Training Log Archive: W

Long training on 1:15000 at Forte Cherle. This started off relatively okay. On the way to one there were plenty of times where I really had no idea where I was but I had faith in being able to see important things along the way (such as number 3). Number 2 was less good and I think it started off with having a bad bearing. The real debacle started at 9 when I again went too short. I mis-took a feature that I thought I was above, when I actually hadn't passed it yet. It was a deep hole with a clearing on it, but I've found myself being skeptical of clearings (in general, not here, they're useful here), and I vastly overestimated the size of the hole, which was actually just a small but wide depression.

I really think it comes down to distance judgement, which I haven't gotten down yet. Perhaps more time will help.

(Spoilers: Unlikely.)

Went to Asiago to run the middle in the three days of trenches. I expected number 1 to be difficult so I expertly botched it high. There was a time when I felt that when I side-hilled, I tend to run down too much, so I think I now compensate by running uphill too much, and that was evident given how high I was above number 1.

However, the debacle arose in earnest at number 9. I ran along the hillside in an attempt to spot this nice plateau above the control and then into the control. But I mis-took a gentle gentle slope for a pleatau and stopped way, way too early. Wandered around for a bit. Went back to the control, tried again, same thing. For some reason I was once again having a lot of difficulty seeing big features, on both the map and the terrain and making them co-operate. Eventually I came to a spot way below it and determined where I was. I felt quite bad about this one, and then felt significantly moreso when I cam up way short again on 12 because I seem to have now developed feature paranoia where every little dip is some huge re-entrant that I need to confirm where I am. I definitely need to chill the hell out a little.

(Spoilers: I didn't.)

After a bit of a break we did a short sprint around Asiago, two 2.3-ish k sprints. I couldn't run too hard because of some bruising on the bottom of my foot from this morning's epic failure, but ran mildly briskly and tried to have good plans well ahead of time. The corners and turns come up very very quickly in these towns, and I did find a use for a magnifier at some points too. Being able to keep track of turns will probably be super important in Venice, the magnifier less so.

Well, got started on orienteering in Italy, and.... it ain't pretty. Dont' get me wrong, the scenery is very pretty, my orienteering, however, is not. There were these claims that this map was hard to read and whatnot, but it was a race map from a previous WRE so obviously people didn't have a problem then, so I can't use it as an excuse now. I did most definitely have difficulty spotting the big features and navigating with them, so things were really not going very well. There were no flags out so there was basically nothing to spot either, but that's not a real excuse. One can only hope it'll get better after day one.

(Spoilers: it hasn't.)

For the sake of logging, I've decided to only log moving time, so time spent standing still like a dumbass doesn't count as training.

Well, this actually went just slightly better. This terrain felt more familiar, but one could argue that several of the controls were on unreasonably large features for World Champs. Like, the cave at the bottom of a giant hole. You could see it from a mile away. But, there was this super rocky area that I could get through okay, and I side-hilled okay. Will I be able to manage all the sidehilling that will inevitably come this week?

(Spoilers: No.)

Well, after some lengthy travel including an admittedly not terrible Air Canada Rouge flight and driving in Italy, we got to Chiesa, our home for the next week or so before we have to repeatedly get up and move places. This is the most annoying part of this WOC, is that we keep having to up and move. That really cramps my style.

I don't really have any style, per se, if I did, I'm sure this would be cramped.

Since we arrived at about 5PM, I tried to get out and go for a jog to keep myself awake until a reasonable hour for some real sleep. Did a little touristic run around the Lago de Lavarone. Up in the hills, through some trails, around time, very nice. This is a lovely place.

One last run in Edmonton with Nevin. Its been a busy day of trying to catch up on everything before heading off to Italy. Strangely, at this point, I wasn't really looking forward to Italy. Its been a good year for running, but a fairly bad year for orienteering. Can I become legit in a week and a half? I doubt it.

The business is really ramping up now, so this is all I had time for with one last run with my sister. Too bad to see her go, but my legs were also getting quite sore from running this slow. Its not that slow, but I guess I've now got "me speed". I suspect part of it is that I would even personally find it too difficult to run at if I was trying to run at my pace and chit-chat. All that gabbing about takes up precious oxygen.

One last training session with Kim before heading off to Italy. Headed back to SWC for some rolling intervals. Its odd to say but I've never really spent much time out at Strathcona to run, but it makes REALLY good interval terrain. Its a long drive, so that's obviously a bit of a pain, but you never have to deal with dogs, other people, cars, or dogs. Its not crazy technical but twisty and turn-y enough to keep it from being boring.

