Training Log Archive: W

Took the extra long single track route to the shop for the evening shift. I am impressed, once I get passed the university I can now go almost all singletrack all the way to the Capilano bridge, thanks to the some new trails I found yesterday. Its good stuff. Though my bike legs don't feel remarkably strong, I was pleased that the technique was still there, mostly.

Orienteering Wednesday at Dawson Park. Well, I suppose technically holding a map does make it orienteering....

Some occasional Hamstring twinges. Didn't wear any compression while running for the first time in quite a while. I know recovery time is three weeks, but I suppose technically that didn't mean racing at two weeks and then again at three weeks. Presumably they were more like... guidelines.

Two days off to give the hamstring a break. Did some strength exercises in the basement for rehab.

My CEP shorts arrived yesterday, and holy moly are they tight. But not thick. I'm impressed. Then again, maybe I got the wrong size. :p

Barebones Middle. Have you ever seen the move Any Given Sunday? Well, I haven't. But I'm pretty sure the phrase has something to do with the idea that in football, you might win, and you might lose.

(The actual quote is: "On any given Sunday you're gonna win or you're gonna lose. The point is - can you win or lose like a man?" - Generally I win like a man and lose like a child)

Anyway, this being a middle, I often assume on the side of lose, since its requires, of all things, real navigation. But, the Bow Valley in general reminds me of Whitehorse, which I had success in just by riding the ridges, so I pretty much knew what I had to do to do well here. However, I really wanted to work on going straighter, being riskier. So, I did. At least, for the first 6 or so.

Quickroute File

The navigation was generally successful for the first little while. I took it cautiously and was vigilant with my compass. 5 was not as straight as it could've been, but I was aiming well left to ensure I hit the first big clearing. 6 was the same, left the control poorly, but knew I was making 100% certain to hit the clearing. Unfortunately, the clearing wasn't quite as decisive as I would've liked, but I was able to re-locate on the fly in the rough open on the ridge. Saw my 2 minute man at 6, which hurried me a little, so we both botched 7. Fortunately, I got very lucky and stumbled on it after relocating with the rough open. I can't honestly say I was very certain on the relocation.

Running to 8 was a bit ziggy zaggy, but I decided to aim back for the rough open as it was a bit faster. I was also singularly focused on hitting the lake, there was really no other option as far as I was concerned. I could run recklessly until I was in sight of the lake. 9-10-11-12 were all ridge running, though I should've taken a direct-er route into 11. The next 6 were very scary, had 2 minute man around me, so I was hurrying, and I really couldn't make heads or tails of the contours very well. But, I tried to ensure I took a good bearing leaving the control, and I was able to fill in things along the way. Not ideal, but my bearing did actually help a bit. I found it quite difficult to make out what was up or down, which particularly lead to the mistake at 15. Apparently I also totally didn't see any bears around 16.

18 was a bit wobbly because I felt obligated to go close to the trail to see if they guy shouting was okay. He was just shouting to scare away the aforementioned bear.

All in all, not bad. Mr. Nipen probably could've done that in about 35.

C • in this type of terrain... 3

Barebones Sprint. Well, I've done my yearly mis-punch. I think of it like when cycling, in this case that I'm running on the razor's edge.

1-8 went perfectly fine. Dropped my map right at the start, but got it together and was pretty smooth but not excessive. Acquired a 24 second lead in 4:42, so I was definitely driving. At 7 I saw Damian, so it was time to kick it up a notch. Number 9 required running across the bridge, taking a right, then going up the rough open. In our case, we had to run PAST one control to get to our control. We were to punch 169, I mis-read and punched 163 in the ditch rather than the edge of vegetation. I was going hard and briefly stopped paying attention in an effort to get a little bit more power and speed out of every step. I had my exit and route to the next control all planned out. I went out on the razor's edge and fell over the wrong side. No regrets, though, if I want to repeat last year's results, that's what has to happen.

