Training Log Archive: bishop22

Missed the lunchtime train by a few minutes, but that is probably a good thing, since I wanted to take it easy today.

Ran out Monroe to the light just before 490 to Park-Alexander and in.

Just the walk and a little touch-up on the driveway this AM.

I was planning on swimming at lunchtime but worked with Scott on an "obvious logical model meets real-world disaster" data problem for our project, instead.

But I am OK with a day off, since the Shamrock Run is Saturday (22nd consecutive, I believe).

Actually took about 40 minutes, but that was because I had to dodge all the cars in the parking lot that was once our driveway. We were invaded by Dumbledore's Army overnight.

C • Dumbledore's Army 2

Squeezed a workout in at Bayview after leaving work at 6:20, so I missed the start of the Sabres game on TV - a game I had a ticket for - and missed Bernier's debut and 2 first period goals (I did hear the second one on the radio).

21 min of Random Hills-14 @ 93 rpm; mhr=146; ahr=116
2 min w/dn @ 12
12 min Manual @ 89 rpm; mhr=152; ahr=136 - divided the 21 bars into 7 sections of 3 @ levels-12,13,11,12,13,14,11

Lunchtime run with Scott, continuing the ascent towards Dodeca-Tuesday. Did the counter-clockwise Genesee Valley Park ped bridge loop, then I added a brief loop on the way back to the Y - here's the route.

Legs were still very heavy from the weekend, so when a fairly quick UofR chick (I assume) showed up on the path, Scott was able to take off and pull well ahead, but it was all I could do to catch back up to her by the time we got back downtown.

Footing was not too bad, since it was around freezing and just a couple of inches had fallen - actually, the air must have been below freezing because I had frozen snow in my hair at the end, but the ground must have been over freezing since the snow was melting just a bit. Bottom line is I SHOULD HAVE STAYED IN PHOENIX!

At least 4" of heavy snow greeted me at the end of the day.

Since I did not sleep at all on the long leg of the red-eye, I decided a day off was certainly in order.

Red Day 2 at the Western States Champs. A disaster. Brain cramps galore on top of heavy legs. The lack of sleep and abundance of training definitely caught up to me for this one.

More later...

Red2 - Splits

Event: Western States + Intercollegiate Championships
 

Day 1 of the Western States Champs, south of Tucson, near Kentucky Camp. I took a conservative start, following the dry stream bed about halfway, which helped me get a feel for the contours. Was cautious going over the hilltop to C2, to make sure I was finding the correct reentrant. I had a bit of a miss on C3 - didn't pick out the "scattered trees" boundary very well. C4 was great, but C5 was a big problem - Greg Balter was catching me on the short trail halfway to the control, and he left it to the right of me, but I wasn't sure that we were on the same course, so I sort of ignored him. Too bad, since I blew about 2.5 minutes searching to the left and not being able to make the contours line up. Gabe S came into the control right after me. We were near each other going to C6, but I went right near the bag and he went left, and had to circle around.

The next stretch was slower than it needed to be, since my legs were feeling quite heavy from all the training. Gabe passed me at C7 when I stopped for a drink and I couldn't close the gap when I saw him intermittently on the way to C8. Going to C9, I crossed the power line right on the line, as planned, but then I went left of the line and did too much up and down on the last few spur/reentrant pairs as I kept changing my mind on whether to stay low or not - lost 1.5 minutes according to WinSplits. Power line was also a nice cheat in getting to C10. I got to C11 by going the road until it turned sharply, where I cut across and then stayed left of the scattered trees until the last big reentrant.

Legs remained heavy, but the last 3 controls were pretty much follow the line. Not a bad run, but it looks like I need some additional conditioning, or zero mistakes, to be competitive in M45+ - the competition was much tougher than in M35+ or M40+!

Sprint Race at the Tucson A-Meet. My legs were even more worn out than this morning - imagine that. Went left around the reentrant to get to C1, then went right of the line to hit C2 nicely, then spiked C3 as well. I went to the right of the hilltop on the way to C4, but feet pointed out that I was near the bigger hilltop, not the little one that I meant to aim for. My pace count eventually ran out and I looked to my right, and there was feet punching. He gave me a good line to C5, but then he was gone. I ran just left of the curve in the road on the way to C6, but that meant I was too far right, so the 2 people that I had passed slipped back by me. I passed the woman on the way to C7, but not the guy. We were then back-and-forth the rest of the way (even though he only had one working arm, he was running about my speed) - I was getting the jump on him leaving each control as, by now, I was successfully using Nate's thumb compass to get a quick reading on a departure bearing each time.

