Training Archive: CristinaIn the 30 days ending 2007-11-30:
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| H | 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 Nov 30 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride in. It only took about 5 minutes before I dropped an F-bomb on somebody today at work. It's going to be a long day. | ||
| Running (road) 32:00 [2] * 3.37 mi (9:29 / mi) | |
| shoes: Kayano XII (pink) | ||
| Apparently we are too delicate to have PT outside if it's raining, and apparently no one sees the need to tell the person who is supposed to be in charge of unit fitness that that is the case. Or ask her opinion.
I ran to the gym (with a map in hand! yay!), jumped in with a guy who was taking his fitness test and ran around the indoor track with him, then ran back. Not surprisingly, running outside in the drizzle was way more comfortable than in the stuffy gym. | ||
| C • are they wimps? 5 | ||
| Cycling (road) 32:00 [2] | |
| Ride home took a little longer today because I tried to go home through my normal gate, only to find that they had closed it (at least) 3 min early. I had to turn back around and go out a different gate, which was really okay because it's not like I really wanted to get home or that it was dark and rainy and my windbreaker is not at all waterproof or anything. It was just more awesomeness, ending such a really awesome day. Awesome.
At least the rain was warm. Snow level is supposed to be low enough tonight for some snow in the mountains. I might need to go up there to roll around in it a bit. | ||
Thursday Nov 29 | ||
| Note | |
| Seabass, after taking a spill on her way to work last night, thought, "oh good, I get to go to the ED instead of work!" I think there might be something wrong with the job satisfaction level in this house.
| ||
| C • Ah, but was she wearing glo... 6 | ||
| Running (road) 1:03:00 | |
| ahr:176 max:196 | ||
| Another sign of winter - it rained most of the day! Just a drizzle, for the most part. But enough that I didn't want to ride to WOG, because riding in the rain, especially in the dark, isn't as much fun as running in the rain. So I ran there, instead, which was just fine. Not much of a structured workout tonight, I guess people are chilling because of the marathon on Sunday or because they were "too tired" from Tuesday's workout. Bah! Wimps. Or maybe, as Randy accused, I'm not running fast enough on the Tuesday workouts. I'm trying!
All we did tonight was run on the bike path around the golf course. I opted for some 30s pickups with some others, but discovered that some people's version of pickups are much faster for much longer than my version. They started fast and ended fast rather than accelerating (or "picking up") and were in the 5:30-6 range, which is... fast. As in, faster than I run for anything except the finish chute (if I have the legs left for it...). Good leg turnover, and hey, I'm supposed to running faster, so this should get my legs used to the idea. I'm so so so glad the week is almost over. Tomorrow will be another long day at work, but at least not a ridiculously early one. I don't care how much character these 0500 show times build... I have enough character already. | ||
Wednesday Nov 28 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride in. My hands were warm and toasty in my gloves.
Tried to move quickly because I was running a few minutes late. Turns out I was actually supposed to be in an hour earlier, so a few minutes wasn't really a big deal. My bad. | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Home. | ||
Tuesday Nov 27 | ||
| Cycling (road) 25:00 [2] | |
| Ride in. It was cold this morning. The whole time I was thinking, "I wish I had gloves on." Then I got to the gate and the gate guard said, "Hey, where are your gloves? You should be wearing gloves!" Yeah, thanks. | ||
| C • Can you ride without your h... 9 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride home. Much warmer. | ||
| Running intervals (dirt) 56:00 | |
| ahr:179 max:196 shoes: Kayano XII (pink) | ||
| Well, I guess it's "winter". That means that I'm still wearing shorts and a t-shirt for running, but I feel a lot better once I stop standing around and start running. WOG tonight:
- Warmup around pond and stadium (~10 min) - 4x strides - 4x200 w/ 200 recovery (46, 49, 47, 48) - whistle drill for ~20 min - cool down lap + around pond and stadium again For the whistle drill we ran fast when Randy blew the whistle and then slower when he blew it again. Looks like we had 11 fast bursts, and they ranged between :30 and 3 min. I ran then at 7min/mi pace, +/- 15 seconds. This was fun because you didn't have to think about anything except running hard. It wasn't like normal intervals where you're waiting to finish a certain distance or time, and it always seems to hurt more the closer you get to finishing. It was nice to see that what felt pretty hard to do for 1 min was entirely doable for 3 min, and in fact felt pretty good. That's encouraging. My abs are getting sore from yesterday. And now I'm all creaky from running. Feels good. | ||
Monday Nov 26 | ||
| Running (track) 10:00 [1] 1.08 mi (9:15 / mi) | |
| shoes: Kayano XII (pink) | ||
| At the indoor track in the morning, helping someone do a practice fitness test. He had knee problems and couldn't finish the run, which is why this is so short...
