Training Log Archive: PG

Up to the power line and back, relaxed pace.

C • I think you might have got it ... 1

Up to the power line, then a little loop there with a little more climb, then back. Slowly stretching things out a bit. Don't have much more orienteering planned for the year, the DVOA A meet and probably a couple of local events, so there's no sense of urgency. Just trying to get the legs loosened up.

Then went off in the afternoon for some O' practice at a place I hadn't been before. Played rather badly. Finished at a little after 4, there was no one on the first tee (and not that much daylight left), so I headed out again, moving very quickly (mix of run and walk), got in 6 more holes and played really well. You never know, sometimes you've got it, sometimes you don't. Just like orienteering and NASCAR, I guess.

C • o practice 3

You might want to check out my buddy Canto.

C • Canto 7

Very, very windy, so I drove over to the gate to run on the lee side of Mt. Toby. Up the jeep road to the top (28:08), on the way back via the Link, second quarter of the PLPC, and the Robert Frost, where I got enough of a taste of the wind -- as in keeping my eyes open for falling trees -- to be quite glad when I got off the ridge and out of it.

Hamstring seems to be doing better, but I skipped today's WCOC meet, figuring that the last thing I needed was my usual dose of tripping/stumbling/falling.

Passed a little bit of time on the climb wondering, where's Big Eddie? No training, no discussion. Is he in love?

C • I think an unleashed dog got him. 1

Got out between downpours, just local roads, better than doing nothing.

Hamstring seems a little better. Must be one of the benefits of growing old (along with wisdom and no memory) -- things just heal faster.

Well, I couldn't take it any more, had to do something different.

Still just out back on Mt. Toby. Over through the town park, up Middle Mt, back down N. Mt. Felt a little weak at times but a decent effort. Hamstring/butt no worse.

An afternoon round at Hickory Ridge, combined one of my worst nines ever (57) with one of my best (37), with the bad one coming first, so at least I rallied. Not an easy course. A beautiful late fall afternoon.

C • aerial photos 1

Once again, same as yesterday. Perhaps part of an experiment to find out what it is like for people who like to run the same loop day after day after day?

C • Same loop every day 5

Same as yesterday, working harder, under the theory that if things hurt the same whether you go slower or faster, you might as well go a little faster and get a little more benefit from the training.

I hadn't realized how cool the IOF World Ranking system is. Last week I was ranked #405. This week I've moved up 13 places to #392. Wow! If this keeps up, 13 places better each week without doing anything, by next spring ....

Does this only work if I continue to do little or no training?

Same as yesterday, a little more energetic. Still sore.

Got my 7-iron back from Ping today. When I sent it off for repair I needed a much shorter box. See, there was this tree in the way of my swing, and I hit a really nice shot from quite deep in the woods, and I didn't really hit the tree that hard after I hit the ball....

Conditions for O practice yesterday were rather tough, upper 40s, stiff NW winds. But still good to be out and getting a long walk in.

C • And he runs again 1

What the hell, might as well see if I still remember how to run. Up to the power line and back, gentle pace. Left leg/butt felt somewhere between awful and great. At least it only hurt every other step!

When I did my right one a few years back, it only lasted for about 4 or 5 years. Wonder if I have that to look forward to this time. If so, lots of good training opportunities for mental strength....

Which reminds me of a 50-miler I ran about a decade ago in Texas (yes, Texas, a grand and glorious place). I was in good shape, doing a last seesion on the track midweek, when I felt a twinge in my left calf. Went to Texas anyway, spent most of the race enjoying my imagined post-race phone back to Gail -- G: How did you do? P: Great, finished. G: How was your calf? P: Great, only hurt the last 49 miles. Honest to God, that one little imagined conversation kept me going, and laughing, for 8 hours.

But it would be nice if this went away in a week or two....

Well, I guess I'm in trouble. Sit on your duff for a week and Kenny (aka Ken, maybe what he goes by at work?) has this thing programmed to harrass those of us who perhaps need a little "structure and accountability" in our training, not to mention our lives.

"Your log can be a powerful motivator, since it helps introduce structure and accountability to your training.

add training - log a training session
add note - a journal entry (not training)"

So anyway, the word from Sunderland is I'm unstructured, unaccountable, but still alive, though with an unhappy hamstring. And just taking a break. Which I think I deserve, seeing as how I'm ranked #405 in the world, ahead of Mr. Ken, and way, way ahead of Mr. Swampfox.

