Training Log Archive: Bash

Not much time today and I wanted to get out before the temperature rose above 30C and the Air Quality Index hit "Poor". So... I decided to re-run the hilly trail route that I did yesterday, except this time do it at my sprint race pace. This was rather disappointing, as it turned out to be only 18% faster than yesterday's run, which was a comfortably moderate pace with a dog to distract me. I've been suspecting that the problem with my running is that I am like a single speed bike that is optimized for races over 24 hrs. I don't have a fast gear. I did set a new record though - I don't think I've ever seen my face that red!

If you see Adventure Sports Magazine, check out page 11 of the July issue for an article featuring Bent, along with a photo that shows how he got his nickname! They got our team name wrong - Tree Huggers from Mars is the team name we use when we enter all-male and all-female teams in the same race. (Yes, the female team is called Tree Huggers from Venus.) Otherwise, we are just the Tree Huggers, a name that arose from our mountain biking style.

On p. 64, you can see Skidder and Hound Dog (in #11 race jerseys), my Appalachian Extreme teammates, heading out from the starting line. I don't know how Shifty and I moved out of the frame before this picture was taken, but I guess we were running pretty quickly for people wearing wetsuits and carrying a heavy whitewater canoe.

Trapped indoors by steamy weather and fine particulates in the air, I finally bit the bullet and headed for the weight machine. I do 3 strength workouts a week - in my wildest dreams, that is. Actually, it wasn't so bad and maybe I'll get inspired to do it more often, since the basement is nice and cool. I did upper and lower body workout #1 with some extras. The push-ups didn't go so well because BulletDog likes to do them with me, which involves stretching out her front legs and sticking her head between my face and the floor.

Wildlife Report: Normally I wouldn't provide a wildlife report from my basement, but a very cute baby bunny watched me through the patio doors for the final 10 minutes of my workout. Then he went back to eating our garden.

Early evening trail run around Palgrave with BulletDog. The temperature had plunged to a chilly 27C with a Humidex warning, but the air quality had improved somewhat, so I thought I'd better grab my chance.

Also, my Very First Real Orienteering Compass arrived in the mail yesterday, so I just had to try it out. Wow!! I'm accustomed to a $35 Suunto compass that is fine for wilderness trips or trekking, but it turns as much as 90 degrees away from north when I run. To take a bearing while orienteering, I have to stop and wait 1-2 seconds for the needle to settle. "One thousand, two thousand." I sometimes have to do this 5-6 times between controls, so I laugh at the frequently-discussed concept of "flow" in O. This didn't used to matter because I didn't run much when I started O, and if I did run a little bit, I didn't look at the compass at the same time. Fortunately, that has changed.

When I tried out my shiny new Brunton today, I was blown away. Even when I was running, the needle was almost rock solid. Amazing. Who knew?? OK, that is not exactly a rhetorical question amongst Attackpoint users. Even through my feeble, rural dial-up connection, I can hear people groaning, "Geez Bash, you silly adventure racer, we ALL knew that. And you probably wear a Camelbak too, you geek." But in my defence, nice orienteering compasses aren't easy to find in Southern Ontario, and until now, I didn't realize just how desperately I needed one. Watch out, Hammer - I'll be catching up with you soon! ;-)

This wasn't supposed to be a rest day, but the air is so bad that you can practically chew it. Raising your heart rate on a day like this would be equivalent to smoking a whole bunch of cigarettes. Rats! Fittingly, I went to a meeting to provide input on our municipal smog response plan.

NavStock Long Course. After a good sleep last night, I felt much better today. It was still way too hot, but that's good preparation for racing in B.C. I started off slowly, but felt great in the second half and ran fairly quickly - for me. Didn't make any huge errors and really enjoyed being out in the woods today - well, except for that nasty 5-10 minutes after I learned that O pants do NOT protect you from stinging nettles. Fun course with lots and lots and lots of climbing. I much prefer longer O races like this one. Really nice terrain.

NavStock Sprint. Mom says I failed naptime in kindergarten, and I'm not much better at it now. I slept 2 hours after last night's adventure run - not surprising when you consider that the sky was brightening when I went to bed, and a skunk was noisily attacking a garbage bag in our group campground area.

