Tuesday Feb 28 |
 | Strength (Legs) 26:00 [1] | |
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| While watching the Daily Show, where Jon Stewart discussed Harry Whittington's apology to Dick Cheney upon his (Whittington's) release from hospital after being shot in the face, heart, etc. Stewart says that Cheney has not yet decided whether he will accept Whittington's apology. |
| XC Skiing 1:09:00 [2] | |
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| Skied all around Palgrave West with BulletDog - amazing conditions. My wax wasn't grippy enough, so I got more of an upper body workout (and less of a leg workout) than I'd planned. I'm feeling great aerobically - apparently I still have some of those extra red blood cells from spending a week at altitude. I had a slip near the beginning as I descended a steep slope going off-trail through the forest, and my knee bent back 180 degrees. Now it is hurting - sigh.
The wind came up while we were out, and the trees started making lots of those creaks and gunshot sounds they make before big branches fall down. Thus my speed increased significantly toward the end. |
Monday Feb 27 |
| Snowshoeing 30:00 [2] | |
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| ThunderDog and I did a beautiful trek through hilly forest covered in fresh, deep powder snow, with big fluffy snowflakes coming down. No, we're not in central B.C. anymore. This is Palgrave! :-) |
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| C • Given that you're no longer in BC... 3 |
| Strength (Core) 40:00 [1] | |
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| You know your vacation is over when... it's time for Hard Core Mondays again. Bent and I did Caron Shepley's "Hard Core Conditioning" routine before dinner. Note to self: never have a slice of pizza as a pre-workout snack. |
Sunday Feb 26 |
| Note | |
| (rest day) |
| Not really a rest day - I spent all day in a Level 1 Orienteering Officials course with 10 other students. It's great for the sport that so many people are interested in learning how to put on events, including two talented adventure race course designers. |
Saturday Feb 25 |
| Note | |
| (rest day) |
| Flew home after an absolutely EXCELLENT week of XC skiing in central B.C. It was our first vacation planned through Attackpoint, and it was a huge success! Looking forward to a return trip some day. There is plenty of snow around our place by Ontario standards, so we'll be able to keep skiing for awhile longer. |
Friday Feb 24 |
| Snowshoeing 2:00:00 [2] | |
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| We carried 'em all the way out here, so we had to go snowshoeing once before we went home! We've been enjoying the skiing so much that we hadn't made time for snowshoeing, but we really enjoyed our tour around Sovereign Lake today. The expert trails had 20 cm of new powder snow, and the winter scenery was... well I'm running out of adjectives to describe how nice it is. We had a perfect sunny day - not so common around here, since all that snow has to come from somewhere! |
| XC Skiing (Skate) 40:00 [3] | |
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| One last lap of skate skiing, just in case we don't get a chance to go out again before the ARC Hardwood Hills race in two weeks. My legs were fatigued enough that I was actually looking forward to sitting with a good book on the long airplane ride home. |
Thursday Feb 23 |
| XC Skiing 3:30:00 [2] | |
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| Back to Larch Hills today, after a white knuckle drive down the hill to Vernon in heavy snow. We skied at a gentler pace today, mostly on narrow, rolling, ungroomed backcountry trails in a fairy tale mountainside forest. There is so much snow that the woods are full of huge, amazing, weird, rounded shapes, many of which seriously defy gravity. The trees are so weighed down with snow that I'm sure spring skiers must get hit with occasional mini-avalanches! We repeated almost none of the trails that we did on Monday, and there are still new routes to try when we return to Larch Hills some day. An excellent deal for $5! |
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| C • Glad to see you're enjoying youselves... 3 |
Wednesday Feb 22 |
| XC Skiing (Classic) 3:00:00 [3] | |
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| More playing in the snow! Today Bent and I did an "Over The Mountain" Pursuit. We started on racing classic skis, doing a couple of the lower loops at Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre, then skiing up the long trail that leads to the top of Silver Star Mountain. It was -7C, but even violet wax wouldn't grip this morning, so my arms and legs worked extra hard.
From there, we skied down the nordic trails on the Silver Star side of the mountain, taking a 5 km detour to see the great view at Alder Point. There was a near disaster when I thought that a trail labelled double-black-diamond was a cross-country ski trail, but my mistake became apparent very quickly. Yikes!! Snow began to fall, and we began to feel fatigued with major food cravings. The last part of the ski into Silver Star Village was a bit kamikaze, as we crossed several downhill runs. The cool part was skiing right up to the front door of our hotel.
