Training Log Archive: W

Ran around the lake and then made a quick visiting stop for probably a little too long before continuing on for the last 15 minutes. Just a bit too much stopping and all of a sudden my legs don't really feel like running anymore!

Scheduling conflicts meant that my 2:00 run turned into an hour run and then a bunch of sitting around kind of wishing I was running four two hours. Not a big deal, though, my legs are still kind of sore and I didn't have much breakfast. My chest has felt really constricted the last week or so as well, maybe just all kinds of lingering fatigue from either a month of racing, or that one hill interval I did.

Yep, definitely hill intervals.

Well, I'm pleased to say I have finally been to a two where the name is comprised entirely of vowels, the bustling metropolis of "Ii".

As I was running I saw people walking around with jackets that said "IISU" on the back, which made me wonder if I had accidentally shown up in this town where there also happened to be a Suunistus event on. I didn't see anything else that suggested there was one, but I wondered.....

It was pouring rain and I hadn't eaten for a while but had sat on a cramped bus for four hours, so although this wasn't very train-y, I was glad to get out and shake out my already sore legs. Yep, still sore.

Kuntorastit Thursday up near Tikkakoski. I didn't wear my studded shoes, which was a poor decision, since it started to rain and it was now wet and oh yeah we're in Finland where you should wear studs pretty much always. But, my current spirits are starting to fall apart. The same stud in both shoes has disappeared, and a piece of wood put a whole in the arch that went through the bottom, the midsole, but didn't quite pierce the insole (and thus, my foot). *phew*

My legs appear to be now sore on a regular basis. I'm not quite sure what from, but, they are. Calves especially, maybe just me *thinking* about a new strength program is making them pre-sore. Nerve-wracking sign.

I've been thinking about doing the Jyvaskyla half-marathon in a few weeks. I envisioned maybe I could do it in under 1:15, which was my goal before, or possibly win it. So, today I went out to do a little tester workout to see how well I could maintain the necessary 3:33/km pace to manage that.

Turns out, not well. I attempted to do 2 x 5km w/ 5 minutes rest, and it didn't go remarkably well. I did them both at in just over 18 minutes, which, if my math is correct, is... 1:16:30, which is pretty much exactly my previous time. And I was hurting. I don't know if I could have done that for another 10k. So, I'm feeling like I need to re-evaluate my goals a little bit. Maybe tone down the half-marathon goal for a few weeks from now, run the 10k, and then focus more in earnest on the CI half-marathon in December. With Finnish Champs sprint/relay the weekend after, I wonder if I will just be hurting myself for an unsatisfactory result in both the half marathon and the sprint.

C • 10km 7

A recovery run up to the Soidenlampi and around and down. That trail is nice, but unlike running in Edmonton, the first 10 minutes are mostly all uphill, rather than mostly downhill, so I pretty much feel awful from the word go. It takes me quite a bit longer to finally feel good. Or... its probably still those hill intervals. Ouch.

Sunday long-er training north of Aanekoski. Lasse printed out the maps at 1:15 so it was pretty sweet to do some long relevant training. Pretty nice map in places, and I think I did technically fairly okay. I didn't run very fast, and I also didn't use my magnifier. So, the time around the control circles wasn't the best, and that was partly because there were just the old stands from the Emit rather than controls, and for the life of me, I just can't seem to see those things. I find myself more likely to trip over them than to actually realize they're there.

Cut it short, though, after 12 to make sure I wasn't out there for an extra half hour.

Also had to deal with these crazy "mooseflies" that look like little spider/tick things with wings. Apparently they like to jump into hair, but seemed to have an attraction towards my eyes. And there are few things that freak me out more than multi-legged things seemingly crawling across my face making a beeline for my eyeballs. Flip out central.

C • Flies 2

Now that my muscles feel like they're going to disintegrate, I am in dire need of a shakeout run. Its been a surprisingly long time since I've run around Soidenlampi and Ladun Maija. I was close to getting bored of it but after a long break I'm happy to be back. Although its still warm and sunny in August, you can really feel that Autumn smell in the air. The leaves are slightly turning, and it feels kind of like those cool/warm mornings in September of Edmonton. Its actually pretty awesome. After a whole year in JYV, I find myself noticing so many similarities to E-Town. Save for those two months of nothing but cloud in February/March.

I may have scoffed at yesterday's workout, but today's workout was pure death. 5 x up Laajavuori ski hill at a pretty high pace! It was originally going to be four, I think, but then they gave me the choice of 4 or 5, and I mean, that's not really a choice. It really brought back memories of punishment workouts back home, and it was a real sufferfest.

