Training Log Archive: Bash

Packing for a big weekend of training and racing up north! :-)

Just when I was getting a good impression of Cub Scouts...
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/28/boy-scouts-intr...

Trail run in the evening light in Palgrave West. I've been taking it easy this week because I did a lot of running last weekend and I'll be spending many hours on foot in the woods over the next two weekends. Endurance training... check! Speed training... well, that will have to wait. Running feels really good right now - whether it's because I've been doing a lot of it or because I took some weight off or because I'm working on Chi running or because I've got brilliantly coloured Salomon SLAB-2 XT Wings, I don't know - but I'm happy about it. Just wish 'Bent's knee would heal itself so we could run together.

Goose has posted some more Wild B.O.A.R. Photos. It is truly shocking how incompetent I look when I pretend to smoke. Mom would be proud. This album will grow as more people upload to it but it shows the other racers, as some of you had requested!

GHO School Meet impeccably organized by the amazing and energetic Ray Kitowski. Close to 1,000 kids raced this year! Goose took on the challenging job of teaching map reading and orientation to students at the start line - a 50-second spiel delivered at 1-minute intervals for about two hours. Can't believe he chose to spend his day off from teaching school this way, but we can always use another experienced orienteer to help out - thanks! I was on the results table with Terri and Jocelyn as usual, manually calculating race times for 500 teams. Fun but intense! Gorgeous, chilly day. Kids seemed to be having a blast. AdventureGirl! and Chloe placed 1st of 92 teams in Bantam Girls - yahoo!!

Madly preparing for our first Cub Scout orienteering night. Nervous!!!

The Caledon Navigators put on our first Cub Scout orienteering evening. Many thanks to Gosling, Joshua, Goose, Cindy, Catherine and 'Bent for coming out to shadow the teams and help me with all the flags. At the Cubs' indoor training session last week, their attention was drifting - but tonight they were awesome. In fact, I should have made the course 50% longer - which it originally was until I decided that it was too much for 8-10 year olds. Well, I've sure learned my lesson! Every pair got all 17 controls before the 45-minute time limit was up, and they all ran like they were being chased by the police. (Only in short bursts, fortunately, so I didn't lose my little guys.) Big thanks to Goose for leading the pre-race map discussion. Soooo nice to have a real live teacher who can do that with some panache.

BulletDog and I vetted Keith's unusual training course at Palgrave for Wed. night. He managed to take me to a cool place in Palgrave East where I'd never been - nasty bushwhack to get to it though! I was stunned to encounter a couple of tow trucks near the beaver pond. As a trail captain, I was thinking that I should mention it to our TRCA rep - until I saw him standing there wearing a guilty expression beside his stuck pick-up truck. Stopped to commiserate with him briefly, then finished the course. BulletDog is an awesome bushwhacker.

Photos and race report have now been added for Saturday's Wild B.O.A.R.

Mob Match Score-O on a chilly day at Claireville. Thought I wouldn't have much energy but it was fun - my legs felt surprisingly good after pushing hard yesterday. Cleaned the course and won a coupon for 12 beer!

The Wild B.O.A.R. - the best adventure race money can't buy and right up there with some of the best ones you *can* pay for! Goose, thank you so much for this wonderful gift to us on your birthday!

This was no ordinary adventure race. There was a 40 km regular course of 12 CPs but the winning team would be the one that earned the most points beyond the regular course.

For example, the best 3 team uniforms earned points. It was mandatory to do at least one leg of the race in your uniform. Goose had assigned the team name of "Salomon Cougars" to VO2Max and me, and we decided that the Cougars were a biker gang.



VO2Max's highest heart rate of the day came from zipping up his Dad's vintage motorcycle suit. He had biker gang clothing and tattoos underneath it for racing purposes.



Our team uniform came 2nd to Crash and Dunc, who must have been very warm in their wilderness/camo/lumberjack apparel. Leanimal and Gosling were resplendent in their princess uniforms which earned 3rd place. Hope someone got pics of the other teams.