Anyhow, hammered out the same loop as last week, but did it more times, and just slightly slower. Each interval was slightly tougher than the last, though I did them in about the same time, ranging between 3:44 and 3:42. My Garmin pegs the loop at about 1.07km with zero climb (HA, no).

I feel more confident in my running fitness than I ever have before, which I think really started to come together last October when I really changed my focused heavily into quality over junk miles. Although I still did lots of skiing intervals, we delayed getting into faster intervals until relatively recently, sticking with just getting out and putting in those brisk intervals. However, once we got into the fast stuff, they were also short, pointed, and fast, and I think they went pretty well. It would have been nice to see how my 3000m time is doing, but maybe after this trip I'll give it a go. Obviously I'm also buoyed by my 10 miler success in April, and my relative run speed compared to Mr. Le Beef. Of concern though is my relative lack of technical training, which will hopefully be remedied in Italy to a certain degree.

I've simply run out of ways to get any real tech training in Edmonton what with working all the time and trying to get in solid running workouts. I can't drive 2.5 hours to go to different maps every weekend, and the quality of Wednesday night events this year have been stunningly low. I think Kamloops had some promising indicators especially if I can keep my focus and maintain the process. My plans need to be better, but hopefully improved fitness will give me a little more confidence to slow down and leave controls with less urgency and more purpose.

Theory into action!

Pulled out the "who's who" of elite orienteering in Edmonton to a brisk control picking session at Coronation Park. This would be another great place for a sprint, methinks. Just cruised comfortably and tried to spot my control, spot my exit direction, though I lost track at one point. Good, but not great.

C • Coronation 9

Not quite my usual system, but went for a morning run before heading to the shop. Nothing too special, except for a "cute" off-leash dog whose owner informed us that her dog simply sees runners and wants to play.

OH, that must explain the growling. DUH.

Did a 5 peaks run down Whitemud. This was literally 5 peaks because we opted out of the 6th due to having to double-pass a group of junior high students being forced to do a death march down the valley. I'm sure they'd rather be using their phones, and we definitely preferred not to have to see their trail-space-taking selves again. It was definitely another slow-ish pace, but I thought the climbing was just comfortable and still a run, and really felt no worse for wear by the end. Then again, these hills are only, like, 20 meters of climb. No mountains here!

Possibly a bit of a molasses run, but that's okay. Did the loop around Hawrelak and then back through the university. It is quite remarkable how not only does running faster not feel much worse, but running slower can actually start to feel bad. I thought that in this case, my legs were more sore after than if I had run faster. Its probably a technique thing, but as I've said before, sometimes you have to deal with that for the pleasure of running with someone else.

Orienteering was Mosquito this week (oh, sorry, I meant St. Albert), so oh no hell no I wasn't doing that. Instead we headed to Goldbar for more high-speed grass running. This time was 8 x 60 seconds, followed by 6 x 30 seconds, and then 4 x 15 seconds. I thought that was not a bad workout at all. I could feel my legs getting a mite wobbly by numbers 7 and 8 of the sixty seconders, so it meant the thirty seconds were also a tad on the "forrest gump" side, as Jack would say. (I think that's how he refers to it anyway). But, afterwards, it feels like it was a productive go of it, so that's good. Nervous to pull a hamstring during the 15 second sprints, but no harm done.

Apparently I went running for an hour and 10 minutes and ran 8 miles. I have no recollection of doing this, but my sister says so, so... okay.

Finally a little O+ training. I may take the cake for the least amount of technical training a person can possibly do before going to Europe to compete in orienteering. Thankfully, once there, it will be a massive blitz.

Anyhow, a couple of courses around the University, including a brand, brand new map. That was pretty sweet. There's plenty of fences and a few gaps so there actually needed to be some attention paid to small detail, which was great. Put in contacts and wore compass, so it was whole nine yards training. Didn't run really fast, just smooth, and continually thought about "plan, plan, plan", even then, though, there were times when I thought about my running technique, or pointless things like that.

Still, that was the first time I've been on a new map in the city in probably 10 years that wasn't made by me. Its a small miracle. And there's still TWO MORE.

Another bout of Kim-tervals out at SWC. This is actually a really great place to do intervals. Like, really good. This time was 1 x long interval, which was about 3.1k in 11:56, and then 3 x 1.1k at faster, progressing from 3:35 to 3:25 pace. On average, this is fewer intervals in a typical workout than I'm used to, BUT, I think its compensated by going faster. Those 1k intervals, I think I probably could have done one more at that pace without too much suffering, but then I suspect my pace would have tanked. I probably could have done 6-7 at the pace of the first one (~3:35 pace), but that's really a different kind of workout. I can appreciate how these are a bit more speed oriented than distance oriented, which is probably good for me. Really, I'm not going to be gaining any more endurance at this stage before worlds, I just want to run faster, so this is good.