I actually thought the hill was bigger, but Toni's fastest (which is sort of the presumed record) is 2:59, which made me think it wasn't so bad. Well, trying to do it at 2:59 is pretty bad, especially after having done it 3 times.

It starts off gentle enough, but then gets steep around the mid-section, and then another steep pitch, followed by two more gentle pitches. And then you have to go all the way back down, which I think is the source of my massive quad suffering now. Boy howdy were they suffering. But, now I have a PB time up this hill, running 3:37, 3:28, 3:14, 3:10, and 3:14. Polar has it at 560 meters and 90 meters climb.

Then I staggered home and stopped for a swim. Nice.

I got asked to come join in a bit of a speed workout, so... what the heck, let's do that. We jogged to one place that I was quite certain didn't have a track (it didn't), and then ended up at Harju. He wanted to do some 100m, at first he wanted to do 12 of them, but that got quickly reduced to 6 for some reason. So, we did 1 x 400m at 68 seconds, and then 6 x 100m sprints, which I appear to be incapable of doing anymore!

Because by sprint, he really truly meant sprinting. I mean, he's a soccer player, so I guess that's understandable, but we'd say go and he would just take off, like, crazy fast. But then really kind of fade at about 50 meters. But, he'd be so far ahead that I would gain on him but not even be close. I think it takes almost 100 meter for me to get to a "top speed". Since I don't think my watch does 10ths, I guess I did them all in 13 or 14 seconds?

So.... PB! YES! Should have tried out for World T&F.....

I took a full and complete two days off after the long distance before a random Wednesday race - which was just called "Toivakka Sprintti" in the registration thing. Since I saw that everyone else had registered and that Toivakka wasn't very far away, I figured, why not? Let's race! As it turns out, this was technically the Keski-Suomi sprint champs, like the Relay and Middle was last weekend, so, cool.

Everyone had said that Toivakka didn't look so interesting so it shouldn't be the greatest sprint in the world, but then as people started coming back they kept saying that it was actually more interesting than they expected, so I once again approached this race with a certain amount of fear that there could be some traps or something that could trip me up. The name of the game off the start was to go fairly slow, figure out the situation, see where there might be potential trouble spots, and figure out the first few legs.

This meant that I actually lost 9 seconds on the first leg itself, I actually wasn't paying too much attention to where I was going and missed cutting some corners here and there. After I missed one that I actually noticed, though, it put me back in the moment and I tried to not just think so much ahead, but have a really clear picture of what I was looking at before trying to plan ahead. I still tried to plan at every dull moment, but really aimed to not be too far ahead of myself.

And so, as the course went on, I just got a little faster and a little faster, the middle section was really not very difficult, you had to decide which route to take but they were probably not so different that it even mattered whether you went right or left. The last section of controls was a bit more difficult with a bunch of hedges and small pass throughs that could be missed, but again, I slowed down quite a bit and rather than run fast with stops, I ran slower but smooth. I hadn't had this level of focus in quite some time, it felt like. I've been doing different things lately to keep my mind in the game and they seem to be working out okay, which is promising.

After 15, with three controls to go, having seen people run across the track to the last two controls, I pretty much could just put my head down and run, since I generally knew where I had to go, and the running actually felt stronger than at WOC, which is too bad, since I would have liked to be strong then, rather than now. But, in this case I raced over the weekend but have generally taken a very, very light week and a half, whereas WOC was coming off the tail end of 10 races in 20 days. There might be something to this whole "resting" thing.

Oh yeah, and I won! Would have been nice to try for a Canadian Three-peat a day later in PEI, but Keski-Suomi champ will have to do!

C • so cool 10

Keski-Suomi long champs. You know you're in for a rough one when the distance for the long is only 9.8k. Yikes. Super slow terrain, whether it was the new forest that was super slow, or the old forest that was super slow, it was really slow, and I am of course not super adept at lumbering through these forests very well. In retrospect, I actually didn't lose too much time to the other guys, they made plenty of big mistakes, and I just made plenty of small mistakes (and one bigger one - all due to taking poor compass from the start), but I suspect they just moved faster. As per usual.

Probably not going to come back to this map for a while..... or, come to think of it, maybe I should.

Although I was partly intending the bulk of this week and next-ish to be a rest period (since I raced 14 times in the span of 4 weeks), it was Keski-Suomi champs this weekend, and, being the most wildly important race in Keski-Suomi since who knows when, you know I HAD to do it!

