Training Log Archive: Bash

We came home last night to find a big box sitting on our doorstep. Yay, it was some cool Salomon gear to welcome 'Bent and me to the Salomon Flight Crew, a new group of trail runners who will act as ambassadors for the Salomon brand in our communities. Sounds like fun! I've been using their gear for years anyway, so I'm excited to be part of the team. If anyone has good or bad feedback on Salomon products, just e-mail me, and I'll pass it along since that's part of our role.

They are smart, those Salomon people, because naturally I needed some clothes to match the new gear they'd sent me. So today I visited the Salomon Store in Toronto and solved *that* problem. Gotta love those colour names... "Tomato Red" and "Kingfisher Blue" make sense. But Phatty and Cheesesteak need to talk to those European designers about "Autobahn", "Swamp" and "Flea". (Flea?!)

Paddled from Deer Island to the take-out at Chikanishing Creek. The weather was cloudy and sprinkly, but the winds didn't go above 10 knots, so it was fine in the open sections - although a little bouncy at times.



I found a few "channels" between islands that had grown in a fair bit, and some of them defeated us today. Turns out there are a few peninsulas masquerading as islands on the map! In this photo, we were able to pass behind Bateman Island and stay out of the wind.



I could paddle through the weeds for the first bit, then I had to grab weeds in my hands and pull on them to move myself ahead. Finally, I had to wade with my boat until the water got deep and open again. The mosquitoes loved the wading part.

The area has a very different character on a rainy day.



One of today's highlights was watching a bald eagle ignore us from a treetop. As we neared the take-out, we met seven canoes from a camp for teenaged girls. To my surprise, they sang Beatles tunes as they paddled. Considering that even my generation was too young for the Beatles (in real time, that is), I have to wonder why they weren't singing songs from less than 40 years ago!

We were hit with heavy rain and strong winds at breakfast, so we did some reading and napping followed by an energetic Inglewood vs. Palgrave Trivial Pursuit challenge in our tent. (I'd brought a box of question cards and invented a way for the game to work.) Sadly, the Inglewood team won - but they were lucky enough to get lots of Science and Nature questions! After that, we decided to warm up with some soup. It's hard to see the whitecaps on the shoals behind me in the photo, but it wouldn't have been a good time or place to be paddling.



The rain stopped in the afternoon, and Richard found a forecast predicting manageable winds with some showers tomorrow. We decided to stay put to enjoy our nice campsite, then get an early start tomorrow.



It was a great place to hang out. The next three pics are views looking in different directions from our "dining room".







We went for an evening hike where I found a rootstock that might give Valerie a run for her money!



We saw a lot of trees down like this, and we didn't remember it from other years, so we're wondering if this area was hit by an unusual storm.

Another great sunset looking toward the La Cloche Mountains.

Day 2 of our trip, and it was a beautiful morning in the Thirty Thousand Islands!



Actually, there are closer to 60,000 islands, but who's counting? I mean, really. Jan hadn't slept in 3 months due to a demanding work schedule, so we let her enjoy the tent for a couple of hours while the rest of us sat on the rocks drinking strong, black coffee, discussing the concept of sustainability and attempting to solve a few major environmental problems.



We had some more great paddling today. These are the Cross Islands - long narrow channels between small cliffy islands. Fun!



Found a huge, beautiful lunch rock. Note the handy little channel at the right for kayak parking.



A few of my routes took us through channels that turned out to be less watery than they appeared on the map. At least we were able to paddle through this one, even though the reeds were well over our heads, and we couldn't see the other paddlers for awhile.



We found one of several great campsites at the north end of Deer Island. Ours had the best harbour, but they all had great flower gardens. (It's wild iris season.) There was also a healthy population of minks here.



As forecast, the weather started to turn by Saturday evening. Tomorrow is supposed to be a small craft warning with heavy rain. Oh goodie.

Day 1 of Georgian Bay sea kayaking trip with Richard, Neil and Jan. After a quick stop in Nobel to check out the latest deals at White Squall Outfitters, we headed up to Killarney for our traditional pre-trip fish & chips feast from Herbert Fisheries, which operates in a school bus by the main dock. Then we loaded up the kayaks and started paddling down Chikanishing Creek.



The weather forecast for later in the trip was dubious - and that's always a major consideration on Georgian Bay. But today was perfect.





After a relatively short paddle, we made camp on Blockbuster Island.