Finished 2nd in M45 and about 10th overall, so not a bad result considering the state of my legs. I even managed to beat Samantha, which has been a very rare occurrence.

Various w/up and w/dn stuff

Sprint - Splits

Red 1 - Splits

AM Training session at Arthur Pack, north of Tucson. It was a precision compass exercise is very flat terrain, and I was able to keep very good lines. The cacti are now my favorite navigation features - I was able to use them to often verify an intermediate point on my bearing / pace count path.

Model event at the Western States Champs. I walked all uphills and all unfriendly terrain - there were lots of the former, but not much of the latter.

The contour exercise yesterday helped me look thru the map and see the contours; the open nature of the terrain allowed me to match the contours on the map with the contours in real life.

Event: US Team training activity
 

AM Training activity in Tucson. I did the morning training with Zach, and we walked most of the way - partly because it was a contour-only map, and partly to make sure we didn't wear Zach out.

The first section was a line-o and we stayed pretty close to the line most of the way - just a couple of sketchy turns where we may have veered off a bit. We found both bags that were out on this stretch.

The course then became a regular course, but on the contour-only map. That should be very good training for this weekend because overlaying the vegetation doesn't really help me, since I can't really tell the difference between white, rough open and scattered trees around here. And on this map, there were not many trails. Also, the afternoon showed that I still can not tell the difference between rocks that are mapped and rocks that are not.

PM Training in Tucson. We did a sampling of "strength intervals", which are tough enough that they will probably be included in Webster XC training next fall. This includes the running portion of the training, which consisted of 7 repetitions of about 200m. Between each interval, the recovery consisted of a different core or leg strength exercise.

The 6 core/leg strength exercises between the intervals included:
- sit-ups (15)
- skating jumps (20)
- push-ups (10)
- sidewinder jumps (20)
- reverse sit-ups (15)
- jumping squat thrusts (10)

I hope I can recover from these by the weekend.

We only did 1 set of these, Tom's club started with 2 and now does 3.

PM Training in Tucson. Middle distance training course with a relay training component - interval mini-mass starts, but I wound up on my own most of the way (which is my problem on mass-start events, I lose contact and the advantage of navigating with others). Nate and I ran an unmapped trail on the way to C1, but it went farther right than we really wanted, so we lost some time. Struggled a bit with C2 but by the time I found it, Nate was still looking in the wrong spot. Tom caught me on the way to C3, which I found by seeing C4 across the way. I couldn't keep up with Tom on the way to C4 (my legs were pretty heavy from the intervals). I didn't see many people after that: Samantha was headed for the finish when I was going to C9, then I saw Cristina to my left as I was headed toward the last control.

w/ups before the AM and PM training sessions

Phoenix Full Moon Hash. Saw bits and pieces of the eclipse while on trail. If I had wanted to watch the eclipse thru persistent clouds, I would have stayed in Rochester. It even rained (a brief downpour) as the circle ended.

Ran much harder than planned on trail. The pack was much more mobile than I am used to in Rochester and Buffalo. I could stay with the FRBs, but it took quite an effort at times.

Played some two-man (the boys and I smoked Walt and Wilbur - the kids can play). Then played some basketball. Since Nate and I were the only ones who could sink free throws, it kept being Nate and I vs Walt, Wilbur and Zach. I think we always lost; Zach was clearly the high scorer. Also played some 21 and thru the donut frisbee around a bit.

After playing some basketball with Walt, Nate and Zach, I did some running, instead of playing 21, then I did some more running, instead of playing tennis.

When I returned, Nate was bouncing the ball on his racket, pretty high, and it went over the fence and just about hit a car that had recently pulled in. When I went to retrieve the ball, it was clear that the occupants had not noticed, as they were engaged in other activities (PG only, luckily, with children around).

C • interesting story, coach 1

I know I entered this already, but it disappeared.

We hiked up Pikacho Peak (or Peak Peak as we say north of the border). We were about 63 minutes going up and about 49 minutes coming back down. To get back from the peak you have to do a surprising amount of climb to get back over the saddle and head down.

Day 2 of the Texas Stampede. The most disappointing result of the day was Nate's MSP. He punched wrong for his penultimate control - it was at a trail / road junction, and so was the control he punched - only 70m away. Since the minimum separation for 2 controls on similar features is 100m, he filed a protest, so that a zero will not be factored into his rating (the Green HS varsity results from Interscholastics will be included in the Red M-20 ratings for JWOC selection). We had to leave before a jury was convened, but it's clear that, at a minimum, he will receive a SPW. After he punched the wrong control, he had to run right past the correct control to get to the go control, so I think the jury has the option of reinstating his result (although the rules are [intentionally?] ambiguous about what precisely can be done). He would have been 3rd on the day, and that would have moved him up to 4th overall.

