Training Log Archive: RLShadow

I've been having a nagging issue with my left knee lately, so I decided to take a week or two off of running. It never bothers me while I'm running, so I'm not sure stopping running will help or not, but I figured I'd give it a try.

I don't know much about knee problems (which means I'm lucky to have had very few, over my many years of running and doing other stuff), but I recall hearing that strengthening the leg muscles can help some types of knee problems. So that was the main objective of this weight lifting session, at Webster Rec Center. Although I did other types of lifting, beyond focusing on leg muscles.

To end of Woodland, bushwacked to Maple, into Finn Park, up to the field but not around it, then back more or less the same way we came.

I'm feeling very incompetent in terms of orienteering ability, in my bushwacks through the woods. I would have thought that with the many times I've done through there, I'd know just about every tree by now. Instead, I often find myself wondering about specifically where to go next. It's made slightly more difficult in that it's pretty flat (with the exception of one small stream), and not many landmarks; the main one being a frame of a teepee type structure that someone built out of logs and big sticks.

Dog walk, through woods to Maple, then to Rt 104, back through woods to Woodland. Neglected to take my GPS; my approx route is:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4208009

Time is also an estimate, as I didn't start my stopwatch.

Walk in Ellison Wetlands, with Cheryl, Anne, and Homer.

Mid-day walk with Cheryl and Homer. Somewhat similar route as yesterday, with some differences. Cold (19 degrees here) but little wind, fortunately.

Early afternoon walk with Homer, after Greg, Clare, and Freddie left to head to Clare's parents' house.

Part of the route I took was bushwacking through a part of the woods I've never done before. From Bayside (the street that parallels Rt 104, closest to Rt 104 on the north, off of Bay Rd), there is a would-be road and housing development (lots of for sale lots, no actual houses yet). I took that back to the end, then headed generally north through the woods to finally get the the trail that runs off of the end of my street, Woodland Lane. There is a passage in the woods between the eastern-most house of Brookwood, and the western-most house off of Maple, where I could make my way.

Didn't encounter any no trespassing signs, and I tried my best to stay pretty much in between both houses, and a respectful distance from each one. Probably wasn't closer than 200 feet or so to either one, maybe further. Anyway, I didn't get yelled at or shot at. I saw a fairly well-worn snowshoe path that I think originated from that western-most house off of Maple.

C • screw shoes 3

Walk with Homer, from home, to the end of Woodland Lane, then through the woods pretty much straight east to Maple. From there, went into Finn Park, and did one loop around the large field. Then back pretty much the same way.

Rated this a "2" for intensity, because it was kind of tough going through the woods to Maple (no trail; some areas of fairly heavy vegetation), as well as in the Finn Park field (mostly unpacked snow, around 4-6 inches deep).

Late-afternoon run from home; into Finn Park, plus various roads.

Nothing that is loggable as training, but a pretty tiring day nevertheless. Worked a double shift at the tuning center at Bristol Mt.; from 8:15 this morning until 9:15 this evening, on my feet nearly the whole time. Not sure if that even remotely constitutes some sort of rogaine training though ...

Afternoon walk, with Homer. Kind of wanted to run since the weather was decent (around 30 degrees, little wind), but my left knee has been giving me a sharp pain, very occasionally, when I climb stairs. It hasn't bothered me while running, but there does seem to be a loose correlation between running and whether or not this pain appears later.

So I may try laying off of running for a week or so.

I normally don't have knee problems, except for one period of time maybe 10-15 years ago when I had tendinitis in one of my knees that kept me from running for more than a year. But this latest annoyance is definitely different from the tendinitis. I'll see if a bit of rest helps, or not.

Hojack Trail run, with Homer. From Klem to Lake and back. The trail was certainly runnable; reasonably packed down in most spots, but by no means hard packed. I think the screw shoes were a marginal help in most places but by no means necessary. However, the pace was certainly slowed down by the footing. I'm guessing because each step sunk into the snow a little and slipped just a little. The pace, while it didn't feel "fast", felt more like a 9:00/mile pace rather than the 10+/mile pace that I was actually moving.

Sidewalk/road run with Homer. Started again at Plank and Creek. Ran on sidewalks on main roads, plus did some side streets that didn't have sidewalks. The footing was OK but not great -- glad I had screw shoes much of the time. For the most part, the sidewalks had a fairly thin (maybe an inch) layer of snow, not really hard packed (would have been better if it had been), but rather kind of squishy. My sense is that I was working a lot harder than the slow pace indicates, due to the footing.

Pleasant temperatures, mid 20's, modest wind from the west. I was slightly overdressed if anything. I always like to err on the side of being overdressed rather than underdressed in the winter, so that was OK.

Snowshoeing at Ellison Wetlands with Anne. She wants to get into decent snowshoeing shape in case arthurd wants her for a partner for the snowgaine. :)

C • snowgaine 2

Rough estimate of time and distance of three separate dog walk outings, one at Ellison Wetlands, the other two from home. Pretty lame, but I didn't have anything logged since Monday, so I thought I'd claim a little credit for these walks.

