Training Log Archive: W

A real nice though slightly shorter than normal tempo run around Jyvasjarvi. I didn't feel remarkably fast, but I did feel fairly comfortable at a pace a little slower than usual. Its getting hotter and hotter out there and I was pretty darn sweaty during this workout despite it being cloudy and occasionally rainy. So... perhaps it was the rain. I'm thinking about doing the Finlandia Half Marathon in September, and this loop is the course (twice), so at the rate I ran it today, I'd do a 1:28 half-marathon! Not a PB!

Afternoon light jog around the neighbourhood ski trail. It makes me happy that I have a neighbourhood ski trail. It also rained quite heavily. Kind of like a standard mid-summer Edmonton afternoon warm day storm, but, sadly, no lightning/thunder. That's really what's missing from Mid-Finland on these summer days.

And some hail.

Summer has FINALLY arrived in Jyvaskyla. Lovely warm weather, sunshine, great to head out and do a nice light run with a bunch of hills around Laajavuori. Lungs feel good, legs a little tired from yesterday, but too nice a day to worry about that stuff. Add in "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" podcasts, and it was a good run. (yes, I now somewhat regularly listen to podcasts while running - so far its 3 - that one, Freakonomics Radio, and Retronauts).

I was lucky enough to get to tag along on the boy's training day over at Suonenjoki.

And... this first training was a disaster. Don't get me wrong, it seemed to be a pretty difficult map, the other guys made some mistakes too. But, for me, it was less about mistakes due to difficulty and more just some pretty foolish mistakes caused by continued lack of attention to the basics. Since being in Finland I've perhaps focused to much on the mantra of "always go straight" with the cost of not paying attention to other important aspects, like.... reading the map.

The visibility was super lower so I did find it hard to see anything, and some controls were simply ridiculous, like the control down about 20 contours on a bafflingly complex yet vague steep hillside, but others should have been easy if I, for example, left the control in the proper direction and stayed on a proper line. This was likely also a product of trying to tiptoe through the tulips rather than run through whatever the forest through at me, so that I need to remember to be tougher and more aggressive with my running.

In general, quite discouraging training, I was really not so happy. And there's still one more training today.

Given my epic frustration of the morning's training, I decided to take a more simple approach to this afternoon's training. I chose some physical things that would be easy for me to do properly. Specifically, 1) Read the map with two hands, and 2), Run with my compass and map flat. Two things that I figured would help my performance, and easy to manage since I could just notice I might not be doing them and physically change.

Many times its easier to physically change something you're doing rather than change your thinking. So, that's what I did.

Sure, the map was a little bit easier and nicer to run, but just focusing on doing those two things right seemed to help a bit and I was far more satisfied with that session. For KRV next week, I think I'm going to try to continue to focus on those two things. Keep it simple, stupid.

Huippu-Liiga Loviisa. Or... Lovisa. Or something. This town appears to absolutely insist on not compromising on the Swedish/Finnish thing. Not even regarding a single "i" in their name.

This was an awful expensive race but a quasi-big deal in Finland and was also a world ranking event, so it was worth the money and the driving distance for the fun/adventure! This week has not been great for training, and I have not been sleeping well or feeling all that fit, so that had me worried quite worried.

The day started off raining heavily, so I opted for 3/4 tights and my X-talons, in part because it was raining and partly because the old map had a hill in the middle of it that I thought we would be doing a bit of trail running on. However, about 10 minutes before my start the sun came out and it got super hot and totally tried up. AND, we didn't use that hill at all. So, there I am at the start in the wrong shoes and way, way, over-dressed. Off to a bad start.

I start off quite calmly and comfortably, trying to stay vigilant on where I was turning and where I was going, but it didn't take long for little mistakes to start creeping in as a result of poor mental focus. I think I made the right choice to 3, but I had to pause because the area I wanted to go had a passable fence before the grass, something that I had plenty of time to notice or swing my in magnifier, but I was trying to run.

I think I took a bad route to 4 that tacked on a few meters, and then number 5 I lost time after slipping on the incredibly slick wood boardwalk and crashing.

