Training Log Archive: Ari-o

SKIING SKIING SKIING

Skiing, skiing, skiing, ski ski ski.

Ski ski ski ski ski.

So we got drunk on Friday night, then left early Saturday to drive to Windblown. 20 miles of skating, not very quickly, but getting the legs back. Some no poles, some double poles. Fun. Saw lots of people I knew: Frank, Bob, Nicole; about half of a Tuesday at Weston was out!

Ari's tips to skiing at Windblown:

1. Don't try to ski midday on a busy weekend unless the mountain is open. Avoid 11-3 when the trails are packed with slow people.
2. Don't stop and try to figure out where you're going very often. There are a ton of turns and no flow (which is why, snow conditions aside, I'll make the drive out to Northfield or up to Waterville if I'm looking for a good day trip). Windblown puts an impressive amount of trails (although 20k was open? not sure) in to a very small area, meaning that there are a lot of junctions and short segments. It's kind of like a Memory O: take a bunch of turns and see if you can figure out where you are.

NP NYC! Took the train to Herald Square, and ran around and did lots of push ups in front of Macys. Lots of photographs were taken by tourists. Lots of NPers from Boston. Good fun!

I was going to rollerski later in the day, but the promise of real skiing tomorrow proved to be a strong disincentive to doing so. So, no rolling Central Park this year.

Once we got to NYC it was too snowing to rollerski, but I went for a quick run before Thanksgiving.

Garmin won't connect right now, so times/distances may be updated.

Wow, inadvertent intensity week here. NP race on Friday (6:53s on hills, AP adjusted pace of 5:43), Traverse on Sunday, and racing stadium stairs today. I went in thinking "well, I don't want to go too hard" but then everyone else was racing so what choice did I have. 45 seconds off a PR but after a couple late-evening beverages and late evening bread kneading and 5½ hours of sleep, not too bad. Hard enough that I came darned close to upchucking, and had to go lie on a bench at the end.

Now it is chunky raining.

So new iPhone keeps track of distance walked and stair flights climbed. It makes me more likely to not be lazy and take the stairs.

I used it on Saturday when I forgot my watch in Lynn. Climbed, according to the JesusPhone, 74 flights of stairs (14 setting controls, 58 running O).

Had to go meet my sister downtown and had to go for a run. Tah dah!

Event: NEOC: Blue Hills Traverse and Regular Meet
 

Quick warm up to pee.

Good Traverse. Especially good since I wasn't too far back (6th overall) and I left a lot of time out there with mistakes. Ran strong, and since my legs were already numb from Friday and yesterday, I didn't cramp! Warm, ran in a tee shirt, good that there was a clothes drop at the start.

I took the left option to the first control and bounded along the trail well. Got to the rock first, put in my dibbler, and then Ethan put his in and said "your's didn't beep." Well, I'm not that used to waking up controls, man! Ran with Ethan to 2 and beat him up the hill and spiked it well, making sure my stick went beep.

Then 3. I have no idea what happened on 3. I ran to the trail, took a right, and then decided to cut the corner through the woods. Somehow I either had already run past the trail junction and/or ran across the trail, and wound up way off in the woods southwest of 6! You can't get caught by a feature which isn't there. I ran back and reoriented off some terrain and found the trail, and spiked 4 well, but lost 5 minutes with that debacle. I should have followed Ethan at that point.

Did well to 4 and ran up to 5, just about the same time as Alex, Ran 6-7-8-9 cleanly, trading off with Alex on downhills and uphills, or where I took a trail and she went cross-country. What great woods to run in, none of the green of Lynn or Townsend. 10 I took the trail over and around, and this would have gone well except I overran the downhill curve and wound up past my attackpoint, so I had to navigate the green terrain over the hill to the control, but still punched ahead of Alex. Probably lost a minute, though.

Then there was a road run, a spike of 11, and water at 12. Then 13. I wanted to go off the road and attack off the rock to the left of the road. But the map here doesn't really resemble reality. I realized I'd overran the attack so I went up the hill to about the right contour and back above the rocks (since the control was uphill of the rocks and spiked it well, but probably lost another 3 minutes there.

To 14 I didn't see the trail option north of the hill and went right over, because why not. Also, after last year I don't really trust the map west of the hill, but do trust skyline trail. Spiked it. And spiked 15 with a nice attack off the trail, green, square stone wall and bench. I'd use that again later.