Supposed to be a warm but cloudy (!) day today, hopefully I'll get in a run later. | ||
| Running (trail) 31:00 [2] 3.44 mi (9:00 / mi) | |
| shoes: Asics Trail Attack III | ||
| Got stuck at work later than I expected, so I only had time for a quick run at Lincoln Park. Sunset was pretty sweet, so it was nice to catch it. And I managed to run for 30+ minutes without doing any repeat loops. I guess there's more trail there than I realized. We do have some sort of O map of this park, mostly just trails, I wonder if it's worth my time to run with it - I guess it certainly wouldn't be a waste of time as long as I'm running with a map in my hand.
| ||
| Strength/Core 40:00 [2] | |
| Yikes, that was a shock to my abs. | ||
| Note | |
| Paris, je t'aime (1)
Lots of 1's lately. I think I need to start watching whatever the kids are watching these days, just so I can hand out some 0's. | ||
| C • Not a guarantee 4 | ||
Sunday Nov 25 | ||
| Note | |
| Planned to go to Mt Tom but woke up feeling like I'd caught whatever my sister had. Or at least something similar. I was the only one up and walking about at 6:30 (most of the house got to sleep at about 2am), so no one was exactly dying to force a potentially sick Cristina to drive out there.
Overheard by an intruder to the bar during my 10-year High School reunion this weekend: "We're definitely not old enough for this place." I really hope those girls were like, 16 with fake IDs. | ||
| C • Not Old Enough 2 | ||
Friday Nov 23 | ||
| Running long (roat/trail) 3:00:12 [2] | |
| shoes: Asics Trail Attack III | ||
| VF O Marathon training run. As in, *the* training run, since I don't imagine it would be a good idea to do anything longer between now and then. I did manage to "convince" Sam that a three hour run would be a good idea, and she bought the story, also managing to recruit Ross and Hilly. Good thing, too, because I don't think I would have bothered to run for so long alone. Much better with good company.
We started from the Sam and Ross abode in Newton and ran down to Cutler Park - one of my favorites when I lived in Newton. Followed a loop there that took as around to the other side of the Charles on trail and street and then back up towards their house... still had about 35 minutes left so we ran to Cold Spring Park for some more dirt and then back down. I think we ended up doing about half on trails and half on the road, and no big hills, so probably fairly relevant. Stopped for a quick bite at 67 minutes and 2 hours. At each I ate one nature valley bar (so, half a package) and had a few squirts of gookinade that Sam so generously carried while everyone else went free. I thin that's a good food choice, though a PBJ at the halfway point might be in order. And probably more liquid... | ||
| C • So do you know how far we r... 2 | ||
Thursday Nov 22 | ||
| Running (trail) 10:00 [1] | |
| shoes: Asics Trail Attack III | ||
| Post-feast family walk around Walden Pond.
