Training Archive: CristinaIn the 29 days ending 2008-02-29:
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| F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | S | S | M | T | W | H | F | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Friday Feb 29 | ||
| Note | |
| Ragnar Relay | ||
| Running race (road) 58:35 [3] 7.3 mi (8:01 / mi) +110m 4:46 / km vdot: 40.6 | |
| ahr:184 max:192 shoes: Gus | ||
| Leg 12, Ragnar Relay. My first leg and the last person on Team DM to run. Got the slap bracelet from Elithe at about 9:20 and set out in the dark with some crazy tunes. I'm really glad I didn't have to run this during the day, it was pretty hot and dry. Still plenty warm at night but not too bad. Last two miles were uphill and I was really cranking, not that that translated to a faster pace... Didn't help that my calves got really tight in the third mile and never relaxed the rest of the way. Fun so far, resting in the van now trying to recover for my next leg at 0 dark 30.
Leg 12 route map. | ||
Tuesday Feb 26 | ||
| Note | |
| Had my annual flight physical today. Unfortunately, they found absolutely nothing wrong with me, and certainly nothing that would prevent me from flying. | ||
| C • Unrelated 4 | ||
| Strength/Core 12:00 [1] | |
| Stretching and strength before the workout and some good stretching after. | ||
| Running intervals (dirt) 42:00 | |
| ahr:172 max:190 shoes: Gus | ||
| WOG. Pretty tempted to skip it after my silly scheduling mixup that had me working the desk last night and showing up for the physical at 730 this morning. I feel like I still haven't recovered sleep from NZ! Tomorrow won't be any better, have to be at work at 430 or so. Eugh.
The menu today was a little plumper than last week - 7x400 + 2x200 + 7x400. I didn't think I'd be able to do any of it after this weekend, but remembered last week and decided to try. Made it through the first half but I really couldn't manage. I wasn't even able to keep up the pace from last week and I was already pushing it in the first half. It's tough to back off while everyone else keeps going, but I think I really needed to. 10 min warmup loop + 4 strides 7x400 w/ 200 easy 2x200 w/30s rest 5 min warmdown lap 400s: 1:46, 1:43, 1:45, 1:47, 1:44, 1:43, 1:44 Time to take it easy before this weekend's Ragnar Relay. <----- Evidence of poor judgement on Cristina's part. | ||
| C • Ragnar relay 2 | ||
Monday Feb 25 | ||
| Note | |
| Fun weekend! I managed two very nice runs and a good one, no disasters, not much swearing at myself. I can live with that (and the F-21+ win, even if that's mostly Sam's fault for being so collegiate). I'm still slow and far from perfect, but I'll take the baby steps.
All the hard work by everyone else (especially Max, the setter/vetter crew, Sandy, and Valerie) means I just got off easy with the web stuff. Still taking me most of the morning to get my inbox back to 0! | ||
| C • I took a couple baby steps ... 3 | ||
| C • Cristina in New Zealand 6 | ||
| Note | |
| I guess it's not very exciting anymore since it's public, but 8 hits to go to a significant number (40k). Winning commenter gets... probably nothing, but it's fun to play. | ||
| C • Ooooh Me!? 6 | ||
Sunday Feb 24 | ||
| Orienteering race 1:06:17 [3] *** 7 km (9:28 / km) +255m 8:01 / km | |
| ahr:174 max:189 14c shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Day 2. Ugh, really tired today. Actually ran fairly well, with the exception of a really poor execution on the long leg to 7 (about 2 min slower than my rivals) but otherwise good. | ||
Red2 - Splits | ||
Saturday Feb 23 | ||
| Event: Western States + Intercollegiate Championships | ||
| Running warm up/down 5:00 [2] | |
| Running to the start rather quickly, which was actually a very nice warmup. Maybe I should try being almost late to the start more often. | ||
| Orienteering race 1:08:08 [3] *** 7.8 km (8:44 / km) +260m 7:29 / km | |
| ahr:180 max:192 14c shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Morning classic. Pretty close to clean. Felt good. Forgot to tape laces. Untied before the first control and never bothered to tie them. Another thing that seemed to actually work well (feet felt great). | ||
| C • He did indeed. 4 | ||
| Orienteering race 24:16 [3] *** 2.9 km (8:22 / km) +90m 7:15 / km | |
| ahr:178 max:186 14c shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Afternoon sprint. No time for a warmup this time. Didn't go as well as the morning. Bobbled a couple and blew number 3 (a little over a minute total loss, I think). | ||
Red 1 - Splits | ||
Sprint - Splits | ||
Friday Feb 22 | ||
| Orienteering 50:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Training at Arthur Pack. This place was a lot of fun once again! And it's amazing what a difference it makes when you're really concentrating... | ||
Thursday Feb 21 | ||
| Event: US Team training activity | ||
| Running warm up/down (trail) 16:00 | |
| Warmups in the morning and afternoon and some quick plyometrics to start things off. | ||
| Orienteering 1:04:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Morning training at Italian Trap. The map was contours-only, which isn't much of a difference from what it usually is. Sort of rough contours, but that just makes it more fun. The training started with a line-o and was followed by a regular course. I had some trouble in the beginning really getting into the map, but had my moments of better going. Skipped 6-8 to keep the training a reasonable length. | ||
| Strength/Core 11:00 [3] | |
| We took a break for lunch, during which Sam and I ate lots of gummy soft-bodied invertebrates and Prunus persica. That turned out to be a really bad idea.