Anyway, that's a roundabout way of getting to the main theme of today's sprint, which was "stupidity". It was a nicely designed course, making good use of a small area of forest. I stumbled and bumbled around like a drunkard for almost an HOUR. On a SPRINT course! I would get these clear-as-a-bell thoughts popping into my mind, like "go due north 50 meters from the trail" - and sometimes I'd even say them out loud, but then I'd realize that I couldn't remember whether I'd already crossed a trail, so I'd have to go back - sometimes to the previous control - and start again. I'd expected to be physically tired after last night's race, but that factor never came into play at all. The wheels simply weren't turning in my brain this morning.

NavStock Middle Distance. This afternoon went much better than this morning, and I took only 10 minutes longer to do a course with 3.5 km more distance. Yahoo, I'm not going to stay stupid forever! However, my brain was working in its granny gear, so although I made fairly good nav decisions (with a couple of small glitches), I was thinking ve-e-e-ry slowly. It was SO hot. Swimming in Bass Lake after the race was a highlight of the day.

World 3-Legged String Orienteering Championship. Bent and I took top honours in the fiercely competitive Husband-Wife category, absolutely demolishing the pathetic times set by Hammer and Griz with their respective partners (both of them still in elementary school). Bent nearly catapulted me head-first into the huge boulder at the finish line. I wonder if orienteering insurance would cover that sort of thing...? (Hmmm.... maybe I'd better check to see if Bent has taken out life insurance on me!)

Two warm up / cool downs for two races.

Event: Nav-Stock
 

NavStock Night Adventure Run with Hingo and Bent. Sure, it's tougher to navigate through the woods at night, but at least you know it will be nice and cool, right? WRONG. It was hot, humid and smoggy, and only two team members were carrying water. (Hingo's bladder exploded during the first climb.) (Which sounds like an even worse problem than it was, if you're not familiar with Camelbaks. ;-) )

We loved adventure running at night! I hope there are future night adventure runs - this was the first. We've done enough overnight adventure races that it felt perfectly natural to be running around in the dark. Our route choices were conservative, with more trail running than usual and very obvious attackpoints. The three of us split up for the Matrix (as usual, 2 CPs for Bent and 1 each for Hingo and me) and arrived at the next CP closer together than we ever have - all within a few minutes. Only one serious nav problem when we got onto the wrong ridge looking for CP6 and descended too far, but Hingo did an awesome job of relocating us when we hit a couple of unexpected trails.

Bent wasn't feeling his best in the heat, but valiantly towed me on the longer trail and road sections. That's riskier at night, since I often glance at the map when I'm on tow and usually have some peripheral vision to avoid ankle-turning rocks. Ouch! Oh well, if I keep my ankle injury-free, I'll never become a real orienteer like Hammer.

The race was lots of fun, a well-designed course by Griz, and a good result for the Tree Huggers: 2nd Coed by 8 minutes, and 5th overall. Also a new personal record of a different kind - driving to a campground shower building at 3:45 a.m.!

Wildlife report: We only saw the scary ones tonight. While I was on tow on a paved residential road, Bent suddenly yanked to the left to avoid a skunk standing 2 meters away with its tail up, facing away from us. Yikes! Then on the final run over the ski hill, Hingo gave me a full body tackle as he skilfully leapt out of the path of a porcupine.

Mountain bikers have an image problem in some circles in Caledon, so ThunderDog and I went to Albion Hills to pick up garbage left along trails by the 24 Hour relay racers. I wanted ThunderDog to have a good hike and go swimming in the river because she is having back surgery on Monday and will need to rest for awhile. To my surprise, she kept the pace rather high. I wasn't going to count this as training time, but for awhile she had me jogging with occasional lunges to scoop up gel wrappers, so I'll count 40 minutes at level 1 for the 80 minutes that we were out there.

No wildlife to report today, so I can only provide a post-bike-race garbage report:

85% Gel packs and pieces thereof (Geez, if someone is strong enough to carry in a full gel pack, then surely they're strong enough to carry out the empty wrapper.)
10% Water bottles
5% Miscellaneous, including bike parts no longer attached to the bike

Rode to Albion Hills with Bent and followed the 24 Hour race course with a few deviations just for fun. We're supposed to do intervals today, and these are most easily done indoors on a spinning bike, but that would be a crime on a beautiful day! So we tried to go hard for 15 min. X 2, 10 min. X 1, with 15 min. off in between, more or less. I'm not sure if we accomplished what we're supposed to, but trail riding always consists of short intervals anyway, so hopefully we're getting stronger. Based on the results of our most recent adventure race, the discipline I should be focusing on is road biking (yuck).