We had lunch in our room, although watching the 3rd period of the Canada-Russia quarter-final didn't do much for our appetites. Then we transitioned to Part 2 of the Pursuit. |
| XC Skiing (Skate) 44:00 [3] | |
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| Since our car was over at Sovereign Lake, we had to ski back, of course! And since this was a Pursuit, we had to switch to skate skis. Our nordic day pass entitles us to ride the downhill ski lifts, so this time we cheated and rode to the top of the mountain. The snow was falling so heavily that we seemed to be ascending into oblivion. We took a different route down from the summit back to Sovereign Lake, just to get in a few uphills on our skate skis. With 8 cm of new snow on the trails, the uphills and flats were harder work than we had bargained for, but we had images of Chandra Crawford and Beckie Scott skating in today's Olympic sprint final to inspire us. |
Tuesday Feb 21 |
| XC Skiing (Skate) 3:00:00 [3] *** | |
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| Droodles headed back to Vancouver this morning, declaring that yesterday's ski outing was more than enough exercise for a month! So... Bent and I headed over to Sovereign Lake with a map for next weekend's ski-O race, which Barbie had kindly provided. We used skate skis so we could work on things from Sunday's lesson, and we felt a lot more comfortable than we had on the same trails on Saturday. I finally seem to be acclimatizing to the altitude. Today was the first day that I didn't feel like I was gasping for oxygen at high levels of intensity.
It was a good test for the upcoming ARC Winter Race at Hardwood Hills, which has a ski navigation section where you sometimes need to cross through deep snow between trails. It's not as easy on skate skis as on classic, but if we can do it in the powder here, we can do it in Ontario. Lots of fun!! |
| Strength (Legs, Core) 10:00 [1] | |
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| Maybe a bit redundant, since my legs and core are getting a workout while I ski. But it can't hurt. |
Monday Feb 20 |
| XC Skiing (Classic) 5:00:00 [3] * | |
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| Wow, what a phenomenal day of skiing!! We went to the Larch Hills XC ski area near Salmon Arm for most of the day - I'll call it 5 hrs without the stops. Our old friend Droodles is visiting for a couple of days, and the boys decided that today we would focus on ungroomed trails. Some of them were relatively easy - logging roads or bumpy glides through the forest. In other places, I skied on a steep sidehill beside a flowing creek with one foot 30 cm higher than the other, herringboned through deep snow up steep hills on narrow trails, and climbed over huge fallen trees. A great workout for strength, skiing and map memorization skills!
The forest was absolutely magical, with large trees and maybe more snow than I've ever seen while XC skiing. The trails are mostly well-marked, but there were a couple of times when I regretted not tossing a compass in my pack - a mistake I won't make again. The only downer was a fall on the Catamount Canyon trail - a long downhill with deep snow and breakable crust that caused each of us to crash once. Luckily, I landed mostly on my wrist, but my bad knee (naturally) got twisted a bit. I finished off the day with a double-poling race against Bent as we headed back to the parking lot. FUN!! |
Sunday Feb 19 |
| XC Skiing (Skate) 1:15:00 [2] | |
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| Skate skiing lesson at Silver Star with Barbie. From reading things she's written, I'd expected that she would be an awesome teacher, and she definitely is! We were out for 2 1/2 hours (I'm only counting half), and she had Bent and me doing drills of all kinds. We'll have to write a bunch of stuff down so we don't forget too much by next season. I have a long way to go, but now I have a better idea of what good skate skiing should feel like. Thank you, Barbie! |
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| C • Barb and Barbie 2 |
| XC Skiing (Skate) 25:00 [3] | |
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| Skiing to and from the area where we had our lesson. |
| XC Skiing (Skate) 52:00 [4] | |
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| Skate skiing at Silver Star, practising what we learned this morning. |
| Yoga 50:00 [1] | |
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| Actually, this was a 1-hour class called "Yogilates" (mixture of yoga and pilates), but it didn't seem worth creating a new category on AP for one training session! It felt great to stretch out and do some strength exercises. |
Saturday Feb 18 |
| XC Skiing (Classic) 2:20:00 [3] | |
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| We decided to start our western skiing experience at Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre, where Beckie Scott won her first World Cup race in December. In the morning, we used our fastest classic skis and did most of the black diamond trails around the edge of the ski area. This included a 4+ km climb to the top of Silver Star Mountain, where we had to be nimble to avoid being hit by snowboarders unfamiliar with their equipment. But the view of the mountains and snow-smothered trees was fantastic, and we were lucky to have a sunny day with a deep blue sky. The long continuous stretches of downhill were loads of fun, but we had to be careful to avoid frostbite. Perfect conditions in a beautiful place - couldn't ask for more.