After lunch we did one set of Tom's club's "strength intervals", which greatly resembled the circuit training often used in a military setting. I took the opportunity of being in a civilian environment to do girly pushups. Five more strength exercises bookended by short running intervals. I don't think there's any question that this is great physical training. I do think it's highly unlikely that many people would do this to themselves without company. | ||
| C • prunus persica 2 | ||
| Orienteering 55:00 | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| After the strength intervals we did a middle distance/relay training course. Sam started first and groups of people were sent out in intervals after her, with Eric setting out last. I started with Peggy and Ryan and sort of sloppily made my way around the first 2/3 of the course with various people around. I felt like I'd eaten too much or eaten too soon before running, but I could still run. Then I started to feel dramatically different from what would be described as "normal" and started to walk in order to calm my stomach. I had to stop for a few minutes at the ninth control, watched everyone who had been behind me pass me, and then walked the last few controls. Not surprisingly, I had no issues at all with those last controls, despite feeling very uncentered digestively.
I liked today's training, especially since they seemed very suited to the map and terrain for each session. I think I was a bit tired from the runs earlier in the week and from not enough sleep this week. A well-rested Cristina would probably get more out of it. But any opportunity to get out on a map and not worry about it being a race is a good time to focus on building those good habits. | ||
Wednesday Feb 20 | ||
| Running (trail) 43:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Asics B&Y | ||
| Afternoon run in Saguaro East with Sam. No cougars but several jackrabbits and two friendly natives in matching shirts. | ||
Tuesday Feb 19 | ||
| Strength/Core 15:00 [1] | |
| Stretching and so on before and after the workout. | ||
| Running (dirt) 1:02:20 | |
| ahr:172 max:190 | ||
| A nice gnarly WOG tonight. My legs were a little sensitive after Sunday's workout, but I've learned that they can surprise me. I figured I'd try whatever nasty workout Randy had planned and do as much as I felt up to. It turns out that was the whole thing.
Warm up stadium loop + 4 strides and then: 6x400 w/200 easy 4x200 w/30 sec rest 6x400 w/200 easy and then 2 laps warm down. Splits for the fast stuff (shooting for 1:45 on the 400s, 45 on the 200s): 400s: 1:45, 1:45, 1:43, 1:45, 1:44, 1:43 200s: 46, 45, 45, 44 400s: 1:40, 1:41, 1:44, 1:44, 1:41, 1:41 Not bad as far as pacing goes, except that I think perhaps I am underestimating my abilities. If I ever run a Tuesday workout on fresh legs I think I'll set a faster goal. Also, HR was pretty low for an interval workout - I didn't hit 190 until the very end of the last 400 and never averaged more than 183. For comparison, the first day at A-B I spent 85 minutes on the course and my avg HR was 186, max 196. I imagine a lot of the difference is due to today's dead legs and the fact that it was not a long, continuous effort... which doesn't make it any less interesting at all. | ||
| C • chez cristina and seabass 4 | ||
| Note | |
| So I guess there's an A-meet this weekend in Tucson. That totally took me by surprise. Where'd the time go? BTW, faithful readers of this log (that's you) attending the meet are cordially invited to Chez Cristina & Seabass on Friday evening for some mingling. Email me for directions and head count. | ||
Sunday Feb 17 | ||
| Running (trail) 4:35:00 | |
| ahr:161 max:184 shoes: Asics B&Y | ||
| Douglas Spring Trailhead (2750') to Cow Head Saddle (6100') and return.