7 was the first symptom of the troubles I often have in Finnish sprinting (well, Scandinavian in general), when it gets really confusing what is Olive Green and what is not. I opted to take the alleyway to 7, but as I approached my turn, I look in and the area looked extremely out of bounds. Sandy, a decorative wall, all the sort of things that I suppose instinctively I thought had the hallmarks of an out of bounds area, but, in this case, it was and it wasn't. Because the passage was okay, but the grass to the right side of the passage was NOT. So, I went on to the next opening, which of course I then realized was one too far. That route choice also set me up badly for the approach to control. These are things that I should be making myself aware of on my way to 6, since I had plenty of time to think about it. I can tell myself to ABP but for some reason I just don't seem to do it.

As I look at the GPS tracking to get more of an idea of what went wrong, my mistake filled 10-11 control was probably where I lost the most time. Kivikas, who started a minute behind me, was 15 seconds up on me at the start of the leg, and was 47 seconds up on me by the end. That is, no question, disasterous.

We had a map change at 9, so I didn't have a ton of time to plan, but I think I saw the good route pretty quickly, and then executed micro choices poorly. I didn't turn hard left right out of 10, and end up having to go around a big pile of dirt. Then coming up the starts, I immediately turned right when I needed to go down one more road. And instead of going straight down the grass, I ran the winding road. Why the hell would I do that?

I suspect I'm actually reading the terrain more than the map, in the sense that I see the terrain, and make decision without consulting the map. I saw this road that snaked through this little grassy downhill, and in my head I assumed the grass was out of bounds. In a sense I think it comes back to my lack of clarity in what is olive green and what is not, since they often LOOK the same, but are arbitrarily, by the rules, not the same. But, this comes back to needing to trust the map more than my own perceptual instincts. Shortly thereafter I turned into an olive green driveway one turn too early. This was certainly due to a lack of focus and vigilance of planning. I wasn't asking myself the important questions - what should I be looking for? How will I know? etc.

Anyway, now that Kivikas had me in his sights there's no doubt he was ultra motivated to pick up the pace and he eventually reeled me in, particularly when I missed another shortcut on the way to 14, which I suspect was due to my acute mis-trust of being able to recognize what is OOB or not. Once he had punched 15 in front of me, I pretty much stopped reading the map and put my head down to try to hang on, which didn't work so well either. There were no real routechoices so it was not really a matter of that, I just couldn't seem to run very hard either, perhaps due to being WAY too hot now.

In the end Kivikas was 6th and I was 24th. There were so many places within a small amount of seconds I really feel like with better focus I would have been in the 10-15th range, possibly top 10.

I don't think this has anything to do with fitness, or even poor technique, it had everything to do with my mind not doing the things I know it should be doing. It wasn't so much an issue of thinking about irrelevant things, rather, not thinking about anything at all. I can't think of how many times I reminded myself to Always Be Planning, before the race, and then I didn't do it.

Or.... maybe I just hadn't sprinted since the JK. And the JK went really well. So.... I'm not sure.

Also, side story. This was the first time the paper on the back of an EMIT card saved me. The computer said I didn't punch 14 (which I of course did), but fortunately my paper hadn't fallen out and it had the little pin punch. I have now learned my lesson that that stupid paper has the potential to save my ass. Some guys weren't so lucky at the same control because they do that punch where they just tap the unit instead of actually punching, and so didn't have the paper.

Mårten won and has one of those older EMITs that has the LED screen on it, so he's able to do that super fast EMIT punch technique and check to see if registered or not. From what I understand, those are no longer available. Naturally, I find this to be wildly unfair. But, this is me we're talking about, so is that really a surprise?

Aamulla juosta that ended with a solid rainstorm. Also, I suppose that morning jog also started at 11:30, so just barely still counts as morning. I've gotten an awful long way away from the ol' 7AM morning runs. Ooops.

People insist that the terrain around Keski-Suomi is terrible, and I would agree. This terrain was terrible. Kuntorastit at Mysionmaki, which is just out of town. Big sections of green, big sections of green with horrible rocky footing. White forest that should be green. There was a brief point between number 10 and 11 that had a little bit of kallio and nice forest, but.... that was about it. The rest was pretty terribad. Foot went through a hole between two rocks and tore a big hole in one of my socks, which I'm very sad about.