For whatever reason, I ran uphill from 15 to the trail, probably losing some time. I had a good plan to 16 and executed the first 90% well, but then was looking at the wrong trail and started running downhill one trail shy. I got to a stream and had to stop and follow terrain before finding the very green control. 3 minutes there, then another to make sure I'd punched (I had) because I had stuff in my shoe I stopped to get out.

Spiked 17 (terrain and compass right to the control) and then 18 was another debacle. I wanted to contour around to the stream and attack off of it. I wound up too high to avoid the cliffs, but then didn't notice when I crossed the trail (again!) and wound up towards the pass I came through to get to 16, running the wrong way. I noticed, and turned back, but lost another 4 minutes, easily, meaning that Alex was punching there but had already run the short butterfly.

I ran back to 19, and then went the wrong direction southwest not southeast to 20 (tired by this point, -1 minute) and navigated well but ran slowly to 21, used the same attack to 22 as 15, and then ran the road to the finish.

So I lost 18 minutes of totally fixable navigation mistakes, half of that because I somehow crossed trails that were there that I didn't see. I ran a mile further than Alex, which is why she beat me by 10 minutes. But still finished respectably, and felt strong and fast. So that's something!

Traverse - BC - Splits

Running to put out controls. Only mishung one. I blame the poorly printed map. The offsets are much better; we should hang off of them.

Fun Iltarastit up with Alex and friends. I ran to the first control which I'd hung in the wrong place, not on top of the obvious hill which had a flag on it, but not from where I was attacking hanging. Oh, well. Then ran the first extra loop pretty well and got a little lost to 4, and then struggled through the woods not finding the white running. Spiked 5 and then went across the marsh to get to 6 which was fun. I skipped 7 (no flags left) but there were flags at 8 (spiked) so I did the 9-10-11-12 loop. Ran it relatively cleanly but not particularly fast but in these woods for me, clean is good.

Then 13 messed with me, as I went out on the spur but not far enough, back to the Pawtuckaway rock, then re-oriented off the terrain and found it. Grr. Off to 7 and 8 and in.

NP today was a race. Three full hills (or as one participant noted, six bouts of nausea). It was cold (which was good) and I felt pretty good so I went for it. The prize? Tickets to a Celtics game in December. Which is cool, unless there's good snow somewhere. But I'll take it.

Ran down the first hill in second place (not even my fastest time down) and crested the top in third. I mostly stayed with or behind this pack, and certainly felt like I was racing (nausea, race taste in the mouth) up and down the hills. Had top-9 in hand on the last hill but heard footsteps behind me and sprinted the flats, finishing 6th. 6:53 miles—a 3 hour marathon pace–except with 250m of climb over 4 miles. Not too many marathons with 1600m/5000ft of climb, are there?

Then it was cold and I felt bad, and then not as bad.

Ran in the morning because of all the things in the evening. Issue: shin still hurts. Cut run short, because, you know, shin still hurts. Ibuprofen and icing? Stupid bruising.

NP! I went to 5:30 with George and ran 41 sections. Did about 25 pushups too. And ran one extra section at the end shirt free (it was 25) to cool down. The problem with NP is I bike home as my core is cooling down and get cold really fast, even with all the clothes. Maybe I should start running?

Ran to a meeting. Really trying to squeeze this in every so often.

Ran to Cambridgeside to get my iPhone. Apparently they make it a real a real pain in the ass to get an iPhone, so I didn't get it, but at least I arranged to get it. Blergh.

So bad at logging. Today, here's what I did:

rollerskied a lot
took the bus home
broke my iPhone
went about backing up my phone and computer and putting the latest OS on my computer (this took way longer than I'd hoped)

Here's what I may go still do:
Get a new phone
Get food for dinner
Buy on-sale cheerios at CVS

And this somehow counts as a successful day.

Plan: Rollerski across BU Bridge. Catch 8:00 bus. Meet Alex at Rotary of Death at 8:15. Drive to rollerskiing.

I missed the bus by 12 seconds. He rolled past me right before the stop and I couldn't get his attention. Oh, well, another bus in 10 minutes. Alex was okay with that, and I got a Comm Ave rollerski sprint in, or something.

Rollerskiing in Littleton. Cold!

Alex made me a breakfast sandwich so I drank a lot of water. And ran out of water. I wound up skiing with Andy and Frank which was great—Master Blasting!—and some guy on a bike. The guy on a bike kept creeping past us on the right. It was really annoying. I came close to yelling at him about it (dude, you're on a bike) and then decided just to stay quiet and be super passive-aggressive and pole near his wheel.

