Training Log Archive: Canadian

An adventure of a day at Moose Creek today. The map is old but the contours are surprisingly good and other than some large clear cut areas and some typical vegetation changes the map is in good shape. Had set out a course 3-4 type long course and a course 6ish long course for the guys and didn't have enough time to get them all out in advance so set the first bit and then David Campden, Robert Svoboda, and Karen Martino helped set the rest out and pick them up. Michael helped pick a few up as well.

The guys did well but they struggled a bit in a few places because the area is really quite technical (so struggling is to be expected!). No one got through the entire thing because while the weather started off quite nice and ended as such as well we got a bit of a storm in the middle...



Anyway, other than the freezing cold toes after the mini blizzard came through it was a super fun day.

10 minutes warm-up with belt then 5x4min with 1min rest without belt and then wrapped up with about 8 minutes with belt. Focused on kicking down as per the advice I got yesterday and it felt a lot more like running.

Just managed to squeeze this over lunch time. Got unsolicited feedback from the pool staff for the second time in as many times at the pool. This time an older fitness instructor lady came over when she was done with a couple of ladies doing aquafit stuff. She commented on how I was bring my knees way up to my chest and should instead be focussing on pushing my feet down and then just bringing them up. Something about bringing the knees being eccentric loading... I lost track of what she was getting at partway through...

I mentioned that I was an orienteer so I do need to lift my knees high and she mentioned that pedalling backwards on a bike was a better exercise for that because it also works the hips. Who'd have thought.

Anyway, no I did not get her number either ;)

Intervals at Riley Park with the level 3s. Set up a 'track' marked by controls at the ends of the straightaways and the middle of each curve and did 400, 400, 800, 800, 400, 400, and ended with 2 100m and back shuttle run style intervals.

Each lap you punched 3 controls of your choice, alternating direction for each interval to switch up which side of you the punching was on. Between intervals you printed your time then had 45 seconds to draw a route choice on a long complicated leg then another minute before starting again (in which you had to clear and check).

My times:
1:33 - punched all 5 controls and woke 3 of them up.
1:29
2:59
3:08 - fumbled several controls
1:30 - fumbled a couple of controls
1:32 - fumbled one control
20/22
19/21

Happy with the pace since it involves punching which you have to slow down and then reaccelerate for each time.

You definitely have to focus on punching to punch smoothly when pushing hard like this. Made more punching mistakes towards the end of the training.

C • That's called dedication. G... 5

15 minutes of setting out controls for SOGO this evening and then picking them up afterwards. Also did a bunch of random core type exercises with kids and a bit of running back and forth which I'm not counting.

Figured I should really try and minimize my running for the sake of my achilles so did a little experiment on the elliptical. Result: what a stupid machine. More pertinent result: the achilles still reacted to it but not nearly as badly as with running. Definitely more than water running which doesn't bother the achilles at all.

C • Stupid Machine and Achilles 2