Training Archive: iamsinhtIn the 30 days ending 2008-06-30:
| [csv] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| « | » |
| » now | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | ||||||||||||||
Saturday Jun 28 | ||
| Canoeing 2:00:00 [4] ** 5.6 km (21:26 / km) +500m 14:49 / km | |
| shoes: NB ABZORB EX 12 | ||
| The New England championship Canoe-O. Lori and I went through a comparatively Herculean process to attend, and we didn't have a particular interest in our speed. She and I hadn't even rowed a canoe by ourselves before, and while we both had sufficient canoe experience, we expected our lack of preparation to put us well back of the field.
We had a good time, but because I was providing most of the power, I was J-stroking almost constantly to keep us on course. We also used conventional canoeing equipment as opposed to race equipment, a fact for which we were gingerly berated. I was satisfied with our pace and strategy - control 3 was interestingly behind a dam. I estimate we could have finished in about 1:40, but we chose a poor strategy (as it turned out, an illegal strategy as well as a slower one) that resulted in our disqualification. For about 29 minutes, I rowed along by myself, and found it quite interesting. With an empty bow, the moment of the canoe is much smaller, so a stroke rotates the bow by 3-8 degrees. Once the canoe gets moving, the resistance to rotation is larger, and it's easier to maintain speed. I tried kneeling in the center, rowing from the stern, and rowing backwards from the bow; bow rowing was the most effective in general. It's certainly true that I was slower by myself, but I believe I got up to an instantaneous velocity of 3-4 mph - however, I was zigzagging slightly. I'm curious to see how a kayak would perform under race conditions - Keith and I were debating which would be faster. Also, the climb component of this entry is a farce (though we were hit by a few impressive wakes). Congratulations to Jeff Schapiro, who came without a boat, supervised parking for about two hours, then single handedly won the New England Championships singles race with a unique combination of brute strength, perseverance, and uberhardk0reness. | ||
Thursday Jun 26 | ||
| Orienteering 55:00 [2] 4 km (13:45 / km) | |
| shoes: NB ABZORB EX 12 | ||
| Pia's training course at Prospect Hill, part of the CSU summer training sequence. As an interesting twist, while the front of the map was the complete course with all the o-details we've come to expect, the back of the map was the controls superimposed only on the contours.
I arrived late, courtesy of my poor planning, and found the contour exercise challenging and interesting. Running into large features - roads, cliffs, open areas and even lakes - is surreal without that data. I find that while contours are interesting, I tend to rely on other features - rocks, cliffs, and major contours, like reentrants and spurs. Anyway, after I hit control 7, I decided it was getting too late and too dark to continue using only the contour map (though I had cheated a few times), so I switched to using the complete map exclusively, and finished through control 15. In the vicinity of control 16, I couldn't find the streamer - possibly because it was too dark - so I aborted and ran back to the start. | ||
| Biking 45:00 [4] 11.0 mi (4:06 / mi) | |
| shoes: NB ABZORB EX 12 | ||
| Travel by bike to Prospect Hill Park. Route choice was not optimal. | ||
Sunday Jun 22 | ||
| Event: WCOC Crandalls Park | ||
Friday Jun 20 | ||
| Weight training (Abdominal Workout) 10:00 [3] | |
| shoes: NB ABZORB EX 12 | ||
| Lori's diabolical abdominal workout; it was a bit challenging, but not as strenuous as I expected. I was unfamiliar with much of the workout, so much of my focus was on correctly implementing the technique. Most unfamiliar to me were the oblique crunches, which I struggled with; with my knees to one side, I struggled to lift the opposing side shoulder blade.
Amusing commentary mid-exercise from Ross. | ||
Thursday Jun 19 | ||
| Intervals 24:15 [3] 5 km (4:51 / km) | |
| shoes: NB ABZORB EX 12 | ||
| CSU Interval training, Tufts track, run by Lori "Teh Small One" Huberman. The course consisted of 400, 600, 800, 800, 600, 400 intervals with 200 m rests between them. Peter Chikov and I were late to the workout, so we ran them together.