We also got points for the best-written waiver (we all wrote our own). I liked Cindy's waiver (see below) and the rhyming "Ode to a Wild Boar" by 'Bent and Coach LD, but Goose's Dad chose our waiver which included (amongst many other signatures) the signature of the local funeral home director saying that he knew we might die and was OK with that, and he provided his contact info just in case.



We also got points for visiting up to 13 optional CPs along the course which we could visit at any time in the race. The regular course had SI timing but we had to take a photo of one teammate at each optional CP.



We also got points for getting specific photos, e.g. an aquatic bird, a wildflower we could name, a mammal, etc.







Unfortunately, VO2Max and I misinterpreted the instructions and thought that we could get points for multiple photos of each type. So we missed some photo categories and wasted some time on the race course but we got a lot of photos!

The race course was awesome fun and took us into parts of Caledon/King that we'd never seen. We started with a run through Bolton, picking up some CPs on the way to the canoe put-in at Goose's Dad's place.



VO2Max and I hit the water first and stayed in front of the pack all day. We paddled about 13 km down the Humber River, following its twisty route on the map very closely because we had to pull ashore and visit some CPs along the way. The canoe/bike TA was our first aid station - with the best aid station food *ever*. Apple slices, cheese, homemade squares... yum!

We did some bumpy trail biking, and I had a nasty back wrenching fall that hasn't had the repercussions I thought it might (phew). Then we hit the pavement for a fast ride where I desperately pedaled to stay in VO2Max's draft. We picked up a couple of CPs enroute to Cold Creek Conservation Area where we transitioned to trek. We should have picked up the one mandatory CP and left the park but we got ambitious and picked up a couple of optional CPs, then got trapped in a nasty bog bushwhack that was particularly scratchy for those of us wearing a mini-skirt!

Time was tight now and I got on VO2Max's tow for much of the run to CP10 and CP11.



It was cool to see my Forerunner recording speeds I'd never seen before! Goose handed us our bikes at CP11. The other teams had been given their bikes at CP9, so all of us were short-coursed but we got the farthest and picked up the most optional CPs. Since the rules said that we'd be disqualified if we hit the finish more than 10 minutes late, we skipped CP12 and went for the finish line, arriving 4 minutes late with half the teams still on the course.

This was definitely the best race dinner ever - homemade lasagna, salads and birthday cake for our creative, well-organized and hard-working race director, Goose!



Crash and Coach LD did a great job decorating what might have been the first boar-shaped birthday cake in history.



It was such a great party that even Cheesesteak stopped by.



On the way home, we arrived first on a single car accident scene on our gravel road and spent 30 minutes waiting for the police with an uninjured but shaken 17-year-old guy from Coach LD's school who didn't have a phone and whose parents were out of town.



Other than that, there were no mishaps today so all those well-written waivers weren't needed.

Awesome fun, Goose. Thank you and Happy Birthday! :-)

More Wild B.O.A.R. Photos!

Tapering today for the best adventure race money can't buy - the Wild B.O.A.R. (Bolton Organic Adenture Race) presented by Goose as his own birthday party. I've been assigned the most awesome teammate - VO2Max - and the team name "Salomon Cougars 1" (thanks, Goose). We are guaranteed to clean up in the Scottish/German Coed category as there are no other entrants. (Gunda and Phatty, Team Salomon Cougars 2, are in the German/Scottish Coed category, which is separate.) We're working on our team uniform (best team gets extra points) and our waiver (the best written waiver gets points too). Weather forecast is fantastic and we're looking forward to a fun day exploring Caledon. Thanks for doing this, Goose! :-)

I've been excited about the Dakota Rogaining Champs since I first saw their amazing website. It's organized by the guy who was course designer and assistant race director when Primal Quest was held in South Dakota. It will be the first-ever USOF-sanctioned rogaine at the request of the race director, who really wants to do things right. It forced us (I'm on the USOF committee) to develop a sanctioning process that we can use for future events.