The only wildlife spotted today was Sean Ruppel of Chico Racing, busy taking down the course and cleaning up hundreds of discarded gel packs. I think I might go back with ThunderDog for a gel pack-picking-up hike.

Trail run around Palgrave on a hot, sticky day - plus intervals described in a separate entry below. I'm getting acclimatized to the heat, which will help in my events in central B.C. - but I have every intention of continuing to complain about it! I've found it easier to keep up my pace in the woods since the recent article in the local paper about black bears being picked up in Markham and Richmond Hill.

Vegetation Report: An extremely healthy crop of poison ivy. The wild strawberries are ripe - mmmm.

Wildlife Watch: 1 deer right outside our front door and a cute baby turtle bravely "running" the same trail that I was. Also a few mosquitoes who have no qualms about biting through Spandex.

Speaking of which...
West Nile Watch: Only 4 dead birds have tested positive for the virus in Ontario this year, all of them in the eastern part of the province. This is way down from last year at this time (23 birds, more widespread), which is good news for those of us who get hundreds (thousands?) of mosquito bites every summer.

Intervals in the middle of the trail run. It's been awhile since I've been able to follow my training plan, so I randomly picked a series that seemed sufficiently painful, yet still possible: 4 min. on, 1 min. off X 5 repetitions. I think the rest periods should probably have been longer. By the end, I was seriously considering taking up pool or bridge as my new sport. (Which probably means that the intervals were about right!)

Cool New Gear Update: Our solar panels got more sun today than they will get on any other day all year. (Rain is on the way.) We generated 8.625 kilowatt-hours of electricity today. If I hadn't done the laundry, that would have covered us. :-)

Morning lap at 24 Hours of Summer Solstice. Trails had dried out, so the biking wasn't treacherous like last night was. Felt like I was working less hard than last night, but cut 6 minutes off my lap time. Really fun race course design.

Our highly sociable and not-so-competitive team had a respectable showing: 26th / 134 teams in our category (6-10 person club teams). Last night was a disaster for us with a flat tire, a chain problem, and two people whose lights died. We did 21 laps, with our speedy 17-year-old Secret Weapon finishing at 11:58 a.m., allowing Bent to do the "victory lap". As usual, he attracted quite a crowd with his recumbent mountain bike.

24 Hours of Summer Solstice mountain bike relay race

Night lap at 24 Hours of Summer Solstice, the largest mountain bike relay race in North America (possibly in the world!) - at Albion Hills, just 8 minutes from our place. I felt good, lights worked great, and the cool weather was perfect, but the race course was really slippery, especially the many off-angle roots. I hugged two trees and had one other fall, all of which pulled at the chest muscles that were injured in last weekend's crash. Compared to previous years, some of the top riders were overly aggressive for a recreational race, trying to pass on tight single track when there was a long line of riders ahead of me, preventing me from going any faster. Luckily, I wasn't passed in the first 6-7 km, but did have occasion to use some of my best Anglo Saxon vocabulary later on!

Bent and I are packing for this weekend's 24-hour mountain bike relay. The Tree Huggers have entered a team of nine riders, so the plan is to socialize extensively at the campsite and take turns going for the occasional lap around the Albion Hills trails. This year's team ranges from age 15 to 50, including a father-son team, which should be fun.

Trail run with BulletDog to the Palgrave Post Office to mail my Father's Day card, then a couple of loops through the conservation area on the way home. Tried hard to keep the pooch and myself out of all the poison ivy, but sometimes it was impossible to avoid. Legs felt good, but chest muscles hurt from the bike crash - although only when I breathe or when my foot hits the ground. (I'm still looking for the perfect sport to do with this injury, but it's not easy.)

Rode at Albion Hills with Bent and Crash, including a lap of the 24 Hour race course. After last night's torrential storm, there were a few puddles, but the main problem was that the trails had the traction of wax paper with a little oil spread on it. After last weekend's crash, I kept the pace down. My chest muscles now only hurt when I climb a hill, go over a bump or breathe. In other words, this weekend's bike race is going to be one big OUCH.

