Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Fairly brutal manual labor most of the day today. I was asked yesterday by a long time acquaintance if I could help him with this deck project that he had been hired to do by someone. The hourly pay was very good so it was tough to turn down. But the work was very grueling. I'm sure my kneecaps and my back will be quite sore from today, and also tomorrow, as we're going to be putting in another fairly full day on this project. I'm definitely not in shape for this type of exertion, either that or I'm just to dang old to be doing this work.

Monday night pickleball group at Webster Rec center. It's supposed to be 1.5 hours but I got there a bit late and readily volunteered to sit out my share of games (we had 6 players, and since doubles is almost always the game played, 2 people were sitting out each game). Had fun but didn't want to over-exert myself after over-exerting myself during the day today.

Event: ROC - Powder Mills Park [2011 Series #6]
 

Powder Mills Red course. Straight-line distance was 7.2 km, with 325 m of climb (AP analysis of my GPS track said I climbed 375 m).

I was on the fence about whether to do this meet or not, for a couple of reasons. I've been having some issues with my left knee lately, which seem to be aggravated by going uphill or downhill (and I know there'd be plenty of both at Powder Mills). Because of the knee issues, I've backed way off on my running lately, so I'm not in the greatest shape. And I've had a nagging cough for the last 4-5 days, and I didn't know if exerting myself would be the best thing in terms of trying to shake it.

In the end, I decided it was too nice of a day not to orienteer. I decided to do the Red course, with the intent of walking almost the whole course, but trying to orienteer as cleanly as possible. I didn't quite succeed on either goal, but I came close. I did a little more running than I had planned on, but a lot less than if I wasn't hindered by the various issues. I didn't have any major mistakes but more bobbles and (in hindsight, of course) non-optimum route choices than I would have liked.

Possibly some comments on specifics about how I did later ...

C • Grad splits please;-) 1

Red - Splits

Pickleball at Webster Rec center, with an informal group that was initiated out of the Tues morning group I play with.

The level of play was a bit higher than the Tues morning group due to a couple of the weaker players not being there today, and Cheryl (my spouse) playing. It was Cheryl's first experience playing actual games, or playing doubles at all, but she used to play a lot of tennis, so her game quickly became better than the weaker Tues morning players. Plus one fairly experienced player, who doesn't play on Tues mornings, was there. We had 8 people for quite a while, then it gradually dwindled to 4 by the time we were ready to quit.

Late morning walk with Homer, over to Finn Park.

Easy run on the Hojack Trail with trailsnail. My first run in a while; my knee has been feeling fine the last few days (no discomfort going up or down stairs). It felt totally fine for the first 2 miles of this run, but then started to show a little discomfort for the next half mile, but strangely enough, was then fine for the last half mile. So I'll see what it's like tomorrow, before concluding whether running does or doesn't seem to aggravate it.

The elevation trace looks very bizarre for a place like the Hojack Trail, and says I climbed 197 feet which is tough to believe. So I over-rode what AP said, and changed it to 60 feet, much more realistic I think.

Late morning dog walk on a cool, dark, drizzly day.

Tuesday morning pickleball group. Definitely lower level of play than Monday evening, but still enjoyable. One newcomer was there who had never played before, but she is a tennis player and in decent physical shape; she picked many aspects of the game pretty quickly, and I would think if she keeps playing, which she said she will, she'll easily be one of the best people in the group. She and I wound up teamed up for one game, and beat the opponents 11-0.

C • happy pills 2

I also joined the Monday evening pickleball group at the Webster Rec Center. Far different from the Tuesday morning -- certainly a higher level of play. There were 6 there tonight (usually there are more, I was told) -- 4 men and two women. One guy was definitely older than me but way more experienced and better. The other guys seemed a bit younger than me; the two ladies looked like they could be around 50 (WAY younger than me). I was by no means the best in this group; maybe around the median, if I want to be generous to myself.

Dropped off some picture files to get printed at Wal-Mart, then went for a walk while the pics were getting printed.

Lawn mowing and some leaf raking and leaf blowing. Hardly constitutes a logable workout, but it's the closest to a logable workout I've had for a few days. :)

Ellison Wetlands (oope, Lucien Morin Park) with Cheryl and Homer.

Late afternoon run with trailsnail on the Hojack Trail. Short, flat, and slow, the type of running I'm determined to limit myself to for a while to see if a nagging knee problem gets a bit better.

I signed up for a weekly pickleball group that meets Tuesdays 8:30 - 10:30 in the Webster Rec center. The level of play was lower than the group that I played with a few times outdoors, such that I would rank myself as probably the best player out of the 9 people who were there (and I was also the only male, and probably the 2nd or 3rd youngest person). There was one lady, probably a good 5-10 years older than I am, who had decent skills (and who like me, used to play tennis), but was somewhat less mobile than I am. One time she and I were paired up as partners and we pretty much destroyed the other team, so we both concluded that we needed to be on different sides from then on.

