Training Log Archive: cporter

Wheaton Regional Park - Since there was no SSS today I re-ran the Red that I did back in the early spring (sometime in March?). It was a delightful 94 degrees out there today so my only goal was to run a faster time than I did back in the spring, which I did. My time when I first ran the course was 1:23:11, so I ran it just about 6 min faster, but I believe that my time per km today was probably even faster than the my time shows - there are two reasons...I tried to take a different route as often as possible, even if it was not the optimal route (and often significantly longer) so that the terrain was as unfamiliar it could be. Also, the woods had grown much greener since March so some route choices I made today were simply to avoid the worst of the green (I wanted to orienteer, but I also wanted to keep up my speed) which meant a lot of trail runs around to controls rather than straight through the forest to them.

I am happy that I got to orienteer today, but I would have to say that I am only mildly satisfied with my run. My largest goal was to run the course faster than I had before, but I also wanted to redeem myself on some of the mistakes that I had made the first time I ran. Fortunately, I did on most of them, but I made the same exact error on my biggest mistake from my first run through the course! Ugh. I also managed to make an error that I did not make on the first run too which I am really mad about. I just simply missed a trail turn off and ran about 200m before I realized that the trail was going down a spur when it should be contouring the hill. Part of what accounts for that error, and a few other minor errors that I made was due to the state of my map. I drew my course on the map after my race in the spring and managed to draw over some rather important navigaional details - it also made it diffcult to determine what feature I was supposed to be finding in each control circle.

Regardless of the miserable heat, poor map quality, and my somewhat sloppy orienteering - it still felt great to be out on a map and in the forest. I cannot wait for Sweden!

We have a blog! Alison Campbell created a blog for the Junior Trip to Sweden this summer which, I might add, is only a week away!!!!! I'm totally psyched, but no where near ready yet. Our internet acess in Sweden might be questionable at some of our stops along the way - but we will be sure to keep everyone stuck in the USA this summer posted. I encourage everyone to check in on us once in a while at http://junioroingsweden2008.blogspot.com/

Cardio Kickboxing - The usual instructor for this class is on vacation for this week so class was structured very differently. Rather than doing a number of short boxing combinations we spent nearly the entire time building one combination. The combination was good and really forced you to think while exercising (orienteering training?), but I got a little tired of going over the same steps and just adding one more thing to the combination each time. Also, since this was a traveling combination we didn't quite have enough room towards the end and all off the stopping/starting didn't help me keep my heart rate up. As nice as it was to do something different, I think I prefer the way the other instructor does things. If only half our cardio time had been spent on the combination it would have been a lot more effective.

We didn't spar today because the gym ordered new gloves - they actually did so because of my hand rash which makes me feel kind of bad, but the instructor said that they needed to be replaced anyway so it gave them a good excuse. Rather than do more boxing moves we worked on the bosue doing different jumping exercises for balance work. We also did some really fun exercises/games while standing in a circle on our bosue's. We started with throwing around medicine balls and then used tension ropes (the stretchy kind with handle on each end) to try and pull each other off our bosue's. Since its Friday we turned the pulling each other off our bosue's exercise into Survivor Bosue - so once you were pulled off you were eliminated and the circle got smaller. I am happy to report that I was one of the three who were left standing. All three of us were pretty evenly matched so we ended up just calling it a draw since we were running out of time. Really FUN!

My instructor informed me that doing all the work on the bosue will zap more out of my legs than I think - so we'll see how running goes tonight.

I'm not sure what is worse running in the heat and humidity or the torrential downpour during the thunderstorm that I got caught in today. Usually when the weather person calls for thunderstorms I decide not to run and then it either never rains or doesn't start until long after I would have been done running anyway. I knew that they were calling for thunderstorms and I thought about checking wtop.com, but I decided that doing so would only give me an excuse not to run, so I just went ahead and got ready for my run and went for it. I was only planning a 45-50 min run anyway since my kickboxing class was pretty draining on my legs anyway so I really didn't think I'd get caught in the rain. When I got to the Adelphi Mill Parking lot the sky was starting to look dark, but again, I wasn't about to back down now - especially since I was all ready to run at this point. I think the rain started at about 18 min into my run, and it only rained lightly at this point so I still thought I might be ok, but then, just as I hit the brutal 3+ min climb from Wed's run the bottom dropped out. I was pretty much soaked through by the time I got to the top so I got worrying about that out of the way pretty quickly and just kept running. The only concern I really had was falling tree limbs - the closest one fell about 10 ft in front of me and it definetly would have hurt or could have done some more serious damage had it fallen on me. I figured if the wind got really bad I'd just hang out in one of the tunnels that run under some of the bridges that cross over the trail.