Short afternoon run, on a cold windy day. Really didn't do anything for me other than helping convince myself that I can really get out the door on an unpleasant day like this. Took Homer along; he thought the temps were just fine, of course (14F as of now). Basically headed over to Finn Park, and did one loop around the field, which was generally not very pleasant. Both the headwind when doing the E to W side of the field, and the footing, which generally consisted of snowmobile tracks that had melted and then re-frozen. Even Homer didn't really like the footing in spots.

In one place, I saw a fairly large puddle on the trail ahead, that looked shallow and frozen. There was no real easy way around it, although I certainly could have detoured around it if I really tried. So I decided to plow through it; it wasn't frozen as solidly as I had hoped, and it was a little deeper than I had expected, so I got wet up to my ankles. It actually wasn't as bad of an experience as I thought; my feet were kind of cold for a few minutes, then I didn't notice much for the rest of the run. Until I went to untie my shoes when I got home and found them frozen solid, I had almost forgotten I had gotten wet.

Snowy run, with Homer, on a generally pleasant day. Temp right around 30 degrees, snowing lightly, only a modest wind.

Decided to try the Hojack trail, and it was surprisingly runnable. Somewhat packed down by a couple of snowmobilers, walkers, and skiers, but nowhere near hard packed enough to be slippery. I brought my screw shoes along in the car, but decided not to wear them, and I didn't need them.

I did bail out to the roads for a bit on the way back; even though the trail was runnable, it was certainly more effort than a road or snow-free trail. My pace on the road was about 45 seconds/mile faster than my pace on the trail, and the effort, I felt, was roughly equivalent.

C • effort 1

Decided it was time to HTFU and do an outdoor run, despite the significant snow on the ground, and the low 20's temperatures.

Penfield not only has sidewalks on most of their major roads, they actually plow them frequently, so that's where I headed. I parked at the old schoolhouse at Creek and Plank, ran south on Creek to Browncroft to a side street for a ways, to get my mileage up to near 5 total.

I brought regular trail shoes and trail shoes that had been made into screw shoes, since I didn't know how the footing would be. The sidewalks had been fairly recently plowed, but we're getting continual snow so there was at least a dusting of snow virtually everywhere, with some hard packed snow in spots. So I wore screw shoes, and I think that was a good decision. Absolutely no slipping or sliding, which I'm pretty sure I would have done in spots with non-screw shoes.

I took Homer along for his enjoyment. He liked it a lot until around the last mile, when he started dragging for some reason. I didn't expect that with the cold temps (around 21F); I'm wondering if some of the salty areas were irritating his paws or something like that.

Short snowshoeing outing at Ellison Wetlands, with Anne.

Too wimpy to run outside today. Did a treadmill run at the rec center in the evening. There was one other person there during most of my time there, in addition to the cleaner. Talk about dead.

Scrooge-O at Camp Eastman. Not a good outing.

Started out OK, doing the controls counter-clockwise. Was kind of enjoying the night orienteering in the snow, although I should have done it as more of a memory O like Stina did. Did around 8-10 of them (don't have the map in front of me at the moment), then got hit by a scrooge. Took a while to get rid of the scrooge light/card; went into control 18 I think it was (by the 5 or so knolls in the woods), hoping to find someone unsuspecting, but for some reason, everyone there (and there seemed to be a lot of people at the control, for a relatively remote location) seemed to sense that I was a scrooge, as they just hung right at the control.

I could have out-waited them but that didn't seem like fun, so I headed out to the field and found Joel to unload the scrooge curse onto. The punch card I picked up from him, of course, had totally different controls done than what I had done (and fewer of them). It took me a while to get oriented in terms of which ones I needed to go to. So I trudged on, working on some more controls, some of which I had already done.

Then I got hit by another scrooge, so start the process again ... It was getting a little late by that point (it had been announced that the time limit was 45 minutes, with people prohibited from coming back until the last 5 minutes), so I decided to work my way back clockwise, doing the same controls that I had done counter-clockwise at the beginning.

Then, for the third time, I got scrooged. It was in a field; he handed the red light to me and it was still on, I wanted to turn it off but the switch seemed to stick. Finally got the switch mastered and the light turned off, and I headed out to look for someone to unload it on. I quickly realized that I didn't have the scrooge punch card -- not sure if he never gave it to me, or if I had dropped it when I was focusing on turning off the light. I headed back to the approx spot on the field where the exchange happened, and spent a few minutes searching -- no luck. Not real easy finding a white punch card on a field that had a lot of white snow on it.

So at that point, it was around 42 minutes into things, and I didn't think I should scrooge someone else with no scrooge punch card to hand over, so I headed back to the lodge. I met Elizabeth on the porch, mentioned that I was a scrooge but with no card, and anyway, it was around 43 minutes at that point, so I was just bagging it. She then informed me that the time limit had been changed, to something like 50 minutes or so. I obviously hadn't gotten that memo! But anyway, I just bagged it in disgust at that point.

The good news is that I went home with a candy cane full of M&M's as a prize for being scrooge.

Whiting Rd trails, with Homer. Trails very slippery in many places, especially annoying on the downhills. No real surprise, considering we had about 2 straight days of rain, followed by around 3 inches of snow.

Hojack Trail run, with Homer. Trail was pretty wet between Klem and Van Alstyne, so on the way back, I took roads to detour that part of the trail. Other than that one section, it wasn't too bad.

Low 30's, modest wind from the west. An inch or so of snow on the path. Not a bad day.