 meter leg, I chose what I thought was a faster route directly through some light green to the control. In retrospect, a nearby trail would have been much faster. I hit several features on the way, but I got lost stumbling into the green. I couldn't get the contours and features to correspond to the map well, and it was dark enough that I was using my flashlight perpetually. After a few minutes of exploring my local area, I decided it would be best to return to the start. I had maintained a general sense of the cardinal directions, so I ran approximately south and hit a large open field as expected. I then followed the field back to the road and the start.

Not a bad run, but I need to concentrate on planning ahead, reading the map a larger fraction of the time (today was about 15-20%), and making better route choice decisions. Time and distance are guesses.

C • thinking ahead 2

Brendan and I ran what I shall dub a "tag team" orienteering course that he set up at Boojum Rock: he navigated to the ith control, with me tagging along behind; I navigated to the (i+1)th control. We critiqued route choices and possibilities.

This was especially helpful because I've never really had close scrutiny of my local decisions. In post race discussions, the typical route choice subject is global, large scale strategy. My local decisions - how to run around objects, wood speed, etc - are rather miserable. After some comments from Brendan, I tried to concentrate on seeing about 10-20 meters ahead of me rather than 2-5.

We actually spent about 1:10 in the forest, but I estimate only 45 minutes of that was running. We slowed down near the end because Brendan's hip was bothering him and because I'm a wuss. I ran out of steam near the end, and I posit the following reasons:

- Inadequate hydration. At the finish, I readily downed 16 oz of water and 32 oz of gatorade and was still thirsty.
- Recent increase in training volume. I ran Friday and Saturday; I usually don't run more than 2 days consecutively (if that).
- Poor heat dissipation. My t-shirt was soaked with sweat at the end; I wrung it out yielding about 4-6 oz of fluid (best guess). I wore a cotton t-shirt (not good), knickers (ok) and gaiters (eh). I need to find better ways to deal with heat, perhaps compromising some protection.

All in all, an excellent exercise and a far more productive running session than a river loop. I need to do more hillz, especially if I plan to face Jeff Schapiro's A-Meet courses at Mt. Tom. Combine one of the most challenging course setters in the area with a ridiculously steep park, and the result is not good for me.

In other news, at the Estonian WUOC Public races, the long of which is a WRE, I am the sole representative of CSU (and probably the USA). I will endeavor to bear this responsibility with honor. I will prepare for these races as well as I can in the 2 weeks ahead.

C • You're going to Estonia? 3

A late night/early morning run to finish my week of training. My pace was gentle; I wasn't trying to push particularly hard. At the end of the route, in lieu of strides, I kicked my pace up to my 1 mile pace for 90 seconds. I noticed a very large number of insects, with many of which I collided.

I read a PR sign on my route describing what some electricity and steam generation company near Kendall does. I didn't learn much; the sign primarily espoused the merits of steam transfer. This is counterintuitive to me, but I am aware that steam has been used as a means for energy transfer extensively in the Northeast (and probably in many other regions), so the solution must have some merit.

The details of the route I took are well known to me; I frequent that circuit. I found in retrospect that I did not recall some parameters of my run - for instance, whether I took the stairs or a ramp descending a foot bridge. This is discouraging; while my thoughts wander among many subjects while I run, I expect that I should have some recollection of these key points. I will concentrate more next time to try to have a better memory of my runs.

A run from my apartment to Harvard Square, where I rendezvoused with Brendan. We ran a Western Avenue - Eliot Bridge loop, then decided to get food at Border Cafe. Border had a substantial line, so we ambled over to Bertucci's, and in our grimy, sweaty, we just ran 4 miles state, we got a table and ruined the classy image of the restaurant.

In earnest, the situation wasn't excessively improper, but it did feel awkward. The food was satisfying after a run.

In an effort to improve my ability to read details while moving, I brought the book (play) Copenhagen with me, and read 17 pages while running up to Harvard. While a more technical book would be more useful, it would be heavier, more prone to damage, and harder to concentrate on. Light, casual reading is optimal for such exercises.

Hopefully more armchair orienteering activities to be posted in the near future.

A highly eventful stretching session, whose details are too intense to be adequately described on attackpoint.

A late night run, in an effort to maintain my training. It's invigorating to run late a night; the temperature was a balmy 72 F with a dew point of 65 F. I ran with my trusty flashlight, a google map printout of the area, and my Clip; tonight's soundtrack was techno (always an inspiration, though only 144 bpm).