Speaking of the bridges - I didn't anticipate that so much water would be running off the sides of the bridges and across the trail so when I did come to them I had two very fast moving streams of nasty water from the roads above to contend with . The first one wasn't too bad so I just ran through it, however the second one was much wider and deeper. I probably would have still just waded through it had I not known where the water was flowing from (New Hampshire Ave I believe), but since it was going to come up at least to my mid calf I decided to just jump up on the railing and shimmy along that to avoid the worst of it. The problem was that the railing was one of those wire rope fences so there was a lot of slack which meant I had to lean back and hang out over the water. I kind of wish someone had caught me doing this on camera it would probably be hysterical. The positive thing that came out of this is I realized just how far my upper body stregnth has come since I started kickboxing - I don't know that I would have been able to hold myself up an make it across a couple of months ago.

Overall the run was quite an adenture, if not a little nerve wracking. It certainly helped to mix my running up a bit.

Tempo Run along Northeast Branch - 15 min warm-up/down and 4x5min at 80% with 90 sec recovery. I normally enjoy tempo runs, but today's was more difficult that I expected - probably due to the heat and humidity. I made sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day, but I was still sluggish - I definetly felt dehydration kicking in by the 3rd rep. I managed to pull it together for the last one and tried to just maintain a consistent speed for the first 4 min and finished hard the last min.

Northwest Branch Trail - Its been a crazy and stressful couple of days which has prevented me from getting out to run for the past 3 days, but more of that later...Continuing my attempts to "branch" out my running routes I gave the Northwest Branch a try. I jumped on to the trail at Adelphi Mill and ran north for a little over 20 min, till the trail split and the pavement ended. My first instinct was to follow the trail to the left along the stream (Northwest Branch refers to the northwest branch of the Anacostia River) and I did for a little while, but the going got rough because there were many obstacles like downed trees and the rocky shore line - I started to think that I made a mistake because the trail was definetly becoming less well tread so I turned back. I decided to give the trail to the right a go which was a lot tougher going than I expected because this part of the trail goes up to the top of the canyon/ravine/gorge/whatever you call it that the river flows through. The hill started right at the head of the trail, but there was no way to know that I would be climbing at a pretty steep grade for the next 3 min. Just as I thought I had made it to the top, there would be another turn and more hill - I still managed to keep a good pace going up it so I can't complain too much. The icing on the cake, however, is that when I go to the top, the trail deadended at a road that was clearly not the Northwest Branch Trail. So I just turned around and ran back down the hill. Since the going had been rough on the first trail, I decided to just head back and run the other direction once I got back to my starting point. I hit that point at about 45 min so I kept going till I hit University Blvd/193. I turned around and ran around the park a bit to run add some more time then eventually headed back.

Despite some hiccups it was a great run and I look forward to exploring more the of the NW Branch.

Oh about my crazy stress - On Sunday night I developed this strange rash on my hands that actually looks more like a burn than a rash, I also found what looks like an infected bug bite (again doesn't itch just really red) on my hip. To make matters even worse, my one lymphnode in my groin/hipflexor area is swollen so much that I have a bump there (again doesn't hurt or anything). I saw a doctor today and she didn't really know what it was or if any thing is related and could only tell me to wait a few more days on the lymphnode and my hands and come back if it doesn't get better. Just to be cautious she is treating me for lyme disease since I'm developing all these rashes. Normally I'd object since I think that doctor's over prescribe, but since I'm leaving the country in a little over a week I decided to go with it because I don't want to have any medical problems abroad. Now let's just hope that everything rights itself before them. Haha, I feel kind of like a patient from a "House" episode, minus the whole life-threatening part.

C • Are you allergic to poison ... 2

Kickboxing Bootcamp

Core Workout Class - Chloe, the instructor for this class usually kicks my butt, but (haha) today I felt pretty good. She gave us a nice mix of exercises and alternated between doing each exercise with quick/powerful movements and then slow/controled movements. Its very interesting how the same exercise feels so different when you slow it down. Most of the ab exercises concentrated on just one side of the abs, so we did a lot of twisting today. We also did alot of exercises that required the movement of both the arms and the legs at the same time. These are not my favorite (probably because they require a lot of core stregnth to do well) and serve a constant reminder of why I am an orienteer and a runner and not a team sport athlete - I have NO coordination.