Tore a hole in my skin, too, but.... meh.

C • a big hole in one of my so... 1

It was raining so I went to the gym and ran on the treadmill. With Huippu Liiga sprint this weekend, I thought I'd do some intervals where the total work was approximately equal to the winning time, so, 13 minutes. Ran 5 x 2 minutes at pretty fast, followed by 3 x 1 minutes at slightly slower but with some big incline. Aside from being super sweaty and forgetting my towel, is was a good workout, but I probably could have done the first few faster. I'm reminded how treadmill intervals are nice to maintain a consistent speed.

ALSO! Debuted my ultra sexy new shoes, the Mizuno Wave Hitogami. Now to find a 10k/Half-marathon to race with these guys. They're a little too heavy for O+ sprinting, but would be great on a mid-distance road race.

C • Find a race... 2

A cruise-y recovery run around Jyvasjarvi on another not so wildly nice day. There was a real nice day back in May, and I was told that was summer.

Some days, I'm inclined to believe it.

Midsummer seems to mean "stay up until crazy hours of the morning and then sleep in until, like, noon. This has been really screwing up my training schedule! Although we had to make the drive back to Jyv we got out and did a nice little track workout on a weird track that was I think longer than 200 but no more than 300. I'm guessing, like, 250? So, just kind of made it up and did 3 laps, 2.5 laps, etc. etc., at a fairly high speed. It was a nice day and good to be out on the track, albeit the non-standard gravel track with plenty of holes.

I wanted to do something fast, but faced with not really anywhere good to run except for a dead flat dirt road, I figured the most productive thing to do was a nice classic 4 x 4 session. So.... that's what I did.

I finally figured out how best to make my V800 do basic intervals the way I want them to, so I actually now have interval data, which is... yay! The first one, as usual with 4 x 4s felt really nice and smooth and then they got progressively tougher, and I ran at 3:29, 3:32, 3:31, and 3:38 pace, with my heart rate not really getting much past 150. I really feel like my lungs are feeling pretty good, but my legs are letting my down a little.

Well, so is my nutrition, but that's not exactly new.

Found myself in Northern Finland for Midsummer, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in particular. I'm surprised that there are areas of Finland that are this flat, I honestly thought the entire country was kind of rolling. But, nope, this was pretty damn flat. I just picked one road and ran out on it for a while before turning around. Fortunately it turned into gravel fairly quickly so it was less like a road run and more like a trail run. I just kept going until I came across some Kallio and then turned around. Although my legs were tired from averaging around 4:45, my lungs felt fine and this was little more than a light cruise.

No sooner had I gotten back, that I turned around and went back out again because other people were just heading out for a run. This was slow, but my legs were now pretty fatigued (having had a 10 minute break), so it wasn't my favorite run! More than anything I think the slow speed had the worst impact, since my form tends to break down a lot when I have to run this slow.

I'm not complaining about the speed since its nice to run with other people and I always want to encourage everyone to come out and run more often, but I do find that I can't maintain the correct form if I run quite slow and it seems to make me more sore than running quickly with the form I'm comfortable with. So, yeah, quite tired after this extra bit. I'd do a leg-soak in the nearby cold river but there are 70 million mosquitoes. Edmonton seems mosquito free in comparison.

C • Urban Edmonton trails 2

Stairs? Really? I never do stairs? Are there even big enough hills with stairs in this place? Well, they're not the biggest set of stairs around, but the ones at Harju are definitely uphill and any stairs can be tough if you run the fast enough. I did 4 sets of 3 each, where the first rep was every step, then every second step, then every third step, with jog back down rest, and then longer rest between each set. It was kind of fun, I definitely felt quite tired afterwards, so it was probably a productive workout and probably worth doing a bit more often (if not doing actual hills). I think a fun modification would be to do some stairs followed by a trail running loop that's a gradual climb. So, steep uphill, followed by gradual uphill. There's a trail that ends up at the top of the stairs that goes around, so it could work pretty well right there.

