Training Log Archive: Bash

I was asked to be a guest coach for a Personal Best snowshoe instruction day. About 60 people came out. I was to start them off with a 20 minute lesson, then they would spin off to try different things with their snowshoes.

I'd been worried about filling 20 minutes since snowshoeing is fairly intuitive. But with some googling and a little creativity, I came up with a lesson plan that included segments on "what I'm wearing from head to toe" and "what's in my pack". Then we all practised how to use cleats properly going up and down hills and while running vs. walking. There wasn't much snow but Google said I should also explain how to get up when you fall, so I did a demo.

Then different groups did a couple of trails, some of us went up the Green Monster hill a few times, we tried more running and I led some bushwhacking. Many people seemed surprised and happy to discover how easy it was to learn and what a great workout it could be. I guess I take snowshoeing for granted and can't imagine that an athletic person wouldn't have tried it before or might worry that they don't know how. (There were lots of Ironmen in the crowd.) So it was cool to see all the enthusiasm.

Lots of fun and so nice to see people planning to get outside more in winter. Caledon Hills Cycling brought a bunch of demo snowshoes, which was great.

This was the running and hill interval portion of the morning.

Short on time before going to visit Mom so just a quick circuit. Yesterday's hills were strength training too!

Event: Snowshoe Raid Adventure Run
 

DontGetLost Snowshoe Raid - Pretty River Valley Provincial Park

Always a fun event! This year it was exciting to explore a new area. I'd done some UTMB training at Pretty River because its trails have significant elevation gain by southern Ontario standards, so today we got a tough workout for that reason and also because there was deep, unconsolidated powder snow. Beautiful!

Dee, who has 10-week-old twins, kindly agreed to race above her age level on a Female Masters team once again. Although she had warned me to lower my expectations, she was still stronger than me, as expected. She is a great strategist and motivator!

Who knows if we made the ideal plan for our team but we organized our route around several "priority" groups of controls and set some time deadlines along the way that would tell us whether we needed to drop controls to move forward toward the next priority area.

The one priority group that worried me was 63-64, two moderately valuable controls half a kilometer apart. There wasn't an obvious time to visit them along our route, and because of the climb involved and the uncertainty surrounding some earlier controls, I was afraid we'd drop them if we left them for the final hour of the race. So I proposed a circuitous route where we collected them before the big climb up to 48, which was both the highest point on the Bruce Trail *and* the highest point value on the course. I'd predicted that Bob would put a control there for aesthetic reasons but he took it one step further. :)

Our route: Big climb on snowmobile trail, then 44, 45, 46. Then down to 43 to get us over toward 64-63. Whether or not this route was a good idea, it was definitely original so we got to bushwhack and break trail through 600 m of deep powder between 46 and 43. Oops. Then it was a fast Bruce Trail run and we followed tracks to 64-63.

We'd hoped to get 47 on the way up the escarpment but our plan was to hit 48 close to the 1:30 mark so we skipped it. On this long, steep climb, we were treated to the sight of Nick and Mick running past us up the hill wearing only 3 snowshoes for two guys. That's all very well on the Bruce Trail but it can't have been much fun elsewhere on the course! Of course they beat us. :)

Our next target was 1:50 for control 52 in the northwest corner of the map. We went to 50 since it was on the way but skipped 51 to get there (almost) on time. Our next target was 2:30 at the aid station so we skipped 53 to have time for our next priority group of controls - 55, 58, 57, 56, 54, which ended up being worth over a quarter of our final score.

Dee was right to be skeptical about going to 58 in the Matrix. I'd hoped that someone might have broken trail from 58 to 57 since they were both close to the same elevation but no such luck, so we climbed back up on the snowmobile trail to get to a faster packed trail. The cost of doing this was that we skipped 42 near the finish, which had the same point value for less work. It was a risk with a chance of reward if we'd had time for both 58 and 42 but in the end, it just gave us some extra distance and climb.

It was nice to see 'Bent managing the aid station at 54 but we arrived a few minutes behind schedule so we had to boogie down the road. Dee helpfully pushed my back and after a long run, we went for the higher value 41 and skipped 42. We finished with over 3 minutes to spare; it might have been possible to get 42 but that would have made the finish sprint super stressful, possibly with a penalty.

I don't think our 520 point total was much below the maximum possible points our team could have achieved with a perfect route on this course in our current condition, so I'm happy. The winning score was 610 with lots of good teams penalized for coming in overtime. Thank you for a fun weekend, Dee!

