Training Log Archive: Bash

Busy day! Another trainer session focusing on the tri bars. I'm developing important skills. For instance, I can now use the remote control to fast forward commercials without leaving the tri bars. I'm sure that'll be useful on the road.

Rehearsal + performance at Goose and Coach LD's annual Robbie Burns Dinner.



Each year we are asked to bring a poem to read but this year we were also asked to be prepared to do a few dance steps. I took Highland dancing when I was 7 years old and learned exactly two dances before it was determined that I had no talent. I found the Sword Dance on YouTube to refresh my memory, set up a couple of Leki trekking poles as "swords", then gave it a whirl - literally. Unfortunately, Crash took video so it might not be forgotten as quickly as I'd hoped.

When we were in Scotland, 'Bent and I searched high and low for suitable outfits for our annual Burns Dinner. Proper kilts were out of our price range so we had to make do with what we could afford. (Yes, 'Bent is wearing a beach towel.)



Weeanimal had the best outfit at the party.

Treadmill intervals - 4 X 4 min @ 10 km race pace with 4 min rest in between. After following the enthusiastic and occasionally raunchy debate on Hansel's log, I set the grade at 1%. If it's good enough for Super, it's good enough for me. This was the first time I've tried this workout and mostly I was thinking, "Damn, I don't race 10Ks very fast. This is ridiculous." So next time I'll have to be more ambitious. (Not just the next time I run on a treadmill... the next time I run a 10K!)

This was not too boring by treadmill standards. I listened to Tragically Hip tunes that I've loaded on my iPod for NZ. If Gord Downie is cool enough to buy Bullfrog Power, then he'll be excellent company for a long plane ride.

After months of encouragement from Frankenjack and Getawaystix that ranged from gentle hints to outright badgering, I finally tested tri bars on Princess today. (Thanks to 'Bent for managing the installation.)

Frankenjack lent me some nice tri bars a long time ago but I'd made excuses to put it off. For a mountain biker getting used to the different riding position and gearing of a road bike, it seemed like too much change - not to mention that they make me look like a fancypants cyclist who ought to know how to ride a road bike a whole lot better than I do.

Anyway, I'll still need to try them on a road but the trainer experiment went better than expected. If anything, I found the position more comfortable than the usual road biking position. But I won't have brakes on the tri bars so if anything goes wrong, it will be spectacular.

While watching another round of Daily Show / Colbert Report.

Planning ahead for Coast to Coast, if you're interested in live race updates and you're on Facebook, you're welcome to become my "friend". (Aw shucks...)
http://www.facebook.com/#!/Barb.J.Campbell

Our support crew will also post updates to the Van Dorp Racing page, which you can "Like" if you want it added to your news feed.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/vandorpracing

We'll have two support crew members in different vehicles posting updates, so there will be different news posted to the two pages.

You can also get news of Frankenjack and the other leaders via the live coverage on the race website. For FB and other non-Facebook types, this will probably be the only source of race news. I'll put a quick note on AP the next day to confirm (or deny) my survival.

"If you've never run aground, you've never been anywhere!"-- Unknown

One of Caledon's most decorated athletes passed away last week. Brian McGrath won bucketloads of medals at the Senior Olympics and other masters cycling events.
http://www.eganfuneralhome.com/2011/james-brian-mc...

I met him one day when I was stopped at a road/trail junction adjusting my bike seat height. He pulled over and asked if I needed any help, then pointed out his nearby house in case I ever needed any assistance or tools. I mentioned that I'd seen him on the front page of the newspaper holding 7 medals a few weeks earlier and he beamed.

Brian passed away suddenly in his 97th year. I read about him doing a cycling event in Terra Cotta a couple of years ago, so I hope he was able to ride his bike till the end. Rest in peace, Brian.

Getawaystix made my week by telling me about a study that showed that you shouldn't try to lose weight and gain fitness at the same time. People who did one or the other were more fit than those who attempted to do both simultaneously. So we're off for a hearty dinner and logistics planning session with Frankenjack. Maybe I'll have to have dessert. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

So exciting I almost forgot to record this... Did a trainer session to test my new tri shorts for C2C. It seems my road bike saddle is not as forgiving as my mountain bike saddle so it is very, very important where the stitching is. 'Nuff said and I think these will work although I wish they didn't have "death grip" elastic at the bottom of the shorts. Nobody wants hour glass thighs.

While I rode and watched more of our "Black Coffee" documentary, 'Bent brought his Omega recumbent bike into the Adventure Basement and made extremely loud noises as he reduced the bike to a stack of rubble. Its remains are now in a plastic bin looking rather pathetic, and some random piece of metal is going to a machine shop today to make his bike "better". (Sorry for the lack of detail - I'm afraid I don't always pay close attention to his gadget-related projects. Bad wife.)

First thing in the morning after a late night of unsuccessfully trying to get my new GPS tracker configured. ("On, damned SPOT! On, I say!") I dropped my car off with the mechanic in Palgrave and skied home. It was -16C and the trails were fast and hard as rock. This excursion was in direct violation of my current training philosophy: "It's too late to get any fitter so fergawds sake, just don't hurt yourself - none of this is refundable."