Zach had a very nice run, finishing 6th for the day in 34 minutes (8 min / km). I think most of the kids that beat him are 9th graders, so he is spotting them 3 years.

My run on Blue was quite awful. I was fine on C1, but I overran C2, once again because I was excited enough that my pace count took me much further than usual. The recovery wasn't too bad. C3 was short and sweet. C4 was a big problem. It was a long leg (~1300m) without any good trail options. I went quite a bit left of the line in the first half, popping out in the ride at the Yellow/White callup line. I then went north (after going to the right to avoid some green) and took the trail way right of the line and back, rather than cutting thru green (which would have been half the distance). I was way too imprecise cutting off the trail for the control and had to come back down and try again.

I tried to follow the indistinct trails that wound towards C5, but I wound up popping back out on the power line, so I took that up to the marsh S of the control at which point I saw feet running out of the woods. Quite disappointing, since he had started 12 minutes behind me. For C6, I was moving slower (depressed) but executed well (picked up indistinct trail at hilltop to fence to stream. C7 was fine and I don't remember C8 at all, so it must have been OK. C9 was a major disaster. I was wearing the Garmin, so I'll have to check the tracks when I get home next week, but my biggest problem was that I had forgotten that the contours were 3m, not 5m, so I was looking for a deeper large depression (and now looking at the map, I can't tell whether those are contours near C9 or just form lines). In any case, I floundered around in the green for awhile. There was a junior at my control, who was so far from his course that I let him see the location of my control (while telling him that I wasn't supposed to help him). Accidentally followed the line (wanted to be left) to C10, so I got a bit hung up in marsh and junk. C11 and 12 went fine, so did most of C13, but I got lost at the last moment and had to retry from the road.

Lost some time drifting right to C14, but then I was quite happy with my C15 execution. Had to stop for a drink on the way to C16. I started to leave for C17 straight, but then decided I should take the trail to the north, but then I lost that, so just angled to the waterside trail. I left it at the junction before 17 and pace-counted carefully, but missed left and somehow didn't see the building (ruined, I guess) that housed the control. C18 was annoying because I climbed to the top, missed my control, saw the other one that couldn't be mine, but climbed down and over to it anyway, then back up to mine. The rest was clean (just slow as I was running out of gas).

Not a good start to the orienteering season. I had to relearn too many lessons that should be ingrained by now. Too often I make bad decisions about how aggressively to go after a control by not taking into account how I would recover from a miss - wandering aimlessly trying to relocate in green areas is a bad idea. I needlessly take precise bearings at times when there are plenty of map features, while I foolishly use rough bearings at other times. Well, there is a few days to get prepared for the Tucson meet, so there is hope that I can be competitive in M45+ (I'm thinking I won't finish dead last next weekend).

minimal w/up

Blue course at the Texas Stampede. As well as yesterday went for the family, today didn't.

Zach hasn't gone over his course with me yet, but he was about 15min/km, so he's back in 9th place in the Intermediate school category. And Nate had a 10 minute error on his C13, which probably dropped him from 2nd to 7th pretty quickly. At least Walt finished (and not too slowly), and Patty ran very well on her Green course, perhaps 66 minutes.

C1 went quite well and gave me false confidence on my reading ability on this map. I blew C2 by over 10 minutes, mostly due to unrewarded attempts to read the vegetation after I somehow lost the main trail that would have taken me within 40m of the control. I was all over the place, trying to relocate, and finally stumbled across C9, or I may have still been out there.

C3 thru 11 were in the southern part of the map, which seemed to be relatively easy to navigate (except when the vegetation chased me away from the line to C7 and I lost at least 2 minutes).

C12 was the long leg, to get to the N part of the map, and I ran mostly on the dirt roads to the left, for a nice stretch of pure running. I took my time leaving the road to find the indistinct trail thru a nasty section of "light" green. Leaving C12 also required a bit of zig-zag thru medium and dark green to find another indistinct trail, but then I did quite well thru C16 (perhaps running a little farther than I had to, to take advantage of trails and rough open.

