Training Log Archive: kissy

This is all I could squeeze in today. It was a crazy day at work and then a crazy evening at home with the beginning of the new semester with new classes and more school supplies to buy. I also had to pack for a 3 day business trip starting tomorrow...in beautiful Jersey City!

Came home earlyish from skiing because the weather was still bad...it was 2 degrees (without the wind chill) when we left. Sorry, but that is too cold for me. Hopped on the trainer when I got home for a little redemption.

I've been wanting to check out the Greenbrier Rail Trail for quite some time now and since I was so close, I figured I would go for a run in the morning and then ski in the afternoon. My sister-in-law, Nancy (Erik's wife, for those who know Erik), decided to come with me. Nancy is an awesome runner who specializes in marathons...she's run Boston 3 times now. I was glad for her company, but I kept telling her to just run on ahead because I'm much slower than she is. She stayed with me, though, because it turns out she had run 14 miles yesterday and had a hard interval workout the day before that. Ha! Anyway, the scenery was beautiful on the trail, but the trail itself was in pretty bad shape for running. It was covered in crusty snow, with re-frozen footprints everywhere that made for slow going. But, it was nice to get out and run somewhere new. I think I'll come back to the trail in warmer weather and bike it.

The afternoon skiing expedition never happened. A storm blew in around 1:00, with incredible winds and blizzard like conditions. We hunkered down in the condo instead.

The boys and I headed to Snowshoe Ski Resort in West Virginia for weekend of skiing with my family (19 people in all). The trip out took 5 hours (!) over very windy, mountainous roads. Graham and I both got carsick.

I went out to Hemlock Overlook today and hung the controls for this Sunday's event. Tanner came with me and hung the Yellow and Orange controls. It was not as cold as had been predicted. If you were in the sun, it was actually quite pleasant.

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This was a little slower than normal because I felt like crap at the beginning of the run. My hip flexors hurt and my legs felt like lead. I slowed down a lot just so that I wouldn't stop completely, and after a while, I started feeling better. Enough so, that I made it up the hill in the middle of my run without stopping. After that, I figured I would be fine, and I was. Not sure what was going on in the beginning, but at least I got over it. I also managed to get this run in before the forecasted blast of Arctic air arrives.

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A good start to the day.

A cold but sunny day. I had to get this in so I could be properly ready for the State of the Union speech. And the superb response from our own junior Senator. Yahoo!

Hopped on the trainer after the birthday festivities. I almost bagged this one, but after having a slice of chocolate cake, decided it was needed.

I have to admit, I was feeling a bit kilter-canter today. I don't know if it was this pain in my neck or this horrible cold (and accompanying phlegm) that I can't seem to shake. It almost caused me to hulk out with some push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups, or at least some craniomuricontusional exercises. I also contemplated hopping on my Nordic track while Tanner and Graham took a nap, maybe while reading Utne, but their nap was too short. At least I got some laundry done in my inconvenient laundry room. In the end, I donned my super tight white UA, two bras, my long UA underwear, a short sleeve top, and a long sleeve top and hopped on my trainer while watching the latest KU game and listening to SRV. I felt GREAT!

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I decided a rest day was in order. I didn't feel sore after yesterday, but I did have a pile of chores that needed tending to. Plus, tomorrow is Tanner's 17th birthday, so a little cake baking was needed.

Training session at Fountainhead with the QOC F45s. peggyd and I ran together for a bit on the trails, heading out to hang our controls. We had the controls that were furthest away.

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This was one of my first attempts at adding non-event orienteering hours to my training. I had decided a while ago to do this and invited vmeyer along. Then, we added peggyd, Heidi and Kathleen. Such fun. However, the local event that I was supposed to set courses for and that had been cancelled, was reinstated again, which meant I had only this weekend to streamer for the controls. Since Fountainhead is right next to the meet site (Hemlock Overlook), I decided I could still do the training *and* streamer the controls. Suffice to say, I am writing this is a state of near exhaustion!

Anyway, the training was super fun. I designed a 6.3 k course, throwing in a few long legs and a little bit of trail running. Unfortunately, one of the control locations I had planned was now right in the middle of someone's backyard (alot of new houses on this map). Luckily, I was the person hanging that control, so I tried to hang it high on the route that I thought everyone would be running. That worked except for Valerie (sorry!!). See vmeyer's log for a link to the course.

I had a really good time out there. I didn't have any troubles navigating. I couldn't find #2, but didn't spend much time looking for it since I knew I was in the right gully. This was also a good course for hill training! And it wasn't as cold as I thought it would be. Once I got going, I was perfectly fine.

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Running back to the cars after retrieving my controls.

Ater Fountainhead, I headed over to Hemlock Overlook to streamer for controls for our local event next weekend. There were 21 controls, all scattered south of the Environmental Center. When I started out on this, I really didn't feel like doing it. I had gotten chilled from the training and my legs had started to tighten up. But I knew it was today or never, so I trudged on. I jogged for the first 10 controls, but then the rest was just walking. I was very mad at myself that I hadn't brought any water or Gu or bars or anything, and I could feel it. I had only had an oatmeal cookie and some coffee after the training, and that was not enough, By the end, I was so glad to see my car and get something to eat and drink. Lesson learned!

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I did this early in the day because I won't be able to do it tonight since it's Trash TV Thursday.

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A tad shorter today since the boys were just getting off the school bus as I was running by, so I walked home with them instead. It was mighty cold out today. I wore two pairs of pants, a la PG. Toasty!

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Thankfully, I was deterred. It was the coldest day so far this winter, which isn't saying much, but it was definitely cold enough to keep me inside. And the "s" word has crept into the forecast for tomorrow, but I totally don't believe it. Seriously!

An early morning run before the very cold weather came in. No ice storms or power outages have been predicted.