We picked a scenic, windy point to keep the black flies away, but this was the one night when they overstayed their welcome. Rocky campsites are excellent for pre-dinner relaxation, however, I caught Richard reading Oral Health Journal after an especially tough week of dentistry.



After dinner, we hiked to the high point of the island where we could see a nearby group of islands that we would paddle through in the morning.



Paddling on the Bay means weaving your way through a maze of islands. Except when we travelled on the outer shore facing the open Bay, I had to concentrate hard on the map. There was an added challenge because a number of islands on the map are no longer islands in real life due to reduced water levels and growth of wetland vegetation. Meanwhile, new islands appear out of the shallow water whenever the water level dips. There were a few times when I needed to find the entrance to a small passage, and my orienteering experience sure came in handy.

Spectacular sunset tonight. I think Richard caught the moment best.

Yikes, it's 30C out there. I'd be soooo much happier with minus 30C! Last year my training took a big hit when the heat and smog got bad, so I'm trying to force myself to train indoors on the days when I'm tempted to do nothing. We haven't had the A/C on yet this year, so it's still warm in our basement training room, but at least it's not stinkin' hot!

Run off the bike. Watched Daily Show/Colbert during the two sessions.

Hot, hot, HOT. Wimp that I am, I decided to run this morning in our shady forest instead of joining Slowrunner for a high noon Crossfit run in the sunny Humber Valley. I ran mostly on trail, but did less than a km off-trail in the Wheelie Woods - good practice for orienteering. I measured a nice 400 m stretch of wide trail for speed intervals. It rises near the start, has a flattish plateau in the middle, then descends. It starts at the first BT post east of Bruce Junction and finishes at the junction between the BT and Swamp Trail. Rest periods were the jogs back to the starting point.

5 X 400 m trail intervals. (Without Slowrunner to hold me back, I was able to do 5 reps, haha.) I didn't look at my watch or even think about time, but I did try to do the last one faster: 2:17, 2:16, 2:21, 2:17, 2:11. It's fair to say that Usain Bolt has nothing to worry about!

As my "prize" for the Moraine in Focus photo contest, I just ordered the Canon 10-22 mm lens from Vistek. Time for some ultra-wide angle fun!

Paddling trainer was acting up, so I moved on.

No resting between sets of different exercises

It was sooo hot today that I thought I'd just do a short run in the FFs near dinnertime, but I felt good and ended up pushing harder than planned. About 45 sec/km faster than last week on the same hilly trail - although some of that can be attributed to feeling more comfortable with the "barefoot" feeling. Didn't step on any rocks today - yay!

LoTox sent a message that the 24 Hrs of Summer Solstice mountain bike relay had to be called off at midnight due to very bad weather! That made it a 12-hr race instead of 24 hrs, which is too bad after all the work Chico Racing put into it, but Mother Nature is always boss. I'm told that the slowest people were taking 3 hrs to do their laps (I usually take just over an hour), and some people did their laps as a long hike-a-bike. Wow. We did the race every year from 2001 to 2008, and there were some rainy periods, but mostly we've been very lucky. The race has always gone the full 24 hrs when we've done it. But in 2000, the year before we started doing the race, they had to stop at 6 a.m. for similar reasons. I like Chico, and we seem to be a good luck charm for him, so I guess we'd better sign up for next year!

Oh right, about the riding... 'Bent and I went down to Albion Hills to check things out. Naturally, the weather was awesome by this morning. We chatted with Mr. Gally and saw some friends' cars, but most people were at the awards ceremony, so we came back and did some rail trail riding before heading to Father's Day lunch.

'Bent and I ran to Albion Hills to check out the action at the 24 Hrs of Summer Solstice mountain bike relay. This is the first time in nine years that we haven't done it, and it's such a terrific event that we couldn't stay away. Crash drove by and offered us a ride, but we figured we'd better get some training in if we weren't going to race.

Unfortunately, today is the complete opposite of ideal bike racing weather. Rain, rain, mud, rain, mud, puddles, chilly - yuck. Everyone was smiling, but I heard a few people hinting that they might not do all their night laps. I risked my non-waterproof camera for a few photos of the race course.









After each lap, there was a long line-up at the bike wash station.



That's where we found Tommy Hillflyer completely covered in mud.



Here's a close-up.



But it wasn't all mud and rain. We also got to see a bunch of friends! Here's Mike Elvidge of the Terranauts.