Ski was very nice. There isn't much traffic out there, but I do like how "good pavement" means "you might go down a hill with some sketchy cracks and a major foot massage" for CSU. But that's sort of okay; I didn't fall. I was warned about the worst downhill in to Harvard that it was steep. I asked if it had good pavement (yes) and a good runout (yes) and any sharp turns (no) and took it without any pesky speed reducers. I think I impressed Andy doing that. It has nothing on most of the hills on my routes in Maine.

Then we kept going and going and going and got back 25 miles later. I was dehydrated and pooped. Alex dropped me at the 70 bus which I took all the way back to Cambridge, and caught up on emails, too, rather than crashing her coaches meeting which would probably go long. Success!

Again, Garmin is for the birds. GPS all over the place, what a mess.

I was pretty happy to be running hills in the snow until I ran about 50 yards and then stopped. While running flat and running stairs were fine, running downhill and my right shin were not agreeing. Bummer. So I ran back to the top of the hill and though "hmm, two days ago I ran stairs and my shin was fine." Guess what there are a lot of on the side of Summit? Stairs! So I ran the stairs twice.

At the top of the second staircase I met Alex, and my legs were feeling better, and I slowly ran down a hill with her and back up. While reading a map of Harriman. Rocky!

Then I did that again, and that was okay, too. Plan for weekend: no downhill running!

By the time I got home from a long day of doing work stuff, I took a short run. It was gorgeous. I was hungry. My Garmin has been taking forEVER to boot up and today was no exception; so I just used it as a good old fashioned timer. Which worked, but was sad, but okay I guess. Then it said I ran 3 miles. Well, I don't think so.

Went to the stadium with the idea of taking it easy. Then, I did not take it easy because they told me not to. Do as many sections as you can in 40 minutes, they said. Now tell someone how many that is. "40!" I exclaimed, leg still hurting from rock orienteering.

Then I did 51. And felt pretty great, actually.

60 pulls on the rollerboard. Felt lethargic all day. Then went out and felt lightheaded on the rollerboard. Legs still kind of jello from O, amazing what running through woods and jumping over things will do to you. So taking it easy for now, hoping I'm not coming down with anything.

My freshman year, it didn't snow in Minnesota until February. They're getting a foot tomorrow. I'm not bitter at all.

Orienteering. It hurts. Running 7 miles? Nothin'. Traill running 7 miles? Well, if there's a lot of elevation involved, yeah you can feel it. Running off trail for 7 miles two days in a row? My legs feel it. It feels good. (Except for my shin that met a rock.)

I have a very informal breakdown of 1 mile of running on a flat road = x. It breaks down as follows:

4 miles road biking
2 miles MTB
2 miles skate skiing
1.8 miles classic skiing
0.75 miles trail running (on a trail with decent footing; with steep rocky trails it goes down much more quickly, I figured that a pack up the Valley Way, 4 miles and 3500 feet with 60 pounds was equal to a half marathon)
0.6 miles orienteering.

I like making up numbers.

C • Units 6

So, very interesting race today. I ran way better than yesterday (winner was 8 mins faster, I was 28 mins faster) and cleaner. I also wound up running with the guy 2 minutes behind me most of the time, Gheorghe, and by running with I mean "leading in to controls." More on that in a second. I liked the terrain today way better. More contours, more bigger features, and less following vegetation boundaries.

So I started off slowly, following the trail and stream to 1, but not particularly well, having to come back to find it. Then went to 2 via more green than necessary, but found it as well. I bashed to 3 pretty well and then took a good if somewhat uncertain attack across the flat area to 4. I wound up seeing Gheorghe around 5 and 6 and orienteered to 5 pretty well but had gotten off north, and 6 okay as well. 7 I spiked well over the hill, and 8 was decent although I was now running with Gheorghe.

Gheorghe is a fast runner. The problem is that he doesn't seem to navigate too well. So every time I thought I'd dropped him, he'd catch up and then follow me in to a control. I feel like I led him in to half a dozen controls, and he led me in to a couple, and led me astray on a couple more. The thing is that he'd started 2 minutes after me, so if we finished together, he would have beaten me. (Although I beat him by several minutes yesterday, I wanted to win today, too. Small victories.) It's no the Billygoat!

9 was definitely one of these; I navigated off the contours and the spur-hill and led him (and someone on a different course) straight to it, and they both followed me as I punched. 10 I navigated down to a trail and then found the control with him. I got ahead of him to 11 and he returned the favor to 12 to the point that I actually caught up with him towards 13, then passed when I read the rocks (we were right) and found off the big rock-little rock pairing in the woods. Which of course he followed me in to.