While environmental conditions are optimal, you do run into more curious social phenomena late at night, including a couple possibly engaging in intimacy (it was dark, I didn't investigate, we'll never know, etc) and the always suspicious "couple walking their dog" phenomenon.

I concluded my run with a brisk run up a hill and 4x30 strides - two sets down, two sets up the hill. From a crude estimate of my stride length, during the fast component of the strides, my speed was in the range of 5-6 m/s.

At the end of my workout, while I was breathing heavily and felt weary from my exertion, I felt like I could have done it again.

I'm amused that people are concerned about birds getting killed by wind turbines. While it's been some time since I read any statistics, I recall that the number of avian fatalities due to automobiles was several orders of magnitude higher than those due to some number of wind turbines.

A succinct core workout, succinctly logged.

A rest day. Doing rest dayesque things, like some crunches and pushups. Apparently at least part of the MBTA's $9 billion debt is due to the Big Dig and unbudgeted modifications to the MBTA infrastructure in conjunction with street modifications.

Yay Big Dig.

Note: Orienteering irrelevant blogesque entry to follow.

I have a bit of a flashlight obsession. I have found myself in many situations where light was needed; a flashlight enables and empowers action in darkness, whether that action is searching, signaling, reading, and so on. I find you can never really have too many flashlights.

The attributes of a light can be loosely classified into power and convenience. In the category of power, you have the opposing qualities of intensity and duration. Convenience represents almost all other aspects - size, switch mechanism, grip, lanyards, a ring for keychain or lanyard attachment, holster, ease of use, accessibility of batteries, aesthetics, and so on. I like to have two lights for regular use - one of a 2x AA variety, 10-40 lumens, for regular daily use, and a smaller one for instances in which a 2xAA light is too bulky or obtuse. Under extenuating circumstances (for which you can plan), you might use a headlamp, a bigger, more powerful light (e.g. 3xD cell, > 50 lumens), or other special purpose equipment.

The company Surefire makes excellent flashlights, if cost is no object - their primary customer is the military and police, who need lightweight, reliable, excessively powerful instruments. I consider these lights the embodiment of flashlight excellence. Models like the E2L and 6P are about 5 inches long, but produce intensities of order 100 lumens for durations of about 10 hours. However, they're not very convenient for daily use - do I really need 100 lumens to read? - and it's hard to justify the expense and specialized batteries.

Anyway, my primary and secondary lights both broke over the past year, so I went to Sears to procure new ones.

I'm extremely impressed with the compact light I obtained - the Coast model 7830. It's 2.9 inches long, produces a 15 lumen output for 76 hours, has a keyring, and is black metal. My two concerns are that the switch is a push-button on the back (and so might be depressed accidentally) and that it uses AG13 batteries. Nonetheless, I am impressed and strongly recommend this to anyone looking for a powerful, compact light (it's also only $10).

For anyone curious, my other light is unremarkable: 1.3 watt 2xAA battery Dorcy LED light; it should be adequate for all my purposes, and while it's not that powerful, it has a nice mix of qualities that I expect from my workhorse flashlight.

C • wait 3

Charles River loop run with Brendan. I met him at the science museum about halfway into his run, and we ran together along the south bank of the Charles up to the River Street Bridge. At that point, I broke off, crossed the bridge, and made my way back home along the north bank of the river. A good run, with a generally comfortable pace. My legs did feel a bit shaky at the end, but otherwise good.

I ended with 4x30 sec strides, at a pace of 180 steps per minute with about 30 seconds break between each. 4:30, 1000 meters.

The pace resulting from my data seems slower than what I recalled. I didn't stop my stopwatch at traffic lights, and it is conceivable that I spent 3-4 minutes waiting for lights, stopping at water fountains, and so on.

Setting up and retrieving controls for my Menotomy Rocks CSU orienteering training. The course was to start at 7; I arrived in Harvard Square at 6:05 and boarded the 77 bus at about 6:10. The bus then took about 35 minutes to travel 3.5 miles to my stop near Menotomy Rocks park, and Matt was kind enough to offer me a ride as a trudged up the hill carrying controls. In retrospect, I should have taken the T all the way to Alewife and then crawled to the park. I would have beaten the bus.

