Training Log Archive: Bash

Thomass winter orienteering race #1 - Blithe Hill

It was great to get back to orienteering after a break, although my legs felt heavy because I haven't been running much lately - not to mention the extra 1.5 kg I brought back from NZ. Or maybe it's because of yesterday's run - or because there were some good hill climbs and areas of recent logging that required a lot of leg lifting. Anyway, it was a very physical race, and I felt like my feet were in molasses. 'Bent saw me a few times and said I wasn't moving all that slowly, so perhaps it wasn't as bad as it felt.

I enjoyed the terrain, and the navigation went almost 100% smoothly, which may be a side benefit of my lower speed. I think I finished 5th overall, with the first six all finishing close together. After that, people trickled in slowly, and the 2nd place woman arrived 28 minutes after I did. She didn't do badly either - there were still guys behind her.

Nice to see newlyweds Mick and Laura out for their first post-wedding Thomass!

When I do overnight races, my favourite time of day is the first light of morning when you realize that you can just start to make out the trees, and you know that the warmth of sunrise will be coming shortly.

In real life, I like to sleep right through this time of day.

But today is 'Ben'ts birthday celebration (even though his B-day is Tuesday), and he voted to do an early morning trail run, so I set the alarm to go off in the middle of the night (OK, it was 6:15). I figured it would be good for me, like wheat germ or TVO. It actually *was* fun to get together with K/O and the Saturday morning gang for a hilly run in Glen Haffy. Now I know which hill is K2 (Bruce Trail west of Centreville Creek), and it is a good long, steady climb to use for hill intervals. BulletDog had a fantastic time herding 'Bent and me like a sheepdog. After our 3-week disappearance, she is not letting us out of her sight again if she can help it! The rest of the gang continued north of Hwy 9, but I didn't want to overdo it in my 3rd run in a month.

In just one more week, K/O finds out if she's been accepted into the BIG ultra-trail run in California - exciting!!

DVD - Power Yoga for Endurance Athletes. Haven't done this for a long time, but it's good for flexibility and balance, so I should do it more often. I can't imagine that I'll ever be strong enough to do those yoga push-ups though! I can do the high plank position, and I can go down to the low plank and hold for a few seconds. But when I'm supposed to go back up to the high plank, I hit the floor on the way, which is *definitely* cheating.

Around Palgrave West, including a run up Lookout Hill on the K-Bash property (no relation). Great view of west Caledon and the Escarpment! After being away for 3 weeks, I'm still getting used to the fact that all the leaves are off the trees. I keep expecting someone to fix that problem before the next time I go outside.

I didn't count my warm-up trek with ThunderDog, but I could have called it "Orienteering, Level 1". At home, she put on this act like she's an old dog with stiff joints who just wants to sit by the fire and get fed the occasional MilkBone. Then out in the woods today, she had me jogging between trees and leaping over logs to keep up on her chosen route. Nice to see it, and I know she'll feel another few years younger when the snow flies.

While watching the Daily Show. It's been far too long, but there wasn't space to do core or leg strength exercises in our campervan in NZ, and I'm not quite brave enough to do sit-ups out on the lawn.

It's time to get training again - in fact, this is probably Day 1 of my 2007 season. 'Bent and I are always off-kilter because we spend so much time skiing, snowshoeing and winter orienteering that we end up getting stronger through the winter and peaking in early spring, then after a lull, we try to push our performance back up for a month or so in the Aug/Sept timeframe, but that's always been a challenge for me. It has generally meant better race results in spring than in summer, but hey, it's worth it. Bring on the snow!!