Saturday was the relay, where the boys put together three teams, which, at the time, I wasn't sure how they were formed they way they were. They certainly weren't made to make one strong team and progressively weaker teams, rather I suppose meant to be relatively even? This, of course, made me super nervous since I didn't want to totally blow it for my team.

I felt a certain amount of relief when Hutteri came through 90 seconds down on first and second and with no one else around, so I didn't feel pressured to hurry in any way, though my fear was increased by being told when I got my map that it was "F***-ing difficult".

So, with that cheery thought it mind, I kept it real slow and careful, stopping more often than not or walking to make sure I was still on track. The problem was that it was a lot of new forest, so there was grass and trees at about head height. Visibility was very bad and runnability was approximately Edmonton levels. In fact, there were times as I was fighting through super thick forest that I felt like I was at home.

Yet, despite this slow and steady approach, I found myself eventually on the tails of the first and second teams (who also happened to be Tera teams). They must have made a mistake somewhere while running together, but then I also ran right through them, when going over the hill, as in, I moved faster than them through the terrain and then nailed the next few controls. That, like, NEVER HAPPENS.

Unfortunately, having now taken the lead, and feeling a bit more worried, I made a mistake at the second to last control in the open-ish green area. I got pushed a little too far right and paused only to see one of our guys running purposefully behind me and to the left, so I knew he was on the right track. Nevertheless, I came in right behind in, which meant that I gave my team a fighting chance to win and pulled back 90 seconds on the lead. That was sweet! Alas, we didn't win, but I actually helped, rather than hindered!

Our 3 teams ended up being within 1 minute of each other and 17 minutes ahead of the next team. I feel like this makes up slightly for our Jukola performance. But only slightly.

I offered to go running with a classmate of mine who has started running more. He's a very good soccer player, formerly played for the Cyprus national team. So he's quite stocky, strong, fast over short distances, and not a great runner. But, whatever, he says that he's running a 5:00/k, so, that sounds fine to me.

And, well, yes, he ran at 5:00/k, but he also runs with headphones, even when running with others. So, as we started running I started chatting, he got out of breath, and then put in his headphones, and I sort of tried to chat some more, but he couldn't hear me because he had his headphones in. So.... we ran together in silence. This, I don't get.

I'm happy to keep running with him sometimes if it keeps encouraging him to get out and do it, but... what's the point of running with someone if you're going to listen to your own music?

I felt like I was at a Running Room group run or something. Just put me in a tuxedo jacket and I'd have the full experience.

C • headphones 2

Slowly slowly slowly but surely my legs are getting back into support of the idea of running again. Hit the single track around Kohniojarvi and then a bit of hills over at Laajavuori. Not breaking any land speed records or feeling remarkably smooth, but its slowly coming back. And it better come back because I've got two races this weekend. YIKES.

I think the goal will be to focus on being strong technically. Ha ha! Good luck with that.

Any post-race pain I had in my hamstrings really came on with a vengeance a few days after the race. The fact that I did a high level of sitting (basically all day) on Saturday was the culprit, I'm trying to get back into the swing of running but the medial parts of my hamstrings are really, really quite sore, and if I did like, 1,000 deep lunges.

Which is actually a pretty apt description of what it feels like I did.

Mega travel day, that started at 6:45 and ended at 6:45 the next morning. Getting back to Finland is a huge pain. And, did you know that in Finland, on long distance buses, they have no problem with you sitting in the aisle? You REALLY must put on your seatbelt when you're in a sitting, but hanging out in the aisle while the bus is going 120? SURE! Why not?

On one hand I wish I could spend a ton more time in Scotland, like, years, but, with the loonie being what it is, its really, really expensive, and I wanted to get back to my normal-ish fitting and only slightly creaky bed.

C • WOC write-ups 2

The WOC Long. The looooong long. Obviously I knew it was going to be longer than our normal longs. 96 minutes for Thierry is not going to mean 96 minutes for me.

The bus ride up to the pre-start was exciting right off the top. It was a super narrow winding road, and half way along it, we encountered another mini-bus coming the other way (this was not supposed to happen). So, we all climbed out of the minibus and watched it slowly, slowly back up until it found a place to get out of the way enough for another bus to go by. This took about 15 minutes, thankfully it wasn't raining much.

Midges! Many midges! It was funny to see some Euros who were covered head to toe with everything they could find. Gloves, hats, buffs, basically just so that their eyes were showing. The Danes naturally had bug covers for all their athletes. I found them a little annoying, but really not so bad. Probably wouldn't have wanted to stop for a picnic, but in general, not so bothersome.

