Training Log Archive: FoxShadow

Crushing HIIT session with Tommy O'Connor. I'm sore as the dickens today. Good stuff.

Hit the shredmill for a jagaroo plus five 90 seconds intervals. These were either at 6 min/mile, or at 7:30 at max incline (which was harder). Both were tough, but the incline interval got the HR higher.

I was very happy to run today, as I've been limping fairly dramatically since sunday's bike crash. With some vitamin I, some warm up, and some cringing I was happy to get this in today. Something about being injured that drives me crazy, so this was nice to put to bed.

C • tell me about it....this is... 2

Bit the bullet and joined a gym for the dark winter months. Planet Fitness got me with their $10 a month no commitment deal. What's there to lose?

Worked it overtime for about 40 minutes, then hit up the grocer for some wild salmon, cooked that bad boy with some brussel sprouts. Not a bad Tuesday night.

Close game. Got the W. 1-1. Tricep actually is sore sore from sweeping hard. I'm not in curling shape yet, if there is a such thing.

C • Curling shape 2

Two laps at Murphey. Took my first hard fall of the year, and ended up with a bruised left quad. Should be alright. Just a bit painful for curling tomorrow night (going to need some drugs I'm afraid).

I my hit pedal on something I didn't see and ejected my rear wheel sideways. When it finally hooked up, I was headed 45 degrees into the bush.

Good pace, and a great group of fast riders. Scooter, Clint, and Ken.

Event: BT Epic
 

Solid 5 hours of leaf raking, tree cutting and fall clean-up at the cabin. It's a shame I use the cabin as often for taking care of it as to simply enjoy it. We'll have to get a game night going out there some night soon!

Of course, no logging if it's under 100BPM. But I was pretty cashed when finished!

Some HIT work before a lunch meeting. Felt good. Gotta get out for some longer stuff at some point but this stuff is just so easy to fit in.

Loop at Leb. Felt sluggish. Perhaps due to HIT work earlier. Still fun though, trail is dry.

Some intervals stuff with Biz before we went McGyver on some bike racks in the garage. Patented WEDALI design made all of MoBiz's bikes dance on the wall like marionettes within minutes.

C • Pics Man! 4

Got totally destroyed our first night out. Yikes.

Another solid run in the woods. Map reading here at home has come really well to me since Estonia, feeling very confident taking a good look, and then just running, trusting myself.

Had to run back to control 5 after I left it, because I read the control description as 216, but the clue sheet said 226 so I ran back to check it. Turns out it WAS correct, so I lost 46 second there. Bummer, but happy it was my only time lost on the course.

Had to stop to tie my shoes coming out of 9 but no lost time per the algorithm.

Nice clean run, and the speed was up a bit from the Terrace Oaks course.

Too bad no night runs this fall, I'm certainly missing those these weeks.

red - Splits

Hopped on the bike, but then the rain came. Did a few sprints, and then came back into the house to do a 12 minute HIT workout. Good quick workout, saves the legs enough for tomorrow's nerstrand O-meet.

joggerroo, before interval throw down.

One minute on, one off. Hard as I could. Felt great.

Road ride into the city and back on the road bike. Love the smooth speed of the Litespeed. Feels like I'm superpowered on that thing.

12 minutes of HIT strength training this afternoon, and another of the same 12 minutes before regular lifting tonight. Did upper body, not too hard, as the interval stuff was mostly enough for the day. The workout I did was just something on YouTube-- 12 minute madness, it was called.

C • Hit it! 2

CPT nationals. What a massive effort. A great race by our squad, and although we did not win, I thought it was one of our better races. We worked really well together, and we worked really hard.

I am thankful for the ability to race with my three teammates, that we were as capable as we were, and that we got to see what we got to see.

I'd like to visit Knoxville again someday.

Brilliant hike up to eagle falls in Cumberland state park. Perhaps a bit of effort considering this was an important recovery week, but my soreness alleviated right before the CPT race so all good!

The USARA National Champs.

I thought adventure racing was dying. At least at the top level, it certainly is not, there were twenty legit teams nationals this year. Andrei, myself and Monika being the slowest of the twenty. It was the three of us who comprised WEDALI 2, Biz, Amy and Erl raced as WEDALI 1.

