Training Log Archive: iansmith

Long run. I ran via Main St. to Bellevue Pond then wandered around the Fells. I brought a map with me of the Pine Hill map and read it until I ran off the edge while circuiting the reservoir. The trails in the Fells were covered with snow, and I lost the trails a little while circumnavigating the middle reservoir. Conditions were cold - about -7 C; I wore the standard SLS/SL, gloves, buff and balaclava. I would have been miserable without the balaclava. I carried a Gu, but I didn't use it because I didn't want to get sticky.

I took an unscheduled rest day. The original plan had been to do a 4-mile threshold run. Between staying out late with some friends on Friday and dealing with my flat tire shenanigans, I was feeling very tired. This is my sixth rest day in January. I suppose one/week is the goal - and a lower bound I don't want to exceed, but an extra rest day thrown in now and again is not unacceptable.

C • NOTacceptable 4

Ran home from Watertown Square after I got a flat on das auto. I changed the spare, but its pressure was too low to drive on it. I considered taking a cab, but figured an easy run was acceptable.

C • low pressure 3

CSU Indoor track workout. I biked over from work and arrived just before strides. We had a special guest: Galen Rupp was running his own workout (at a much faster pace) at the same time as CSU. Wicked awesome. I did my best not to geek out and played it cool. He was running a cool down during the first half of our workout, and I managed only a lackluster "Go Galen!" when we passed going the opposite direction.

Terry put together a rather contrived workout: I ran 1000, 800, 600, 600, 1000, and 1600. Patrick, Tom and I finished off with 2x200. I wish I had warmed up a bit more. While running to the workout is an adequate warmup, biking is not. I took the km intervals a bit more gingerly and generally hung in the fifth or sixth position behind the fast guys. I latched onto Terry for the mile, but he pulled away in the last 400 by about ten seconds. The rest was 200 between each bout and a kilometer at the end.

Splits:
1000 - 3:30
800 - 2:41
600s - 1:59, 1:57
1000 - 3:30
1600 - 5:39
200s: 34, 33

Commute.

And home, with dead Garmin. It was about -14 C when I made my journey, but I was dressed adequately: SLS top/SL bottom, gloves, buff, hat. Breathing the frigid air was painful; I ran hard up my home hill to catch some bikes and was struggling for breath at the end. Ultimately, I decided to abort rather than run a tempo run or even 30 minutes easy.

I'm happy to make my Harriman exercises available to anyone who wants them. I have a decently large repository of Harriman/Blue Mountain exercises from a few training camps.

I warmed up with a 2.8 km control pick I designed that took me from the parking area to the start of the Team Trials Blue Middle Distance course. I jogged for maybe 2 minutes to get to the control pick start, but my muscles were not excited about going from a cold start to climbing ten contour lines in the first two controls, even at my relaxed pace. It was a great exercise nonetheless, and a very good warmup for any race. There was still 2-4 cm of snow on the ground. I continued my theme from yesterday by trying to broaden the control. My garmin was out of energy, and I forgot my charger, so I ran with only a stopwatch.

C • Nice weekend 3

Blue Middle Distance course. Distance and climb are reasonable guesses. I dislike getting whacked in the face and shins by mountain laurel. The first third of the course was thick with the sort of vegetation that doesn't die, and I suffered for it. I ran the Red Middle over Thanksgiving 2011 with the crew, and I fared much better today, making sure to choose and hit distinctive features on my descent of the cliff strewn hill, e.g. into 6. I was ponderously slow by comparison to the field, and I don't know how much of that can be accounted for by the snowy ground. I wasn't quite giving a full out effort, but I was running hard at maybe tempo pace.

I struggled to pinpoint 14 and 19; analysis to come.

Run back to the parking area from the finish of the middle.

My second session of the day was an 8.3 km variant of the red long course from the 2010 team trials. The course has some ordering differences from the one actually ran, and I didn't have splits anyway because my Garmin lacked energy.

I had printed both the 12.8 km blue and the 8.3 km red, and I was pleased to realize that I could run the shorter course and still achieve my training goals for the camp. It would have been a shame to do only the middle training on my last day at Harriman.

I originally planned to alternate hard and easy controls, but I deviated from this after control 4 and just ran at a steady effort. I started to fade after control 11, and my left arch briefly ached on the march up to control 16. Still, it was good to force myself to dig deep and persevere to the end. I focused again on maximizing the visibility of the controls, and on the longer legs explicitly zoned out. I orienteer much faster when I'm running towards something, and especially when you can choose a distant, prominent feature, you can dramatically increase your speed and reduce the concentration needed to navigate.

I botched control 2 when I found a double boulder about 100m short of the control; on my approach to nearby 3, it was clear that I was coming from the wrong place, so I took 2 again. In a race, I probably would have taken the road route on 6-7 since mountain laurel sucks, but for training purposes, I decided to push through the terrain. It was rewarding, as punching through the very dense mountain laurel forced me to reckon with low visibility situations and run with appropriate abandon in the middle of the leg. It was great fun, and I was delighted to finish on a high-ish note.