Lost 1:06 on control 14, the large hill. I forgot that the contour intervals were 5 metres, and I also thought it was a depression, so I was tip-toeing around well right of the OBVIOUS feature while I was looking for a little tiny one. At this point I was now 20 seconds down on the leader, and finished 29 seconds down by the end. He put on a 6 second gap in one leg at 19 and a 4 second gap at 21, so clearly there's some speed that needs to be found near the end.

Barebones Long. Didn't necessarily approach in the hopes of avenging the morning. Was mostly just looking forward to a new race at the nordic centre and letting whatever happens happen.

I generally dislike racing at the Nordic Centre. I find the sprinting to be silly, and middles to be boring. I've never done a long, though, and I've always thought that it would be a great place for one. Big hills, lots of trails for route choice, not necessarily super open forest, so lots of choice between fast trail or slow forest. And, lo and behold, it was great. I am of the opinion this is the only interesting type of event that can be held at the Nordic Centre. And maybe a bit longer.

Here is the DOMA link, I can't quite figure out why my QR track is so dim on this one.

Started off fairly cautiously, with a cluster of 4 controls that appeared easy but could just as easily totally mess me up. But, they didn't. Nailed them pretty well, and took some coaching words to heart and spent several seconds planning out a route to 5 before leaving. I'm not sure whether the way I took to 7 was necessarily the fastest. I wonder if staying high might've been faster. But, I think there would've been a bit of extra climb too.

Quite pleased with my route to 11, except I missed too low, which marred an otherwise pretty fast and straight option. 12 was probably too scrappy and getting to a trail would'be been better. I was really impressed with the cliffs at 13-14, I had no idea they were there. Legs really started to burn here and wished I had more fitness. 16 was scary but I repeated the mantra of "I can do this" and went straight through and made it. 17 was equally risky too, as I crossed the second path I realized I didn't have any idea whether I was right or left of the control, I didn't aim off at all. I asked myself, "WWED" , "What Would Euros Do?", and they'd go straight. And I did. And boom.

Caught myself walking on a shallow bit from 19-20 and gave myself a major scolding. As I was running to 24, I gave a lot of thought to whether I should around the steep hill or straight up. I resolved to follow along and see if I saw any nice way up, and if not, once I hit the single track, go that way. I found a game trail and decided to go for it. Tough climb, no doubt, and probably gained 5 more contours than necessary. Ended up losing almost a minute, and very nearly had some hamstring cramping on the way down, but managed to minimize the damage just to brain cramping. Funny thing is, I had a lot of difficulty finding 26, yet I still had the fastest split. Clearly we were all flipping tired.

Took the day off. After yesterday's high amount of pain, I was better off to do not much at all. Walked over to other Adrian's to pick up sprint maps.

More training at Rafter 6. Started off okay, though I botched two, simply because I didn't go far enough. That's likely a product of confidence. By four, though, my hamstring was really starting to ache. It ached all night, so after 4 I decided to just walk. Its actually quite difficult to walk, my distance judgment was not great (at least, worse that usual), but I was generally able to pick out most things along the way.

Unfortunately there weren't many flags out, so I'm not 100% confident I' found the correct locations.

Decided to skip the afternoon session due to that pain. Made for a really boring day, and tomorrow will likely be fairly boring too. Odd thing to say while in Canmore, I know.

First training session of the HPP camp in the Bow Valley. Did some re-location followed by some compass, followed by more relocation. I'm starting to think that maybe I have too high expectations for my compass. Many of my Silvas have that black line along the edge, which seems to often rub off, particularly in wet weather. I've been finding that with a faded line, and the edge of the compass, I'm unable to to really distinguish the path that my compass is pointing when I take a bearing, and feel its therefore always angled slightly off from the direction I want to go. Couple that with whether or not its really pointing straight out from my body, and I really don't feel that my bearings and the direction I run in are necessarily matching, and even on shorter legs, I'm finding I'm off by several %. On the other hand, several people have said not to worry about being that close. But I can't shake it every time I see those Euros taking a practically straight line through featureless forest to almost bang on.

I surely must be able to recreate that. Its important.

C • compass 2

Another orienteering training session in the bow valley.

I think generally if you took the previous winge-ing, adding a loss of concentration and some carelessness, as well as difficult in following what little features there are in flat-ish terrain, you'd have a summation of this session.