Got a lift out to Kuntorastit at Saaksjarvi. Did a relatively slow session, working on picking the straight and relatively difficult routes, and trying to maintain some level of mental focus. At times the mental focus was good, sometimes, not so much. Tripped at one point and fell on top of a small stump, so now I have a circular scar/bruise in the groinal area that, if it were a little bit more right and down, could have been REALLY painful.

Like, baritone to soprano painful.

This club is tough. One day I go from feeling marginalized to enjoying to be part of a cool group of guys. Didn't get a chance to go training but did get out to the going away party for Pavel, which included a beer-O. Good fun, great company.

On an completely unrelated note, I often get messages to one of my e-mail addresses from people who incorrectly think my address is someone else. Recently I've started getting e-mails from a German business man on a regular basis. He's clearly gone on some sort of vacation/business trip to the US and has been sending regular updates back to "Vera". He's also never been to N.A. before and is quite amazed by all the things he's seen. His most recent e-mail was funny enough that its definitely worth sharing:

"In 24 hrs we will take off directly to Kork-City. NY is a fascinating metropole, but also fullY crazy. It is the melt pot of money, biz, Rush, day and night running around, no contemplation, everything is possible and impossible. People of all colors. Most of them ugly and fat, nearly no elegance, all in the same sport shoes of. Nike or Reebok, black people with blond hair, Japanese witch red hair, whithe with rasta. Everybody wants to be somebody else, poverty and wealth on the same pavement, of lot of druggies, sometimes One thinks to be out side of this planet. And immenselY expensive. Paris is cheap in comparison. I am glad to hear y soon on The phone."

C • Amaze. 10

Spun out the legs to the Mustalampi. I have to figure out what sort of training I'm going to do for the next few weeks. I have a fair amount of time, but low levels of motivation. But, I think I could get in some awesome gains, but which ones! Hit the track and focus entirely on sprint? Run through the forest a lot? Longer runs with hills? There's only so many hours in the day and Kainuu O-Week is only 3 weeks away.

The new Muse album is out, and I've decided that... yes, I mostly like it.

Now for the big one, my first Jukola. I was put on anchor, I'm not entirely clear on the reasoning behind that one, but, hey, we're the third team, so who cares, really.

I was first woken at 3AM (45 minutes before my planned wake up time), by the news that our first team had already dropped out, our second leg runner having broken his ankle.

So, now our second team was the uber-important team, which was also interesting because we, the third team, were very close to them. This only compounded my anxiety, and was further worsened when our 6th runner came in only about 10 seconds before their 6th runner, AND the 6th runner from Suunta Jyvaskyla. Add on the statement that we could be the "best 3rd team at Jukola" and I was of course very grateful to have a whole bunch more outcome based goals to shred away at my focus and self-confidence.

Thus, although I didn't go out crazy hard, I blew number one. 3 minutes lost. Gone was our second team, gone was Suunta Jyvaskyla. My mind reeling, I really chased number 2, and although it wasn't a mistake, it was by no means smooth, and on number 3 I lucked out when I hit a path and realized I was running on the map looking at a different leg. It was very fortunate that where I accidentally ended up was actually very, very close to where I needed to go anyway, so much so that I kept my headed up and saw the feature. Minor miracle there.

4 was a battle of focus where I just could not get my head back in the game, and as I got closer to the control, I continually mis-read things, but was fortunate enough to trust my instincts of where I thought I was and bounced back right on top the control. Time lost, but not as hideously as I thought I might.

I then went straight from 5 to 7 since I went up two re-entrants to far to the right, which I think was a result of problematic compass.

So, my route to 8 I decided to play it probably unnecessarily safe, and go well around on the trail that brought my pretty close to the control and an easy bearing in. I hoped that would give my brain a short rest and a confidence boost.

However, when I got to the path junction and was about to head into the wood again, I came up our second team's anchor, who was walking in the opposite direction clutching his shoulder.

"I put my shoulder out", he said. I considered telling him I knew how to pop it back in since I've seen it on TV many times, but instead I stopped to make sure he was okay and then continued on. More than anything I felt now focused on making sure I didn't hurt myself.

