Training Log Archive: W

Jettisoned off to Canmore to hang out with Adrian and fun stuff. Played soccer , doesn't count as training.

So I didn't do anything from Wednesday to Friday because I was still concerned I was getting sick, and coming up was the most important totally not important race of the year. Its important because I'm going to have to do it anyway and its going to hurt regardless, and not important because its the Death Race.

Although I wanted to do leg 2, I naturally got to do leg 4, which is a miserable 36k, featuring a nice 12k of climb followed by 24k of downhill full of the suck. Like, its the worst. The last 9k are all downhill on this dirt road which, again, sucks.

I probably went out too hard during the climb. It was raining, it was cool, and I'd been climbing a lot the last few weeks and felt pretty good. I decided I needed to tone it down a bit, and when the hill opened up I just did a power hike. This leg is all about anticipation of the downhill horror.

I lost some time at the top thanks to awful course marking and course marshalls who weren't paying attention. They said I was the first person through, even though I was actually third. In the past you have to go punch at the top, then go out on the ridge and get the flag and come back. This time you could just go straight out and get the flag, but the course marking had both lines blocking you off and flags leading you up the hill. I stepped over the blocking off flagging because I rolled with what I'd been told (follow the flags!) and what has been done in past years. Turns out that was wrong.

Then the downhill came. In lengthy runs me knee has a tendency of getting really, really stiff, so it was a gingerly run downhill. While rounding the hill towards the Ambler Loop, I bit it into a giant puddle, and smash my knee in the place that tends to get stiff. At that point on it was quite stiff, whether it was from the fall or not, it makes running much harder on my hips and my feet, since I tend to not bend that leg so much.

Before the aid station I also came across a bear, it blasted out of the woods and onto the trail and ran away from me at Mach 10. Yeah, you run, sucka.

The train wreck of pain really started on the way down to Ambler Loop, and it a fever pitch once I came back up and started down the long descent. It was at this point that I really wished I had my trail shoes, as my feet were in a bad place. My stomach was also quite unhappy, in addition to my knee. I stopped several times to have a 'moment', and lost 10 minutes to the person in front of me who had initially been 30 seconds ahead.

In the end, I was 12 minutes slower than my previous time, probably partly owed to the last 9k, but I think also a general all-around slower-ness from that year. I haven't compared the splits, but I suspect I climbed a little slower (it was slippery), and descended a little slower, and probably a minute loss from the top, 2 minutes from crash, and another minute from bear.

Not a great result, but our team finished second overall in an extremely weak relay field.

Also, never doing leg 4 again. Or the Death Race again, for that matter.

One more full day in Truckee deserves one more longer run. I wasn't intending this to be this long, but I got up in the hills, and then saw a really big hill and felt I needed to just run up this one hill. Which lead to another one, and another, and suddenly I was in some parking lot with a map and I realized I was.... fairly far away from where I started. Then it was a not quite as nice run down a road back. Hot, sunny, but a bit of a breeze made it quite a nice day, and I was slathered with sunscreen so no burning for me!

Thankfully, my week of racing is almost at an end, and I'm pretty roasted, though miraculously not sick. The last thing to do is the Trailcross event, a long-ish running/navigation race at Northstar. Generally its easy enough to take trails, unless you're feeling sassy, which, of course, I am.

Actually there were two guys with me for a while, which means I to try a bit. Fortunately the pack blew up a bit when I read 9 to mean 6 and started going there from 5. I corrected, any everyone else did at slightly different times, but it gave me the jump. I had to hustle after 7 to get out of sight of Jonis, otherwise I'm sure he would have easily hung on. Going to 5 was a minor miracle as I straightlined it up this somewhat vague hillside only to recognize the green bit right beside the control and discover I was going to dead on straight. Huzzah! Definitely fun to run from 8 to the rest of the course, as it was all progressively downhill and I could very comfortably carry a 3:30 pace.

A quick sprint around Northstar village. And.. by quick, I mean painful and slow, especially back up. Missed the mark on the leg in the field with the down trees, I think the scale totally whacked me out and I didn't adjust. The town bit of the course was really neat though, with stairs, cut throughs, and largely pedestrian only areas. I've often thought that downhill ski resort villages would make great sprint areas too.