Took Tuesday off to drive back to Canmore. Driving just might possibly be the worst thing for a hamstring. I swear. It was like 5 straight hours of ache.

Sage Stomp sprintal action. Again, still not confident to go full out. Nevertheless, I wanted to take it at a brisk pace, which I did, but..... still quite a few mistakes. Granted, it was 5 metre contours and my first sprint since February, but some of the mistakes, particularly the 14, where I got a little careless and completely overshot the pretty obvious building that made the control quite easy. A poor direction out of 1 to 2 also made that slow, likewise with 13. Its odd that in an ISOM set-up, I find 2.5 metre contours to be ludicrously difficult, yet when its ISSOM, I missed the comfort of my 2.5. Its like, 5 metres are too obvious. Or something.

Criminy, this guy's a total hack at this stuff!

Sage Stomp Long distance. Once again, although the hamstring feels okay, I tried to go strong, but keep it toned down. I'm really not sure this was a good idea, but, as an athlete, I want to race.

Started off pretty bad, I went relatively risky right off the start. And even picked a pretty tiny feature to venture into the forest with. That wasn't very bright, but will be a necessary evil on a world stage, really. Playing it safe just won't get me there.

Smooth for the next little while, the long uphill leg to 4 involved too much climb, was weak on the map reading and found myself stuck with having to go down and then up again. Dropped the ball at 6 where my compass told me to go one way, but I decided to go a different way, and I was wrong, natch. Couldn't find the lake at 10, that I would've thought would be easy, but I guess I over shot it. It seemed quite a few people had a trouble with that one. 12-15 would have been improved with better route choice to reduce climb, particularly leaving the control. Then botched 17 probably due to poorly leaving the control as well.

I think the problem is that I'll take a bearing from the control, look up, and the way I have to go looks rough or ugly, I decide to go around, then slowly trend off course. Its a poor habit I do all the time, since I think I'm not strong at moving quickly through rough terrain. This is likely a result of generally having to do that a lot around norther alberta, since there's so very, very much deadfall that going straight is rarely possible. See Morningside.

Sage Stomp Middle. I took a very very light warm-up, slow and lengthy, with lots of dynamic stretching and light lunges. Planned to take the race with a good effort, but by no means a maximal effort. However, given the climb, I could still walk and still feel pretty gassed. I think that's my fat ass talking. My shape does not feel remarkable.

Anyway, in light of the lowered effort, it was a good opportunity to try and be technically sound, as this is a middle distance, not exactly my forte. Started off quite unsure of myself. This being May and all, and probably my 3rd or 4th forest organized training opportunity of the year, what can I truly expect (other than the fact that for someone who aspires to compete in the World Championships, this is about 1% of the quantity I should be doing). So, tried to be good with the compass pickout obvious features and really focus on finding an Attackpoint and it worked... *most* of the time.

Most of the controls that were relatively clean also included a bit to much zigging and zagging, I suppose this is where the compass comes in really important, but I still really feel like I need to frequently feature hop rather than pick out things along the way on a straight compass. This was particularly notable on 7, where I decided to go to the top of the hill rather than straight across the side hill. I thought the spur would be obvious enough for me to just hammer straight down into it, but I found myself going to far and just following along with the road in sight and going in when I "felt" I was close, which, admittedly, I was.

12 was also probably another case of trying to read every feature, every spur, re-entrant, etc. I saw several deep ones that I just couldn't recognize. Eventually I found the fence and all was well. 13 was also poor as I picked out the wrong hills, I was one too low, and this was a result of leaving the control in a poor direction, in the hopes to avoid the deadfall I would have had to go through to go straight.

After a long drive to BC, I headed out for a light tester run before tomorrow's races. Some occasional twinges, but picked up the pace just a little to see if some extra speed would prove bothersome. It didn't remarkably noticeably. Race will still be a game time decision.

