Training Log Archive: Bash

3 km portage from Great Mountain Lake to David Lake for our final night on the trip. Pack was slightly lighter and temperature was a bit lower, so this wasn't quite as tough as the portages we did on Friday.

An hour of training on David Lake with kayak paddles, plus about half of the paddling we did to move to our scenic new campsite tonight. Nice view of Silver Peak once the clouds finally rolled away!

White quartz ridge hike with 'Bent and the pooches. Many, many blueberries to eat. We could see that a bear had been up there recently enjoying the blueberries as well.

Lousy weather today, but we assembled our kayak paddles and went out for a spin around the lake. Also did some canoe paddling to get to Little Mountain Lake where we could access the backpacking trail. Pooches don't like the kayak paddles in a canoe, as they get splashed. Funny how they go swimming all the time, but get miffed if you dare to fling a few drops of water their way.

Hiked awhile on the La Cloche Silhouette backpacking trail. Wow, is quartz ever slippery when it gets wet! I would hate to be carrying a heavy backpack on this trail after a rain. We hit a steep section where the rock scrambling was a bit too much for the dogs, so had to go the other direction instead. Even on a cloudy day, the views were impressive. After 3 months, my twisted ankle still feels disappointingly fragile. I'm wearing the Active Ankle brace for biking, running and trekking, but I don't feel confident when I hit really uneven ground or wear an especially heavy pack.

Always tough to figure out how or if I should count activity on wilderness trips as training, but there is no question that today's 6 portages, including one of 3 km in length, were really hard work! Because of 'Bent's recent back problems, I carried a lot of weight on our one-trip portages - somewhere around 40 kg, I'd guess. We had some heavy food treats, like a small apple a day and cheese for lunch, and I carried our SRS kayak paddles as well as our canoe paddles, so it wasn't a super-lightweight trip.

This is about half the time we actually paddled, travelling from Johnnie Lake to Great Mountain Lake on a hot day, then exploring Great Mountain Lake to find the best campsite. It's a big lake with only 3 campsites, which is really nice. ThunderDog and BulletDog went swimming about 20 bazillion times today. At one point we were held up by an unflappable Mama moose and her mooselet, who were guarding a big portage. We got into the campsite around dinnertime, and it felt great to jump in the lake!

As always, this so-called "rest day" wasn't restful at all. It was already going to be a busy week, and it got busier with the unexpected changes to our Endurance Aventure plans, so I got to sleep at 2:30 a.m. on two consecutive nights. Met my Sideroads Magazine deadline today - feature article and photos on the new Caledon Navigators orienteering club. Then I purchased and packed food for our 4-day canoe trip, keeping quantities flexible until the last couple of hours when we confirmed that Knobless and Gorgeous would have to cancel due to illness. We'll miss them! Drove up to Grundy Lake tonight, stopping for the rare treat of a Licks Homeburger.

Mostly Albion Hills single track, with some roads and other trails. Trails were in great hard-packed condition after last night's big hailstorm, which strangely I remember nothing about, even though 'Bent claims we talked about it in the night. Because I was facing several urgent deadlines at the same time that the you-know-what hit the fan for our AR team, I was up till 2:30 a.m. playing catch-up. I guess I must have been so tired that I was sleep-talking to 'Bent! Anyway, I think everything will be well in hand by the time we leave for Killarney tomorrow evening. Yahoo - 4 days in the backcountry!

Another Attackpoint milestone - I passed 5000 hits today. They're probably all thinking the same thing: "After so much training, when is that girl ever going to speed up??"

Road and trail running around Palgrave after a long day with my laptop, trying to work on three things at once. (As a result, I'm about to start a long night with my laptop!) There are a lot of big trees down across trails from last week's storm. I hope some friend of the trails owns a chainsaw, otherwise it's going to be a lousy ski season.

What a difference a day makes! After yesterday's hassles, things are looking up. Tiny generously agreed to join the Tree Huggers on short notice, thus making our team much stronger than it was! And PeteD has stepped up to the plate to support us - a very experienced support crew member and a strong adventure racer in his own right. We still need one more support crew member, but Gazette said she would do it if we're really stuck.

Suddenly, things are working like they should! Gazelle phoned from the airport enroute to his vacation with some info. The rest of us got more race planning accomplished via e-mail in 2 hours than I've been able to get done in the past month.

Good. I won't have to take up drinking after all. ;-)

Warning, this is a rant! The teammate who was supposedly arranging support crew for our Endurance Aventure race hadn't been answering e-mails over the past few weeks, and today he dropped out of the race with 23 days to go. Apparently he's too busy, hasn't trained enough, etc. Considering that we agreed to do this race less than 4 weeks ago, it's surprising that his life could have changed in such unanticipated ways in such a short time.

'Bent and I are heading into the wilderness for 4 days later this week, so it's lousy timing to suddenly be stuck with looking for a teammate and support crew for a 50-hr race in Quebec. Our 3rd teammate is in New Brunswick until Aug. 4. I didn't know the "dropout" guy well enough to realize that he could be so irresponsible. I will never again make the mistake of paying $1200 for a race without being certain that every team member makes commitments thoughtfully AND knows how to use the "reply" function on his or her e-mail software. End of Rant.

Oh yeah, and it was Hard Core Monday. Nothing like a little anger to make those sit-ups really count!