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For some reason, my leg muscles (mainly inner thighs) kept cramping up all night, so I decided to do a Power Yoga session this morning to try and loosen things up a bit. It felt like it did some good. We shall see.

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A trainer session while watching the Golden Globes. Boy, oh, boy...what was Warren Beatty rambling on about?!? I thought he would never shut up!

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Blue course at QOC meet in Patapsco State Park, MD. I decided to run the Blue course to help meet my 2007 orienteering goal...plus, it was a long way to drive and I wanted to get my money's worth. I started out feeling pretty sluggish, and the massive climb to the first two controls did not help. I also missed #2 by a bit, stopping one reentrant too soon. After that, though, things went better. Controls 3 - 13 were all pretty much on top of the escarpment, with not too much climb and no big misses. But then 14-16 were placed on the steep slopes down to the Patapsco River, so if you made a mistake by dropping too low, you paid dearly. There was also a particularly nasty climb from 15 to 16, made nastier by the fact that one of the route choices to 15 brought you right by 16, only to then have to look waaaayyy down the hill to see 15, go get it, and climb right back up. I was getting tired towards the end, and that coupled with the fact that I hadn't brought my spikes, led to quite a few spectacular falls on the rocks. All in all, though, a fun time.

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Well, this is certainly the winter for crazy weather. I went back to the battlefield today and ran in shorts and a t-shirt...after freezing earlier in the week. I felt sluggish at the beginning of the run, but picked it up after about 1.5 miles. Since this is an out and back for time, I can only measure my speed by how far I get out in 30 minutes, and today I ran out further than I did the last time, when I was feeling so fast. The trail was pretty muddy today with black, oozing mud, after the last few days of rain, so my shiny orange trail shoes are now black and yucky.

A planned rest day that turned out to be not so restful.

Today's run was further proof on how freakishly mental running is. I started out not feeling so great and halfway through the run I convinced myself that I was going so slow and felt so bad that I would just cut the run short as I was passing by my house on the final loop. Well, I got to my house and figured I might as well finish so I could add a decent amount of time onto my AP log. Now, this whole time, I felt like I was just plodding along, out for a little easy jog. So, when I came to the end and stopped my watch, I couldn't believe that it was one of my fastest times in a while. How can that be? How could I feel so slow, but be going faster than normal. See, that's just freaky.

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Did a trainer session as an homage to Sverige.

A not-too-speedy run this morning. It was much, much colder than it has been, and my legs never did seem to warm up. One nice thing I did notice is that the trash doesn't seem to be accumulating quite as quickly on the side of the road anymore. Maybe enough people saw me out there picking it up that they started feeling guilty and stopped dumping it. Wouldn't that be nice?!

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Just a little evening session thrown in for fun.

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What a beautiful outing, in so many respects. The weather was perfect...cool and overcast, it was on a trail at Fredericksburg Battlefield, and I felt great. I just felt like I was sailing along, in that wonderful running flow. I even attacked the last massive hill on this route, a hill where I usually have to talk myself out of walking the whole way up. The only bad part was I met a woman with two leashed dogs on the trail, but the leashes were pretty long and the dogs didn't look so happy to see me. It was basically a stand-off on the trail, and the woman wasn't making any moves to reel in her dogs, so I took a circuitous route through the woods to avoid them. And the whole time, the owner didn't say one word, even though I was telling her that her dogs didn't look so friendly. I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt, though, and will assume that she spoke no English. And my AOWN smelling was a skunk...pee-yew.

I did something bad to my shoulder during yesterday's core conditioning, and when I woke up this morning, I was in a bit of pain. One of those things where if you turn a certain way, a stabbing pain shoots through the muscle. Yea, one of those. Good thing today was slated to be a trainer day.

Had planned on running today, but the day got away from me. Today was the Beecroft family's Julebord, and I was hosting it this year. And, of course, I waited until the last minute to do too many things, so there was no running in the morning. Instead, I opted for the Caron Shepley Core Conditioning program as something to do after a day of feasting on all foods Norwegian. Yum!

Although I did not publish my 2007 goals, one of them was to increase my orienteering hours by roughly 50%. After planning out the local meets and A meets for the year (with no 1000 Day to help me this year :-( ), I quickly realized that I would need to get out into the woods several times a month...ALL ON MY OWN! So, today was the first day of that. I headed up to Pohick and ran a recent Blue course, in reverse order and without a compass, and then piddled around on the map for awhile. It was a disgustingly beautiful day (73F) and even a bit too warm. I was working on a few things today...one was to get a better feel for which way I normally drift (right) and by how much (sometimes alot!). The other was to go back to the basics of *always* having an attackpoint. I've gotten lazy about that lately, just figuring that when I got in the area of the control, I would just see it. Well, that's not such a great plan. So, before I started on each leg today, I picked a definite attackpoint and went to it, and then went into the control. That worked really well.

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Another spring-like day...ridiculously warm and raining. Oh, yea, and my forsythia has begun to bloom. My run today was fine, just like every other day. Nothing hurts, but I did feel a little slow...maybe it was the heat.

What a beautiful day; I almost thought it was spring already. It was a mild morning, with the birds chirping and some flowers blooming. Where is winter?!? This was a nice run, although the transition back to running legs from skiing legs was a bit rough.

Back into the routine of weights and strengthening. Plus, I like the addition of the pink to my AP graph.

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Travel day home, so only time for a short trainer session. There were no glitches in my travels, so that was nice. I left Laramie wrapped in winter white and arrived in Stafford in almost spring-like green. Freaky.

Final, and perhaps best day yet, on the trails. The snow was perfect and so was the weather. And thus ends my cross-country skiing for Xmas 2006.

Yahoo, the first trainer session of the year!! I've laid out my training schedule, and Monday nights are dedicated to cycling.

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