Training Log Archive: W

Maryann was heading off tomorrow for a placement in Red Deer, so although I had intended to do a longer run, instead I joined her for an easy run down to Hawrelak and back. As we got to the top of Keillor Road, some of mid-pack runners of the Mother's Day 10k were coming up the hill.

This one dude ran past, and as he did he lifted up his shirt, wiped the sweat off his face, and on the way by blew his nose into the front of his shirt. That was weird. And gross.

After a lazy Sunday at the shop, I had the energy to go for another run. My achilles has been bothering me now that I'm running more, but a little bit of warm-up works wonders, and eventually I felt just fine.

I also covered 500 meters more than this morning in 5 less minutes. Some runs are a bit more effective than others. But, I can't do all my workouts alone. Just... 95% it would seem. I thought that percentage might go down a little bit while in Finland, but that hasn't quite worked out the way I wanted to. And now the boys living in the other building are moving away. Darn.

I had everything planned out so well. Until I didn't. Darn! Oh well. Monday.

Back in Edmonton for a bit! Yay! I realized what I missed - the river valley. There are few things I like more than running through my trails. I know the all so, so well, and sometimes I tire of them, but today is not that day. All I thought was that its a shame people don't come to Edmonton more often so that I can show them how awesome it is. I couldn't possibly afford to live here any more, I don't think, not at the moment, but I wish I could buy a nice house in Belgravia or something and then encourage various Europeans to come over and join in the fun. For a couple days. Then we'd go to the mountains. Great city to live in, not the most riveting to visit.

An overnight layover in Houston meant we went to a hotel. I check a map and the hotel was actually relatively close to the Jesse H. Jones Park and Nature Reserve.

I checked a map so I had a rough idea of where I need to go. I figured, being a park, as long as I got to the edge of the park, I'd find a trail to enter the park.

As it turns out, I forgot that I'm in Amurica, and thus the entire park is surrounded by a large fence with barb wire on top. Great. I had a rough idea of where I thought the entrance would be, so, undaunted, I continued, but had difficulty finding away to GET to the entrance through all the suburbia and cul-de-sacs. I found it after about 40 minutes, which gave me about 15 minutes to hit some trails and run around.

It was a cute park, it would have been nice to run around it more. There is no way you could do any orienteering in this park. Way too thick. It was also a shame that all the trails were paved and not something softer.

Either way, my brief experience of Houston was not so bad. I really only spoke to the people at the hotel, and no, they weren't very nice. But the weather was nice, that park was okay, and the sign on the vending machine that said "watter available in office" [sic], was very funny.

So.... I give a Houston a Not enough information / 10.

Final run on the Cayman Islands. Sad. But, we went back to the other place that Claire likes to run on the island. More dyke roads, but at least its not pavement. I imagine its pretty good for intensity if you can get over the eventual boredom. A little bit softer than pavement, but fairly smooth and straight. Good for sustained running at any pace. I'm not going to miss CI, but I'm going to miss hanging out with someone is enthusiastic for adventures (with adequate rest in between) , can take and dish out the wisecracks in equal proportion, and having someone to talk that I know is totally on my side.

Although I suppose technically that's her job. Its what I'm not paying her for.

Finally time for the much anticipated ultimate race of the First Non-Annual Cayman Islands International Sprint Orienteering-palooza Cup, or, FNCIISOC, or something like that, its possible I forgot a letter (TM).

This was clearly the most important orienteering race to have ever happened on the Cayman Islands, and the men's and women's elite category was a who's who of international orienteering, in that the international orienteering community would say, "who?".

In the interest of efficient start management, the race was a mass start. Unfortunately, the route choice to number one was immediately blocked by some unexpected construction, which pretty much made this race fall in line with most urban sprints around the world. Its like it was meant to be.

There was much protesting over the quality of the mapping, particularly on the way to number 2, when a very obvious underpass and sidewalk were mysteriously omitted from the map. Clearly the mapper did not put in the requisite time with Google Earth or creeping on people's vacation videos on Youtube.

Unfortunately, on several controls, all elite competitors were in fact disqualified by officials who were hiding in the bushes.. However, upon multiple protests, they were all reinstated due to the fact that were it not for crossing the olive green, the athletes would have literally been trapped and unable to get to the next control. Glad to see the jury was willing to be flexible. It is assumed there will be plenty of passive aggressive comments about this on Attackpoint.

The race featured some short legs, two controls on a tropic island, a super-long, map spanning route choice leg, and plenty of bewildered observers.

This can only bode well for the future of orienteering on the Cayman Islands. Since the founding of the Cayman Islands as a country there have been an average of zero orienteering events per year. Now we can proudly say that rate has increased to 0.0189 orienteering events per year. Talks with Noname to produce Team Cayman O-lands is already underway.

Another hot hot hot weather run in the cayman islands. This is also I think the sixth straight day where my watch registers precisely zero meters of climb. I think the only time I've achieved that is running on a treadmill. I'm quite certain now that running on this island all the time would be both insufferably boring and leave me quite injured.

Or I suppose, mentally tough and with feet of steel. You never know.