And my teammate from last weekend, Mrs. Gally, along with shy cutie, Wee Gally.



A regular teammate, ThreePinJim.



And bride-to-be Lori Toxopeus.



And the Three Tenors from Caledon Hills Cycling.



We didn't find Rocky, Harper or Mr. Gally, even though we looked, and we only saw Crash while we were running on Duffy's Lane. So we may need to go back tomorrow!

When we got back from Albion Hills, I was a bit hypothermic, and I wanted to shower all the mud off right away. But - our power went off for 4 hrs just as I stepped into the shower, and in the country, the water goes off when the electricity goes off. So I could only dab the mud off with a washcloth and water bottle. What a letdown! This also blew apart our plans to watch a movie on the trainer (instead of skidding around in the mud like our friends). I tried riding with my iPod and found that it worked surprisingly well as I tried to match my cadence to the beat of the music. 'Bent was laughing at me as I sang along, danced and even did one big organ solo while riding.

'Bent and I hosted the Blaze Run from yesterday afternoon to this afternoon. We depend on volunteers and support crew to keep us racing, so it's nice to have the opportunity to help other racers out. The athletes and volunteers were terrific guests. They were in excellent spirits, and the athletes were still turning in some great runs after 72 hrs. Most of us got by on minimal sleep - there was plenty of action through the night as runners arrived and departed. The incredibly organized, patient Travellinga rejigged the running and driving schedule again and again in response to changing circumstances. Laptops, Blackberries and cell phones were constantly in action. 'Bent and I each did some driving to shuttle athletes to and from the race course.

Unfortunately, most of the racer groceries didn't make it to our place, and we'd only bought some treats to supplement their meals, so the pickings were slim for 20+ people for dinner and breakfast. Apologies to the people who had to have chocolate milk in their tea! Our shallow well lasted until the final hour, then the water finally ran out. Only 'Bent and Hansel had the sad experience of stepping into the shower and finding it dry. (Um, not at the same time.)

Photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/BarbJCampbell/Blaze?au...

Looking forward to cheering on the runners overnight!

A few notes while waiting for the Blaze Runners to arrive late this afternoon...

1) If you did the 2008 Coast Raid, or if you liked the scenery in the photos, check out the movie that inspired the event director to hold an adventure race on Quebec's beautiful Lower North Shore - La Grande Seduction (known as "Seducing Dr. Lewis" in English). It's a fun comedy in French with English subtitles, and it won all kinds of awards.
http://www.zip.ca/Browse/Title.aspx?f=titleId(1153...)

2) Four days after bushwhacking through seas of healthy poison ivy, it looks like I've escaped unscathed. I had a good soapy wash right after coming out of the woods on both Saturday and Sunday (attracting some funny looks in the Rattlesnake Point washroom, but at least I wasn't the only one doing it!) 'Bent, who seems immune to PI, was kind enough to clean my two pairs of contaminated shoes. Phew, I was anticipating disaster.

Rainy day, so I biked indoors rather than damage the trails. Watched The Daily Show and part of the Colbert Report.

Might have lasted longer since it was feeling like a good workout, but when the Colbert Report ended and a stoopid game show started, I lost interest.

Short trail run in my new Five Fingers "shoes". Didn't want to overdo it the first time out. I was alert for trail debris and didn't look at the scenery much. Uneven ground, small sticks and soft pine cones felt OK, but pointy rocks and hard pine cones hurt. The soft ground on Swamp Trail felt really nice. I was surprised that it felt so similar to regular running, other than occasional bruising from a stone on the sole of the foot. (The soles feel a little tingly now.) The only time it felt substantially different was going uphill. I was running on my forefoot then, and the back of my foot felt "loose" and unsupported - although not in a bad way. It just reminded me that I needed to consciously keep my foot in the right position. Interesting!

Distance note: Short Bruce Loop via long way through F&M's = 3.1K

Results from TOC's Sunday event just came out, and 'Bent and I were the top Coed team with 314 pts - yahoo! Our strategy for maximizing points while minimizing effort due to our fatigue from ESAR seemed to work. We got three fewer controls than the 2nd place team, who had 278 pts. And we only got one more control than the 3rd place team, who had 233 pts. That makes a rogainer's heart glad. :-)

Leanimal and I went out on the HVT for a Crossfit run, stopping at various bridges to use them for pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, squats and whatever else we could think of. Both of us are fatigued from the weekend, so I'm sure the workout felt a lot harder than it actually was! It was good to get out anyway. It was my first time training in serious summer heat - I sure haven't missed it!