Barb, animal that she is, started from her place very early by bike and rode to the trailhead. John, being slightly more sane, left later and met me for a ride in, giving Barb a head start at the trailhead. My legs were pretty dead today when we started. This isn't surprising given that they weren't very zippy yesterday, and it's not like I've had a good sleep or rested since then. I had to walk a lot of sections that I have been able to run in the past on the lower portion of the trail. John inched ahead of me to the Douglas Spring campground, arriving just ahead of Barb. We chilled for a bit by the stream there and then plowed on to the saddle. I definitely wouldn't have continued if those two hadn't been there. It's steep and we hiked the whole bit (all 2.4 miles) without a single attempt to run. Lots of snow on this section of the trail, it was pretty cool. Even better was running back down with the sticky snow acting like trail grip! I said bye at the top and did the trip back to the trailhead non-stop, except for one particularly sweet fall on the rocks while crossing the stream at the campground. Trip up travel time was about 2:45 and down was 1:51. We spent about half an hour at both the campground and the saddle chizzizzling. Again, no cougars, but Barb brought a knife just in case. And also, just like yesterday, I expect that Barb took some pretty awesome photos, because I wish I'd had my camera. I've run the bottom of this trail many times and have wanted to go the campsite and beyond for a while, so I'm really glad we did today! | ||
| C • sticky snow 1 | ||
| Note | |
| A little late in posting, but caught two and half movies on the flight back from NZ:
Bee Movie (1) The Simpsons Movie (0) Elizabeth: The Golden Age (1) Yum. (Tudors *and* Cate Blanchett? Again? I'm spoiled.) Plus some snippets of LOTR and rugby, of course. | ||
Saturday Feb 16 | ||
| Running (trail) 1:11:00 | |
| shoes: Asics B&Y | ||
| Barb and John are in town for the week... and Barb tried to bring nasty northeastern weather here. It didn't last long, fortunately, and Sabino Canyon was pretty gorgeous once the sun came out. Ran an out-and-back on Phoneline with John while Barb hiked and took some spectacular photos (I hope).
I was looking for cougars. Didn't see any. Too bad, that's one I don't have on my list of "dangerous creatures you don't want to run in to" sightings list. | ||
| C • cougars 9 | ||
Thursday Feb 14 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| In to work. Dark! But not very cold.
Apparently it's Valentine's Day. Who knew? (I didn't get the memo.) | ||
| C • Valentine's Day 9 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride home. We have a "winter" storm coming through so it was wicked windy, though I'm sure it would just be considered breezy in Laramie. The snow level tomorrow night is supposed to drop to 2500'! This is good news for two reasons: 1) I've never seen snow in the valley with my own eyes and 2) the A meet grass may get squashed by a couple of inches of fluffy stuff. Good times! | ||
| Running (road/dirt) 59:40 | |
| shoes: Gus | ||
| Got to WOG a little late because of pleasant delays by a few APers. This meet is coming up quick!
Arrived during the warmup so mine was a bit short (~6 min). I did my strides easy so that they felt like part of the warmup. On the menu today was 8x200 hard with 200 recovery. I didn't have a watch that could take splits (oh, the horror!) but some of the guys were and I think it was apprxoimately: 46, 45, 45, 43, 40, 40, 40, 39 Probably a little quick for repetitions but sometimes it feels good to run fast. It is a bit humbling to realize that many of the women I'm orienteering against can maintain that kind of pace for quite a long time. And they usually navigate better, too. Followed this up with a loop out and around the golf course with a group that advertised "8:30 to 9:00" pace. They lied, so I dropped back with a few others after a couple of miles but still kept it honestly not slacking (averaged about 8:30 in the end). This felt like a good, reasonable workout. And I almost didn't go. Go me! | ||
Wednesday Feb 13 | ||
| Cycling (road) 22:00 [2] | |
| Ride in. It was hard getting up this morning. | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride home, later than I would have liked. For some reason I thought that people would actually get stuff done while I was gone. Silly Cristina! | ||
| Running (road/dirt) 38:40 [2] 4.1 mi (9:26 / mi) | |
| shoes: Gus | ||
| Round the golf course in the evening with some good tunes for motivation. Did not sleep well at all last night and I was quite tired and hungry. Dark, but almost 70 degrees still. Nice that winter in Tucson isn't terribly different from Auckland in summer. | ||
Tuesday Feb 12 | ||
| Running 22:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Asics B&Y | ||
| Last day! Boooo hissssss.