Sadly, 'Bent's knee didn't recover quickly enough so I resigned myself to missing the event. But this week Attackpoint Barb (as we call Barb Bryant around here) needed to replace a partner who had dropped out, so I am going. Team Barbs - yahoo!! I've always wanted to do a rogaine with Barb, one of the best strategists in the biz, so this is doubly exciting. We'll be able to cheer on Harps and Phatty at the awards ceremony - assuming that the mountain lions don't divert any of us from our route to the finish line. (Yipes!) Looks like there will also be *huge* buffalo and speedy antelope in my race photos. Plus we'll get to see Mt. Rushmore. Looking forward to it!!

Crash asked me to join her and Skyerocket in Albion Hills with a 1:50,000 topo to do some Wilderness Traverse-type navigation training. To humour Getawaystix, I figured out how to use the declination key on my compass (I normally just do math in my head), since I know that's what he'll be teaching Crash in his nav course. It was a bluebird day and Crash did really well. We made it to our CP 2.5 km cross-country, waded across the chilly Humber River enroute, and chatted about nav strategies along the way. Having become accustomed to high quality orienteering maps, Crash's challenge will be getting used to the reduced amount of detail - and inaccurate information - on topo maps and the related adjustments to her nav strategy. She did really well out there today and so did Skyerocket!

Interesting note: We met some mountain bikers who swore they had seen a small bear just off the northeast single track - the place where I was running alone last night and setting up the orienteering course for the Cubs. Not 100% sure we trust their wildlife identification skills but there have been bears in the Palgrave area before so they could be right. So... I definitely want a few more volunteers for the Cub Scout Orienteering Night!!

Serious purging of closets and cupboards in preparation for Earth Day tomorrow. Caledon Community Services has rented a big truck and is encouraging residents to bring in donations of clothing and household items that will be sold to raise funds for local community programs.

On a related topic, does anyone need one or two single bed box boards (the part that goes under the mattress)? Two singles = 1 king. Free to a good home. Still in plastic wrap from Sleep Country. It's a long story but it turns out we don't need them and they're taking up space.

Ran the hilly northeast single track at Albion Hills before vetting control locations for next Tuesday's Cub Scout orienteering night, put on by the Caledon Navigators. I think I've planned far more than they could possibly do, but it's a Score-O so that's fine. I need a few Caledon folks to help ensure that no Cubs escape. It's Tuesday evening, Elmview picnic shelter (the one in the open area by the northeast trails), 6:45-8:15 or so. Let me know if you're in - thanks!

While listening to a CBC Radio DNTO podcast. I'm really liking podcasts for strength workouts lately. Time flies faster than TV.

Slowrunner and I rode to Inglewood to eat a chocolate chip cookie from the General Store and support the economy by visiting Caledon Hills Cycling. A tall, cute, pony-tailed cyclist guy wished us a good ride as we left the store and aimed a big smile at Slowrunner but she's too focused athletically to be distracted from her workout by men in Spandex.

Primo weather, nice to keep the legs spinning for a longer ride, and excellent to have company to keep the rail trail interesting!

And he's off! Bender has run the first 5K of the Boston Marathon in 21:47. It's very early in the race but they are currently projecting a 3:04 finish for him. Let's cheer a little harder and push him under 3 hrs!
<http://www.baa.org/2010/cf/Public/TrackingIndividu...> Bib 4596 or enter his name.

While watching the Colbert Report. Not feeling good today.

Girls' morning out! Mrs. Gally, Rocky, Slowrunner, "Cindy" and I ran from Bolton's Green P parking lot up the Humber Valley Trail to the wind chimes and back. (Slowrunner joined us at the trailhead so she's not in the official starting line photo.) At 6 months pregnant, Mrs. Gally is temporarily running at a speed I can handle - or maybe she was just going easy on us! Cindy went a little farther than we did just to show off. Excellent company, chatty pace and fantastic to be outside in the chilly sunshine. We joined the long line-up at Timmy's afterward and felt mildly horrified at the trail of dirt we left behind when we got up from our table.

Worked on my skinny toothpick arms! Runny nose that started yesterday afternoon is getting worse. Rats. I don't feel sick otherwise but it's annoying.