First half of C17 went well, but then I ended up running over the hill to play ot safe, when I should have run around. C18-C21 went quite well, except I was quite tired running uphill thru rough open to get to C20. C22 was another miss - I drifted left (unknowingly of course), so when I got to the trail and saw a cairn on the other side, I was shocked when there was no flag behind it, but I corrected when I saw another cairn on the map. I lost at least 2 minutes trying to go relatively straight to C23 without noticing the uncrossable fence. At that point, I should have gone right, but I panicked and went left, which added even more time. And then I stopped at the control before mine, distracted by others (and my clue sheet had been torn off, so I didn't know what I was looking for), before moving on to the water slide.

w/up included getting Z to the start (alternating 1 min jog / walk), jogging back to the car (1100m), some brief jogging and jogging back to the start.

w/dn was not worthy of logging - my legs were pretty worn out.

Oh, I forgot to do my whining: I made a rare 90 degree error on one leg that cost me a minute or so. The map has some printing - the club name I believe - that is not aligned to the north, but to the west. I thought all text had to point north, and I left a control with the map folded and using my baseplate as if it were a thumb compass, so I got a bit away from the control before I realized the text was sideways.

I can't find a rule that actually covers this, but I thought I had read that sometime in the past. Perhaps its just another thing I have to note when I flip a map over.

Event: Interscholastic Champs
 

Whew, what a freakin' long day. Since Chelsea's game went late and then their bus wasn't able to start up to bring them home from Greece, we had to go back and get her and yada, yada, I'm packed and in bed at 1 and up at 3:45am to catch the flight to Texas. That would be Houston, TX (Hobby, to boot), which meant a drive of over 3 hours up to the meet site. The start was closing at 4, we got there at about 5 of.

Nate started a minute ahead of me. I ran fairly clean (too far left on 8 cost me time) and Nate had goofs on 8 and 9, so I saw him punch 9, at which point the navigation was basically over, so I couldn't close any further. Nate picked up third in HS Varsity. His competition seems to be pretty tight. A kid named Huw seems quite tough, and Greg A was just ahead of Nate and Gabe S was just behind him. And there are a couple more kids that are in the running.

Zach had a very fine run. Before we started I had snuck a peek at the results and someone pointed out that a Primary School competitor had gone about 17.5 minutes. Zach is doing Intermediate this week, since his school is grades 6-8 (and we want him to stick to Yellow now), but the Primary school kid was also a '96. Zach went out and did 16:45 or so - and the course was 2.0k, only slightly shorter than Nate's and my 2.2k. That snagged 2nd out of IS competitors (first place is 2 years older than him, 3rd place is 3 years older). Knocking on wood would be in order here, since the weekend courses are likely to be a fair amount tougher than today (Zach said there were some key streamers laid out today, although he chose to ignore some of them to take shortcuts).

5 min w/up (luckily I forgot my SID card at the car, or the w/up would have been even shorter.

Got 8 min in with Nate afterwards.

Sprint A - Splits

Tight schedule again today, but I squeezed in some gerbil work before we had to get to Chelsea's hoop game (they won - to win the "D" bracket of Counties). 7.0 to 7.5 mph during the first 1/2 mile, then did 4x100m strides at 9.0 mph during the last 3/4 mile.

HR gradually rose from ~135 to ~145 while running 8:00 pace, not very encouraging.

C • heart pace 2

So much to do, so little time before the 6am flight on Friday. I had to make the trip down to Bristol and back again today, during another long lunch, to see Nate compete in the Sectional relay. He did pretty well for being on classic skis for the 2nd time this year (and perhaps 6th time ever), and his "B" relay beat Irondequoit's "A" team in a nice see-saw battle.

Got home shortly before the Sabres-Leafs came on TV. I was supposed to be at the game, but if there wasn't time to train today, I certainly couldn't afford the extra 3 hours of driving.

In the good news department, I found my missing Garmin, compass and O-shoes. The law of conservation of lost items means that I seem to have misplaced Nate's thumb compass. I'm not sure what else will turn up missing when we pack.

But the most exciting news is that I have a new niece, complements of brother PJ (well, Cynthia did just about all of the work). That makes 17 (well, counting nephews) - 15 on my side of the family to 2 on Chris's side.

Took an extra long lunch to see Nate ski at Sectionals (39th, despite starting out too quickly), and left work just in time to get to Chelsea's County playoff game (they beat Spencerport for the third time this year). And I still hadn't really eaten when I got home, and the Sabres were already well into the first period, so there was no way I was squeezing in a workout.

At least I wasn't a total slug today.

And I did run between my car and the ski meet 4 times (over 2 minutes each time!).

