Training Log Archive: Bash

Browner, Storm, Coach LD, 'Bent and I drove up to the Torrance Barrens this morning. This is a Crown Land conservation reserve near Gravenhurst that is designated as a dark sky preserve. The Logs Rocks & Steel multisport race was held there for two years when it was hosted at Camp Pinecrest.

When we were making plans to go winter camping on New Year's Eve, we needed to find a place relatively close to the GTA since Goose could only be away from Caledon for 24 hours. His schedule was especially important since he was bringing the party venue - a big canvas tent with a wood stove. While we waited for Goose to arrive, the rest of us had some extra time to enjoy the beautiful Canadian Shield terrain.





A week earlier, we'd wondered if we would be canoeing on New Year's but Gravenhurst was hit by heavy snow squalls so we finally got our first real taste of winter. We opted for snowshoes and set out on the Main Trail to look for potential campsites.



Although there was lots of snow, the wetlands and creeks weren't frozen so there were a few soakers on this trip!









This was a great location but it proved too difficult to clear the tent site. ;)



It took some effort to follow the trails since we knew from past trips that the markings are sometimes painted on the rocky ground - like Slickrock in Moab. We had no tracks to follow so I kept my compass handy. We followed the Main Loop (with some variations) back to the parking lot to meet Goose.

Goose's toboggan was a masterpiece of packing. It included everything from his clothing to the canvas tent, from a wood stove to a can of whipped cream - not to mention the kitchen sink.



When we weren't madly running around with cameras, we tried to snowshoe ahead of Goose to break a nice trail for the toboggan.



We weren't planning to go in very far so none of us bothered to pack light. It ended up being a 2 km snowshoe.



Looks like Storm even packed in a Christmas tree!



The wintry landscape was beautiful and silent except when the odd train went by.





We headed down from this ridge to a more sheltered area to camp.



After selecting the prime location for the canvas tent, we stomped down the snow and levelled it, following Goose's instructions.



Then came the adventure of setting up the canvas tent.



The sides of the tent have guy lines that can tie to a tree or a log. There's no point sticking pegs into snow. We shovelled piles of snow onto the logs we used to secure the guy lines, and that froze them in place.



This was the view from our campsite.



Once the canvas tent was set up, we set up our individual sleeping tents. We would all hang out in the big tent but there wasn't room for six people to sleep there.



This is one of the last photos of our tent before it started to self destruct. Actually, that's not true since one of the poles had already broken by this point. Both windows tore away from the rest of the fly, and the fly ripped too. I had to use my emergency blanket under the fly since our tent was only mesh underneath the big rip. Apparently, ours is not one of those summer tents that can be used in all four seasons. It has been around the block a few times so maybe the fabric has been weakened by UV. It sure was a great time for our tent to start shredding all around us!



This was our little community, once we were all set up.



Goose's tent has a wood stove so we collected, chopped and sawed a big pile of firewood.

Then with our final bit of daylight, we went for a short snowshoe trek to work up an appetite for New Year's dinner.









Sunset was a beautiful pastel blue and pink.



Storm and Browner carried in camp chairs for extra comfort.





After sunset, it was time to put on our best down booties and head into the tent for the big New Year's bash. What a comfortable place to spend a fun, relaxing evening with friends!









Browner made yummy chili for the main course.



Sian brought a delicious "make your own" dessert with optional whipped cream.





It had been dark since 4:45 p.m. so we counted down to New Year's at 9 p.m. then managed to stay awake for an entire extra hour before heading back to our own tents. 'Bent had been feeling pretty comfortable in the warm tent even before 8 p.m.



The snow squalls kept on coming during the night.









Happy New Year, all.

Winter came last night - sort of. It started with heavy snow and high winds. If we'd wanted to ski, we would have had to go out at midnight before the freezing rain began. From this morning until early afternoon, it was just plain old rain. The ground is white but the snow is very wet and heavy; some of it is just ankle deep slush disguised as snow.