Despite that, the next few controls went pretty good, considering the tricky area, though I think I was right on top of 15, didn't see it, and wandered around. I even saw Thierry's route on the GPS coverage to this control and I don't know why I didn't do what he did. It would have made so much sense. I guess I was really chasing time at that point.

Fortunately, after 15 I feel like I finally got a bit of focus, though it could have also been the very easy legs coming up. I hit the rest almost dead on except for an error at 25 which I'm really not certain I would have done differently. It was a quite vague area. But, being able to run over that bare rock pretty fast and nailing where you want to go is super fun. I was finally having a bit of fun.

As I ran into the finish I was convinced I'd lost places, but it turns out I came back in in exactly the same place as I started. I'm sure I lost some places, but it would seem I gained some places too. I figured, okay, well, we finished with a higher number than our bib, so that's a positive result. An improvement. Since I had no idea where we were expected to place, I actually thought our placing was pretty good. Yet, all the team wanted to talk about is how good our results "could have been" if our good teams would have finished. I also lost us "top 3rd" team status.

Initially I wasn't crazy unhappy with this race, but between looking closer at the results and the post-race chatter, (no one was remarkably enthusiastic on analyzing my race with me)I felt more and more despondent about my race. Results because I lost so much time, and even removing the mistake to number one would have made me jump 30 or so places in the leg standings. There were so many guys within 5 minutes.

But, the worst feeling came a day later when e-mails were sent about how the local media in Keski-Suomi referred to Suunta Jyvaskyla as the top club in the region. This of course could not stand and it seemed important that someone inform the local media of the situation about how our real teams would totally have beat them if they weren't all injured. Although I know its not their intent, all this discussion did is make me feel even worse that I personally made that happen. If I had performed better, we still would have been the best around and everyone would have been satisfied. Unfortunately, we had this lousy North American as our anchor and he can't navigate his way out of a paper bag. Obviously, it sunk me in an unhappy spiral that's tough to get out of, yet tomorrow I have to let all that go and get right back to it.

Or, at least, once I feel like my sleep schedule is back to normal.

Another session on a further West part of the same map as yesterday. There was a particularly long leg along the top of the hill, which was scary, but it wasn't until after that I really realized how much I needed to simplify these areas and worry slightly less about every little thing. In this particular case, there was a pretty obvious hill that, if I was on the correct line, I would see and have no problem. I could just dance from kallio to kallio and keep up a nice pace.

Unfortunately I also had some significant problems, enough so that after a couple controls everything negative about myself seemed to flood in and I had to sit down and take a "moment". The rest of the run was slow and unfocused but I hope that it served to provide a little bit more improvement for tomorrow's race.

Speaking of which, I was getting more and more nervous as the day went on. Its largely because I'm running anchor, never been to Jukola, and I always fear with relays that I'll let the team down. I can tolerate individual races because in the end the only person I feel will be mad at me is me, but in this case I have six other guys who are equally relying on me to have collective success. Fortunately, this problem is also mitigated by the rather clear implication by some members of the club that third team is incredibly, incredibly not important.

After a long day of that now insufferably boring 4 hour drive to Salo, I hurried out to get on the map near our accommodation to try and get myself accustomed to the Jukola terrain. It ain't easy. The edge of hills are the trickiest with their many cliffs and whatnot. Its slow-moving, hard to read the contours, or keep track of which rock/cliff you're on. The tops of the hills are a bit better. The kallio (open rock) is super fast, but tricky if you lose track of where you are, but I'm learning to not worry too much exactly where I am on that stuff, as long as I know where I'm going. The valleys between the hills actually seem the trickiest, since they're slower and thicker and it can prove difficult to go through them and out the other side and be certain you're still on your bearing or climbing the right hill/re-entrant. On a grand scale, these parts are going to be the toughest, since they could set me on an extremely wrong path, whereas the kallio and sides of hills are mini-tough, since they'll have me screwing around in the control circle.

Not a massive confidence booster, was this training, but any bit that gets me a little more acclimated to this terrain is good.