It feels like it's been a very long day. Took the red eye last night to JFK for the switch to Boston, which is a very nice flight because it only takes 4 hours (slightly less last night, even) to get from Tucson to the northeast. Unfortunately, it only takes 4 hours, so it's hard to get much sleep. I think they should fly around the southwest a bit to delay before heading east, give us some more time to sleep... there's no need to arrive before 6am. I mean, really. That's early. Got home and, after being greeted with lots of love and kisses from my mother, was promptly handed an apron. We cooked, ate, and then headed off to Walden Pond without much time for lounging about. I figured, with all this talk of what to eat before running that this was the perfect time to see if I could run soon after eating all that yumminess. The answer is: sure can! Didn't run very much, but - and this is the more important reason why this is loggable - several of these minutes involved mami running, too, for very short periods of time... but still running. Eventually she'll be able to string together several minutes without her muscles being all like, "WTF?". And that would be fun. And exciting. We got back and started watching movies. I fell asleep near the beginning of the first one and slept through two additional movies and a phone call that my parents thought was part of the movie. I guess I'll have ratings later if I manage to watch any of them... | ||
Wednesday Nov 21 | ||
| Running (trail) 45:00 [2] 4.2 mi (10:42 / mi) +50m 6:25 / km | |
| shoes: Asics Trail | ||
| Sunset run at Saguaro East, starting from the Broadway trailhead.
As soon as I started running I realized that my butt was sore from yesterday's workout. Awesome! Not much to say today. I think my brain is too busy. Contemplating a set of training activities the week before the A meet. Even if there were only a handful of participants it would be well worth it, I think. Seems like a waste not to take advantage of awesome February weather. | ||
| C • Hope you figure it out soon. 4 | ||
Tuesday Nov 20 | ||
| Cycling (road) 21:00 [2] | |
| Ride in.
Contacts report: and I bet you thought I'd totally given up! I tried to get the right one in this morning. Didn't even get close, so I gave it a rest and came back to it 10 minutes later. A little more progress the second time, but no full success. Very very frustrating. | ||
| Note | |
| Just taking a look at Sunday's numbers:
39 total official entries, 19 entries on Green and Red 17 total DNFs, 13 DNFs on Green and Red What's interesting is that many of those who DNFd are typically top finishers on the course. The ones who slogged through for 2.5-3 hours to finish were mostly people who usually take a long time anyway and move more slowly. I guess they probably weren't as discouraged or as disgusted as the people who like to run more. There was a pair out on red for almost 6 hours. They were looking for #2 and didn't come in until they'd found it, unaware of the course closing time. We had already alerted authorities and the orange shirts were on their way. Nobody told them when the courses closed (nobody told me, either... nobody said anything to anybody, which is something we really have to fix) and they were just enjoying being out in the desert, totally oblivious to the fact that they were about to be the subject of a SAR effort. Overall, it was quite an interesting day. | ||
| C • Bad Day 2 | ||
| C • Contacts 4 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride home. | ||
| Strength/Core 10:00 [1] | |
| Warm up, fo' shizzle. | ||
| Running tempo (dirt) 1:02:00 | |
| shoes: Kayano XII (pink) | ||
| WOG. Last hard workout for Diane before the Tucson Marathon, but just the beginning for me and my VF O Marathon training. At least, that's what I tell myself, that there's a long run in my very near future, and a Tuesday WOG is the perfect warmup.
Today we did a different ladder - half miles and miles. - warmup (~10 min) - 4 strides - 2x800 w/400 recovery (3:41, 3:45) - 2x1 mi w/400 recovery (7:43, 7:41) - 2x800 w/400 recovery (3:48, 3:41) - cooldown (another ~5 min) Feels like a good workout, but not at all gut busting or killer. Supposed to be half marathon to 10 mile race pace, which I think it was, but I wonder if I shouldn't be running this stuff faster. On the other hand, just doing the workouts consistently, week after week, even if a tad bit on the slow side, should result in some good improvement. | ||
Monday Nov 19 | ||
| Cycling (road) 22:00 [2] | |
| Ride in. | ||
| Cycling (road) 18:00 [2] | |
| Ride home. | ||
| DDR 25:00 [3] | |
| Phew, first solid solo session in a while. Tried some new Paranoia variants and quickly started sweating to the point of being able to earn a shower. Mission accomplished. | ||
Sunday Nov 18 | ||
| Orienteering 1:30:00 [2] *** | |
| 5c shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Awful map and really atrocious terrain. I mean it, I really do. I've never had less fun orienteering, and that's even though I found all the controls I wanted to find.