266 = 3750 R 983 982 919 866 Boris Granovskiy USA41
272 3702 R 991 935 918 858 Eric Bone USA11
288 3572 R 946 903 874 849 John Fredrickson USA197
312 = 3433 R 925 920 870 718 Eddie Bergeron USA24
340 = 3310 R 966 785 781 778 Clem McGrath USA23
389 3032 R 866 842 695 629 Gregory Balter USA36
402 2962 R 843 782 771 566 Ross Smith USA114
405 2943 R 824 751 696 672 Peter Gagarin USA158
412 2893 R 738 733 719 703 Joe Brautigam USA12
433 2774 R 871 720 670 513 Randy Hall USA48
448 2712 R 966 927 819 James Scarborough USA2
465 2641 775 746 628 492 Thomas Carr USA156
495 2454 R 864 815 775 Ken Walker Jr. USA39
528 2287 R 824 809 654 Sergey Velichko USA37
563 2164 R 743 741 680 Vadim Masalkov USA61
589 = 2092 R 764 681 647 Michael Eglinski USA53
600 2058 R 760 673 625 Ed White USA101
682 1843 R 674 631 538 Kristaps Tamuzs USA205
763 1582 R 794 788 Leif Anderson USA136
772 = 1542 R 829 713 Erin Schirm USA212
809 1402 R 790 612 0 Brendan Shields USA208
822 1358 R 828 530 Ted Good USA080
827 1341 R 712 629 Andrew Komm USA157
832 = 1306 R 736 570 Wyatt Riley USA42
1003 = 1026 R 1026 Mikell Platt USA102

I may just take another week off!

C • ranking = time off 3

Hudson Highlander. Good run, 14th out of 50 or 60, coud have been a couple of places higher but chose the wrong fork at the end (other fork was shorter but seemed to require either a good detour to go around some thick stuff or a lot of work to get through -- turned out it was pretty wide open and easy).No mistakes of any consequence other than that. Got quite tired about 2/3 of the way through but then rallied and finished pretty well, not running hard but still running all the places I hoped to.

Feel great! Except it seems everything hurts. I was debating which would be the shorter list -- what hurts or what doesn't hurt -- but anyway the major damage is:

Very sore left butt and upper hamstring
Somewhat sore right butt and hamstring
Somewhat tenderized feet
Various leg lacerations
Large welt/laceration right forearm (really hit hard, felt like I could have broken the bone if my bones were a little weaker)
Moderate corneal abrasion to left eye

Well, that's actuallly not a long list, maybe that's why I still feel great!

Must have set a PR for falling down, had to be over 20 times. Worst was leaving #5, a good yank to my left hamstring, it was pretty unhappy the rest of the way. The rest, well, I was lucky I didn't do a Minium.

A long day. Up at 4 am, picked up Phil, then at the end a bit of a late start coming home, big tie-up on 84 east of Danbury, opted for plan B and took 34 over to Derby and then up rt 8, added about 35 minutes, don't know if it was better or worse. Got to Northampton and dropped off Phil, then stpped at a store for a loaf of bread and could barely stand up, and that was with holding on to the car. Staggered in, glad a cop wasn't watching because there was no way I could have walked a strraight line if I'd had to.

Oh, and all this was in celebration of my 62nd birthday!

Now to see if I can stay awake long enough to scan in my maps....

Map 1 (trail run)
Map 2a
Map 2b
Map 3
Map 4

C • Happy Birthday!!! Nice way to ... 13

XI - Splits

Up to the power line and back, slowly. Legs a little sore but getting better. Energy level pretty close to zero. Must be my new diet....

C • About your Mac 3

Just a couple of long walks the last two days, hamstring still sore but getting better. Need to get back running tomorrow.

And, repeating what in the last decade has been the most important single action each year for better fitness, I got a flu shot.

C • At what age did that become a good idea? 5

Warm-up before the Wine-O, to see if I was going to do it or not. Hamstring quite sore, but seemed tolerable, and seemed to loosen up just a little.