So... I went running instead of skiing. Rather than push my gimpy knee too hard, I started on muddy, slushy gravel roads instead of trails. After warming up, I did 5 X 200 m intervals, then ran home through the snow using trails and the section of Duffy's Lane that's closed in winter. I could feel mild knee pain but it didn't seem to be affected by the running. Progress.

Gave my knee a rest.

Ran some of the Palgrave West trails with 'Bent, AdventureDog and the visiting Quinn (Thumbs-of-Death's dog). It was snowing lightly after many hours of rain and gloom. We bushwhacked to a hilltop to check its height for future intervals.

My left foot slid on an icy railroad tie on my very first step of running, causing me to wrench my right knee - that must be a new record! The knee has been wonky since I fell on a rock in our early December race. Every time it starts to feel better, I do something stupid.

'Bent and I went for our first ever Christmas Day canoe paddle. Our family is at Deerhurst Resort where we had expected to be skiing and snowshoeing. However, there's no point arguing with Mother Nature. This was fun too.

Although there was no snow, the water was still cold so we wore our dry suits. No other boats were on the water while we were out there so we would have been on our own if we'd dumped.



We didn't see any other vehicle driving north with a canoe tied on top.



'Bent tested the new improved GoPro he got for Christmas.



Fairy Lake, Huntsville



Canal between Fairy Lake and Peninsula Lake



Deerhurst Resort and the famous "Cartoon Map" hill, known and loved by many adventure racers.



Peninsula Lake





The sign is accurate.



I feel sorry for Hidden Valley Highlands Ski Club. When there is no snow over the Christmas holidays, it's tough for winter-oriented businesses to make profit on their year.



(Time deducted for photography.)

So windy that there were whitecaps on the lake and trees dropping branches. We decided to postpone our outdoor activities. Great timing to hang out with family anyway!

"O tragic irony..." (From This Hour has 22 Minutes)

'Bent and I went to Caron's annual Christmas yoga class with live music by professional musician Patrick Dilkie, whose Dad, Trent Dilkie, is in our class.



It's a pay-what-you-want fundraiser, this year supporting our local hospital in memory of Paula Coats, wife of Don Coats who owns Caledon Hills Cycling. She passed away suddenly in the spring. Paula and Don were both in our yoga class.

This is our most calming holiday event every year and usually the last one before we move into family gatherings so the timing is good.

This has felt like a "cautious" holiday season, if that's the right word. A year ago, the beautiful music in this class made me weep. I knew Dad was slipping away and the holidays were going to be heartbreaking. He passed away a few minutes after Christmas ended.

The old holiday feeling will come back one day but I'm not there yet. Dad loved Christmas and I know he would want us to carry on the traditions and celebrations - to toast him with a glass of egg nog, put on a silly Santa hat and sing carols with gusto. I'll try, Dad. I'll try.

Interesting concept...

Implementation Intention: an improved strategy for obtaining goals by specifying the when, where and how portions of goal-directed behaviour.

An exercise-related example in a 2002 study published in the British Journal of Health Psychology:

- The control group was asked to exercise once in the next week. 29% of them exercised.

- Experiment group 1 was given the same task, along with detailed information about why exercise is important to health (i.e., "You’ll die if you don’t".) 39% of them exercised.

- Experiment group 2 was asked to commit to exercising at a specific place, on a specific day at a specific time of their choosing. 91% of them exercised.

The Trail Runners Toronto group took a road trip to Palgrave Forest this morning so 'Bent and I went to welcome them and go for a run. Nice people and great to see some familiar faces. As suspected, they're pretty quick so I dropped back to keep track of stragglers since it's easy to get lost in there. One of them was feeling rough so I went to head off the faster runners so we could pick up a van key from one of them, then I escorted the sick runner back to the parking lot before rejoining the group at a later point.