I enjoyed this interval training more than I expected, and I was less incapacitated by it; however, I wish I had run faster. Peter did a great job - this was his first running training with CSU, and he wasn't quite sure what to expect. I'm not sure how much faster I could have pushed myself without some outside stimulus - like Ross, Ian Finlayson, or Clem motivating me. Length/Time/400 m Pace 400 93.70 93.70 600 151.71 101.14 800 208.31 104.15 800 200.97 100.46 600 148.86 99.24 400 82.16 82.16 My goal was 90-second/400 m pace - corresponding to a 6 minute/mile pace. The data suggests that I'm slow and unskilled as a runner. | ||
Sunday Jun 15 | ||
| Running 15:00 [3] 3.5 km (4:17 / km) | |
| Run from the Alewife T stop to Menotomy Rocks Park. | ||
| Orienteering race 47:04 [3] 6.4 km (7:21 / km) | |
| shoes: NB MT800 Alpha | ||
| NEOC Long Motala at Menotomy Rocks park. This is my second race at this park, and while the Motala format was interesting, I don't think this course was as effective using the park as the CSU park-o.
Briefly, the Long consisted of three legs (much like a relay) - (in the order I did them): orange, yellow and street of lengths 2.1, 1.9, and 2.4 k respectively. I started my orange leg simultaneously with Carl Underwood. I was ahead of him at 2, but fell behind after a poor route choice from 4-5. He runs well. While Michael Commons was traveling from one side of the park to another, I passed him 5 times. In the grassy field at the entrance, there were like N dogs (N(t) - varied with time), and N-k (for 0 < k(t) < N(t)) tennis balls. The result was hilarious - dogs frantically scurrying about trying to keep or steal a tennis ball. They were so focused on their goals, I almost ran over two while approaching a control. While I was in general pleased with my performance today, an acceptable benchmark - Carl Underwood - pwned me in about 39 minutes. I made a few mistakes and one particularly bad route choice, but I'm not totally discouraged. The biggest lesson of today's orienteering was simple: always go to the bathroom before going out on your course. I won't get into details, but suffice it to say that I think I could have shaved about 4-5 minutes off my time with this simple precaution. My focus for the next week will be abs, because I know whatever Lori cooks up for Thursday 19 June CSU training will be the diabolical abdominal workout from hell. | ||
Thursday Jun 12 | ||
| Orienteering race 30:34 [4] *** 4.05 km (7:33 / km) | |
| weight:86kg shoes: NB ABZORB EX 12 | ||
| A CSU training park-O put on by Ross at Peter's Hill in the Arnold Arboretum. The course, while navigationally straightforward, had substantial climb. I forgot my compass, but that didn't substantially impede me. I was pleased that I stayed in contact without the use of my compass.
On e-punch courses at A meets and most NEOC meets, I use my stopwatch to track my total time - usually to motivate/yell at myself for taking so long to approach control N. As a result, I have not extensively practiced recording splits; on this particular course, I took 9 of 13 splits (so they're pretty much all useless). I met Clem McGrath and his wife Daria; they apparently live very close to my apartment. I hope to glean some WOCesque skillz. | ||
Tuesday Jun 10 | ||
| Biking 13:28 [1] 2.98 km (4:31 / km) | |
| slept:6.5 shoes: NB ABZORB EX 12 | ||
| Travel to work. While hardly a workout, I'm logging it for data collection purposes - for later analysis. I suspect time dependence because of traffic (and perhaps heat); this run was from about 8:30 to 8:45. I spent about half the journey waiting at traffic lights. | ||
Sunday Jun 8 | ||
| Biking 3:30:00 [3] 67.86 km (3:06 / km) | |
| shoes: NB ABZORB EX 12 | ||
| A bike ride to Walden Pond with Lori. The temperature started at 94' F and diminished to about 86 F. We road predominantly on the scenic Minuteman Bikeway, though there was a fair amount of road riding. We also traversed an impressive number of hills of non-trivial size.
