Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

Feeling very ambitious this morning, I decided to join up with the CSU running section for a longish run out in Lexington at the Battle Road trail. It's a very nice soft dirt trail loop and there was a crew of about 8 running. Terry, John, Jon, Kevin, Andy, Dima, Karen and me.

The run felt great, a beautiful morning that was threatening to feel warm even. Never felt like I was working too hard.

Drove home and then Sam and I headed over to the Rocky Woods meet. I was feeling a little tired at the start but figured that I would "wake up" once I got into the woods. I was working hard and mentally I think I was sloppy because of being a tired from my earlier run. Stopped a bit early on 1, overshot 2, overshot 5, drifted right on 8, and then really bungled 11. Started off on a poor compass bearing and got on a parallel path which took me way far south. This flustered me and I was still feeling rushed when I got to the boulder cluster and didn't see the flag. Ran around the area a bunch more trying to make sense of the mapping in the thicker vegetation and eventually saw the bag, but 5 or so minutes lost. I wasn't able to get back on track though, and stopped on smaller hilltop in the area and was going back to relocate on the swamp when Sam caught up and passed me. So I chased her down and then promptly made a parallel error on 13, allowing her to pull ahead again. Drifted too far left on 15, bogged down in green on 16 and just incredibly slow up the hill to 17. Sam still just ahead of me on the trail towards the last control so I try to take a shortcut across the marsh, which was actually a very slow route.

So a nice race by Sam (and Alexei, who edged Sam by 6 seconds). Fun course designed by Ian.

Navigating when tired is a game of determination, one needs to be very deliberate about map reading, as it is easy to try to just "coast".

Control pickup at the end of the day. I snagged the quadrant with the fewest controls to pick up and jogged/hiked out to gather them in.

Brendan is right to say that we always get lucky with the weather when we hold a meet at Rocky Woods. The sun and good company made for a great day.

Red - Splits

Setting flags in the morning at Breakheart with Alex. We split things into two parts and I only misplaced one streamer by finding a barerock section that looked to me like a cliff with several boulders at the base.

A little snow in places, a great morning to get out and get moving.

Alex designed this course and Ed printed really pretty maps. CSU was hosting a bit of a Training weekend, as Lori and SGB proposed filling up the weekend which already had a local meet with other fun things. So a course at Breakheart was the first event.

After meeting in the parking lot and divvying up all the maps, I set out at a normal race pace, willing my feet and hands to warm up quickly. messed up 4 a bit after seeing Ali, and 6 after seeing Ian Webb. A decent effort the whole time and nice to push a little bit harder.

Still embarrassed about hanging the cliff wrong on the green hillside.

Headed over to Brendan's place for brunch afterward. which was amazing.

Sprint training at the Tufts campus map. Brendan set 3 little interval courses, and we started at short intervals and raced each other before meeting up and discussing each one.

started near the end of the first wave and was catching up to people on the first one. Brendan and I decided to go right on the first control just to see how it compared.

I started early in the wave on the second interval, but got caught by SGB almost immediately when I slowed to make sense of a missing tree at the first control. Pushed hard to stay ahead/with him to the finish.

Legs feeling a bit leaden at this point, pushing up hills was tough.

A final sprint course to cap off the evening. I started behind Sam and Ali and that was pretty good motivation to keep moving.

After the training we dispersed to take showers and then met up for a progressive dinner. Guacamole and hummus at SGB's as an appetizer. Pasta and sauce at Lori's as a main course, and then homemade Ice Cream and topping as dessert at Eric's.

We managed to get home feeling very full and happy. Awesome day, so thanks to everyone involved.

C • R&R 3

Took the day off from work in order to be a volunteer in yet another brown fat study. This time they were using ultrasound and an injectable contrast agent to image my neck for brown fat depots. I was acting as a positive control of sorts, because I have already been shown to have brown fat by PET-CT and MRI scans. The doctors in this study were happy to see the results though, and I like to participate in the studies. I got paid 100 dollars and I got to see an ultrasound image of my heart beating, including the fluttering of my valves. That's just so cool.

Sadly the test took a long time because they were still troubleshooting things and it also involved several hours of sitting in the cold to activate the brown fat. So today turned into a rest day.

To work.

Work to track.

A really nice workout. Sam came again, as did Kaspar, Ian Webb, SGB, and Terry. After warming up we did 3x (1000,600,400) with 1 minute rest between the pieces and 200 jog between the sets.

Felt great, pushing hard. SGB is a fast fast animal.

To work, getting in early for experiments.

Feeling tired, so took the shuttle home after work.

Running to work in the morning. Forgot to charge the Garmin.

Running to SGB's for CSU training.

Street-o exercise from SGB's place. It was a line o course, where a route was shown on the street map and all the intersections with other roads were marked as well, but the complete grid of streets was not shown. I ran counterclockwise and Giacomo ran clockwise and we met up at the same time at the end.

A fun exercise, and challenging because the scale was such that things were coming up very early.

Then dinner of pizza and chatting with the crew.

Caroline very nicely gave me a ride back into Newton. I had her drop me on Comm Ave and I ran home from there. A nice evening for running, but it was a good idea not to run the whole way back from Somerville.

To work. Motivated after a great training camp!

Snuck out at lunchtime to do some hills. Just plain creeping along though. only got through 4 reps, and all at about 2:20. Monday after a training camp is not a great time for speedy legs.

Not losing sleep over being slower than desired.

Running late to CSU A-meet meeting. A productive meeting and a great dinner with friends too.