I have now written and re-written a few descriptions of what was so bad and how little fun I had but I just can't put it into words. | ||
| C • map 22 | ||
| Note | |
| Almost forgot the reviews for the weekend. Friday night saw:
The Sentinel (1) but it's a different kind of 1 than the last movie, which would have received a way higher number if I were to use more numbers to rate movies, which I don't, so it doesn't. Saw the ART production of Candide on Saturday night, which was most excellent, especially the performance by the young lady playing Cunegonde. I would give it a good rating if I could, but it's not a movie so I won't. | ||
Saturday Nov 17 | ||
| Orienteering race 35:20 | |
| 11c shoes: Integrators (Red) | ||
| Tucson local meet at Catalina State Park. First of the "Scott & Drumm" sprints which turned out to be a pair of short advanced courses and a wee bit too long for a sprint. Still fun, and Scott warned us plenty that the runability was way lower than he expected when he set the courses on paper...in Oregon. He didn't expect us to take less than 45 minutes, so I guess we were pleasantly surprised. Fair enough.
This one went pretty well. It's a little weird to run on a 1:5000 map with 5m contours - seems to make it harder to determine up and down and see the shape of the terrain with it all spread out like that. Made a few mistakes, but still almost caught Ludwig and passed Leif in the middle. Beat Max, too, which doesn't happen very often, for 1st of 5. Not many people showed up today. Saturday meet instead of our usual Sunday, late start window on a hot day for November (hi was 81), and it was El Tour de Tucson day. The ride goes right by the entrance to the park. I don't think many of our usual participants were riding (maybe a few), but plenty of people just don't want to drive around when there are 10,000 cyclists on the road. | ||
| Orienteering race 38:20 | |
| 10c shoes: Integrators (Red) | ||
| Stopped for a good rest and some water before heading out for the second one. This one didn't go quite as well. Had a little confusion with up and down and contours on the second leg and then had that same dehydrated/sun-drenched feeling from last Saturday in Phoenix. Again, middle of the day, no shade, and I guess not enough water. Bah. Walked a few legs to regain my brain power and finished okay, almost almost catching Leif at the very very end.
Max won, pretty sure Ludwig was 2nd with me third. | ||
| Orienteering 35:00 [2] *** | |
| 6c shoes: Integrators (Red) | ||
| Control retrieval. Really didn't feel like going out again but it was just a few controls. Part of what makes the runability so low is that the things that look like they should be fast on paper - trails and drainages - are really sandy. So you get away from the desert plants grabbing at you but then have to slog through sand.
Tomorrow it's regular courses and potentially record high temps for the day (mid 80's), so I'll be wearing water. | ||
Friday Nov 16 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride in, at the commencement of which our fearless protagonist discovered that her bicycle's rear illuminator had been illuminating all night. | ||
| C • Happened to me yesterday 2 | ||
| C • Breaking News 8 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [1] | |
| Ride home. | ||
Thursday Nov 15 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride in, after trying to sleep in and failing miserably.
There were *grey* fluffy things in the sky today. Seabass even says she had to use the windshielf wipers on the car this morning. I didn't even know they still worked. | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride home, under the gray stuff. Cool. | ||
| Note | |
| No WOG tonight. I feel pre-sick. Meaning that it's not too late to stave off whatever is trying to attack me (die germs die!) but I don't want to encourage them, either. Since I was also time-crunched on both sides I decided to skip the running tonight. Did ride to and from Peg's for the TSN meeting (burn calories burn?), but that seems to be below the workout threshold because I instinctively clicked "add note" rather than "add training".
I think I'm clear for the Valley Forge weekend. Crikey, it's going to take me a long time. Almost paved the way for the NZ trip, but no tickets yet so it's not a done deal. Trying to figure out where to go and what to do before the event. It's not that there's any lack of stuff to see and do, it's that there's too much and I don't know where to start! | ||
Wednesday Nov 14 | ||
| Cycling (road) 22:00 [2] | |
| Ride in. Last night's workout knocked me out. Slept for a long time last night. Left knee is still a little quirky. No soreness or anything from yesterday, which I think is good. | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride home. I was really perky and awake for the first 15 min, but then I got hit with the "it's way past my bedtime" feeling, or something, and just wanted to hop off and curl up on the side of the road. Weird. | ||
Tuesday Nov 13 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride in. Bit chilly today. Wore knee warmers! (And sandals.) | ||
| C • A photo you will like... 2 | ||
| Running intervals (dirt) 1:10:00 | |
| shoes: Kayano XII (pink) | ||
| Very good WOG. I think this resting stuff helps. Or maybe I'm getting faster. Both? Now if only I could get below the G.