Well, not entirely true. Canada could have done a bit better against Switzerland...
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| XC Skiing (Skate) 1:02:00 [4] | |
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| I'd been a bit surprised to see so few skate skiers today - and nobody had been skating on the long trails that climb the mountain and descend the other side. Well, this afternoon I learned why. I guess that all of my skate skiing (in my limited 1-year experience) has been in relatively warm temperatures, but today was colder. Even with fresh wax, it was hard, hard work to get glide on the uphills - and of course, these "hills" are actually mountains. If it weren't for the downhill sections, I'd have to call this a level 5 - wow! I declared a halt after an hour because I want to have some energy for tomorrow morning's eagerly-anticipated skate ski lesson with Barbie. |
Friday Feb 17 |
| Note | |
| slept:2.0 (rest day) |
| It would be more accurate to call the past couple of days "non-training" instead of "rest" days, because resting is the one thing I definitely haven't done - unless you count the nap I took in the departure lounge with my head on my carry-on baggage after Air Canada announced at flight time that they were "still looking for the pilots". I do appreciate being kept informed, but there are some things I'd rather not know, you know?
Bent and I landed in Kelowna, B.C. for a cross-country ski vacation, and were surprised to find absolutely no snow on the ground. We drove to Vernon, and it was still springlike. Oh dear. The first snow appeared about 20 km from Silver Star, then fortunately it kept getting deeper as we climbed until now we are surrounded by snow drifts much taller than we are, and the base is 202 cm. Phew! Looking forward to getting out and stretching our legs tomorrow. |
Wednesday Feb 15 |
| Strength (Legs, core) 30:00 [1] | |
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| While watching skating |
Tuesday Feb 14 |
| Note | |
| (rest day) |
| Happy Valentine's Day! :-) |
Monday Feb 13 |
| XC Skiing 33:00 [4] | |
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| Fast post-breakfast ski to say farewell to the Kukagami trails for another year. |
| XC Skiing 45:00 [3] | |
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| Broke trail for Bent on the ski-out from Kukagami Lodge. (He was feeling under the weather.) ThunderDog and BulletDog kept up a good pace and made dog angels in the deep snow alongside the trail. |
Sunday Feb 12 |
| XC Skiing 1:50:00 [3] | |
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| Morning and afternoon ski outings. Conditions are still spectacular. Star gazing out on the lake tonight was excellent, even with the full moon. |
Saturday Feb 11 |
| XC Skiing 2:20:00 [3] | |
| slept:10.0 |
| Don't know why we never thought of this before, but Bent and I followed a suggestion to ski the perimeter of the Kukagami trail system, i.e. each time we hit a trail intersection, we turned right. It made for a fun and different ski, with lots of hills.
We also went out before dinner for a brief ski to the top of the Porcupine Lookout, where we could see several kilometers of Kukagami Lake glowing in the warm late afternoon light. |
| Snowshoeing 1:00:00 [2] | |
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| Snowshoeing with Bent and BulletDog. This was a valiant effort to tire out BulletDog in hopes that she won't mind being left behind when we ski on the trackset trails where she is generally not allowed. Unfortunately, the more we try to tire her out, the fitter she gets!
The forest was sun-dappled and magical - like being inside a Group of Seven painting. We had to be careful to avoid the low-hanging branches of coniferous trees, which had a tendency to release avalanches of fine powder snow down the backs of our jacket necks. |
| XC Skiing 31:00 [2] | |
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| Heron Trail under a full moon. Not my top pace, since I was well-fuelled with port, camembert, hot mulled wine, lasagna, fresh-baked bread, salad, cherry cobbler and mint tea... :-)
Then back to the cabin to teach myself Sudoku by candlelight. |
Friday Feb 10 |
| XC Skiing 45:00 [4] | |
| slept:4.0 |
| Amazing ski-in to Kukagami Lodge with Bent and the pooches. Trees were so heavily laden with snow that they looked almost cartoonish. Perfect conditions - they've had a meter of snow this year. In fact, one of the challenges was ducking while skiing under a few branches that are now a lot closer to the ground than they used to be. My wax (left over from last weekend) was too sticky, but the trail was so awesome that I pushed hard to get the feeling of flying through the woods. Best classic ski we've had in a long, long time!!
Started to feel a cold coming on, so had a restful evening and a rare good night's sleep. |
| Note | |
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| I highly recommend Kukagami Lodge near Sudbury to anyone who would enjoy classic skiing on a private wilderness trail system, unlimited snowshoeing, excellent food, and a rustic ski-in lodge that holds a maximum of 12 guests. This was our 11th trip, and it just keeps getting better. |
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| C • Sounds blissful 2 |
Thursday Feb 9 |
| Strength (Legs) 30:00 [1] | |
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| Usual routine of leg strength and The Daily Show, with some regular and oblique sit-ups at the end for good measure.
