Training Log Archive: W

Another middle-post-long morning training, at Spooner Lake. A whole ton of climb and lots of sidehilling. I was generally... bad. Particularly a colossal mistake at 5 when I was trying to save contours by, you know, not going to the control. Clever.

More quickroute. If anyone has ideas on how to spend 15-20 hours per week analyzing this stuff, I'm all ears.

C • I ran this exact... 1

Long training at Spooner Lake. A whole ton of climb, and a whole ton of side-hilling. I was responsible for putting out the flags, so I spent extra time being extremely certain of where I was. In many cases the mistakes were again due to not adequately judging the amount of climb or descent I needed to do, often going too high out of fear of having to climb back up. Still, it was a relatively successful endeavor, except for the solid mistake on 12, because I had thought I was lower than I was.

Holy smokes, this guy's on fire with the quickroute.

Awright, time for Tahoe! I've been looking forward to this for a while. A bit more altitude, particularly. Shame that my calf has been really tight lately, I assume its because the whole ton of climbing I've been doing in the last week.

First up was the "little truckee" long, from last year, I think? 12.4k, 465 metres of climb. I did the long course, while everyone else did something a bit shorter, so there were mostly flags out. I actually expected this to be easier than it turned out to be. In general route choice was simple, but it was super hard to distinguish between open, rough open, and forest, and the contours were very gentle and broad.

The vast majority of my wasted time was right around the control, I was often very close (save for 20-21). Probably goes to show that I perpetually eschew finding an attackpoint, meaning I'm blinding running in the general direction of the control in the hopes of locating it. Kind of a sprint mentality, I'd say.

Here's a Quickroute. Now featuring *fixed*!

C • Looks suspiciously like... 2

More training at Little Truckee summit. After a several hour lunchbreak, we headed out to do a little middle training below where we were in the morning. My legs have been solidly roasted for a week now, so I was pretty winded down the hill to number one. I thought I kept it together somewhat well, my bearings were straight-ish, and I was generally able to find something worthwhile to navigate on, though it was relatively easy terrain.

Not really a confidence booster, rather, hopefully a competence booster. That'll need some empirical measurement, though.

More quickroute!.

Well, day in San Francisco to catch up on some sprints in San Francisco. I gotta tell ya, San Francisco is pretty overgrown in June. I'm a big fan of coming back in mid-winter when maybe there's less grass/thistles. Also I was pretty slow, given there were no flags or anything. Still, good to get out, plenty of running.

Also, I really don't like running on the road in F-lite 190s. Sorry inov-8. This year if WOC sprint is mostly urban, its going to be either the Asics Tarther or the Mizuno Musha.

More travelling, more orienteering. Headed to San Francisco for the now cancelled sprint races. However, Rex-thorian was nice enough to still let me crash at his place and spur the rest of the San Fran crew to do some training. So, Thursday night, after a bit of mis-communication and late-ness, everything worked out and we headed to Joaquin Miller Park for some somewhat thick bushes followed by sweet sweet forest underneath the redwoods. The second part was obviously the good part. I actually did some pretty good navigating in the mid-tricky part, and then totally screwed the pooch on the last two controls that were relatively easy. I couldn't figure out which was up and which was down, and then took a godawful bearing out of the control, since I was in a hurry.

Went out for the classic Canmore 45 minute jog during a lull in the rain. The rain then decided to come back with a vengeance at about 30 minutes, and torrential downpour had us soaked and freezing for the last 15. I don't spent much time in Canmore, but I don't think I've experienced quite that heavy a rain storm, or that sustained. It had rained all night and all morning first!

Annual HPP fundraiser race at Argyll. Basically people who want to participate get a head start, then I chase after them. This year they had a twenty minute headstart on a 5.5k course.

I actually felt really fit. I was quite pleased, and I was able to hammer out a good pace. I couldn't find several controls, which turns out to be a crucial part of this sport. In one case, I'm certain it wasn't there, and in several other cases, they were white ribbons and those really don't pop in the forest. Two guys managed to escape, and they even took a smaller head start (15 minutes). Overall it took me 39:23, where it probably should've taken around 35.

Jogged up to the Nordic Centre to do the permanent course there for the spring. Got to Trail Sports, and discovered that they don't have the maps yet. Doh! I probably should have sent an inquisitive e-mail to the powers that be ahead of time to check. So, I continued on for a jog about the trails. I probably should have gone longer, but it would seem my right calf has gotten indignant that it doesn't receive the TLC my foot and hamstring does, so it's been a little sore. Its a little weird jsut because my other calf is totally fine. Eh, well, I'm sure its fine.

Famous last words.

Brisk trip up Mount Lady MacDonald. We almost got to the top, but then our "expert" leader who has been up it many times couldn't find the top. Granted, we were totally shrouded in cloud to the point where we couldn't see 10 metres in front of us which meant side-hilling along the scree slope. So... we were really close to the top, but couldn't find it. It was out there somewhere.

Round trip two hours, let's call it... 1:15.

We did a morning workout, but it was a somewhat skeptical workout.... we jogged over to the outdoor quasi-weight set up they have in Canmore and did some quasi arm exercises. So... although my arms were unfortunately kinda sore, this doesn't really count as training.

Anyway, in the afternoon, we climbed Ha-Ling. Well, we jogged it, well, I jogged it. Those other boys, they were getting pretty gassed, and that pleased me so much I had to keep attacking. :) I didn't hammer, per se, but I tried to keep a running stride the whole time, even if walking was probably faster. Adrian's PB is somewhere around 31, and I felt very comfortable running about 41. Its always hard to say on a 100% climb whether you could have actually gone faster, but I know that I definitely could have felt way more tired.