Leanimal, Phatty, Goose, Cindy, Son of Cindy, 'Bent and I met at Leanimal's folks' place in Orillia after a truly nasty drive north through blowing rain, sleet and snow. We headed out on Lake Couchiching in canoes and kayaks anyway and were rewarded with pretty nice paddling conditions for mid-April - even a good dose of sunshine!







We were hit by some blowing snow (if you look really closely) but everyone was dressed for it.



Well, maybe Phatty was a little chilly. Otherwise, it's hard to explain why he insisted on doing a set of 100 one-armed push-ups at every rest stop.



Lots of fun! Nice scenery and excellent company. It was great to get the kayak paddling muscles working again - including the lower back, which clearly needs more paddling practice. Thanks so much to the Mueller clan for letting us invade and feeding us yummy post-paddling snacks by a roaring fire - mmm.

I ran around the narrow block of conservation land where the Bruce Trail runs between Humber Station and Gore Roads. Other than a few forays to find wild apple trees in autumn, we've usually stayed on the Bruce through there. It's convenient to home and it would be nice to run a loop, so I decided to try to run all the trails and make a map with my GPS. This involved some backtracking and repeating, and I hit a couple of dead ends, including someone's driveway - oops.

A few of the tracks on the map aren't really trails - some of them turned out to be faint animal tracks through rough open land where the thorny bushes were a little unpleasant on bare legs. I'm not 100% sure where the boundary between conservation authority land and private land is, so I'll have to figure that out, but there is definitely a worthwhile short running loop in there.

Argghh - just learned that the evening we picked more than 6 months ago to teach orienteering to Cub Scouts at Albion Hills will also be the "ride and register" night for the Chico Tuesday night mountain bike races. We'd asked the park super about that and he said April 27 would be too early in the season for bike racing. So... time for a quick change of plans to Palgrave since we can't have little kids wandering across trails during a MTB event. The Palgrave map isn't as friendly to beginners and there won't be any facilities for the kids - no washrooms, no garbage pails, nada. As if I wasn't already nervous enough about working with a gaggle of 8-10 year old boys!!

Gorgeous warm and sunny day! Sadly, I spent almost all of it in a windowless room at a tense Region of Peel Council meeting. :-( At least our solar panels were able to take advantage of the nice weather, generating almost 11 kilowatt-hrs of electricity - more than we'll use today. Just wait till the days get longer!

Fantastic way to start the day! I rode from home to Albion Hills where I met 'Bent (who had dropped off his computer at work), Leanimal and VO2Max for a fun ride around the single track. I'm still getting back into biking for the year - not always taking the best line on the trails, getting too close to trees and hitting a few roots at the wrong angle. But my climbing legs feel pretty good from doing more early season running, so I mostly have to work on my coordination! After the trail ride, Leanimal and I rode the rail trail and had lattes on the new Palgrave Cafe patio before riding to our respective homes.

Here's where we went in the Albion Hills part of our ride. (Yeah, the novelty will wear off eventually but I'm still having fun with QuickRoute!) Click on the map, then click on the magnifying glass to make it bigger.


My bike computer measured 1.5 km more distance than the Forerunner which gives an indication of how much the FR under-measures single track. In a recent test on 20 km of open rail trail, the bike computer and FR were only about 20 meters different.

I claimed my prize today - about half a roast chicken with frozen dark chocolate yoghurt and berries for dessert, yum. Now back to being well-behaved again.

Aieeee - here's some incredibly unhealthy fast food. And people think we adventure racers are the ones taking risks with our lives?!?

Ran to the northwest corner of Palgrave East to spend time on different trails and run some of the usual trails in the opposite direction. Surprising how different it felt! Fantastic weather - cool and sunny. Lots of happy frogs in the wetlands.

I surprised The Archer and half a dozen other mountain bikers on some twisty single track. I knew they were coming so I stepped off to wait but the first guy looked a little startled. It's rare to meet anyone in Palgrave, let alone someone who suddenly appears out of the thick brush just a few meters away.

When I got home, I tried a new recovery drink - a greens smoothie with some high protein powder mixed in. Yecchh. Back to my chocolate milk!