14 I effed up. My mind wandered as I was contouring and I got to a big hillside which I failed to read. About a minute of standing around and I figured out where I was and navigated up to 14 fine but probably lost a minute or two. Then I went up to the fence and handrailed up to 15, spiking it around the (dry) pond, and Gheorghe followed me in. We ran together to 16, took different routes to 17 and 18, and the 19 struck. I got pulled way down, and wound up following Gheorghe to 20 (there were a lot of other people on other courses around) and went to make sure it was the wrong control. It was, but I was able to reorient well and run to 19, then back to 20. Lost four minutes, though, and a chance, if I'd orienteered well, to let Gheorghe overrun and get out of his line of sight.

21 we got to mostly together (I handrailed off the stream) and then 22. I bashed through the woods towards 22 and then reoriented off the trail there. I was a little north and wound up in the green line marsh, but Gheorghe was also a bit farblunget, and I pretty quickly realized where I was (having been caught by the line marsh) and bashed right to the control. Out of sight of Gheorge, I climbed to the top of the cliff, looked at my map, and dashed to 23.

I ran a straight line to 23, spiking the rock off the contours and the features, and then went down and found the trail to 24. Lost some time going way west, but at least I was beyond the visual field of Gheorghe. From 24 to 25, I ran down to the trail and found the rocks, spiked 25, and then ran off through the green and marsh to 26. While Gheorghe had managed to get ahead of me time-wise, he wasn't following me to 26, and while I lost some time getting to the control, I went in a conservative, straight line, and didn't lead anyone in.

To 27 I was north but then navigated well, bashed through green to 28, and sprinted in to the finish.

Beat Gheorghe by 9 seconds (having put 2:09 on him since the last control we had visited together). Since it's not the Billygoat, success.

Okay, I feel like I am being bitter. But it's rare that I actually navigate better than someone! I ran decently cleanly, but very cleanly for me. It was one of those days where I generally kept contact with the map and felt good about the run (the Billygoat last spring was similar, and similar terrain). I probably left a good 10 or 15 minutes out there, too, in navigation, and the rest in slips, falls, the huge black-and-blue forming on my shin, and such. But certainly better than yesterday.

C • Well done! 2

Run to the arena, bag drop, run to start.

Blue - Splits

Event: NEOC: 2014 Troll Cup
 

Long-ish run to the start.

So, orienteering when it's not 80. This is a good thing. I felt okay today and didn't make any huge mistakes, only really lost contact once, and raced the first half pretty well before falling apart in the second half. Which was too bad; I was feeling pretty good. Obviously I need a lot more training to really do well, and need to learn to move through the woods faster, but all things considered it was a decent race. Too bad I effed up the second half as much as I did. I was 15 minutes behind the leader at control 12 and wound up 50 minutes behind. Do the math.