SPOT is working! Can you see it OK?
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots...

Balanced things out with some post-run upper body work while watching Stewart/Colbert. This is my last high-volume week pre-C2C.

I had to run the Hockley Loop one more time before trying to run over the NZ Alps. There is enough climb to make this a good training run for a mountain race - by Ontario standards, anyway.

My feet were toasty in my Goretex Salomon XA Pros, and my Yaktrax Pros worked well for traction on gravel roads and in the few places where the trail was well packed down. There were long sections of trail that hadn't been travelled since the last snowstorm so I wasn't always able to run, and I sometimes had to guess where the trail went. There were a bunch of frustrating hills where my feet were just wallowing in the snow with nothing I could push off against. The new field crossing in the southwest part of the loop was ridiculous - I plunged through the crust into knee deep snow a bunch of times. It was good for the heart rate but there wasn't much running going on.

I missed chasing FB and Phatty around the Loop, which kept me pushing last time (when we did it 20 minutes faster!) I met a nice older gentleman on snowshoes who had just encountered someone who did 10,000 km of hiking in 2010 and was setting out to do 1,000 km each month in 2011. I love hearing about people and their different goals. So inspiring!

The only other guy I ran into was Truly Scary Looking in a serial-killer-in-the-movies kind of way. For all the time I spend running around alone in remote places, I've been pretty lucky about the people I meet. I smiled and said hello, and he just looked me up and down silently with a sullen expression. I have to remember that my friends and I also look scary at times during our outdoor activities, and this guy is probably totally normal except for his inability to respond to a greeting. I was planning to take a food break shortly after that but I went an extra couple of kms before I stopped!

I added more layers halfway around when I realized that my fingers were getting clumsy even though I didn't feel cold otherwise. I seem to be getting worse at retaining dexterity when my hands get cold so I'll have to be more careful. (I've been wondering if that's part of the reason I couldn't get my kayak skirt off underwater when I had no trouble with it at the start of the paddle down the Seymour River. That and two layers of squishy, waterlogged gloves.)

It wasn't a bad day though. I was listening to new tunes I've downloaded onto my iPod for NZ, and at the high point on the northeast side, I felt so good that I stopped for a little boogie time. Glad no one was around to see me!

Although this wasn't a spectacular performance on the Loop, the cool thing was remembering that this run used to feel unbelievably epic because of the distance combined with all the hills. Although it is still a good challenge, it feels totally normal and do-able now. My speed remains so-so but my endurance seems to have improved.

If I can maintain a similar pace during the 33 km mountain run in Coast to Coast (which has big rocks and riverbeds but no deep snow), I'll be well ahead of the cut-off to start the 67 km paddle. Then it mostly comes down to whether I can keep the kayak upright...

In case we didn't look fashionable enough *running* in our Vibram Five Fingers, they are now offering a line of casual barefoot shoes to wear at the office, out to dinner, etc.

http://runningmagazine.ca/2011/01/sections/news/ba...

Leanimal, Weeanimal and I went for a good hike on the snowy Humber Valley Heritage Trail. Just like her Mom, Weeanimal is a trooper. She has all the right outdoor clothing and gear. She didn't complain at all, managed her nutrition and hydration nicely and planned a perfect sleep strategy. Nice to catch up!

From the British Psychological Society

If a meeting becomes stressful, does it help, or make things worse, if team members drink lots of coffee? A study by Lindsay St. Claire <http://psychology.psy.bris.ac.uk/people/lindsaystc...> and colleagues that set out to answer this question has uncovered an unexpected sex difference. For two men collaborating or negotiating under stressful circumstances, caffeine consumption was bad news, undermining their performance and confidence. By contrast, for pairs of women, drinking caffeine often had a beneficial effect on these same factors. The researchers can't be sure, but they think the differential effect of caffeine on men and women may have to do with the fact that women tend to respond to stress in a collaborative, mutually protective style (known as 'tend and befriend') whereas men usually exhibit a fight or flight response.

For the construction puzzles, caffeine under high stress conditions led men to take an average of twenty seconds longer (compared with no caffeine) whereas it led women to solve the puzzles 100 seconds faster.

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2011/01/co...

There's rain in tomorrow's forecast so BulletDog and I had to get out on the ski trails in Palgrave West. Looks like someone had a big ski/snowshoe party over the weekend - there are tracks everywhere. My wax wasn't working well even though it was cold out, so today's ski was very tricep-py.

Coast to Coast entries so far:

- 147 for the 1-day race
- 22 are women
- Only 4 of us over 40. Two of us are first-timers (although one of us is an accomplished NZ multisport racer with lots of age group wins, and it's not me). The other two finished the modified 2010 C2C course which skipped most of the kayaking and mountain running. One of those two has completed C2C a number of times as a 2-day racer.

So the worst I can be - if I finish, which is a big "if" due to cut-offs - is 4th Masters. Yay.