While carrying firewood inside, a snowy log slipped and landed vertically, right in the top centre of my shoeless foot. Naturally, it was my injured leg. Big ouch - still waiting to see if there will be any other ramifications, but I was able to do the leg strength workout without too much whimpering. |
| Running 36:00 [4] | |
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| Arriving in Hamilton felt like being transported to a different planet. It is SO wintry up here in Palgrave, and the ground is bare in places there. I took advantage of the good traction to run faster than I've been able to do around here for some time. I thought I was working on my running posture today, but both Hammer and Etoile commented that I'm not succeeding. :-( I tried running the stairs for the first time - 4:20 up and down, so no new records were set. |
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| C • bare? 2 |
| Running 1:15:00 [2] ** | |
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| Street-O with Etoile, looking for lamp posts while exploring Hamilton's various educational institutions, industrial sites and residential areas. We didn't look at the map at all between controls, which was our exercise for tonight. Fun time and good company, with an extended burst of speed at the end to get Etoile back in time to retrieve Adventure Girl! from her ballet lesson. |
Wednesday Feb 8 |
| XC Skiing (Classic) 1:04:00 [3] | |
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| Skied at Albion Hills with Bent. First time all year that I've used my classic racing skis - they're so light that I practically float along. However, when the tracks get shallow or disappear, as they did in many places, these skis can be tricky.
Fortunately I didn't fall, because my bad knee is twinging after just 30 minutes of cycling yesterday - high cadence, medium gear. Rats. I've been researching Tour de France cycling trips for this summer - the ones where you bike up Alpe D'Huez, then set up a BBQ at the side of the road and wait for the racers to go by. But until I figure out if biking is what screws up my knee the most, I guess we'll have to put that idea on the shelf. :-( |
Tuesday Feb 7 |
| Cycling (Trainer) 30:00 [3] | |
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| We have a house rule that you're not allowed to watch the Tour de France DVDs unless you are pedalling. And until now, I hadn't seen any of it!
I did the Prologue time trial along with Lance. Passed Ullrich, but Zabriskie won by less than 2 seconds. Oh well, we tried. |
Monday Feb 6 |
| Snowshoeing 54:00 [2] | |
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| Be careful what you wish for! In 48 hours, we've gone from half-bare ground to 40 cm of snow. It is still coming down so hard that I can barely see to the edge of our property. Believe it or not, this is too much snow for skiing. OK, it is technically possible, but very slow in the deep snow, especially with all the fallen branches and leaning saplings. If you don't know where the trails are supposed to be - even big logging roads - you can miss them entirely.
So I went snowshoeing with ThunderDog instead. This was a good compromise, although still difficult to travel at any speed. I used ski poles for some upper body exercise, and climbed a lot of gratuitous hills. It was absolutely beautiful out there. Winter wonderland sounds cliche, and this was so amazing that it felt like I'd been transported somewhere else - maybe into the coastal mountains. Wow!! We've had lots of snow here before, but this may be the biggest storm yet. Bent is going to have a slo-o-ow ski home from work. |
| Strength (Core) 40:00 [1] | |
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| Hard Core Conditioning DVD.
Another reason to look forward to Mondays...!?! |
Sunday Feb 5 |
| Note | |
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| Thomass Starkey Hills winter orienteering
So... here is how my Thomass race went. Heavy, wet snow started falling yesterday afternoon, with occasional ice pellets. Our power went out during the night and is still out 14 hours later, which also means no running water out here in the boonies. This morning we had 25 cm of the white stuff and it was still coming down lightly, but I wanted to go orienteering. Bent, however, did not! But he heroically melted snow to make coffee on our propane stovetop for me, then managed to get the automatic garage door open without electricity.
A tree in our front yard, about 25 cm in diameter, had split vertically all the way down its trunk, and its branches were blocking part of the driveway. I had to bushwhack through it in my car as I shot out of the garage into the deep snow, trying to keep up some momentum. Our driveway is 125 m long, and I got stuck for the first time ever in a Subaru Outback as I did my turn-around. Got out and kicked down the heavy snow around all the wheels until I was able to move again, then when I made it to the end of the driveway, the snowplow had blocked it with a 1 m high snowdrift, heavy as concrete. Ran back to the house to grab a snow shovel, then dug out the minimum necessary opening in the drift, then took a run at it to get to the road. Made it. Phew.