1: Long-ish leg to 1. Getting a feeling for the map. Decided to skirt the swamp which was pretty dry, and then went up on a ridge next to the green. The stone walls were pretty overgrown, and I helped a kid on another course find his place (I've been there) before attacking the control. Brendan had run the road there and only beaten me by 2 minutes; that was probably a decent route choice.
2: Went up the valley. A bit nubbly running the stream, but not much green. Discussion afterwards about whether the road would have been a good choice, it added lots of distance but the other routes were certainly slower. Although not running the road helped me see the terrain.
3: Overran a bit on the trail but came around to spike it pretty well.
4: Used terrain but wound up getting caught by the trail, again went around the green.
5: Great attack up the reentrant off the road from the north, very spike.
6: Contour, rock, spike.
7: Used the contours and the vegetation, but some hesitation.
8: Zoomed down the trail, spike.
9: Vegetation and small contours, and a rock. Spike.
10: I got pulled right and wound up on the wrong spur, and ran by 11. This wasn't actually a horrible route, and I found 10 pretty easily.
11: Then back to 11.
12: And spikey navigation to 12.
13: Here things fell apart. I actually navigated pretty well towards 13. I took a good line through the woods and hit the trail running. My route choice of following the swamp was sub-optimal; I should have gone through white above it but the swamps earlier had been easier to follow. This one was light green on the map but denser than that. I immediately lost contact and hacked through it. Even the white swamp was very green, and I couldn't get to the big, runnable swamp from earlier. So it was up through some white, aiming to be caught by a trail, stone wall or water feature. I finally found a stone wall—the wrong one—with a huge boulder that was unmapped. I went the wrong way, then the right way and found the control. AP says I only lost 2 minutes, but I probably lost 6 as opposed to taking a good route. Also, I now know that black dots in white can mean a boundary between different types of veg (deciduous vs hemlock).
14: Things here went from bad to worse. I navigated well to the trail and attacked from a small, rocky spur to a big boulder and then planned to use vegetation and contours to find the control. Several issues: vegetation was thick(er than mapped) and indistinct. Contours were small, and often obliterated by vegetation. And the control was in what probably should have been a rock cluster, not two rocks (they were separated by less than a meter). I attacked twice from the big rock, and finally went back to the road and took a higher attackpoint and used a spur and vegetation to find the control. Easily lost 10 minutes.
15: Things got better for 15, but not much better. I was able to find the control with some difficulty.
16: Somehow I made two parallel errors and wound up two hills over, but corrected back to the control. Lots of other courses down here.
17: Spiked this one, at least.
18: This control seemed a lot greener than mapped. I mostly navigated there but then sort of bashed through white (the top was white, anyway) to find it. Not a spike, but where I expected it after I corrected for error.
19: Another loss. I navigated the first 3/4 on a straightish line, figuring I'd re-orient off the trail. Then I didn't. I just went in the woods, didn't find anything, went back to the road, found two big boulders, realized I was 100m off, ran down and found the control. 5 minutes?
20: And a minute or so here fumbling in the jumbly stuff.
21: Ran to the go control and in.

So, 20+ minutes lost on three controls at the end. All my fault, but all correctable stuff (and some of it was sort of map related; the green up top seemed differently mapped than down below, since the patches were much smaller). Tomorrow the goal will be to run the finer attackpoints better, that's where most of my issues happened, and not take silly attacks like through that swamp (although in my defense, it was white on the map).

Alex and I had rollerskis, so we went rollerskiing. I mapped out a nice loop up a hill. Well, it would have been nicer if it wasn't the detour for Route 119. But the downhill with the cars wasn't too bad, and everyone arrived home in one piece. Maybe a bit more rolling tomorrow?

Blue - Splits

So I skipped training yesterday because a) it was cold and rainy and b) I was going to do something early before the cold and rainy but I went to the Cambridge Boards and Committees reception which was way awesomer than I expected and had wine. And I may or may not have had just enough not to make a fool of myself. Then I had a couple of beers last night. I felt it all this morning. Being old is hard. And drinking season doesn't start until after Boston, so it is going to be real interesting.

Decent if a bit hungover run this morning. It hurt during, but was okay after. My shin is still giving me some trouble from a couple of weeks ago, so I took it easy on the downhills, and whenever we were on grass I bounded. At the end I did a few extra hills bounding. Bounding feels good. I need to find bigger hills to do it.

Everyone came to November Project! 1455 people, it was outrageous. And awesome. We took pictures. We ran stairs. Ridic. So much fun, guys.

Good run around the Longfellow and BU. Great night out there.

Run to and from NP

137 sit ups, 137 push ups, and some sprints.

Great run with Lincoln, Jess and Doug Mayer. No snow in the valley but an inch or two up a ways. It slowed us down some but basically was great for steady pacing. No big climbs but lots of ups and downs, and good paces the whole way. At the end, we had to blast through a nice, deep river, luckily at this point it was a nice short run to the dry sock car. Plus my feet got warm during that anyway.

Some new trails in the RMC area, and good ones at that. Didn't miss going above treeline in 10˚ temperatures with 100 mph winds. (Heh, now peaked to 112 mph, wind chill of -24.) Lincoln tried to get me to come to Mars Hill (ha) or Camden (considered it) to shred the snow over in Maine, but I didn't want to spend days in a car.

While others were hiking up a wet, nasty trail, I decided to hang back at the hut. My first work for stay was to build a tower of tables and benches and close windows. Then I asked if there was any wood to split.

There was.

An hour of splitting and stacking (mostly splitting) had me down to a tee shirt in a light snow. Splitting wood is so much fun, and such a damn good workout. I would love to live somewhere, someday, where I had to split wood. Oh, and these wood splitting machines? I will never stoop to that level. The satisfaction of squarely hitting a chunk of wood with a maul and having it split and fly in two directions is such a high.

I'm weird.

Ran the other way around the lake on the bog bridges, then down to the car. Made a call just in time at 2. A bit wet/snowy to rollerski.