4:00/8:03
1:27,27,27,25,26,25
3:21,17,17

Enough work at lunchtime to rationalize not going out into the cold, so I went to Bayview in the evening. Easily the best swim workout I've had in ages.

After swimming, jumped on the treadmill at 9:38pm, so I only had 22 minutes until closing and wanted to get in 3 miles (the old minimum amount to count as a run). Went from 7 to 7.5mph during the first 1/4 mi, then upped it by 0.1mph every 0.1 miles, up to 9.3mph, just before the 2 mile mark, then back down to 8.3 by the end. Felt surprisingly easy.

Random splits:
2:13 - first 1/4
7:31 - next mile
3:25 - next 1/2
3:15 - next 1/2
3:21 - next 1/2
1:45 - last 1/4

Ran from the Hockey Outlet in North Tonawanda, after dropping Zach off for his game. It was cold and the wind was brutal - more into the wind on the way out for 13:44, then came back in 12:30.

After Zach's game, we went straight to the Sabres game, arriving with about 5 minutes left in the first period (an unusual 6pm start time, coupled with the late start and long duration of Zach's game cost us). The highlight of the game was the Sabres finally rallying after blowing a 2-goal lead for the 3rd straight game. The lowlight of the game was the frightening and gory injury to Richard Zednik in the 3rd period - it absolutely silenced the arena. The game continued after an announcement that he was stable and on the way to the hospital, but there was still a pall over the arena.

C • shocker 1

4:10/8:23
1:27,30,30,31,32,30
3:23,17,17

Gerbil at Bay View. Workout was 4 x 1/2 mile @ 9mph, with 1/4 @ 7mph recovery. Felt relatively easy for a change, so I upped the last one from 9-9.2mph on the first lap, then from 9.3 to 9.8 on the second lap (1:34)

w/up was 1 mile in 8:15 (7-8mph)
w/dn was 1 mile, also in the 7-8mph range, but with a few quicker strides thrown in.

C • costly 1

4:08/8:21
1:29,31,31,30,30,29
3:27,23

21 min of Random Hills-16 @84 rpm - I had trouble doing much more than 60 rpm when all 20 bars were lit up.

15 min of intervals - 4/7 and 10/11
5 min easy - 6/8

I thought I was done for the day, but Nate had hockey practice at 9pm, and they had been skiing at Willink that afternoon, so I figured I head out during Nate's practice. There were icy sections on the 1/2 mile loop, so I did some double-poling along the side, but other sections were great for skating.

Did 6 loops, on the first 4 I brought my lap time down from 5:10 to 4:10 (still pathetically slow), then eased back the last couple.

First goose egg of the year. Didn't get up early enough to catch Mass in the AM, so I had to go at lunchtime, then left from work for the Sabres game. Good game - shootout victory - but costly trip in the car department.

The weather turned warm again today, so the march toward Dodeca-Tuesday continues. Ran this route with Scott and Mike V. Had a few faster stretches (but nothing any faster than 7min pace), followed by some real easy jogging.

C • question 6

4:07/8:20
1:32,35,30,33,32,30
3:24,20

I was looking at the latest entrant lists for the upcoming meets, and was quite shocked to see that Swampfox is ducking me. I signed up for M-21 in Texas, then he signed up for M45; I signed up for M45 in Arizona, and then he signed up for M-21. It must be to avoid having to race against me, I can see no other logical reason. I would switch to Blue in Arizona, but I want to be on the same course as Nate, to show him who's still his daddy.

C • Let sleeping (swamp)foxes lie... 1

Event: ROC - Ski-O at Webster Park
 

Hash from Piano Works Mall. Did a tour of ER, stopping at Ayer Park, where a fire had been started for us.

Low turnout due to some football game on TV, so we skated 4 on 4, with just 3 subs. Quite the workout - relatively speaking, I got faster as the game went on. Got my first career (Zamboni league) goal - it wasn't pretty, since I fell and didn't see it go in, but it counted.

4:06/8:19
1:29,31,31,32,31,32
3:24,25,24

At Bay View, in even warmer water than usual.

"Easy" run (nothing is easy on a day like today with every sort of precipitation falling and icy and slushy running the whole way).

Left from the Y and picked up Scott at Xerox Square, where we also met G2, ran out Clinton and met Skull near Alexander, then continued out and met Dave at Field St. Jumped onto the trails and to the top of Pinnacle Hill, back down to Highland and over for a loop around the Cobbs Hill reservoir road, and in Monroe, dropping Skull and Dave off near 490.

Saw Erik and Sue parked in their car on Monroe, with an undisclosed Starbucks item in a bag. Donuts instead of running?