My knee has been a little stiff since I smashed it on a rock two weeks ago, and it has felt funnier since Thursday night's yoga class so I must have tweaked it. Today it felt like meniscus pain so when we reached a meeting point where some of the group wanted to go back to the cars, I offered to lead them back to the main trail, then I headed for home. Fingers are tightly crossed but I'm icing my knee and it is really sore now. Sigh.

Ambit start/stop button wasn't working consistently again so I guess I'll switch to my other watch. Today's distance was probably 10% farther since twisty single track is always under-measured.

At the Banff Mountain Film Festival a few years ago, some of us saw Ueli Steck set a record for free climbing the North Face of the Eiger. That time, in 2008, he successfully beat his own record from the year before. His record was beaten in 2011 by Dani Arnold, who used fixed ropes for part of the climb. Last month Ueli Steck went out and set a new record: 2 hrs 22 mins 50 secs. Wow.
http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/ueli-steck-re...

This year he also set a new team speed record on the Eiger North Face with trail running superstar Kilian Jornet and Nicolas Hojac: 3 hrs 46 mins. Not many people can say that Kilian slows them down.

Hard Core Live with Caron

Power Yoga class - lots of twisty back and shoulder stuff tonight. My right knee is still messed up from falling on rocks in Arizona. It feels OK most of the time but I can't bend it all the way, e.g. for a proper standing quad stretch. Pigeon pose was the only move I had to bail on completely on the right side. I substituted "Dead Pigeon" pose, which seems appropriate!

Pit bull didn't sleep well. We didn't sleep well. But the good news is that her rabies tag number linked us to her owner this morning and she is now safe at home. Her frantic owner was up all night looking for her but not near our place. He hadn't imagined she would come this far from home (about 1 km).

Couldn't fall asleep last night - weird. Maybe I can't handle two quality workouts in the same day? I wasn't up for the run I'd planned today so I settled for a trek with AdventureDog. We climbed a bunch of small hills at a brisk pace.

I'd planned to get Princess (my road bike) set up on the trainer for later but as I was picking up our mail this evening on a pitch black country road, a pit bull jumped up with paws on my waist, panting madly. After an initial shock, I realized she was on her own on a country road on a cold, wet night. She went over to my car so I let her in and took her up to our fenced yard. She wasn't happy outside so I spirited her into our dog crate and now it's going to be a long, noisy night. AdventureDog isn't happy to have her around and when BazingaDog gets home, it's going to be worse. Fortunately, I have a rabies tag number so I should be able to find her owner. Unfortunately, she seems inclined to bite.

Listened to the first part of the TA1 podcast with Chris Forne, Seagate's navigator. I like the way he thinks.

Tough pre-Christmas boot camp - especially the burpees. Caron was trying to kill me tonight!

ANNOUNCEMENT AT LAST!
Wilderness Traverse - Sept. 23-25, 2016
http://ar.attackpoint.org/eventdetail.jsp/event_30...

I'd planned some Bash & Crash 500 intervals on the Oak Ridges Trail behind our place but I heard the whine of chainsaws as I approached, then a huge tree crashed down at what would have been my starting point. Yikes!

I ran to the closed-for-the-winter portion of Duffy's Lane and chose a section that ended up being about 415 m. The flat part of the road wasn't as long as I'd remembered so each interval started with a 5 m climb followed by a longer downhill before the flat part. There were also some obstacles to add interest - dozens of potholes filled with water and a fallen tree across the road.

It's been awhile since I've used my HRM and it seems like my "happy zone" for running is my MAF HR, which is interesting. It is really hard to raise my HR by running on flats because I'm such a slow runner these days but hills are quite effective.

I did 5 repeats X 415 m at 5K race pace - 2:03, 2:08, 2:05, 2:04, 2:02.
(Not that I've ever done a 5K race!)

Then two short, hard climbs of Noxon Hill before heading home.