We did the same workout as last Tuesday but I ran it at pace. Sets of 400 and 1000, with the 400s at 5k pace and the 1000s at about 10k pace. These were perhaps a wee bit faster than that, but they didn't feel fast. In fact, all but the last two 400s (which were too fast) felt way easier than intervals usually do. Of course, my legs have that satisfying used feeling, which is a good sign. Warm up + strides - ~12 min 2x400 (200) - 1:43, 1:45 2x1000 (400) - 4:33, 4:32 2x400 (200) - 1:45, 1:44 2x1000 (400) - 4:28, 4:28 2x400 (200) - 1:41, 1:38 Cool down - ~10 min Good stuff. It was creepy warm today for mid-november... still in the 70s after sunset while we ran. We'll probably do this once more next Tuesday and I'll shoot for the same paces, see if it feels the same. I've been thinking about how tempting that O-marathon is in December. Why does this country have to be so wide? | ||
| C • O marathon 7 | ||
| Strength/Core 15:00 [1] | |
| Stretching (and stuff) before and after. | ||
Monday Nov 12 | ||
| Note | |
| (rest day) | ||
| Woah, two rest rest days in one weekend!
Saturday was a sleep/energy kind of day. Today was a feet and knee recovery day. My feet are really beat up, never had a chance to recover from blisters at the LAOC meet, getting more (including very raw heels) at the US Champs, and then running on them all week (with elaborate tape and moleskin setups). Yesterday was a little much... the problem is shoes - the ones my feet were "used to" started falling apart, so I had to wear alternate pairs that caused pains in weird places. Anyway, I'll still run on them this week but they need to get better, same with the quirky knees. | ||
| C • yeah, it's a pity feet don'... 4 | ||
Sunday Nov 11 | ||
| Orienteering 2:03:00 [3] | |
| 19c | ||
| Phoenix local meet at Coon Bluff. 2-hour score-o.
Seabass had to work last night, but since she's just a little bit crazy she wanted to come with me and spend the day in Phoenix... on only the sleep she managed to get on the drive up! She wasn't able to think very clearly when we got up there and thus wisely chose to go out on white and come back for a nap rather than deal with a score-o. The Coon Bluff map was, I believe, GPHXO's first OCAD map. I ran there at night in 2003, first time they used it. At the time it was a relief to the eyes, basically a prettier version of a USGS topo. Previously they had only been using portions of 1:24 quads blown up to 1:15 and photocopied in B&W - serious crayola contour effect. Since that was several years ago I figured the map would be even better by now, so I was a bit disappointed when it looked the same. It turns out that they have done some minor updating. I guess there's only so much you can do with the quad as a base map, especially in terrain that doesn't have much except contour features. Anyway, I ran around for two hours. No real strategy, though it went well for the first ~70 minutes, during which I nabbed 14 of my total of 19 controls, and 450/630 of my total points. Then I pretty much shut down - the sun (low 80's, middle of the day, no shade on the course) and the fact that I'd had no water got to me. I changed my plan to head to a water drop that was located five (5) contours above the nearest control, on top of a hill, and out of my way. It took me a long time to make that decision, and then once I got going I wasn't moving well and took a nasty spill. All spills are nasty in this terrain because you either land on a cactus or on a pile of granite cobbles. Tore a hole through my pants and my skin, and then got my water. It didn't get better - screwed up 2 of the my last 4 and totally underestimated the time it would take to get back - so I was three minutes late and had to skip 2 more that I wanted to get on the way in. I guess I took off at a pace for 1 hour in the shade, not 2 hours in the (November) desert sun. When I got back I had a bit of an argument with the organizers about water placement. I feel that water doesn't belong on top of the biggest hill on the map, with no control nearby, and not on the way to any control. They feel (or felt) quite strongly that you absolutely can not put water at a control location because people standing there drinking would tip people off. Oh yeah, and also that that served as something of a trade-off to people who didn't carry their own water. WTF? Oh well. Good to get out and run around. And I think this map could be a really worthwhile desert area if they got a real basemap with real contours. And rotated it to magnetic north. | ||
| C • Felt 13 | ||
Saturday Nov 10 | ||
| Note | |
| (rest day) | ||
| Super recovery day. I didn't realize that I needed it, but I got a good night's sleep and then slept half the day (!). Things are kind of achy (?) but I think I'll feel downright spunky tomorrow.