In any case, I set off at 6:50 to place the controls. I've orienteered a few times in Menotomy Rocks park, so I feel pretty comfortable with it. I designed a course to try to maximize distance and navigational challenge in the park, but since it's only 750 meters across, it's a nontrivial problem. The final course was about 4.3 km.

Since I was unable to obtain an OCAD file, I scanned two maps from previous events and then used MS Paint to build a clean map (removing the courses from the other two). This was a tedious process, even copying clean regions from the two different maps. I spent over an hour making pixel by pixel modifications. Adding my course took a relatively short time.

I enjoyed designing and setting the course; I will have to do it more in the future. Apologies to all those doughty orienteers who started the course before all the controls were up.

What was to be a 5k at pace became a 4k. I set a pace of 9 mph (6:40/mi, 4:10/km) on a treadmill. Unfortunately, I decided to stop for the following reasons:

- I'm obviously not ready for this pace. I was steady for the first 4k, but I was working very hard. Breathing was too high, though my heart rate was dubiously reported as 160 by the treadmill. I believe it was either higher or I was very sensitive to the heat.

- I think I was overheating. My shirt was soaked with sweat (I wrung it out later), and I was still too warm.

My goal is to break 20 minutes for a 5k by the end of August. I listened to introductory German mp3s, including greetings, numbers, and common phrases. Guten tag.

My workout, including curling, overhead presses, squats, diabolical abdominal machine actions, and the treadmill warm up and cool down for my 4k.

I'm faced with a quandry: I'm not really built to be a fast runner (Lori calls me "top heavy," which is an exaggeration). My upper body is not excessively strong, but it comes in handy moving furniture, portaging canoes, helping friends move heavy objects, and fighting crime. I also enjoy upper body exercises, like bench presses, curls, and so on.

The dilemma is this: I seek to be a competitive elite orienteer, but it seems that maintaining that upper body strength will hinder me. On the other hand, I don't want to lose that strength.

After some deliberation, I have concluded that when my training and performance are serious enough to demand a totally focused orienteering regimen, I will abandon significant upper body exercise. At present, even if I lost ten or twenty pounds of non-orienteering muscle (which I may not have to lose), it would not help me as much as training my mind, improving my running, and building up my cardiovascular endurance.

So, if and when I can compete at a higher level (for example, somewhere near where Brendan is now?), I'll stop pressing and curling. Until then, my goal shall be to maintain my strength.

Apparently "weight" is typed numeric; you cannot insert "ALOT" into the weight field in attackpoint. Unfortunate.

C • A couple comments: 1. H... 2

Charles River run. I pushed fairly hard, but I wasn't able to break 7 minute miles. I concede I haven't run in quite some time, but I had high hopes. More running to come in my efforts to train for the 2010 US Team Trials.

C • yo 2

A tricky line-O set up by Brendan as part of the CSU summer training sequence at Middlesex Fells reservation. I had never before run a line-O, and I found the whole experience intriguing and challenging. Rather than conventional waypoint navigation, the objective is to follow a particular path through forest terrain and locate a set of streamers along that line. Brendan used the park well, particularly given the plethora of paths. I encountered 11 of the 12 streamers Brendan placed, overlooking one in a depression.

I debuted my knickers on orienteering terrain, and while my knickers were mauled in places by the flora (thankfully not the fauna), I have retained far more blood than expected. I was equally grateful for my gaiters.

The interesting twist to this particular event was that my friend Peter Chikov did not return to the start by nightfall. We started running at c. 7:15, and the park was plunged in total darkness by about 8:45. Peter is relatively new to orienteering, and the navigational demands of the line-O were extensive. To complicate things, it started raining heavily as night fell. Alex drove around roads along the border of the park, Matt, Sana, and Lori waited at the finish, and Brendan and I ran along trails to try to find him. It turned out that he had been lost, he wandered, and eventually he relocated. He then proceeded along a trail (in darkness and rain) until that trail intersected a road. He then followed the road back to the start. Given the size and complexity of Middlesex Fells, I am extremely relieved he came back so promptly. Apart from the urgency of the situation, I did enjoy making trail loops in the rain, calling for Peter. Glasses are useless when wet; most of us do not have the benefits of "Impervius."

C • Harry Potter 2

Run home from work. While it's not long enough to be a meaningful workout, it was nice to get my heart rate up for a bit and save me some time on my commute.

A weak mix of abdominal work - 32 crunches, 32 leg lifts - and 32 push-ups. I am not strong.