It was raining, so we decided to visit the Auckland Museum. As soon as we got there and stepped out of the car, the sun came out. We went anyway (it was very good) and as far as I can tell it was pretty nice the whole time we were in there. A few hours later we headed back to the car and I changed into running stuff. As soon as I was changed it started raining again. And it rained for exactly 11 minutes and then was sunny and hot. I guess this is the variable weather we'd heard about but didn't experience! I just ran around the Auckland Domain, which was quite lovely. Wanted to get in a run "earlier" (later) at LAX but I just didn't feel up to it. | ||
Monday Feb 11 | ||
| Other Cardio (Kayaking) 1:00:00 [2] | |
| Today we took advantage of the weather (variable, not good for ocean activities) and went kayaking inland. We started in Puhoi and paddled down the Puhoi River, basically to the mouth. It was pretty chill, we spent a little over 2 hours on the river total, checking out the swampy shores and bovine inhabitants.
After paddling we went on a mission north to see some very big trees. We saw some very big trees. | ||
Sunday Feb 10 | ||
| Running warm up/down (trail) 12:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| The 2km walk to the start today was along the beach! | ||
| Orienteering race 1:49:30 [3] | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Well, this was a lot of work for an invalidated course. The walk to the start was quite lovely but the actual terrain was anything but. It was a fern wonderland and very difficult to move anywhere. Both the NZ and AUS teams protested the courses based on questionable control placements and mapping. It's hard to say how my orienteering was because at least a few of my rough legs were due in part to the aforementioned issues. Pity the last day was the least fun, but it was still heaps better than that wretched day at Catalina! And this hasn't detracted at all from the great rest of the week.
After the O we made our way up to Goat Island to look at the slimy sea creatures in and around the rocks. Ew. I can't believe people eat sea things. | ||
| C • sea goats? 16 | ||
Saturday Feb 9 | ||
| Orienteering race 1:02:20 [3] 4 km (15:35 / km) +175m 12:47 / km | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Middle distance course in tricky pine dunes stuff. At first it seems like it was a bit of a mess, but when I look at my history in similar terrain (low visibility, intricate detail), this is actually quite an improvement! I finished and was never horribly lost. I had no energy at all (again), but I didn't really need it today since the goal was just to move slowly and actually orienteer.
As much as I got my butt kicked today (I'm getting sort of used to it), I wish we were back in the same stuff tomorrow so I could go at it again and give it another try. Last day of O tomorrow. It's gone by quickly! | ||
Friday Feb 8 | ||
| Note | |
| Today was relaxation day in Marokopa. I think this was the only day that we set no alarms. We slept in! Read a lot, walked on the beach, played some scrabble.
In the afternoon we did have to make our way all the way up past Auckland for the weekend's events. We stopped back on the way in Waitomo Caves to watch the woodchopping competition, Australia vs New Zealand. We got a little summary of the sport and the nuances of the event from the mayor of Waitomo Caves. More surprising than the fact that the mayor had competed in local competitions was the fact that this town even had a mayor! Then we hit the road to Hellensville. | ||
Thursday Feb 7 | ||
| Note | |
| Today we went 'blackwater rafting' in the Waitomo Caves. It basically involved wading and tubing along some underground streams to see the glow worms that grow in the caves. It was pretty neat.
Afterwards we continued into the town itself to do some more touristy things and begin our quest to find John and Martha. My friend Cort lived in the tiny town of Waitomo Caves many years ago and told us to look up some family friends of his while we were there. He gave us their phone number, but also said, "just walk into the bar and ask, it's that kind of town." And indeed it was. Everybody seemed to know them and we kept showing up in places where John had just been. Eventually we caught each other and got together for some coffee and we discovered that they had left NZ at one point and lived in Sudbury, two streets away from my parents. Martha (not a kiwi) and I went to the same high school, 35 years apart, and even knew some of the same teachers. Melissa and Martha went to the same college. Basically, they were very nice, and we got along swimmingly, and friends of friends are always fun to meet, so they gave us the keys to their beach house ('bach', as they say here) and we were off for a relaxing evening on the coast. | ||
Wednesday Feb 6 | ||
| Orienteering 2:00:30 [3] 6.7 km (17:59 / km) +330m 14:26 / km | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Today we orienteered in the woods! Nice to be out of the sun and the grassy paddocks. It was very nice terrain, though a bit steep. Open pinelands type stuff, sort of felt like the high terrain in the west/CA/WA.