Started out pretty conservatively, especially given two immediate downhill legs, which can go south really quickly (though in this case, north). It takes me sometime to adjust to the scale and the speed of the terrain too, but I emerged from 1 and 2 unscathed and a long uphill + long leg helped me get everything figured out.

The big problem was, I just couldn't move very fast. Everyone will say that, but its always to different levels. I didn't feel light on my feet, and ran inefficiently through the lumpy and soft marshes. I was actually in 30th place at number 4 because I didn't make any dumb mistakes, but that also made clear that over the rest of the course my fitness was a defining factor since I slowly and gradually dropped down. I caught sight of my 6 minute man, the Japanese fellow, on the way to number 9, but made some route choice errors and simply could not catch him until the end of the long leg. He then actually ran past me since he seemed to be able to dance a little better on this terrain. He was actually running pretty well for a while! But, he made a mistake at #18 that I nearly made too and got away again.

I saw a lot of people on the butterfly loop, and especially at the water control when I saw several people with low 120s numbers storm in, I felt very disheartened, but it turned out that they were still heading out on the butterfly loop, and I was leaving, so things were not going as slow as I imagined. The second long leg was scary and I felt I needed to go unnecessarily slow at times, causing the Japanese runner to catch up to me again after I made a mistake at the control location. This leg was also the first time I fell waist deep into mud, while cross the open marsh. It was generally a promising run across that marsh, and SPLASH, he's in the mud.

Although I had taken one gel, my hamstrings started to cramp on the 3rd long leg, which I believe is more a product of strength than nutrition. Too much walking with my back hunched over meant a lot of strain on my hamstrings and there were several twinges that I had to be careful with to manage.

Eventually on the way of the long leg I got caught by the German and the Belarussian, which was motivating to hang with them the rest of the race. I broke off and took a straighter route to 25, and then basically let them do all the navigation until the finish and I just ran along. Ran in to Gerald on the way to 25 and asked if I had a spare compass - his capsule had fallen out of the plate. Unfortunately I didn't, but he wisely just decided to hammer and hang onto our group and got into the finish solidly. It was mentioned afterwards that we weren't certain whether competitors are even allowed to give each other equipment. I've got to assume that was okay, because how insane would that be if you couldn't?

Anyway, I suppose "Top 50" sounds great, as long as you don't look at how many people were actually in the race! I basically didn't make any mistakes, but had to make plenty of map stops and the fitness is clearly not good enough when other people can wander around moping about 6 minute mistakes but they still beat me by 7. I'm convinced more than ever now that getting back in the gym will be a really good start, not just for strength in running in the terrain, but overall running economy, so that will be high on my list for the fall.

I suppose I was close to getting "pre-qualified" for next year, but I don't imagine I would have accepted it, since I don't believe that narrowly scraping out a 45th position necessarily makes me any more deserving of that spot than any others. But, since I didn't get that choice, its easy for me to play Monday morning quarterback.

Just starting the race, however, was a culmination of the only thing I really, really wanted to do for the last three years. I didn't blow it out of the water, but I just desperately wanted to start. I don't *necessarily* have to win, but I always, always, want to be in the game.

And I did! And I had a wonderful, albeit painful time! And now I want to train harder! For what? I'm not rightly sure, but since there's no China this year, this WOC long will have to be my springboard for next year's enthusiasm.

I was on the fence about whether to go to the model map or just to do a light run around the Inverdruie. These decisions are often decided for my by the amount of driving required to get there. In this case it wasn't too bad, but the map didn't seem crazy relevant, so we just went for a light run and a leg soak. We had some discussion on the optimal length of cold water leg soaking. Anyone have an opinion/evidence?

WOC Relay day! I don't imagine this race went remarkably awesome for any of us. My running second certainly took massive amounts pressure off myself and gave it to someone else. I've been there in that first leg before. You finally, finally, get a chance to do a mass start with other runners who are faster than you are, and its nigh on impossible not to go for it, and then things go wrong. Its pretty much the feeling worst thing ever. Guilt, disappointment, frustration, embarrassment. It sucks. I know it. Though, it also really, really makes you want to try again. You can't just leave it at that. That would be wrong.

Its also why so many CAN runners are desperate for more opportunities to experience these types of events, so that high speed challenge becomes more familiar. Realistically, this is the only relay any one of us Canada get to do in a year.