The Wine-O' -- ocross is what they call it, mass start, a couple of forked loops for the old folks, the same plus one more common loop for the others. It turned out the first couple of loops were the same for all. They started the men first, then the women about 5 minutes later, then the old folks about 3 minutes later, so all I saw of the young ones were the stragglers.

I set off at a moderate jog and the hamstring seemed to deal with it, quite sore (maybe a 9 on the Wyatt scale?) but not getting worse, so I saw no reason not to keep going. Except just before I finished the first loop I got a branch in my right eye and it snatched the contact I wear for distance vision. So now I had 2 good eyes for reading the map, but everything more than a foot away was a blur.

Any sensible person would have quit, since I was right back at the start/finish, but I thought it would be interesting (and good training?) to run the second loop blind. I've had to do it several times over the years, and always managed, just a little slowly.

And that was true for this time, a little off course to the first one, but that was just sloppy compass work, and then pretty clean the rest of the way, except for the finish -- I thought it was going to be by the parking and download station but it was up the trail a ways. Ran right by it, didn't see it. I'd guess Gail got me pretty good "in the chute".

George came in not long after me and at some point started to give me a thorough chewing-out about getting the God of Injury pissed off by some comments I posted after the CNYO meet, and how I'd better mend my ways or I was in for some serious trouble. I really have no idea what he was talking about, but I do know that I still feel great! Fat maybe -- ice cream for the third day in a row, I have to do something to get Swampfox under the G and soon, he is binging and purging all the time, I hear -- but great! (Is that better, George?)

Wine-O' (loop 1)
Wine-O' (loop 2)

Very nice terrain!

Warm-up.

NAOC "long" -- ran my age group (M55-64), pretty good run, first by about 9 minutes. A little slow in a couple of complicated areas, but that was ok. Not sure if I got the best route on the long leg, crossing one marsh and then a big semi-open area were both worse than the map would indicate, but then another marsh was better than mapped, so maybe things balance out. Anyway, pretty happy with the run, certainly better than yesterday.

Only downside was a fall about 2 minutes before the finish, got my left hamstring, bad enough that it hurt pretty good, not bad enough that I couldn't keep running. Will have to see how it is in the morning and if I want to do the Wine-O before heading home.

Maps from the weekend:
Sprint (M21)
Middle (M21)
Long (M55)
Notes on today's long course (though 6.1 km isn't exactly long):
On the way to 1, saw that the trail went reasonably close to the control, and then immediately thought, wait, there's supposed to be route choice, and spotted the left route, which I'm pretty sure was faster.
To 3, resisted the temptation to cut the corner.
To 5, woods south of 4 were trashy enough to make getting to the main trail a priority.
To 6, very hard to read the map, eventually came up from the pond just heading for the center of the circle, eyes open for a control.
To 8, wanted to get to the main E/W trail. Decided to risk the straight route, figuring the first marsh was quite narrow and rest would be not so bad, light green having been mostly ok. So the first dark green marsh was at most light green and I was feeling like I'd struck gold on the route, but then the second marsh had a narrow band of alders (or something similar) on the near side, took me the better part of a minute to go about 10 meters. Got across the open water ok, just a little over knee deep, but then the semi-open area was a lot more bushes and thickets than open, and I had to zig-zag quite a bit on the first half of it to find places I could run. So by the time I got to the little trail on the west side of the "clearing" I felt like I given back whatever advantage I might have gained. And certainly wondered if the mapper had been where I had. (The other place i wondered about the mapping was when I left the main E/W trail -- there was a little piece of semi-open marsh with widely spaced vertical green lines. Started to go across there, but it looked totally impassible, so I went further south before leaving the trail.)
The rest was just keeping track of the trails.

Despite my reservations about the map on the way to 8, the course was a lot of fun, a nice mix of fast and slow, easy and hard, with some good choices to be considered.

C • thanks for posting map and com... 7

Training at Rocky Ridge in the morning.

NAOC middle, M21-34. Miserable run. Actually, that's being a little harsh, so let's say it was a blown opportunity, but still really bummed.

Missed about 5 minutes spread over 3 different places. Plus a couple little bits elsewhere. Didn't get into the map right away, missed #2 both the route execution and around the control (need to go visit the site tomorrow afternoon, still don't understand what went wrong) and #3, a little off course and very slow to correct. Had a moment of thinking, well, I've already blown today -- when you run slowly, you can't afford any mistakes -- but then at least had enough discipline to bear down and just keep trying.