Aimeé & Jaguar (1) | ||
Friday Nov 9 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride in, interrupted by morning PT. I'm not going to hold back here, so I hope people from work are reading this - group PT is stupid and useless. | ||
| C • stupid and useless 4 | ||
| Running (road) 32:30 [2] 3.25 mi (10:00 / mi) | |
| We ran a lap for warmup (lame) and then did some lame stretching. It was lame. Then I went running. Alone. I was tired. | ||
| Strength/Core (stretching) 20:00 [1] | |
| Then I did a whole bunch of good stretching on my own by the picnic tables. It was nice. | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride home. Got my flu shot today. Poor flu. | ||
Thursday Nov 8 | ||
| Cycling (road) 22:00 [2] | |
| Ride in. Wooeee! | ||
| C • Switch country?? ;-) 4 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Ride home.
I got tagged today for a random urinalysis. Some people, most notably boys, hate them because they don't like having someone watch them pee. That's certainly understandable, but I imagine it's much worse to be tagged to be one of the people who has to do the watching for an entire week. But that's just me, and I'm not a boy. I don't really understand their fears. | ||
| Running (dirt) 39:10 | |
| shoes: Kayano XII (pink) | ||
| WOG. Didn't feel super up to running hard but, as usual, figured I'd enjoy it once I got there. And I did!
My left knee kind of hurts. Earlier in the week I thought it was an impact pain, only I couldn't find a bruise and or any signs of acute trauma. Now it only hurts when bent... which kind of has me worried but it's too soon to tell. Felt mostly okay running. Ran a warmup lap around the pond and stadium followed by: 4 strides Running drills 6x200 w/200 easy (42, 42, 44, 42, 40, 40) and then two laps on the track talking to Randy about non-WOG running geared more towards O needs. We'll see. I ran the 200s with the third group that went out. The first group was supposed to do about 40s, so I figured the third would do high 40s or 50 or so, which seems about right. Well, as is often the case when one runs with boys, they started too fast. We alternated leading and I intentionally slowed it down for mine (the third one), but probably not enough. Not sure it makes sense to do these this fast, but it was a light workout overall so I'm not too worried. I'm also surprised I could actually run the sixth one at 40. Yikes. | ||
| Strength/Core 8:00 [1] | |
| Stretching and stuff, mostly before. | ||
Wednesday Nov 7 | ||
| Cycling (road) 22:00 [2] | |
| Ride in. Frickin' ealry. Maybe some day someone will decide that 0500 is too early to show up to wokr. | ||
| C • early start 4 | ||
| Cycling (road) 1:10:00 | |
| Rode home, dropped my bag off, and seabass joined me for a quick sunset spin around town. We were both loving the freedom of riding without a bag and without having to go to or from work!
The flight doc who flew with us today brought cookie dough for the crew so that we could have cookies. I baked them during the second half of the flight, but she was too busy puking and recovering from puking to enjoy them herself. Pity. Kind of funny that these flight docs have such a hard time keeping their cookies down, so to speak. | ||
| C • Oh, it's oven in flight! 4 | ||
Tuesday Nov 6 | ||
| Cycling (road) 22:00 [2] | |
| Ride in. | ||
| Cycling (road) 18:00 [2] | |
| Ride home. | ||
| Strength/Core 10:00 [1] | |
| Stretching, etc before running. | ||
| Running (dirt) 1:07:25 | |
| shoes: Kayano XII (pink) | ||
| WOG. I was excited for a good workout but also knew that I couldn't/shouldn't go terribly hard. Luckily, Diane was there and ran much harder this weekend than I did (half marathon on Sunday) and was ordered by Randy to go easy on the prescribed workout. We ran easier than we would have if fresh, but still probably a bit too hard given our states of recovery.