Trail Runners Toronto (TRT) are doing a road trip to Palgrave Forest & Wildlife Area this Saturday, meeting in the Hwy 50 parking lot at 8:30 a.m. Some of them are regulars at the Salomon Store runs in the Don Valley. We look forward to welcoming them to our neighbourhood.

Come on out if you're up for it! They're planning 18-20 km "slow and easy", taking 2-3 hours with opportunities to bail out earlier. If you're interested, you might want to join the Facebook group - or else I can provide details. (Although that's pretty much it. Just show up!)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/592592327478514/

Maybe I was too hard on the poorly planned AR World Champs in Brazil. The Olympics sound worse.

"Canoeists will test their real-world skills by slaloming around dead horses and floating feces on a gritty inner-city river course."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/editor...

Rodney Yee - Power Yoga for Flexibility

I'm doing this to build strength and endurance for poling in skiing and running. Actually, although we've put our boats away for the winter, outdoor paddling conditions are still just fine. Maybe we'll have to throw our canoe on the roof when our family goes to Deerhurst during the holidays.

Time to head out to Party # 3 in three days - two for Christmas and one for Hanukkah and some family birthdays. Weight loss plan goes into action tomorrow morning!

Easy run/trek with poles to check out some of the nearby climbs for hill training potential. I want to be consistent about training for hills every week until Lavaredo in June. There are lots of ways to do this - strength training, practising with poles (including skiing and snowshoeing), using a stair climber, snowshoeing, dragging a tire, etc. - but it's also nice to just stomp up some hills! The best climbs around here involve some bushwhacking, which will be easier when we get SNOW.

Mostly lower body today

A little foothab before the dental office Christmas dinner.

Hard Core Live with Caron

Tonight's class was heavy on variations of pigeon pose, which meant modifications to suit my unhappy right knee. I'd forgotten about the colourful bruising and cuts on that knee from my fall on rocks during Saturday's race. I'm hoping that's why it doesn't feel quite right after today's run.

First run since the 50K - probably a little farther than it should have been since I could feel a reprise of my end-of-race creakiness in the final 2K after stopping to chat with a neighbour on the trail. Because of the imminent FES in the forecast (100% chance), I stayed on trails close to home.

Thanks to Arthurd, I was reminded that the sun sets freakishly early this week so I snuck out to the Palgrave East single track for the last hour of daylight. I'd rather be skiing or snowshoeing on Dec. 9 but I'm happy to spend any time in the forest. This late in the season, I would have expected some fallen trees across the trail but the elves have been working hard, and the trails had virtually no debris - barely any leaves or twigs. Impressive!

I found several signs of holiday spirit, including this. :)



(Bike computer distance)

Foothab while listening to Legendary Randy and Warren Bates on TA1. Interesting podcast.

Caron's boot camp with 'Bent. I wonder what's going to hurt the most.

McDowell Mountain Frenzy - 50K
Phoenix (Fountain Hills), Arizona

The plan had been to run The Bad Thing 50K in October, build up to a 50 miler in early December, then start skiing and snowshoeing.

None of that worked out. Between volunteer projects and a persistent upper respiratory infection, it's been a lousy autumn for exercise. I did The Bad Thing 50K on very little training and when I was still fighting bronchitis in mid-November, I switched to the 50K for McDowell Mountain but I wasn't able to train properly for that either. Since there is no snow for skiing or snowshoeing, that part of the plan will have to wait too.

Regardless, a weekend in Arizona with good friends still sounded like an excellent way to kick off the holiday season.

I hadn't expected that the Race HQ would be just inside the park boundary and that we would be able to park less than 1 minute from the starting line, check in for the race in 30 seconds and take drop bags to collection points only 10 meters away. So Browner, Dee, 'Bent and I had lots of time to hang out, cheer for Storm when the 50 milers started and admire the desert scenery at sunrise.







'Bent was thrilled to discover free pre-race coffee. [Edit: I think I see a tea bag in that cup. Horrors!]