Wildlife: 3 wild turkeys, 1 deer

Salomon Adventure Challenge Marmora Long Course

FAR designed a very difficult long course this year, which was made more challenging by the 32C temperature, bright sunshine, high humidity, smog, mosquitoes, black flies and deer flies. Total advanced course length was just over 100 km. There were 38 teams, including rookies, and not surprisingly, the finish rate was lower than usual. There were more injuries and incidents requiring medics than in any other race FAR has run, including Raid The North events. Some teams were lost in the bush for many hours.

Hingo, Bent and I started in the dark (but not for long) with a 12 km trek through an area with few marked trails and a short mandatory swim. We made a 5-minute error enroute to the first CP, but otherwise we nailed this section and emerged at the bike TA after 2.5 hrs in 6th place - ahead of SRS (a proud moment, albeit very temporary, as they went on to their usual well-deserved victory!).

Next was a 50 km bike ride on gravel roads, rail trail and ATV trails, mostly of good quality, but with occasional swampy sections where we had to hoist our bikes on our shoulders and wade through. Lots of rocks and ruts on the ATV trails, but less technical than some races. I had a foolish and potentially serious bike crash when I took one hand off the handlebar to get an energy bar. The front wheel hit a rock and the bike crumpled immediately to the ground, with the handlebar end smashing hard into the right side of my chest. Swelling began instantly and my wilderness first aid training kicked in. Things to worry about included: ribs, lung and internal bleeding. I stopped frequently over the next hour to check things out, then I was checked by a medic at the next TA. Every subsequent CP volunteer took great pleasure in asking me whether I had "crepitus". (Geoff said the medic just enjoyed the chance to say that word on the radio a lot.) They also wanted to know if I could take a deep breath. The answer was "yes", I could breathe just fine, but it hurt like hell. After a bit of a scare, it appears that I will get away with nothing more serious than a very bruised and painful, um, bosom.

Next was a very sunny 10 km paddle down Moira Lake and a short way into the Moira River. For the advanced section, we kept our PFDs and swam down the river a bit (VERY nice), then travelled cross-country through mucky swamp, farmer's fields and forest to the advanced TA.

We had another 20 km of paved and gravel road riding to get to the bike drop that preceded the final trek. The trek was only a few kilometers and we didn't expect it to be too challenging, since it was at the end of the race and we were aiming for a CP at a major mine close to town, so it hardly sounded like dense wilderness. However, this was the worst part of the day. We got trapped in an evil, never-ending swamp filled with thick alders, and we thought nasty thoughts about the race course designer as we hauled our tired bodies along, trapping ankles under logs, sinking suddenly up to our knees in smelly muck, and getting tangled in gnarled branches. Morale was at an all-time low when we saw a Green Hill With Big Trees ahead, rising out of the smog like a Holy Grail. It took forever to drag ourselves over there, but it was better going and led us to the Bare-Rock-With-Dangerous-Crevasses-and-Poison-Ivy-and-Scratchy-Juniper-Bush Section. Eventually we stumbled onto a network of ATV trails and made it up onto a Martian-looking desert plateau beside the mine.

From the final CP by the mine, we headed into town to the finish line. My teammates decided that after 100 km of hard effort in steam bath heat, we should run the last couple of kilometers to the finish line. Argggh, OK. Good thing we did, as we were only minutes faster than the team that finished just behind us (thanks to a time credit because they waited for a transition bag - if they had been in sight, it would have been easier for us to run faster).

Result: the best-ever Tree Hugger finish in a summer sprint race!! We were 3rd Coed and 6th overall on a very tough day. We got special blue jerseys to wear in the championship race - which unfortunately we will miss because we will be doing the Raid The North championship instead. Great work by Hingo and Bent! :-)

Trail run around Chedoke before the sprint. Found Hammer wandering in the woods on a steep hillside and managed to direct him to the starting line. Or something like that.

Wildlife Report: Vicious mosquitoes

Sprint at Chedoke. There was evil heat, humidity and smog, but it was a fun sprint race course. Since a sprint race is about 30 hours shorter than my favourite race length, I'm not expecting a great result. Only 5 weeks till the Canadian O Champs - I need more practice!

