Training Log Archive: W

A brisk spirited run a day after the race and before the shop. Forgot to re-start my watch after pee break. Duh. Legs felt adequately recovered.

And, thus ends recovery week, and my 13th straight day of working somewhere. With the Alberta Cup next week, I'm anticipating another 7-day work week. With the new cycle, I'm also aiming for a 10 hour training week. With hopefully intervals Wednesday & Saturday, and more of my standard runs to be at my new higher pace. We'll see how it goes.

First off, I forgot to stop my GPS after the workout, so my garmin track includes driving to the shop and jittering around for several hours. These things need some sort of mode that says "You look like you've stopped doing things, are you sure you want to keep timing?"

Anyway, First Flakes loppet at Capilano. Yeah, this was kind of a rest week, but, screw it. I didn't do my 10k TT last weekend, so why not do it in race mode. As it was a mass start, I of course skied to the race rather than my own speed. The first two laps were entirely pedestrian, which was annoying because it was a group of 6, including one 15, two 16, and one 18 year olds. They were, of course, out of control, so there was naturally a crash, poles getting stepped on, and all sorts of disorganization. Kids. Eventually we skied away from them on lap 3, though they were all amusingly doing only 7.5k and sprinted back to us just as we lapped through and they finished. They also very much need to work on their mass start passing etiquette.

Anyway, the slow start meant that the pace ramped up slowly, and so did my fatigue. I didn't think I had any business feeling that caught for pace on lap 4, but my skis were faster and I made a bad tactical error on the downhill before the climb, as that was the point where I should have gotten in right behind and tried to be in the front at the climb. Instead, I let them glide away a bit to let me skis catch me up at the start of the climb, which left an opening to be passed and somewhat muscled into the softer part of the track. They then made a gap on the long climb. In true loppet fashion, the finish was weird and did not leave a lot of space for much, so although pulling them back, I just simply ran out of real estate. I pulled back a solid 3-4 seconds in the last 200 metres, so if I hadn't been lazy before the climb, I could have easily pulled away in those last throes. Ultimately, ended up 3rd, "2 seconds back" (hand timing), really more like 1.

I look at my HR graph, and interestingly I recovered the most on my 3rd lap downhill, going all the way down to 151, while the others were closer to 160. I stayed in the track the entire way down the hill, but I wonder if I would have been better off staying up at 160 rather than trying to recover. Also pleased to see that I hit 178 bpm, so its getting up there (yes, I know that heart rate is not an indicator of effort, don't care).

And then I worked at the shop. And my legs hurt.

Also, if you're curious, my skate set-up for this year:
Fischer Carbonlite Hole Cold (FA Value = 108 aka "stiff as all hell")
Madshus Nano SK Boots
Madshus UHM Poles (172.5 cm, I love the extra 2.5cm!)

Went for a pretty light run with Nev after a long day of office and shoffice. Lovely night for a run, as usual. Eventually winter will kick in and we won't have perpetual delightful nights of -10. Until then, its really dynamite out there. I am solidly acclimated to cold weather. Just not super duper cold weather.

So, this will inevitably be a day off since I'll be working all day and then in the evening. Oddly enough my feet don't tend to hurt much while running or skiing, but they are still very sore at night and in the morning. I like to sleep on my face, but that positions my feet in a fully plantarflexed position, which actually kind of hurts. So I seemed to have switched to the fetal position.

On a different subject, I'm confused by this new "petition" or "letter" or whatever it is, about the new WOC format. Haven't we been through this already? Isn't the IOF just putting into place what was voted on by all the countries last summer? Wasn't a sprint relay in the Nordic AND the Italian proposal? How is this news? Since when is sprinting not "real challenges"? If you find sprinting too easy, shouldn't you run harder? Is it really so bad to have to suffer through an event you don't like as part of a larger effort to grow the sport? (Pfft, who am I kidding, nobody sees an orienteering event on TV and thinks, "Man, those pyjama pants would look SO sweet on me, do they have them in neon?")

Is "rape" really the best word to describe what you think is happen? Really? Could you not have just asked a native English speaker to proofread?

Criminy, I wonder if elite athletes in real sports are this whiny.

After a Tuesday soccer / quasi rest day as part of my active recovery week, I went for a nice easy jog. I tried out some new Smartwool long underwear I acquired, the same day as my collection of Craft underwear arrived. And I tells ya, nobody makes base layer like Craft. That Smartwool stuff can't hold a candle to some nice pro zero extreme. The comfort, the snug fit, the warmth or the cooling, it doesn't matter, Craft is so very, very, much better. In retrospect I should have bought more.

Light ski evening for recovery with Nev around Victoria park. Very flat, lots of double poling, but its close, quiet, and pretty good condition! Its supposed to get pretty cold soon. Boo-urns.