4 through 8 were ok, then spiked 9, only there was no number on the e-punch box, it was covered over with duct tape. I was pretty sure I was right, but no number, so I assumed that it was a control already out for the next day, just with the number covered. Spent a minute looping around, back to the same point, only then did I notice the number on a placard on the side of the stake. Shit.

And then I really screwed the next one, not a good route at first, then at some point I shifted my focus on the map to #4 and was heading towards it. Realized that a couple hundred meters before 4, changed course to what was now a much more difficult approach to 10 and blew it. Or more accurately, lost contact, stopped, couldn't figure it out, went a little farther, same problem, saw a high point with rock off in the distance, ran to it, at this point I could have been anywhere on the map. SW-facing rock face, checked about three of them on the map and none fit, then saw one more on the map partly covered by the circle. Hmm, if that's it, my control should be just around the corner. And there it was. But probably stood there for more than a minute....

Rest was ok. Time wasn't a disaster, a bunch of people did worse, some a lot worse, but 35 was certainly doable. Best was Johnny F. in 29+, good for him!

Event: 2006 North American Championships (Golden Leaf Orienteering Fest)
 

Warm up for the sprint.

NAOC sprint at MacMaster University campus, M35-44, same course as M21-34 and M17-20. Ok run, best was 15:23, a couple of little 5 second misses, plus I really need to practice my e-punching, bet I could have been 20 seconds or more faster.

Breakneck Trail Race, 20 km more or less, pouring rain, low 50s. The kind of day when it was much easier to drive an hour and a quarter for a two-hour race than go out my back door for an hour training run. Because the training run wouldn't have gotten run.

The race was standard New England, some hills, a good number of rocks and roots, plus a lot of mud today. I ran what felt like so-so most of the way, not great legs, but at least managed to pick it up a bit and run the last 15 minutes hard to sneak in under 2 hours.

The race had an unusual twist. The course was a lollipop, out and back with a loop in the middle. The out-and-back was straightforward, follow the blue and orange trail markings for the Ridge trail, though there were hard to see at times, and in the sections of old hemlock forest with no undergrowth the trail was easy to miss.

The lollipop was a loop around Breakneck Pond, and here the rule was, go any way you want. Actually they said use the trail or use the old forest roads (a little longer, but a little better footing), don't know about bushwhacking. And you could go around clockwise or counter-clockwise, whatever suited you.

And the race director had hung up no extra streamers at all. He did give out a map, though I seemed to be the only one taking it, partly because I'd never run the race before, whereas others had run it a bunch of times under more restrictive rules.

Strange as this was, I figured if it didn't benefit me, nothing would. And I think it did, I finished 6th or 7th out of about 30-40, getting passed on the last part by a couple of guys who were a good bit faster but had taken slower routes around the pond (or gotten lost). For the record, I went partway down the west side on Cat Rocks Road, then on trail for a bit, then all the way up the east side on Snow Sled Road. The "roads" were pretty crappy, rocky/muddy, but still quicker than the rocky/muddy and somewhat twisty trails.

I ran much of the way with Eddie Alizobek, a really nice fellow who does a lot of work to make these races happen. I asked him a few years ago how come he seemed to know everybody, and he answered that at every race he tried to meet at least one person he didn't know, and over a few years and a bunch of races each year, it adds up. When I remember, it's something I try to do at O' meets.

One other oddity -- I'm not sure what my official time will be. I kmow what my time was (1:59:30 plus or minus a couple seconds), but when I stopped to ask what time the race director had for me, the answer was 1:55 something. Cant't be, I said. And Eddie was there, he'd finished a minute after me, 2:00 something, nope his official time was 1:56 something. Can't be, said Eddie. With which the race director pulled up his sleeve and said, "But both my watches agree!" So how are they both off by 4 minutes? We were running pretty fast, and if I remember correctly, our watches might have sped up a little, but his watches were the ones that sped up, and he was going nowhere. Who knows....

All this followed by a relatively short visit to Litchfield, more of the SOM program, whoop-de-doo. Treated myself to some ice cream on the way home as compensation.

C • race time oddity 10