Training Log Archive: bishop22

Well, my 20-year streak of Bills home games is intact; however, my (longer?) streak of running before Bills home games has ended. I didn't want my brain bouncing around in my skull, plus it was already dark when I got to EA, so I was a little gun-shy.

The game was interesting in a "don't really want to watch the car crash" sort of way. On a happy note: it did not rain.

Event: DVOA Fair Hill, Mid-atlantic champs
 

Do you see where the sidewalk curves in this map?

View Larger Map
Well, I didn't! My running entry will have the details.

Hash from Ellison Park. Climbed up and down countless reentrants and spurs in and around Ellison Park. Apparently only two of us didn't shortcut to avoid the final monstrous climb.

Since I was running out of time to get Zach to his hockey game, I left the stop early, and headed for the car. The first stretch was thru some, at times nasty, undergrowth, and it apparently worked my shoelace untied. Since I was wearing older shoes that do not lace up easily, I had not done my usual drill of unlacing one notch, attaching the key, then lacing, so when the shoe came untied, the key flew off into the undergrowth. It was dark enough that there was no chance of finding it, so I decided to just run home (I calculated that there was still enough time).

I hustled down to the main trail, across the bridge and out to Blossom (my full route resembled this). I was nervous going up Blossom in the dark, wearing basically all black, but only a couple of cars came by, and I was able to stay out of the way. So, when I got to the sidewalk on Creek, I figured I was home free. Boy, did I figure wrong.

I was zipping along the sidewalk, when an approaching car's headlights
momentarily blinded me. Unfortunately, this happened just as the
sidewalk curved to go around a telephone pole. I did not see the curve,
so I did not curve. Do you know that sound a head makes when a face
slams dead-on into a telephone pole? Well, I do now.

Other than some minor scrapes on my face, 3 very small chips out of
teeth and what seems to be a bit of whiplash, I'm only a little sore in
a couple of places. I guess the body is pretty resilient.

I am listed as "probable" for the Bills game on Monday night.

C • Ow! 1

Zach had a hockey game in Syracuse (B'ville, actually) at 12:15 and Nate was playing in Oswego at 7:00, so instead of driving home after Zach's game (even though Nate's XC Ski practice prevented him from joining us in Syracuse), we went to Green Lakes State Park.

I had some NA Sprint maps with me, plus an old advanced course on the old map (updated map is a huge improvement). Also, we've never been Geocaching, which doesn't much interest me, but I thought Zach might have fun. But we added a different twist. My Garmin is currently missing, so I skipped the whole GPS thing, and instead, went to some geocache site where they had the locations mapped on Google Maps. This allowed me to find a few locations that were on the Green Lakes map, so I noted the approximate location on the map.

So, we did a couple of O contols, then had a geocache nearby, so we went to the rough location (I estimated that it was near a mapped distinct tree), and saw a tall tree stump which was hollowed out, and sure enough the cache was in there. I showed Zach where the next one was (west edge of a thicket), and he found that cache, but the top was off and it was full of water.

We were running short on time, so we skipped the nearby control and cache and cruised back instead, with me doing 5 x 2min pickups with 2 min recovery. And Zach surviving. I stopped the watch when we were stopped or looking around, so the total time was longer.

4:02/8:09
1:32,32,35,33,34
3:29,24

Arms and back just a bit sore.

C • Umm..... 1

Easy run in Buffalo, from Riverside Park, up the river for 13:05 and back in 12:12. That's how much time I had available to run on another beautiful November evening, before Zach's 7pm hockey game.

Here's the route. A nice little jaunt along the river.

Zach scored his team's first goal and they went on to win 3-2 (almost blowing a 3-0 third period lead).

C • Back to RTH 2

E-C-P - first time since early August, due to XC season. Did 8 x 1 minute pick-ups, just to make sure my legs still worked. Managed 170-172 steps each of those minutes.

6:59
6:30
8:00
8:04

Lost 3 of 4 to a weak team. Chris and I got there late after carting kids around, so we had to sit out the first game (a loss). We crushed them the second game, but then our other tall guy sat out the third game, along with our better setter, so we lost. The last game was especially frustrating. I had set a lineup, and 2 guys switched without telling me, which meant our strong-side hitters were not opposite each other. It was close most of the way, and we got to 19-all, then we were stuck with both tall guys in the back row and lost the last two points and the game. A couple of teammates still could not understand why is was a bad idea not to have our strong hitters (and blockers) opposite each other. On the last point, the other tall guy ran from the back row up to the net, ran into our weak-side hitter, and they failed to get the ball over. If we didn't lose first place tonight, we will next week against the second place team, with our lack of teamwork.

Chris had to leave VB after the third game to go to the parents' XC Ski meeting, and then had to pick Z up from soccer at 8, so after VB I ran from the Xerox gym over to the ice rink.

It was an outstanding evening to run in November - low 50s, not too much wind. Definitely an unexpected bonus run.

4:02.92/8:06.13 (4:03.21)
1:32,32,30,30,30
3:23,20

What a difference a couple of days can make. Felt like I could almost swim today, after Monday's sluggishness. Of course my arms are fairly sore afterward, matching the fading aching in my legs.

Too busy to get anything in today, so just wrote it off as RTH recovery with a clean conscience. Left calf quite sore every time that I got up from my desk, but just for a few steps.

Late night last night as it's getting into crunch time for my QC buddies prior to the December pilot of our system.

C • rest 3