Only one side of the road was driveable, so I stayed in the tire tracks, approaching hilltops carefully in case another car was approaching in the same tire tracks. Just before I reached the main road, a huge fallen tree blocked my way, and I had to backtrack and take a longer route around on deep snow-covered country roads. Finally got to an intersection where the road had improved to half-snow, half-pavement - still not great, and the snow was still falling.
At this point, I realized that I would be annoyed if Bent chose to drive more than an hour to an athletic event in this sort of weather, so it was rather hypocritical of me to keep going. I checked the clock and realized that given how long it had taken me to get to this point, I was going to be cutting it close to reach the race on time. And then I glanced below the clock into the passenger footwell where my running shoes SHOULD have been - and, well... the decision was easy after that. It was totally clear that I was not meant to do this race!! I turned around and slipped and slid all the way back home. I hear it was a fun event. :-( |
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| C • Well that sucks..... 2 |
| XC Skiing (Classic) 1:00:00 [1] | |
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| Skiing with Bent and the pooches around Palgrave West. Between fallen trees and sagging bushes in the deep snow, it was like bushwhacking on skis, even though we stuck to very wide trails. Beautiful scenery, but hard to get any speed up. ThunderDog and BulletDog had a fantastic time, which made it all worth it. |
| Strength (Leg, Core) 15:00 [1] | |
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Saturday Feb 4 |
| Running 1:48:00 [4] | |
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| The winter storm warning kept us away from our planned Duntroon XC ski trip, so Bent, Gazette and I decided to drop cars at either end of the Humber Valley Heritage Trail, and run its entire length. Gazette coaches 10K clinics for the Running Room, and she is preparing for a half-marathon, so the running pace was a bit fast for me - which was great. She also had us take 8 one-minute fast walking breaks for food and drink, which made it less painful to run a bit faster in between. The terrain was difficult today - ice, goopy mud and water - and the usual bunch of steep hills along the river valley. Great workout - just what I needed in a week where I've been feeling like my running needs help bigtime. |
| Running warm up/down 10:00 [1] | |
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Friday Feb 3 |
| Note | |
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| Finally decided to invest a few frequent flyer points into a trip to Barebones. It'll be fun to orienteer in some new terrain. Boldly GHO! :-) |
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| C • barebones 3 |
| Running 1:00:00 [2] *** | |
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| Decided to break up an all-day road trip by stopping at Hilton Falls West for a run. My poor ability to match map to terrain in this area has been bugging me since the training camp, so I wanted to take another shot at it.
I'd been planning a trail run, but the trails don't make a nice loop, so I ended up doing some cross-country travel and even a bit of dark green bushwhacking. All without a compass, although I had it in my pocket in case the map totally stopped resembling the real world. It was a dull, damp day near sunset with no one around, although there was plenty of evidence of human presence. In a few places, it felt kinda Blair Witch!
The map made somewhat more sense today, but I sure can't imagine running at top speed - even my top speed - while interpreting it. The lack of snow today made the rock features look more different from one another, which helped. All the same, I'm just not good at picking out 2.5 m contours, or distinguishing rocky dot knolls from hilltops on rock pavement, etc. |
Thursday Feb 2 |
| Strength (Legs, some core) 30:00 [1] | |
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| While the "Daily Show" dissected Bush's State of the Union Address |
| Running 30:00 [2] | |
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| Around Palgrave West with ThunderDog. Snow was soft at +5C, so it was hard to get traction.
I think the groundhog predicted 6 more weeks of spring today. Sigh. |
| Running (Form Exercises) 8:00 [1] | |
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| Wildlife report: 2 white-tailed deer.
(And I think they were laughing at my ABCs.) |
Wednesday Feb 1 |
| Running 30:00 [2] | |
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| Ran to Palgrave for my dental appointment. Not quite the pace I was aiming for, due to ThunderDog's off-trail explorations.
Dr. 'Bent did his best to fix my big adventure racing-induced cavity. He gave me 50/50 odds that it will flare up and need a root canal, possibly within the next few days. Those are better odds than what we had expected based on the X-ray, but still I'm sitting here feeling like a ticking bomb. |
| Running 1:00:00 [3] | |
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| Traded dogs with Bent, so I ran home with BulletDog. Took an extra loop around Palgrave East, because I really need to do more running. Where traction was good, I tried extending my stride and using my new, improved calf muscles. It occurred to me that I feel strong when running these days, but not fast, so it's probably time for some speed intervals. If I really want running to feel easier, I should probably lose 1-2 kg, but what is the point of all this exercise if it doesn't allow me to eat chocolate?? |
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| C • Chocolate 3 |