Just for the geeks and orienteers in the crowd (and for those rare people who are both)... Here's where I went during the Palgrave East portion of the run. Click on the map, then click on the little magnifying glass to make it legible. Green is faster and red is slower. As Hammer pointed out, I'm way too slow on the corners! :-)

Caron's Power Yoga DVD #1. Managed to get through all the upper body stuff without any splats due to my toothpick arms. Small victories.

30 years ago today, Terry Fox began his Marathon of Hope to raise $1 million for cancer. The total currently stands at half a billion dollars. Tonight the CBC Radio show "As It Happens" played part of an interview between Terry and the late Barbara Frum after his cancer had returned, just nine months before his death. Powerful stuff.

Rode with 'Bent to Albion Hills to meet Coach LD, Goose, Gosling, Phatty and Leanimal for my first single track riding of the season. I felt better than expected, considering that I've done a 10-hr training session and a 5-hr race over the past week, but I bailed early to come home for some post-race laziness. Fantastic day and the trails are in awesome shape. I don't remember Albion ever opening up this early before!

Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Giant's Rib Raid in Milton.

Perfect spring day for an excellent adventure run! This year the Tree Huggers were hobbled by injury ('Bent) and then our substitute teammate (Slowrunner) was also injured. Fortunately, we were able to hook up with our longtime Masters rival DLevine, whose teammates were taking this race off.



Hingo was in fine form. He doth protest too much about his lack of training.



DLevine's orienteering experience gave us some extra firepower.



As usual, my chief role on the team was to take photographs and model Salomon gear.



I looked at the map a little too. I'm glad that our team didn't just stand around mugging for the cameras like these jokers we found hanging out in the woods.



Our route choices weren't all perfect.



And the course setters clearly had a sense of humour.



But the scenery and weather were amazing, the company was good, and we kept up a fairly consistent pace for most of the day and hit most controls pretty well.



I felt great running. I guess more running on dry trails in our early spring has helped, along with the lighter load.



It was a great race course - lots of fun with a different character from other Giant's Rib Raids we've done in Milton. The course design was excellent from a volunteer and safety perspective, returning several times to a central hub that was used by the Raid, Half-Raid and Kids' events. Point-to-point courses are fun - especially in wilderness races - but in a sport that relies so heavily on volunteers and where the abilities of competitors are so different, it's fine to "go loopy" once in awhile.

Hard to believe I've known Hingo for over 20 years now! Nice that he's still making time to go Raiding with the Tree Huggers now that he's got 4 kids keeping him busy.





Finish line - 1st Masters. We had a few stressful minutes after the Matrix as we waited with two members of another Masters team. Fortunately, DLevine was the next man up the hill and we ran off without daring to look back in case they were right on our tail!



Phatty and PhattyJR were 3rd overall. Kirikou is so fast-moving that he eluded the camera.



VO2Max, Leanimal and Goose were 3rd Coed. Nice smiles, eh? I've heard a rumour that they all see the same great dentist. :-)



Big congrats to the overall winners Team WildernessTraverse.com - Getawaystix, Hansel and Nick - another team of longtime rivals working together. Interesting to see that all 9 members of the top 3 teams log their training on Attackpoint. Obviously, it must work!

15.2 lb lost since Jan. 1! :-)))

Some late night excitement, not logged. Crash's sweet dog Skye bolted from home into the darkness toward a rustling in the forest and didn't reappear when Crash spent more than an hour calling her along the trails. After receiving a "911 for Lost Critters" call, 'Bent and I headed into the rainy woods with headlamps, a dog leash and lots of lung power. Fortunately, Crash's Mom had found Skye safe near the road by the time our search reached her place. Phew!!!! Over the years, we've lost ThunderDog a few times for 5-10 minutes each. Doesn't sound like much but I cried like a baby every time. Welcome home, little Skyerocket!

0.2 lb above target weight this morning (stoopid scales with decimal places!!) I can almost taste that roast chicken. :-)

Kinda surprised... Raid The North Extreme returns on Labour Day.

While watching The Daily Show.

