Training Log Archive: Anvil

Just a short one to loosen the legs after yesterday and warm up for some core.
After some soreness this morning, legs felt great - unfortunately my right achilles did not. Sore at the beginning, never improved (though the sensation was less when I increased the pace) and bad enough to make me stop.
I assume it is due to yesterdays race, either from three hours:
a) in old Salomens with no insole, or
b) with the snowshoe strap tight around said achilles - it had slipped up there early and I just tightened the strap, assuming it had gone loose through my poor snowshoe strapping technique.
Hopefully I haven't done any major damage to it and will clear up in a few days - the last thing I want is to develop issues down there.

C • achilles 2

Event: Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Snowshoe Raid
 

That was just a whole bucketfull of fun (mostly).
Teamed up with the renowned Katie Mac in Coeds. Took the win by the very tiniest of whiskers - we spent a little too long at the aid station thinking we had plenty of time to get back, forgetting about the hardcore final km & uphill finish.
Had some really tough sections, going cross country from #79 to #78 was awful, then tried to be clever taking the road the long way round to #77 only to find the road unplowed and equally crap as the forest. Second half made up for it though cause of all the trails, basically only needed to glance at the map after #76 to make sure the trail you were on was going in the right direction!

C • Great job! 27

Was meant to be a rest day in preparation of the Snowshoe Raid, but when I considered the chocolate content of all the opposing teams rivals a Cadbury factory I decided to make the most of the awesome weather and head out for a cruise.
Mud-tastic on the Ginger Valley trail - where ever there was a slight banking on the trail I usually ended up in the forest. Really nice being in shorts and T again - looks like we're back down below zero tomorrow.

C • Snow 1

TNT with a huge turbout.
Due to an imminent Raid, we just headed up and down the Radial trail and did the usual Frankensteps.
Nice taster of spring, it was nice and warm out - however the trails were a slippy mess of ice and slush and even a little bit of mud.
We'd heard a fairly dodgy prediction of the SSR placings on Tuesday night, so spent the run making up a much more realistic one of our own :)

Was super cold on the ice tonight

ChocolateCore. Attempted to join in turbocore at ARK, but kept getting distracted.
Think I'm gonna switch rest days to Wednesday. Trying to squeeze a run in before ARK always makes me feel like I'm rushing to get everything ready before it starts.
However even when I needed to pick up some extra equipment at the last minute - todays ARK felt super smooth and I was a lot more relaxed.

Nice and easy, post Sprint Camp recovery run #2 (Hammer style).
1,2,3,2,1 tree line ints back on Chedoke and back in the snow (but not for much longer maybe). Frankensteps to follow.
I had nothing to give tonight, the spirit was willing but the flesh was chocolate. A bit annoying cause it's the kind of loop I like, but what can you do. At least I overtook hammer on one of them.

Nice and easy, post Sprint Camp recovery run (Vancouver style)
Trails of PSP, very wet and soggy. 2 creepy owls were guarding the trails.

Sprint Camp was epic. I've now got about an hour footage of myself during high intensity racing, so I will take advantage of that and do some detailed analysis.
However a few things I've noticed I need to work on:
One of the things I've prided myself on is my ability to plan ahead and have good flow in Sprint races, but I noticed I have the tendency to take it too far and not pay enough attention to the leg I'm currently on. Leg 1-2 of the MicrO Olympic Park race and 5-6-7 of the Jericho Beach Chase is a case of botching the planned leg due to focus on parts of the course to come. It's a tough balancing act, but at least something I'm now aware of.
I also don't fold the map enough - usually just one or two folds down the middle to make it more manageable to hold. Next race I'm going to purposefully refold the map for each leg just to see what it feels like.
There were a few speed/running too fast errors in there, I can put that down to 7 weeks worth of snowplusing (did I spell that right?) and not being used to hard, dry ground. Once Hamilton thaws I'll be able to work on that a bit more.
Finally, I'm aware of a lot of things I do wrong, but I realised after a question from Charlotte at my headcam presentation that I don't consciously work on fixing them. So, I'm gonna work on that too - I think on non race weekends I'll set myself training sessions to specifically work on my flaws. As far as I see it, I'm currently at a 17 minute/Weak Aussie level and there's no reason why I can't move up to the 15 minute/Hard Norwegian band with a bit of discipline.