The lessons learned: - It's been too long since I've ridden my bike - I am not ready for such long journeys at present - My butt is not well conditioned for long periods of using a bike seat - My bike is more robust than I gave it credit - I need to bring an audiobook next time I go cycling for any length. I estimate our peak flat speed (e.g. on long stretches of the Minuteman Bikeway) was about 16-17 mph, based on mile marker measurements. We stopped a fair amount, including about an hour at Walden Pond; the total duration was 5 hours. Interesting sights on this trip included Jean Rife (a former music instructor of mine @mit.edu), an albino squirrel, spy pond, and innumerable cyclists of varying calibre. | ||
| Weight training 10 [4] | |
| Curling Lori exactly once. It was a bit of a strain; I wouldn't want to integrate this into my regular exercise regimen. | ||
| C • Day 1 | ||
Thursday Jun 5 | ||
| Running (Elliptical) 30:00 [3] | |
| ahr:160 shoes: NB ABZORB EX 12 | ||
| I ran on an elliptical at my gym while reading Wheel of Time. I'm not entirely sure why, but I have difficulty standing up straight at length while using an elliptical. I find that as my workout progresses, I increasingly use the arm holds for support.
In that sense, while ellipticals are lower impact than treadmills, I find treadmills more sustainable. Perhaps I should revise my elliptical technique. | ||
| Weight training 15:00 [3] | |
| 40x squats, weight varying incrementally from 45 to 135 lbs
100x awesome situpy machines, body weight 50x curls, 30-40 lbs | ||
Sunday Jun 1 | ||
| Orienteering race 1:14:45 [3] *** 6.6 km (11:20 / km) +270m 9:24 / km | |
| spiked:10/13c slept:4.0 shoes: NB MT800 Alpha | ||
| The NEOC Nobscot Scout Reservation red course. Overall, I was pleased with my performance. In general, I had good route choices, kept up a good running tempo, stayed in contact with the map, and effectively used my time for planning purposes.
I rolled my ankle, and my right knee was painfully throbbing along the course; the former I will probably treat with ice, and the latter with weight training (I guess). I was just on the verge of the 10 minutes /k goal, but I was within my (2 times average(Ross, Brendan)) goal. (Ross won in 54 minutes; Brendan did not attend). Overview comments: - I still suck at interacting with other orienteers. About fifty meters out of the start, I ran into a couple who were probably running yellow or orange; I transitioned into my "look like you know what you're doing" mode, and got lost ON TRAILS. Sigh. I estimate a four minute mistake. - Lakes are awesome attack points. - I find that when actually orienteering through woods, I find a set of attack points on the way to ensure I'm still in contact. In a curious correlation, I find that adding attack points makes my split time longer because I take time to verify hitting each one. This was true, e.g. on control 6 on 26 May Long course; I had a good route and stayed in contact, but my split was long. In depth description: Apart from my trail blunder approaching control 1 (I overshot on trails by about 250 m), that control was easy. Control 2 was steep, but obvious relative to a significant cliff. I initially didn't go far enough south, costing perhaps 1 minute. Control 3 was a difficult, treacherous approach on a steep, leafy slope; my route could have been better, but I did hit the two trails I expected to intersect in the correct places. I was proud of my route to Control 4; rather than take the obvious trail (and add perhaps 150-200 m), I hit a field and beelined via two rock walls to spike the control. For control 5, I had a good route and should have run faster. Controls 6, 7, and 8 all had excellent lake attackpoints, bringing me to within about 100 m in each case. From 8 to 9, I decided to go over a spur rather than contour around and picked up the reentrant leading to the knoll near 9. I figured it was fastest; the other runners I talked to all went over (and I'm sure someone as energetic as Ross and the Saegers, e.g. would). The remaining controls were all fairly straightforward. I put a lot of effort from 12 to the end. | ||
Red - Splits | ||