Training Log Archive: W

Beat the Blues Boogie loppet!

Its weird, for most of the year, the grooming at SWC is great. Nice and firm, usually fairly fast. And then, the day of our loppet, they panic and seem to groom about an hour before the start and turn it into soft and deathly slow. Thankfully, this year, they forgot to re-groom half the trail. So, one side was still firm and really fast, and one side was really not. As the race went on, the trail started to soften up and slow down, but the track did not. Guess what that meant?

Marathon skate for everyone!

Yep, I spent a large majority of the race double-poing in the track, or doing a whole megaton of marathon skate. I was really surprised to learn that quite a few people never figured it out. I think I was about halfway around my first lap (of 6) when I concluded this was the ticket.

Myself and Lukas, my usual combatant, hung on to the leaders for the first two laps, though near the end of the second Lukas started to drop back and I decided I'd try to catch a ride with the leaders. I assumed they were doing 20k. Near the lap lane, when they started sprinting, I realized that, no, no they're only doing 10k. Great, now I'm all alone. Pretty much at that point I had to go with my original strategy which was to gap Lukas between 5-25 k so that I didn't have to contend with his 10k speed and be unable to sprint by him at the end.

This actually worked out quite well! I just kept my tempo up, and really focused on maintaining as much speed as I can by staying in the track, and getting back in the track whenever I had to step out. According to Strava, I had laps of 13:21, 13:25, 13:59, 13:54, 14:14, and then the last one is a bit shorter and doesn't count. So, despite the warming and the snow getting much slower, I stayed [relatively] consistent! I wish I'd worn my HR monitor because I felt like I was redlining it from about 9k. Very pleased with my persistence. That was a solid 1:22:23 of suffering.

Indignation forced me to go for another workout. I hammered straight from the race to work at the shop, then drove home and got up the energy to go for a run after some stretching and rolling. It was supposed to be 45 minutes and easy, and it was 40 minutes and faster than that. Oops!

Finally the weather is pleasant enough to want to go outside again, so I headed out on my new favorite loop for a run. It was a tad warmer than anticipated so I was a tad warmer than anticipated. Changed it up a little and went through the grandview trail.

When I got home, I noticed there was a new Strava segment called "Steep, Steeper, Steepest, Part 1". So, what the crap, people, somebody has made a Strava segment and named it based on the name I give that workout.

Ah, who am I kidding, I know exactly who made that segment. You know those people who will pretend they're interested in something, not because they're genuinely interested, but because they find it funny that someone else could actually be interested in that thing? And so they either bait you into talking about it, or do little gestures that come off as being genuine but they fully intend to have a real good laugh about the response they get afterwards? Its especially effective on well-meaning people who aren't self-aware enough to know they're actually being made fun of. We've all done it at one point or another, and I rarely feel good about it afterwards. In this case, its that they know, for funsies, I gave that workout a name (because, I mean, who names workouts, MIRITE?), and they presumably find it funny (and stupid) that I named it. Its so... junior high. I can but only roll my eyes at it and tuck it in the back of my brain for when I get to hit them in the groin with some sort of blunt object.

Wow, was this a slow ski. I'm not complaining. A lot of little sore bits around my feet, back and shoulders and a 30k on a Sunday suggested that just getting out to get my heart rate up is as good as I should aim for. Lovely conditions, though, and virtually deserted. Apparently people have social lives or something on Friday nights.

Since yesterday I didn't do much other than learning how to sell sports bras, I thought I should double-down today, so I got on my trainer in the morning and spun/sweat for a while.

A snowy run around the river valley before working at the shop. I'm not going to call it achilles tendinitis, but its like..... I have a stretched tendon. Where my achilles is. Its not exactly new, but it comes and goes, and usually about 20 minutes of running makes it warm up and be less painful. Its not something that bothers me too much, unless I think about Daniel Hubmann running into the finish of the Euro champs and having it rupture in the chute. I'd really, really prefer if that didn't happen.

So each month CBC has a listing of songs you should have listened to over the last month, and for February they had one that was not only a cool song, but an absolutely hilarious video. Normally I'd just embed it, but this one is slightly more PG-13, so, I'm just going to post the link, and then you should watch it.

Its all about marketing. And headbutts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8b4xYbEugo

Newsflash. Soccer still bad for me, so says the giant bruise on my shin and the rather sore bicep. Hopefully less painful for the race this weekend!