Training Log Archive: W

Long, long, long training on some slightly slower forest. Large chunks of the maps were blanked out. Personally I thought that meant we were supposed to just go for it and try to compass our way through a vast blank section. For me, that meant some major thrashing around lost, especially on the second box, because it was really slow and I went way, way off course while trying to stay on my bearing.

Then I found out that everyone used roads to go quasi-around the boxes. I suppose at least I got the most value for my money!

I stupidly forgot my plug-in adapter, so I wasn't able to fully charge my GPS for the weekend, which of course meant I got no tracking at all the entire weekend. Darn.

The morning wasn't orienteering either, but instead an easy run with 10 x 10 second sprints up stairs. I thought the stairs were a good idea, but then I would have maybe liked to just go running more. Since we left at 9, we finished at 10, and then had 4 hours to kill until training #2.

And, since I still stupidly had no plug-in adapter, I couldn't even do homework. That was a wickedly unproductive 4 hours.

2 x ~3k forest sprint mass starts. Really really nice open forest with lots of visibility, but also a few really big hills. Aside from botching #1 both times, the rest went fairly good, and I wasn't too far behind. I thought I stayed pretty calm and under control despite all the people around, but that may also be reflective of just how easy the navigation was. I mean, it wasn't that easy, but they were distinct big hills, and you could see very far. I suppose at least I know that I can run with those guys, physically, in certain terrain.

First evening of Tera's Peurunka training camp! I didn't get a chance to run in the morning but I was confident we'd do something in the evening. As it turns out, we did about 40 minutes of core. Push-ups, sit-ups, all the usual stuff. Unfortunately, since I don't count core as training, no training for me!!

Kurko #11. I'm definitely getting better at these things! Just in time for the series to be basically over (I'm going to miss next week's). I still make one giant catastrophic mistake, but for the first half of the race, I was right in the thick of it with Pavel, Lasse, the boys. There were even times when I think I took a slightly more efficient route, noting that both of them were going too far left or too far right. Unfortunately, at 8, the really, really weird one, I thought Lasse was going too far left, but he was busy nailing the control, and I was going to a different control, that was even further left. So I screwed around a while and tried to relocate and whatnot and lost quite a few minutes. At that point I was alone and the time started to bleed away some more. BUT! I won a few legs, and was quite close on some other ones. That's great. These races are so much fun.

A pleasant morning jog without any classes. Mainly just prepared for my Finnish speaking exam on Thursday. Yikes!

In between Salibandy matches (update: we sucked), I managed to jump out and go for a juosta. I thought I'd go north and explore the lake to the north of town, see what it would be like for running a loop around it. I actually thought I had started exploring the east edge, but it turns out I was actually just wandering around the southern part. Its a much bigger lake than I anticipated. I think that if I were to run from home and around the lake, it'd be about 25k? Guesstimate? And I'm not clear how much of it would be on trails versus road.

The internet and my sister agree that I probably have Morton's Neuroma, which is I suspect wildly common in runners. Its like walking around and feeling you have a pebble in your shoe. There have been times when I've noticed this pain before but it generally subsides quickly, this time its been a bit more persistent (read: 4-5 days), so we'll see where it goes. All of my road shoes are very much past their lifespan, and I suspect that is part of the problem. Its only another 2.5 weeks until I'm back in Edmonton for a bit, where then Ill stock up on some cushy goodness. Until then, I'll..... ?

C • Morton's neuroma 2

C • The Killer K 3

Does it count as training if you consumed alcoholic beverages after each loop? Its still technically running.... and still technically a race, in which I TOTALLY CRUSHED Pavel and Hutteri.

No further questions.