Agenda: Inner lap + stadium loop for warmup (13 min) + strides 2x400 w/200 easy (1:51, 1:52) 2x1000 w/400 easy (4:57, 5:02) 2x400 w/200 easy (1:55, 1:51) 2x1000 w/400 easy (4:54, 4:59) 2x400 w/200 easy (1:55, 1:49) And that's it! I was pretty stiff at the end of it, good thing we didn't try to go crazy hard. | ||
Monday Nov 5 | ||
| Skating 41:00 [2] 6.0 mi (6:50 / mi) | |
| Evening skate with seabass, 2 laps around the bike path. | ||
Sunday Nov 4 | ||
| Running warm up/down (road) 10:00 [1] | |
| shoes: Jalas | ||
| Warm up run to the start. I had a hunch that today would go better... I mean, how could it go worse? | ||
| Orienteering race 1:33:15 | |
| ahr:180 max:196 spiked:7/18c shoes: Jalas | ||
| If the goal today was to simply find all the controls (or even just the first one), then I did quite well. If the goal was to have a really solid run, then not so much.
After yesterday I just wanted to be careful, especially in the green. I took my time to the first control, actually figuring out very specifically what I needed to do - it wasn't tricky at all, but I it doesn't hurt to be übercareful to regain confidence. It worked - I felt really good after that and very focused. I lost that focus on the two middle long legs, 7 and 8. On both I was just going in a general direction to get to a road, and in both cases I got pulled far right by the terrain and didn't realize it. Lost quite a bit of time because of these two, and add to that a goof on 13 and that's a little over 10 minutes. Drifting like that on a long leg happens to me a lot. And the thing is, it's not difficult to fix - I just need to look at my compass for more than a split second - it's not enough to make sure that I'm not doing a 180, I need to be a little more precise than that... At least today I also had a number of good legs, those ones that you can think back on to remember how it *should* be. | ||
| C • stuff 9 | ||
| C • better run 2 | ||
Day 2 Red Y - Splits | ||
Saturday Nov 3 | ||
| Running warm up/down (trail) 10:00 [2] | |
| Warm up running to the start. | ||
| Orienteering 35:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Integrators (Red) | ||
| Disaster.
Update: I wrote a whole bunch about this while sitting in Chicago and then my battery died unexpectedly and left me with nothing! Anyway, what happened... I was all set at the start to be careful, with J-J's final instructions of "go slow" echoing in my head. I did move slowly, taking my time to figure out the first control, cautious of the 1:15 scale... but not actually picking a route and not actually keeping good track of where I was. Had to either follow a stream to the end around the green and then cut across to the ditch with the control, or cross over early before the green and go up the next system to the ditch. I ended up being pulled across early and I *thought* I knew where that was. Spent some time trying to figure this out and hacking through green. Eventually crossed over to find my ditch where I thought it should be and found something that seemed very ditch-like going in the same direction - no control. Hopped back out, tried to make sense of where I could be, but there were no parallel features nearby... so I decided to bail to the bigger feature of the main reentrant system below. I did that, still totally confused. I made it make sense (stupid stupid stupid) and re-attacked. Got back to exactly the same place. Now I was really frustrated, it'd been over 20 minutes (I'm telling the abbreviated story) and I obviously had no clue where I was. And I was not enjoying this terrain. I decided to look really big picture and figured that maybe I was several hundred meters too far south. It made some sense, so I went north along the ridge and eventually found *a* control - not mine, of course, but something on a feature. But that didn't help because I didn't know which reentrant it was in. Bailed back out to the ridge and, for the first time, saw something that really clicked with the map - a parallel ditch and ride. At this point, well over 30 minutes in, I had so little confidence in where I was and I'd been wandering around for so long that I was pretty sure that it was just a coincidence and that I was yet again making the map fit my idea of where I was. So I half-heartedly attacked from the ride, got stuck in some green, didn't see what I expected to see, and made the very disappointing