After Monday's epic session, I'm content to keep things short this week. I ran Short Bruce Loop (3.1 km via long route through F&M's both ways) then measured a 200 meter distance in our yard - relatively flat for around here. Then I ran five 200 m intervals ranging from 4:29 to 5:07 kms - aiming for what I imagined to be a 3 km race pace. Then did a cooldown around F&M loop. Totally random, I know, but it's time to start *some* sort of intervals as per my New Year's resolutions!

Speaking of which, I didn't do a March review but I have some failing grades. Training hours for the past 12 months are below my goal because we didn't do any long winter races like the Snowgaine or the Rock & Ice Ultra. Strength training has been virtually non-existent. Still no progress on learning guitar and piano music. On the bright side, my running is going well and I'm down 14 lb since Jan. 1 - although it feels like I'll *never* lose that final pound! It's probably because I've promised myself a grocery store hot roast chicken (not the whole thing at once!) when (if) I reach the 15 lb goal. My body knows it wouldn't be good for me so it's not letting me get there. :-(

Discovery of the day: Instapaper.com

"A simple tool to save web pages to read later." As someone who often has 25 tabs open in Firefox, this sounds perfect. Anyone know any reason why I shouldn't use it? I learned about it from CBC Radio.

Now that Wilderness Traverse is over, I can post the GPS track for our course test of Trek #1 and most of the paddle section. (Click on the little globe above to see it.) Getawaystix and I weren't always trying to take the optimum route; there were some trails and areas of forest that we wanted to check out. However, that excuse doesn't cover all our drifting on the first trek. The truth is, we got chatting and didn't pay enough attention to our compasses!

Here's my original log entry:

4 a.m. alarm for a last-minute plan to meet Getawaystix to test the sections of the Wilderness Traverse race course revised in our meeting last week. It's a rare treat on April 5 on the Canadian Shield to be able to paddle ice-free lakes and trek on relatively dry trails. I'm disappointed we'll be away that weekend so it was cool to see what the rest of you will be experiencing.

After starting in rain, we had awesome, sunny weather. The water was seasonably frigid, so we were ultra-careful as we paddled in occasionally gusty winds. It was a fun day of exploration and we proved that even two experienced navigators can drift on their bearing when they chat too much. That's OK - we wouldn't have had the excitement of stumbling on the secret pot farm if we'd taken the direct route.

The toughest part of the day was a long, white knuckle drive (those were GStix's knuckles!) as I negotiated 'Bent's van along a very sketchy logging road for the vehicle shuttle.

This challenging race course lives up to the Wilderness Traverse name and the tradition of backcountry travel and adventure racing. From the time we met, it was 12 hours until we saw another human being - and we were only ambushed by one wild beast!



















Trek time: 3:52
Paddle & Portage time: 6:43

Original log entry without GPS Track. I've kept it to retain the comments.

'Bent and I headed out from my parents' place in Brantford for a quick-paced, windy tour of the Grand River waterfront trail system - mostly crushed gravel bike trails with a bit of dirt and pavement and a few kilometers of quiet road. Really nice - we often have a full vehicle when we come to visit, but this was so much fun that we'll have to find room for the bikes in future. Maybe we'll go further along the trail and drop in on Hammer, Etoile and AdventureGirl!

Our turn-around point was Mohawk Park where they were holding a huge Easter Egg hunt for kids. The hamburgers on the BBQ smelled awesome but I still have one more stubborn pound to lose, so we headed home to "enjoy" some carrot sticks instead. Also a few small torso pieces of the dark chocolate Easter Bunny my Mom and Dad gave me! :-)

Good Friday morning paddle down the Humber River with Goose and Coach LD. Started at their place in Bolton and went about halfway to Kleinburg in fantastic weather. It was soooo nice to be back on the water again! The GPS track for this one is fun to look at if you know the area.



Lunch break with Coach LD's yummy chia muffins.



Skeleton crew.

After a busy couple of days, my stoopid cold came back and my body didn't feel like doing much even though the weather was spectacular. I went for a short run around Palgrave West including a trip up Lookout Hill. Only one face plant after my shoe got snagged by a big stick.