AV-training at some map whose name I can't remember. Its really my first real O+ training since I got back. The first interval was pretty bad, as there was one leg that was super duper flat and wildly difficult by my standard. Sort of that classic half Kallio, half marsh, half white forest (yes, that's 3/2), and pretty much entirely flat. Those are real tough for me, which means I'd like to do them more often. The ones with a bit more hills were better, and I kept the silly mistakes to a minimum, although my focus wasn't their and I had trouble getting a feel of how far I had travelled. I felt more confident after FinnSpring and I think the Jukola terrain is going to be mildly similar to that, rather than this. Hopeful, I am. And tosi pelottaa.

Still kind of run like a heffalump through these sort of forests, too, but, I suppose being in Finland I should say I'm running like a Moomin. Looking at their body shape I would guess they suck at orienteering.

C • they suck at orienteering 1

A few early and long days have meant that I can't really get the time to go out for much of running. Eventually my thesis interviews will end and I won't have to get up at ungodly hours to talk to people back in Canada. Its making me woe-fully tired.

On the other hand, I'm partly bringing it on myself by staying up until 1:30AM to watch the women's world cup. Will I be getting up at 4AM on Friday to watch again? Helllz yeah. I never get to see any Canadian team win at soccer. Like, ever.

C • to see any Canadian team win at soccer 4

There was some sort of O+ event going on at Ladun Maija as I ran bad, as per usual, I had no idea what it was. Over the weekend there was an event in Tampere. Now that the other Tera boys have moved away from Keltinmaki its gotten a lot harder to get to events. No one particularly wants to drive over here to pick me up, even though I have said numerous times I'd meet them somewhere else. I have to keep begging, but I hate to just keep begging, though.

*le sigh*, or, *sigh-laisi*, I suppose. Or something.

Also have been struggling a lot with sleep over the last week, what with staying up until midnight and then getting up at 5AM to do interviews for my thesis. Throw in staying up until 1:30AM to watch the women's world cup and my sleeping is all over the place and making me very, very tired. Training is suffering for it.

Went out and did a fartlek-y style run around Laajavuori. This is something that Kim has suggested a couple times - going for a brisk run and then strongly running up the hills, and then settling it down again and continuing without stopping. Interestingly, that's pretty much exactly what Ivan Babikov said was his favorite workout on a one of those training articles on fasterskier a few weeks ago, with all that unanimous support, I'll probably keep trying to do this every week, perhaps as a summer replacement for the tempo runs around the Jyvasjarvi.

Now that its summer-ish, its super heartening to see all the sunshine and lovely weather around here. Its still quite cool - 15 degrees or so and windy, but the sun is out (even at 3AM), and perfect weather for running.

Ran from near the university over to Vaajakoski to take a friend around the Kuntorastit course from last Thursday. The orienteering wouldn't count as training, but the cumulative runs both ways were a good way to get in a workout too. The run home started just after 9 but you would never know because its super light out. After running there, walking around in the woods for 1.5 hours, and running home, I was pretty tired! And to add to the fatigue, I have been finishing off my interviews from my thesis, I've been waking up at odd hours of the night to do them. More on that in the next couple of days.

Wickedly tired after my flight back to Finland, but I thought it would be appropriate to go out and workout the legs a little. The loop around the Soidenlampi is fully dry (there was a chance there was still snow, in my opinion!) but its totally dry and good to run on. The loop is nice and smooth, I just wish it was just a little more roll-y.

Evening single track run above the house. I said I would do this more often once it dries out about, so I'm going to keep focusing on doing that. I think it makes a nice evening recovery workout and hopefully will improve my agility and willingness to run strong and aggressively on pretty technical trails. I need to go to the university and print off the map I have of the neighbourhood so I can start to maybe do some line-o in the forest.

Pretty much back to normal now, as evident by this run, which I had to run a bit faster to get in before heading to the airport for my flight. Wednesday will be a training write-off so I'm glad I was able to get out and do something. Its still going to be another week until I feel like I can double-down again, though.

Managed to get back out again! Went out with Paul so the pace was assuredly quite slow and manageable. Felt like I was working pretty hard despite the slow pace, so clearly I'm not quite back to normal. But, close.