But, I digress. I should have run faster. Having a lovely open forest to myself meant I could run calmly and focus on my navigation. Although I didn't really make any mistakes, I was playing it relatively safe and didn't seem to really have the energy to open up as much as I could. I didn't pull nearly enough time back on the US as I'd hoped, and still finished in the overall ranking of my leg pretty far back.

Had some troubles co-operating with my compass on the last few controls, which was odd (though not surprising). I thought the crazy forking was very clever but not the least bit stressful in my position. The GPS made it clear that there was discombobulation all around, and just goes to show how many runners are quite clearly blindly following their competitors. Pretty nuts.

To a certain extent, we've run out of maps to train on, or at least ones that don't require a bloody 1.5 hour drive to get to. Fortunately, running around Aveimore is awesome, so I just went for a morning jog. I liken Aviemore to Canmore, kind of touristy, very outdoorsy, and a place I'd totally be okay with living in. There's even an awesome 1 bedroom church you can live in. Unfortunately the ad suggested it was already rented out.

Darn.

Monday model day up near Darnaway. The white forest is not quite as lovely as I might have hoped, just quite a bit of deadfall under foot. Visibility is quite good, contours are pretty distinct, might be better when running at high speed. The open stuff is pretty awful so here's hoping its only in the middle! (in retrospect, it mostly was, *phew*).

Did some Euroflop training afterwards. Need to work on drama level. Too low at the moment.

C • Euro flop 2

I'm sure people would probably say "just forget about it, focus on the next race". But, I don't forget, I get angry. And I actually race pretty well when I'm angry.

Once, at a ski race, when I was 14, another kid from Edmonton told me about 10 minutes before the start, "You know, you're going to lose today". And then I had my best race ever. Technically I didn't win, but I beat him, so PFFFTTH.

Anyway, WOC Sprint Relay. Lovely day in Nairn for the race, starting right on the edge of the ocean, super cool. It had rained quite a bit maybe 5 hours before the race, and I was really on the fence of which shoes to wear, since yesterday I had a rather [still] painful spill in my F-lites. Fortunately, my new Icebug Celeritas (Thanks to Icebug Canada, again) had just arrived c/o of Team O-Store.ca, and it opened up a new shoe possibility. They're definitely not appropriate for the urban part of the race, and they totally, totally didn't match the rest of my kit. But, at the last minute I decided with the grass and the dunes they would be a better choice. Probably, for confidence purposes, they were.

I don't really have any idea what place I started off in, but I had Ireland right in front of me, and unfortunately no one else for another 40 seconds. I managed to catch Ireland within the first, oh, 15 seconds or so, and then it was just continuous frantic running to try and get Damian some chance to be in sight of someone to chase.

With some artificial fences, 2-3 was presumably meant to be a tricky long leg, because the obvious route was blocked by two fences along the way. Yet, I simply ended up zig zagging around both fences on the nearest block. I had some concerns with ensuring that I turned down the right road when I resumed the route, but ultimately I didn't find that to be overly tough. Going back to the beach, I maybe went one road too far east, but I liked my choice at the time because I did less turns than the others, and I had a longer time once on the grass to figure out how I was going to nail the first beach control, which I did, and the second & third I got through equally unscathed, *phew*.

I probably blew the second long leg a little, where I decided to go back the way I came. Again, for me, it came down to being able to do a pretty straight shot, I turned quite a bit less than other competitors, but my route was probably longer.

Through the spectator run through it got very loud because team GB started charging from behind. It was fun and a good guy to chase after because he had slightly better legs than I did. Although he was pulling away slowly he also had a slightly shorter fork up at the top because had to visit one less control, and got a bit more of a step on me. He was still in sight so it was still a good motivator.

Then, on the last loop, I punched two extra controls (which were fortunately both directly in line with the controls I was going to, but I was definitely more focused on hanging on than actually navigating. A little foolish, but I lucked out because I really didn't waste much time at all.

I didn't realize it at the time but I had at least given Damian a fighting chance to chase after GB (13 seconds) and Australia (23 seconds), and having the opportunity to chase slightly better teams was really what we wanted.

So, some small redemption for me, very proud of our team for stepping up their game from last year, but, I think our sprint relay team can definitely do better. Its hard to compare a little because I know that many teams fielded a "B" team - many of the best athletes didn't run because of the final a day later.

But, as it stands, 20th is not at all unreasonable (58 seconds), though it will be a big jump up to the 'teens, almost 3 minutes. But doing that will put us in the fight again with another 4 teams within 29 seconds. And then, like, an extra 7 minutes will pretty much make us world champions. Easy.