Training Log Archive: Browner

Trek scouting some new trails for Storm the Trent. Will see chickens and llamas and horses, and sheep and sheep dog.

Impossible to ride above tract this time of year. Thick gooey clay combined with dead leaves= one very pissed off rider with one very gummed up bike. 5/8 kilometers is from the road ride to get the muck off.

More fun hanging out with the farm animals....left Storm to his own jollies.

Hot Yoga

Intervals: 5 x (1km fast + rest + 1km easy).

strength workout - clams, lunges, Bulgarian split squats

Slow doddle around the hood with 4 hills.

New strength routine suggested by my physio, oh about 4 months ago. I should be ashamed.

Lunges, Bulgarian split squats, side leg lifts, plus push-ups and sit-ups.

O-Cup at Kelso

DD11 set a great course for today's O-Cup. It was fun rambling through the woods with the snow lightly falling. Sadly, I am not used to getting the map 5 minutes before start and didn't really get the concept with there being 2 separate boxes - I took the second box first from CP6. Whoops, mistake the map was marked properly. Once I realized I made a mistake, I switched into choose your own adventure mode.

C • Son of a !?! 3

Hot Yoga is getting very popular (50 peeps in my class). Note to self - time to get a flu shot!

Run through High Park and home. First time ever passing a Running Room winter running photo shoot. Poor guys were freezing their asses on the Humber River bridge with the Toronto skyline and sunset in the background.

Too dark for trails, roads too icy. 5k of intervals on the back lanes was all I could muster.

First Hot Yoga of the fall.

Raid the Hammer Race Report

I think this was my 10th year doing Raid the Hammer, and practice makes perfect because our nav was definitely on for the most part (whew!). This was also the first year that I didn't argue with my brother about nav decisions and we avoided conflict by developing a third route if neither liked the other's proposal. It's a slow method, navigating by consensus, but this is where I do all my learning, so I don't mind walking and stopping and taking over route choices. Now this year, it seemed longer than usual - it took us 6 hours to finish the full course, but we didn't do a lot of running so maybe that's not too bad.

The course design was great, loved spiking a few of the harder checkpoints and being off trail for most of race and ya there was tons of climbing, but I liked that. The coffee break was fun (got to hear about plans for Season 3 of Boundless from Turbo), but my knees went stiff when we got back at it and running there foreword was painful (I have crappy knees, but that's never happened). Walk the Line was fine but that's easy to say when there is a clear path set out for the back of the pack teams. There were a few teams, including individual runners, who were bashing around looking for a missed CP. One team had been around 3 times!

The best part of the race was while waiting at CP22 after getting CPA in the matrix and waiting for the others to return, there was total chaos. One team merged and realized that 2 members went for B separately, but nobody got C (what?), and another man was hollering deep into the woods in all directions ..."Daaaavvvvveeee.......where arrrrrrrre youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu?" over and over. It was really funny to me (but probably not him).

Overall fun times in the woods, and I am totally knackered.

C • Longer 1

First run in my new mid week neighbourhood in Southampton, Bruce County. I started to run randomly along the cottage roads, picked up a rail trail and then ducked into the woods where I saw a wide path. It turned out to be an awesome 5 k double track loop with fantastic home-made signage and a section labelled Ghost Ridge that was decorated with fabric ghosts high in the trees. Needless to say this wasn't the smartest place to run, it being deer hunting week here too, and with the sun setting so early I jumped back out onto the road.

I am so happy I can create new running routes here that will work in the winter and dark. All I need is a local running pal. Only 2.5hrs from Toronto!

C • ?? 5

Run on all of the trails in high park and the surrounding hills of Bloor West.

C • You training for an expedition race or something? 2

Awesome trail run with some very cool ladies on the Bruce trail, east of 6th line in Milton.