decision to call it a day. To say that I felt like a loser is an understatement. Now for the worst part - the control I saw was on the blue course and I was able to recreate what I did based on its location. I estimate that I was at the edge of the control circle when I gave up. And, according to those who found the control, the ditch wasn't very visible, which would explain why I didn't see it when I was so close. Whether or not I would have wanted to finish the course if it had taken me almost 40 minutes to find the first control is another question. What to learn from this? Well, aside from the obvious lessons about actually picking a route and keeping track of where I am, I should also trust myself when I see something that really clicks on the map. I had zero confidence in myself when I saw the ditch and ride, even though it really made sense. I don't know what the solution there is, except perhaps to think back to this incident and remember that I *was* right, finally, and way too close when I gave up. | ||
| C • Oh no! 6 | ||
| Running (trail) 20:00 [1] | |
| shoes: Integrators (Red) | ||
| Running back in from the disaster. | ||
| Note | |
| www.sprintseries.org | ||
| C • Very nice! 9 | ||
Friday Nov 2 | ||
| Event: US Champs | ||
| Orienteering 35:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Integrators (Red) | ||
| Sprint model. At this point, before doing any actual racing, I had high hopes for some good runs this weekend to cap off the year, so I really wanted to get a good look at the model terrain.
The woods were pretty trashy but we were told that they'd be nicer for the actual event (they were). The map was a little weird in places, but didn't seem like that would make too much of a difference during a fast, sprint-level race. Didn't feel very energized but I hoped that was just the morning effect. | ||
| Orienteering race 23:29 [4] *** 2.7 km (8:42 / km) +95m 7:24 / km | |
| ahr:187 max:197 spiked:11/18c shoes: Integrators (Red) | ||
| Sprint. I didn't know I could make so many mistakes in such a short time frame. ;-)
There were plenty of moments of good orienteering, with notable mistakes being drifting to 8 on my way to 4 (I had goo company with that), drifting left on the long leg and going up the wrong ridge, and getting very confused by the open areas on the way to 15. I figure about 3 minutes of mistakes, which is a pretty hearty serving over only 23.5 minutes of running. 20:30 wouldn't have moved me up at all placing-wise, but I would have felt much better about it. If nothing else, Spike seemed really excited to catch me (he started 4 min behind). Eliminating just one of those bigger mistakes most likey would have allowed me to keep him from catching me, and then I'd have no happy moments. Well, that's not really fair. I did really enjoy the course. Very fun orienteering, and the kind of things that allowed me to try to orienteer really fast with pretty quick feedback - something I'd love to be able to do more of. | ||
| C • Catching Cristina 2 | ||
| Orienteering 15:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Integrators (Red) | ||
| Classic model. Went out with a little crowd and we only visited a few controls because we didn't have much time. Kind of wish I'd had more time with this, though I'm not sure it would have made much of a difference. | ||
Sprint Red - Splits | ||
Thursday Nov 1 | ||
| Note | |
| Off to VA! This 3 hour time difference thing makes going east almost a whole day affair. Blergh. At least on the way back it's only going to be 2 hours! Oh wait, that doesn't help...
Forgot to share one of the highlights of last weekend, which has nothing to do with orienteering. On the way out to CA we stopped at a Starbucks (not my choice, obviously) in Blythe, CA and talked with the young lady behind the counter. We wanted the first In-n-Out in CA, which is turns out is not in Blythe but out near Palm Springs, a good 100 miles away, and this girl would just die for some In-n-Out since there's not much more in Blythe than a damned prison and an ever drier river. Find out the lady is working on Sunday, so on our way back to AZ we picked up In-n-Out for her and swung through Blythe and the Starbucks. She was totally floored that we remembered her and, aside from free beverages for both of us, I'm convinced that our good deed translated into other good deeds. ;-) | ||
| C • In-n-Out 4 | ||