One theme of the day was humidity. It was foggy or sprinkling at different point during the race. This made chafing and foot problems a challenge.

Another theme were the hills. The hills in southern indiana are not tall, but they are steep, and they are relentless. Ask us to see the maps, it looks like a prune. One could travel a mile and climb over 1000 vertical at most any point.

So, to the story.

We started with a one mile run, we did it in around 10 minutes, but it was hilly so a quick pace. Then, 15 miles of ripping singletrack. I was really enjoying it, a great trail! The brown county singletrack system is really well known in this area of the country for good reason. We were a bit slow, as Monica does not really ever ride singletrack, but Andrei did a great job of telling her to relax and take it slow, and I spent quite a bit of effort convincing her he was right. NEVER race too fast in the first hours, it's just not worth it.

We were middle of the pack out of the singletrack. Then a few hours on the bike to the paddle put in. We arrived there in about 10th. Then a few hours of dragging the boat - hard on the back. Our shoes filled with lots of sand. then a few hours of paddling on a reservoir. It was a decent paddle, but only fun because we had a good boat really. We were paddling well, not losing any time on the teams around us. Monika and Andrei had good timing, and we worked together well as a team.

Then a curve ball. At CP10, we were told that we had to get three checkpoints. At one, across the lake, we had to drop our canoe and return on an inflatable, they just gave us. Two others were attainable on foot. And we could split up! Andrei went to grab the foot CP's, Monika and I on the canoe//inflatable mission. Fun curveball, and Monika and I enjoyed the 10 minutes we had left over waiting for Andrei to return.

We continued working well together through the day, and as the sun set, we felt fine, and had not lost much time to poor navigation. We soon found that Monika had not brought a few things. Notably, no pants, and no headlamp, and no lube to prevent chafing, among other things. I felt like I should have gone through her pack thoroughly before the race. We did a long trek with her between Andrei and I, I got dizzy turning back and forth to illuminate the logs I stepped over.

We laughed and joked, shared out food, and some caffiene pills, the usual fight though the night. Andrei navigated well on foot, me on bike. We successfully relocated each other if we needed help. I grew to appreciate Andrei more and more - he is a selfless teammate who just wants to succeed.

The night was long. The cooling air felt good. We were still in good spirits, but it was tough to jog, to fight at all. Monika was in a great deal of pain. We had no more lube, her legs were destroyed, and we could no longer recusitate her from her suffering. She is a gravel road racer, no longer an adventure racer. She wanted to quit, really badly, on the verge of crying on and off throughout the morning hours.

With about 6 checkpoints to go, running in about 16th place, we began to slow to a crawl. The sadist race directors brought us back to the start, where the silver bullet beckoned us strongly, before the last trek.

We walked away from the comfort of the fridge, and our beds, back into the wet woods, horizontal light beaming through the fog and leaves like a lazer light show. It was glorious! But it was not enough to allieviate Monika's suffering. We knew that it was not worth it for her to try to place 16th instead of 20th. We made a compromise, mostly implicitly, as the topic was largely avoided, to get just half of the remaining CPs and return home.

The psycology of the group is facinating. As a leader on this team, instead of the new guy, as I've been a few times in recent years on WEDALI, I never complained once, I don't even think I made a noise when I hit my shin or got stuck in briars. But as the one in the most pain, you have license to complain, but you don't feel like you have any ability to decide for the group. This powerlessness makes racing harder. I knew what Monika was feeling. So it was with this empathy that I had to decide to ask her to continue pushing, or call it. We called it and went home after about 25 hours of racing.

In end it was the right call, as we only dropped a few spots, and Monika hopefully avoided any damage that would lead to infection (something she talked about at length) or an inability to rider her bike this coming weekend.

It's the first time I've felt ok about what was essentially "quitting". I am becoming more and more ok with it lately. Adventure racing is something we do for fun. We know our limits by this point, we know we are tough. If it's not fun, then don't do it. We're out there for ourselves, we don't have anything to prove.

Congrats to Kyle and Technu for devestating the field by two hours, that was impressive.

C • nice work! 11