An easy, marginally slow recovery run with a special guest. WHO COULD IT POSSIBLY BE??

So I'm reasonably confident I've figured out why my Garmin was eating workouts over the last few days. And turns out it wasn't. It was GARMIN EXPRESS! See, I was trying to get my car GPS to have Italy maps (for that whole adventure), and so in turn I downloaded this program that is meant to integrate all Garmin services into one program. BUT, it A) didn't upload my workouts to Garmin connect, B) didn't store them locally, and C) deleted them off my watch. So it said "succesfully downloaded!" in which 0% of those words were actually correct.

Anyway, running. Went for a run. Hit some trails, nice morning, good stuff. Finished off with some indoor in the evening. Feet still holding strong despite two consecutive games of soccer. That'll be the end of that for a while.

Paul convinced me to come out and do some 4x4s, and I turn convinced him not to go out to Strathcona, rather, leave from my house. These weren't true Vo2Max 4x4s, but just nice cruise-y ones where I didn't feel overly stressed by the end. Unfortunately I have no idea what my pace or HR was because this was day 2 of Garmin Express making my workouts vanish into thin air. Still, this didn't seem to do too much damage too my legs, and good to get out.

Sneaky Garmin ate my workout without even telling me. Clever. Went for my usual run before the shop on Thursdays, just out to Mill Creek and back, nothing too special. Legs felt fine, just cruised along. Though, there was this muddy bit and my Pearl Izumi's still have less than no tread on them, so that was a rather exciting few moments. Like ski boots on ice. Yikes.

C • no traction shoes 3

Well, it rained a little. Went down to Goldbar where there was both a workout and orienteering. Arrived early to at least get in some of the orienteering course. Wow, am I thankful I had a workout to do. I skipped 2 and 3 due to incredibly bland dog-legs, 7 was nothing short of a crazy person's leg, where going straight involved fording a currently raging creek, or, going way, way, around, and then exiting the control by going way, way back the way you came, re-fording the raging creek, or about 200 meters of classic Edmonton dark green. How is that possibly a good idea?

So, after suffering through that for a while, got back to the pavillion to hit up some fast running around the lake. 4 x 1 minute, 6 x 30 seconds, and then some strides. I think I actually went faster than last time, the minuters going from 3:08 to 3:01 to 2:58 to 2:51. Obviously that's quite fast, but with so few of them, I think its worthwhile to do them fast; make them as productive as possible.

I've been thinking a lot about trying to make myself run less like a skier. I really think that I let my leg extend too far back, as if I'm classic skiing. I lift my leg to late and so it comes through late and I spent more time in contact with the ground. Though, to be honest, after watching this video that Kim took and comparing it with some slow-mo on Youtube, it doesn't look too different, but... still something wonky. I'm not quite sure what it is. But.... probably not worth fretting over too much.

Gee whiz, I felt pretty good tonight. Wasn't the greatest idea necessarily to take my least grippy shoes out for a trail run in the rain, but, what the heck. The second part of the west side of whitemud in the single track is pretty durn thick these days, so it got pretty slow going when I came upon that part. Someone else clearly thinks that's their private place because there's two of those nice folding lawn chairs overlooking the ravine.

Actually I imagine its a pretty good view. Good idea, mystery person!

Intended to take the day off, but Paul suggested a fun workout at SWC. 10 minutes running, followed by 5 minutes of core, and then continue running. Aside from the epic amounts of mosquitos, I enjoyed this. The most interesting part was how activated my core felt after doing bouts. You'd think it might be fatigued, but really, it felt like my hips, abs, shoulders, etc. were all awake and firing and it felt surprisingly good. I'm going to have to give this some thought for future workouts and races. I not going to outright go and start doing push-ups and whatnot, but there must be something I can do to make this a more tangible thing.

Polished off with some plyos at the end. Time is for running only (NO CORE LOGGING HERE!)

Kim workout at SWC! It was an approximately 2.2k loop at the Wilderness Centre, lots of rolling hills, though apparently none of them registered with my Garmin, since it says that I did ZERO climb in each interval. That's.... not quite right. Its a very nice loop for intervals, though, the toughest is when you get to the turnaround part (after avoiding the very aggressive geese), its basically all net uphill. Two very steep hills, and generally you go from the bottom to the top.

Kim's a big fan because its a lot of transition, constantly climbing, descending, fatiguing, recovering, again and again. Ran the loops in 8:38, 8:26, 8:27, 8:30, and it got progressively a bit tougher to maintain that pace by the last one. Legs a little angry from yesterday's lengthy road run. I'd like to try this again when my legs are better. I think I could comfortably do it faster.