Well, one week later. I can walk comfortable, no problems there. I can mountain bike, and though I don't feel twinges of pain, it feels notably... leaded. Like, my hamstring's gotten fat and is a bit more out of shape than my other one. At kids program yesterday I tried going to a jog. Light jogging seems generally okay, no immediate pain, but again some lethargy, or something. Picked it up just slightly, felt like the pain grew a little bit, but nothing stopping me from continuing save for the light amount of fear.

Going to give it more light testing at Terwilligar Wednesday tonight, if nothing else its a good map and good training, hopefully I can move at a better clip than last wednesday's hobble.

Big question will be whether to skip any races this weekend or next. And among the many things I hate, there are few things I hate more than showing up at a race and not racing.

Oh yeah, and I went for another bike ride.

Got out on the bike yesterday for a non-weight bearing mountain bike ride to the shop. Didn't ride very hard, no specific explosion of power, stayed smooth, and quite frankly, was a lazy cyclist. Nevertheless, the hamstring felt tight (as if I'm recovering from a horrible cramp), and had some intensive heat sensation where it was cover in KT tape. Probably the good kind of heat, but it was definitely burn-y nevertheless.

So, yeah, I pulled my hamstring at soccer on Tuesday.

Unlike my foot, I can't just run through the pain on this one. I am unable to push off without a lot of pain, which pretty much eliminates any running at all. Given that important races are a week away, I'm taking this much more seriously. Its been taped up, I'm popping anti-inflammatories, completely stopped training, ice 5-6 times a day, wrap it for the compression, stretch very gently, and silently weep when no one is looking.

Maybe I'll do an hour of core tomorrow.

C • hamstring 1

Hobbled.

Pulled my hamstring at soccer yesterday. Foot is generally fine, but can't extend my leg very well or do any sort of push-off.

No swelling to speak of, so it mostly feels like a really horrible cramp. Many years of being injury free is finally coming back all at once.

MOAN MOAN MOAN MOAN MOAN WINGE MOAN MOAN MOAN MOAN WINGE MOAN MOAN MOAN WHINE BITCH MOAN MOAN MAON WINGE MOAN MOAN MOAN.

I'll stop elaborating for the time being.

Ran over to Mill Creek to do an old Medium course from a Wednesday night event. I tried to make a point of keeping my map flat even while running, constantly rotating the map to ensure it was properly oriented, keeping my thumb where I am, all those good habits that I almost rarely do. Also tried to stop cracking my compass thumb on the fly, totally whacks out my compass.

Usual spring event. I'd love to try to follow the contours, but I keep having to go around things and get totally thrown off. I'd say of the 19 controls, I nailed... maybe... 4 of them?

Very, very, pissed about how that went. Shoddy navigation at best, 100% unacceptable. It disturbs me that my next legitimate competition is one that actually matters. I feel neither confident in my navigation nor fit in my... fitness. I'm going to do track intervals on Tuesday. As punishment.

C • Complaints 5

Saturday morning fast Trax training, 30 x 1 minute with 1 minute off. Kept the pace under wraps for quite a while. There is a temptation to go hard because they're so short, but 30 of them will kick your ass. Would've liked to feel faster, though.

Well, this was an interesting day, I'm not sure I've ever done two workouts, one at 4 and one at 7. Tonight I was forced to go out to Blackfoot and help hang controls for next Wednesday's meet as part of my "officials" course. So since I managed to escape work early (I ran out of things to do). Ran partly around the university campus to tear down some of my ribbins.

The positive was that I got to do some contours only practice at Blackfoot, which I was really not very good with. Couldn't read the contours to save my life.

I was in a foul mood, so the best thing to do is to kick my ass up and down the trails. 15 x 2 minutes with 2 minutes rest at 10k pace but definitely faster than that. Actually, in retrospect, it was less fast, but I felt terribad. Some of the climb-y intervals felt okay, but for the effort, realistically my HR should've averaged more than just 165-ish.

Went out to run around the University of Alberta to hang my ribbons (tapes) for my Wednesday night meet. A lot of stopping and starting, but then took the long way home, so there was still running in there.

How did the meet go? Got some compliments on the course design, but technically its not "my" meet, since I'm not a "qualified" official, therefore I'm just the shadow planner.