I felt a little better than yesterday, but I still felt like I was running at very high altitude. I had two rather large mistakes. The first one was due to plain exhaustion, I think, as it was a matter of reversing up and down. Then I blew the next one, too, but it seems that some very good orienteers did exactly what I did, so I don't feel so bad. It seems like I was excruciatingly slow, and I pretty much was, but the winning time in W21E was about 65, so it wasn't exactly fast terrain. After the O we headed over the Raglan for some grub and to check out some nice beaches. Bumped into lots of other orienteers! | ||
| C • I'm enjoying your trip 3 | ||
| Running warm up/down 10:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
Tuesday Feb 5 | ||
| Orienteering 1:10:00 [2] 5 km (14:00 / km) | |
| shoes: Jalas | ||
| Loop race. Today was just one of those days when I couldn't do it. I "ran" two of my four loops and then called it a day. Would have stopped after the first one (I was totally beat and just couldn't focus on the map) but I figured it was good training to keep going. I don't think it was good training, so I didn't keep going. I guess I'm tired from all these races back to back, not sleeping well, etc. Better to rest a little more than waste time not having fun and tiring myself out. (Time and distance guesses for now.)
This morning we took a tour of the Hobbiton set from LOTR and in the evening we checked out the Hamilton Gardens, which were quite awesome. | ||
Monday Feb 4 | ||
| Orienteering race 21:53 [4] *** 2.5 km (8:45 / km) | |
| 21c shoes: Asics B&Y | ||
| Sprint at Waikato University, WRE.
Blah. It seems that it is too often that 1 control can really ruin a race. I ran pretty well for the first two thirds of the course. (Well enough that no one had caught me yet, which is always a good thing with so many good runners around.) On my way to the 15th control I got really confused by the map and did what most people would consider to be the sensible thing to do and stopped running. But that got me more confused, so I stood and looked for a while and finally just headed back the way I'd come. This just confirmed that I'd done exactly what I'd meant to do, but the 2-3 minutes (!) that this took is pretty awful. I was only about 20 or 30 meters from the control. I ran the rest of the course okay, so with a few bobbles in the beginning on maybe 2 controls, overall it was okay, except the one. I could scream at how stupid that was. I went back to look at that leg with seabass afterwards and the map did make perfect sense (it's a really nice map, no reason it shouldn't) but I think I was confused by an uncrossable wall that looked more like an overhang to me. I'm not really sure what I should have done. Normally, if something doesn't make sense, it's good to stop and figure out why. But in this case it took a rested mind to look at it and made sense, where as if I had had confidence that the (simple) route that I had taken was right, then I could have run the next 10 seconds and kept going. I don't know. Anyway, I thought the course was a blast and the map was awesome. Time to concentrate more so I don't suck so much. | ||
| Running warm up/down 10:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Asics B&Y | ||
Sunday Feb 3 | ||
| Orienteering 1:09:00 [3] 6.3 km (10:57 / km) | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| The chase based on Saturday's middle. This kicked my butt. Much trickier than Saturday, lots and lots of up and down the gullies. Fun, but I was pretty beat after the previous two events. And I got sucked into some marsh up to my waist. Anyone who thinks that O wouldn't be interesting on TV needs to follow me around and catch moments like that. | ||
Saturday Feb 2 | ||
| Event: Waitangi Summer Carnival | ||
| Orienteering race 30:41 [4] 4.1 km (7:29 / km) | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| First day of O. This was a middle distance on some very fast and open gully terrain in Taupo (Airport map). I had the first start of the W21E set but didn't run too fast like at Anza-Borrego. Pretty good run, though there were a few times that I wished I could run faster (or at all, uphill), and a few small bobbles, but it wasn't super tricky. Finished something like 19th of 22. But, I had the fastest female finish split of the day (from trying to hold something off, which I did) and therefore won some head thing. Free stuff! Cool! Anyway, this was a lot of fun and I ran pretty well. | ||
| Orienteering (night) 1:15:00 [3] 5 km (15:00 / km) +210m 12:24 / km | |
| shoes: Asics B&Y | ||
| Katoa Po relay. I ran leg 5 of a 5-man team for the Auckland club. Even for night-o, this was pretty ugly. Ooh, almost out of net time, more later. | ||
Friday Feb 1 | ||
| Note | |
| Spent the day in Rotorua. Not really long enough to see or do a lot, but we did catch Whakarewarewa for some pretty sweet geothermal action and we went zorbing. (Yes, we're dorks.) Pretty sweet to see pockets of bubbling mud around town and what not. There are some times when I wish my camera was able to record smell, but this was not one of those days. | ||