P.S. AdventureGirl! and KatieMac won the Female category and made us proud by placing 4th overall of 110+ teams! We were 13th and top Female Masters.

Snowshoe run around Palgrave West, this time without BazingaDog, who went to work today. My pace was exactly the same without him but the adrenaline level was much lower. Packed trails, powder snow trails and bushwhacking over fallen logs - the usual mix.

Slowrunner's Workout #5, which includes more plyo and off-to-one-side weights than the previous ones.

Caron was wearing orange tonight - with long sleeves - which let us all know we could expect a tough evening. Core was shorter than usual but more relentless. Instead of a brief rest between sets of exercises, we did different variations on plank.

The theme continued into our yoga class. Tougher than usual with a focus on core strength.

'Bent is sick so both boys in our house are missing their usual exercise. Against my better judgement, I took 'Bent's advice to try snowshoe running with BazingaDog on the skijoring harness attached to me by an elasticized cable and a waist belt.



"It will be great," he said. "BazingaDog doesn't pull hard like he used to," he said. "You won't be slammed onto your face, dragged through the forest and hideously maimed," he said.

Well, some of that was true. The first kilometer was terrifying as BazingaDog seemed to smell a deer every 100 meters and would take off like a horse in a Roman chariot race while I grabbed the elastic cable, leaned back like a waterskier and yelled, which for some reason failed to calm him down. It was great practice for being towed by Dee at the Snowshoe Raid, haha.

I just about pulled the plug after 5 minutes but it was already sunset and I wanted to get in a snowshoe run with some bushwhacking. BazingaDog got tired and started making excuses to sniff a bunch of trees along the way. In between, he ran at a more reasonable pace, sometimes pulling a little and sometimes leaving some slack. By the end, we liked each other again. Around the house tonight, he was clearly favouring me over 'Bent so I felt very honoured.

I'm not sure what 2015 holds but family commitments may dictate that training needs to take a back seat again. So here are my goals for the year - with an asterisk.

Year End Review, Part 3 - 2015 Training Goals

1) Races
- Finish Birkebeiner (54K classic ski), Eiger Ultra Trail (101K mountain run) and my first 100+ mile trail run, as yet undecided.

2) Health
- Average 7 hrs sleep daily.
- More protein in diet. Nothing crazy but I need to work harder to get the recommended intake, given that my chef 'Bent doesn't eat meat.

3) Targets
- 220 hrs of running (not including orienteering, which is usually running too)
- 80 hrs of strength training, physio exercises and yoga
- 550 hrs of total training (about 1.5 hrs/week more than 2014, which was my lowest training volume in 5 years, partly because there were no multi-day AR events to boost the total)

4) Strategies
- Multi-sport endurance training, racing and random adventures with friends
- Running-specific strength training including weights & body weight exercises, plyometrics, yoga, physio

5) Fergawd's sake, write the UTMB and World Rogaining Champs Race Reports already!

Session #5 with Slowrunner after a month off.

A surprise visit from Knobless made me change my afternoon plans to take him on a chatty ski tour of Palgrave West, which was in great shape after a few more cms of snow. We did some bushwhacking and met a fit older gentleman, Ernie - Jeff's Dad and owner of a property on Humber Station Road backing onto the former Russells' place, now owned by the Metcalfes. (I'm writing this down in case we meet again.) We ran into him again while we were ski-bushwhacking and he wanted to be sure we knew how to get back to civilization. Given what he was doing today, I'm amazed that I haven't run into him before. I've almost never met anyone off-trail in Palgrave West. (Time deducted for neighbourly conversations.)

Monday night ski training with Coach LD. Our original plan for these sessions had been to use some of her techniques for ski training without snow - but fortunately, we don't have that problem anymore. We did a different tour of Palgrave West with some slow, challenging bushwhacking in the dark - but I knew Coach LD could handle it. After exploring the woods for awhile, we came out to the trails and appreciated them very much.

We went down to the Wheelwright hockey pond where Coach LD got me doing some good legs-only drills, then I was allowed to add poles without over-using them. We had a fun ski in fluffy snow on a very dark evening with a few face plants due to skis getting caught under logs or branches in the darkness. We also did some steep hill climbs for extra workout points. In between the bushwhacks, face plants and steep hills, we kept up a good pace so I am tired now!