All in all, though, it was a lot of fun -- pickleball seems to somewhat level the playing field so that different abilities can play together without a stronger player dominating as much as he or she would in tennis, for example.

C • More fun in the granny league... 9

Very easy morning run, with Hershey, a dog that we've been sitting for for a couple of days.

GPS didn't kick in until about a quarter mile into the run, so I added an estimated 0.2 miles to the GPS distance.

My left knee has been bothering me a bit lately, so I decided to only do short and fairly flat runs for a week or two, to see if there is any improvement.

Event: ROC - Irondequoit Bay Park West [2011 Series #5]
 

Setting out controls for the courses that ccsteve designed for the Iron. Bay West meet. It was exceedingly helpful to have all of the control points streamered! (Only one streamer was missing, out of 41.)

I made a 20-minute error before I even set foot on the trail, which put me behind enough that I got the last control set out exactly at noon, a lot closer than I'd prefer to cut it. The 20-minute error was due to my car's trunk being locked so that I couldn't pop the trunk from inside the car, and me not having the type of key that could open the trunk directly, and all of the control stands being in the trunk. Therefore, a round trip home was needed.

I'm very curious to see how people do on the courses. The park is small but tough, both physically and navigationally.

C • results 2

Pickleball at Webster Park with Cheryl.

Ellison Wetlands, with trailsnail. Just recovering from a cold, so I didn't feel real energetic.

Morning run, to try to get it in before the rain came (I succeeded).

Morning run in Fulton, MO with my daughter Andrea. Another nice day -- sunny, warm, low humidity, and a nice breeze.

Mid day run in lovely (at this time of year, anyway) Fulton, MO. Upper 70's, sunny, but low humidity and a nice breeze, very pleasant.

Mid-day urban run, from Park Ave. near Berkeley.

More Iron. Bay West mapping. Trails, trails, and more trails ... almost feels like Dryer Rd Park in spots, although not nearly so switch-back rich.

Results have been posted from yesterday's Out of Bounds 10K race.

I finished middle of the pack, 18th out of 37. (3 seconds behind the next person -- we were doing the downhill run at the end of the race side by side most of the way, and chatting about how this is much easier on skis than on foot, but he had a bit more left at the end.)

As I suspected, I was the only person in my age group (although there was someone in M70, and I did beat him).

But I felt my victory in the one-person age group was at least somewhat earned, in that I would have been 1st place out of 7 people in the M50 age group.

Iron. Bay West mapping.

Event: ROC - Mendon Ponds Park [2011 Series #4]
 

Out of Bounds 10K at Bristol Mountain.

The only reason I did this race (considering the horrid weather this morning, when I was getting ready to leave) is that I had committed to trailsnail that I would do it! She had pre-registered, I hadn't, but I had given her my word that I would do the race ... so no backing out.

Fortunately, the rain had just about stopped when we arrived at Bristol, it wasn't very windy, and all in all, not a bad day for a race, weather-wise.

When I told Cheryl about this race, her reaction (summarized) was: "OK, it's a race at a downhill ski area, and the start is at the top, and the finish is at the bottom. What could be so hard about that?"

It wound up being exceptionally tough. It certainly wasn't a race from the top to the bottom, on ski slopes. Probably no more than 25% or so of the race used the ski slopes. Some of it used the XC trails, some used old dirt roads, some was on narrow trails that I had no idea existed, and some went through the woods with no trails at all. Parts of it were pretty technical, made harder by the wet, muddy conditions. One fairly extended stretch in particular -- pretty steep downhill on a medium width trail, which was very muddy. I was with two other guys at the top of that, but they did much better on the downhill than I did. It was all I could do to keep from wiping out on the slick mud.

Even though the race featured a net elevation loss of around 1100 feet, there was still more than 1000 feet of climb, as calculated by AP from the GPS track. So there was plenty of uphill.

One particularly grueling uphill was on a ski slope, around 5 miles into the race, where it climbed 430 feet in 0.46 miles, for an average incline of 18%. For reference, the average incline of the Pike's Peak Ascent is 11%.

After that climb, we were "rewarded" with a 780-foot descent in just over a mile, to finish the race. It was fun for about the first quarter mile -- then I was really wishing it was either over, or there was a very gradual downhill the rest of the way.

I wound up winning my age group, but I may have been the only one in it ... will have to wait for results to be posted to see.

Bristol Mt did an excellent job of hosting this event, from the courteous lift attendants (one of whom, the lift supervisor, was thoughtfully wiping dry the chairlift seats right before we boarded), to the outstanding post-race dinner served in Sunset Lodge. Trailsnail and I agreed it was the best post-race meal we've ever had.

I'm thankful I didn't enter the half marathon -- they do the first part just like the 10K course, then they get to run back up to the top of the mountain and repeat it again!! So that would be 3000+ feet of climb.

Event: BLFO Holiday Valley Score-O