Trail riding at Kelso with The Sherpa and The Minister. The conversation was far too entertaining for this to count as a serious workout, however, I will rate it at Level 2 because we biked up Glen Eden ski hill at noon on a day when the temperature was over 30C. Nice trails, beautiful views and lush forest, but the network isn't that big and it costs $7 to ride there. It made me appreciate all the trails that we have out our back door in Palgrave.

Upper body weights. Not much time because I had to visit Thumbs-of-Death to work on my knee. Glad to see that things are back to normal after AppX. My new injuries are nearly gone and my right knee is a bit on the crunchy side - as usual. Looks like I'll feel good for the Salomon AC adventure race in Marmora this Saturday - 10 to 14 hrs, starting at 4 a.m. sharp.

Over 30C and another smog advisory, thanks in part to Ontario's coal-generated electricity. Would everyone please set their air conditioner thermostats a couple of degrees higher? Thanks.

Bent and I started with some single track at Albion Hills to warm up. (Does one really need to "warm up" on a day when it is over 30C in the shade?) The delicate fragrance of lilacs throughout the conservation area was a pleasant distraction. All the wildlife was way too smart to be out on a day like this.

Bent and I moved to the rail trail and some hilly gravel roads to increase the effort.

This would be a nice day to return home to central air conditioning, but we just can't bring ourselves to use that much electricity after installing our solar panels... (Which are working really well, by the way.)

Trail run with Bent - Bruce Trail to Glen Haffy, a hilly loop around there, then back home on the Bruce Trail followed by a short loop in Palgrave with the pooches. The darkened sky threatened a thunderstorm, but never followed through.

Wildlife: 2 deer and many birds. Bent is good at identifying their calls.

Rode with Bent to Albion Hills and had a fun and relatively easy ride, although you can't get around a place with the word "Hills" in its name without some bursts of hard effort. Thanks to a late spring, my classes, illness, injuries and a lot of racing, this was my first opportunity in 2005 to do a good ride on the Albion Hills trails. Wow, the new single track that Chico has built in the northeast section is awesome! Technical enough to be fun, but not so technical that you can't get up some speed for a good workout.

I haven't been able to do much bike training yet this year - other than the 125 km mostly-off-road bike section in Appalachian Extreme, which was a heck of a way to start my biking for the season. So... I was pleased to get out today and find that my non-bike training seems fairly transferable - everything felt good. I have never, ever climbed Sugar Shack Hill successfully on the first attempt of the year - until today. I guess I was too young to do it before. ;-) And HR was only 87% of my max at the top of that hill, which is a new low.

Now I just need to get my nerve back for those steep single track downhills. I climbed those hills as fast as I descended, due to the Fear Factor!

Trail run around Palgrave

To get ready for the Canadian Orienteering Champs in July, I need to:
(a) Run. At all. Sounds simple, but my training program has been sporadic since I got sick in mid-April.
(b) Run in hot weather. As a true blue Canadian gal, this is the hard part. I love the winter and my cardiovascular system would prefer to hibernate from June to September. But that doesn't fit with my plans, so when the mercury hit 27C on the shady side of the house, I headed out the door.

My legs still feel like they can go forever. Lungs felt good for the first hour, then said "whoa, that air is HOT" and went on a work-to-rule campaign in the sunny sections.

Wildlife Report: 6 painted turtles, all suntanning, and a wild turkey. Best day since the two moose at Appalachian Extreme.

Vegetation Report: Scads of forget-me-nots and a few final trilliums. Looks like a healthy crop of poison ivy this year, unfortunately.

Sprained Ankle Report: Very colourful, but not so painful anymore.

Blonde Eureka Moment: Hmmm... why do I have this headache? I'm well-hydrated. Maybe I need more electrolytes. Potassium, I'll bet that's the problem. Oh, wait a minute. Let's try loosening my hat. Ahhh, that's it - headache gone instantly. Feet expand on hot days and, apparently, so do heads.

Things are looking up, injurywise. I stopped wearing my arm splint today, except for sleeping. Thumbs-of-Death checked out my ankle and it is continuing to heal. He says that oddities like the accidental dog-kick-induced goose egg are common in the first few weeks after a sprain. My ankle is just looking for opportunities to swell up at the slightest provocation, so that's what happened. So... lots of ice, but it's OK to go running. My arm is recovering well enough that I can probably do single track. VERY happy about that.