Browner and Dee did some pre-race physio. They were both doing the 25K. Dee had been planning on the 50 miler too but she's recovering from an injury. They both did really well so I guess the physio worked.









Although 'Bent and I were both doing the 50K, we wouldn't see each other on the race course so we got a photo together beforehand.



One of the buttons on my Ambit wasn't working so for the first 17 minutes of the race, I tried different things until I finally got it started. I wasn't running with earphones so my only constant companion was going to be my GPS watch and I would have really missed that feedback. (I've used 'Bent's Garmin total distance and elevation gain for this log entry.)

The desert scenery was beautiful and fascinating for someone from Ontario. As the temperature rose to 22C, I missed the shade of our forests.







There weren't many big climbs and I discovered that running on flat trails can be tiring in a different way.





There was some coyote scat but not as much as we see regularly on our trails in Palgrave. I did see a coyote, however, which rarely happens here.

Some of the trails were smooth and sandy while others had small rocks, some fixed and some loose. I lifted my feet higher but about 12K from the finish, I caught my toe on a rock that was hiding in the shadows and did a hard face plant. It knocked my breath out and I landed in gravel with scrapes to my right knee and elbow and the palms of both hands. I walked for a few minutes and used antibacterial wipes to clean the dirt out of my cuts. So glamorous.

I passed a few runners who were having a lot of trouble with the heat. I drank a lot by my standards and felt fine although I certainly noticed the heat. It was an uneventful day - just enjoying the scenery and saying hello to passing mountain bikers. I didn't approach it as a race, given my poor preparation.

This was the sixth 50K I've run and each of them has been a Personal Worst (the first was also a PB) until this one. It was easier than The Bad Thing so this was only my 2nd slowest 50K. Yay, I guess! This is definitely not my distance but it was the right distance for today. I was about 3/4 of the way back in the field.



There was a charity beer garden at the finish line - a great way to keep people around to cheer for the rest of us.



'Bent had been bothered by the heat and a sore knee but he still had a great 10th place finish in the 50K.







There was a portable wood-fired pizza oven. Every 50K and 50 mile racer got a pizza, and they were available for purchase by other racers. Yummy!



It was fortunate that I switched from the 50 miler since it meant that we could go back to the hotel for showers and dinner at a reasonable hour. Storm suffered in the unaccustomed heat but persevered to pull out a 6th place finish. Great job!





This was a well-organized event in a cool landscape - well worth doing, even though I don't see many desert races in my future. We went for margaritas and Mexican food afterward. I definitely see more of *that* in my future!

Here is 'Bent's GPS track since mine is missing the first bit.
http://ar.attackpoint.org/sessiondata.jsp?sessioni...

To Phoenix for a nice dinner with Browner, Storm, Dee and 'Bent. We're going for a desert run bright and early tomorrow.

Chatty night run west of Hilton Falls with Funderstorm and Bugsinteeth. We parked at Currie Tract and carried some maps but they only seemed to correspond with reality once in awhile. Fortunately, I'd brought a compass that proved very useful in guessing which direction to turn at each junction. We did two loops, which allowed Funderstorm to get a fresh battery for her fading light.

Then we pigged out at the Mohawk Chophouse - yum! Great to catch up and hang out. Simpy, we missed ya.

And people think adventure racing is a weird pastime!
Canadian found with turtles in pants pleads guilty to smuggling

"He was caught last year at a border crossing with 51 snappers taped to his body."

A rare study has been published on extreme ultrarunning - a 4,487 km race from southern Italy to northern Norway over a 2-month period with no rest days.

The good news: Although joint cartilage degraded at first, it began to regenerate after awhile. There was surprisingly little damage to the body. The scientists concluded that the human foot is meant for running.

The bad news: Brain volume decreased! Runners lost an average of 6.1% of their grey matter by the end of the race. It was back to normal after 8 months. (Not very helpful since most of us foolishly register for our next race long before our brains start working again!)
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20151130/Research...