The 4 bridge stops

The Blaze runners started in Tobermory at 1 p.m. this afternoon. They'll start arriving at our place on Thursday morning, and we'll serve as one of the base camps for 24 hrs.
http://www.adventurescience.ca/blaze

You can follow the location of the Blaze runners here. It looks like Team Old Guys is the only team transmitting to the map.
http://adventurescience.ca/blaze/follow-the-team.h...

Took ThunderDog for a hike in my new Vibram Five Fingers KSO "almost barefoot" shoes. Thanks to T-Dog's route choice, we ended up in gnarlier terrain than I'd planned, including some bushwhacking, but the shoes were fine. The strangest sensation was going through a field of tall grass and having to push hard against grass between my toes. Looking forward to trying a run - but today my legs are trashed from the busy weekend!

TOC's Navstock Adventure Run at Rattlesnake Point. Interesting format - two different Score-O maps in 2 hrs. While one teammate was running the northern map, the other teammate ran the southern map. You planned to meet your teammate at the start/finish at a particular time to download your SI card and switch maps. The twist was that you only got points for controls that both teammates visited. So the strategy depended on relative teammate abilities as well as the point values of the controls. Considering how fatigued we felt, I think 'Bent and I did OK with our 314 points, but results aren't available yet. It was great to have Goose there after a long recovery from his broken ankle. I don't think we could have chosen trickier terrain for him, and a 2-hr event was a great re-introduction to racing! Tiny cleaned the course - awesome. Great to see so many friends out and enjoy the BBQ afterward on a gorgeous day.

Emergency Services Adventure Race 2009 at Canadian Forces Base Borden.

We've often driven past this military base and wondered what was behind the fences, so it was very cool to have the opportunity to race there. When the map indicated that an area was out of bounds, it was probably a grenade testing area or artillery range, so there was little risk of anyone breaking the rules.

I was looking forward to racing on a brand new female team - the Beowulf Tree Huggers - with Rocky and Mrs. Gally. We had done a 1-hour paddle training session and discussed various teamwork strategies by e-mail, but we knew the key to our success would be our matching shirts, pigtails and hot pink hair ribbons (courtesy of Mrs. Gally, who has a 3-year-old daughter and knows about such things).



We had a mass bike start and followed a marked route to a gate out of CFB Borden. We started on pavement, then moved to gravel, and before we knew it, we were pedalling through mud and pushing through deep sand. It took a surprisingly long time to get off the base, and it took more biking skills than I'd expected from looking at the map! Rocky towed me a few times on the roads, then we settled into a pace line drafting each other for the rest of the race with Rocky and Mrs. Gally taking turns on the front and me falling behind whenever I looked at the map. They are such strong athletes - thanks for your help, you two!

We got to the canoes and had a bit of a portage to the Nottawasaga River. I carried the canoe, and just before we launched, a team of fit-looking female firefighters jogged by and tossed their canoe into the river. I think we should have bought them a beer afterward, because they stayed less than 100 meters behind us for the entire paddle, and this meant we could never slack off. There was no way we were getting beaten by another female team, even if they weren't in our category!

Mrs. Gally and Rocky paddled hard, doing occasional higher intensity intervals of 20 strokes. Mrs. Gally's experience with fitness class teaching came in handy, "Come on, girls! Make this next one count! 10 more! 5 more!" I'd decided on a canoe paddle for the stern after seeing how twisty the river was, and I'm not sure if it was the right choice. I liked being able to J-stroke and sweep on the hairpin turns, but I would have loved my kayak paddle on a few of the long, straight stretches. The firefighter women had 3 kayak paddles, and they were keeping up, but the only team that passed us was a coed team of police offers with the same configuration as us - 2 kayak paddles and a canoe paddle in the stern.

By ESAR standards, it was a long paddle - around 75 minutes of hard paddling with lots of steering. Getting the canoe and all our paddling gear up the steep riverbank, across the train tracks and over a couple of fence posts to the TA was a slog, but the ladies were smiling as they got ready for a 2K road run.



Mrs. Gally had me on tow as the female firefighters ran past looking strong. They were exactly the kind of people we would want to see if our house were burning down, but we weren't pleased to see them right then! Shortly afterward, we hit a busy road with a traffic light. The firefighters jaywalked/ran across the road, and we arrived just as a stream of traffic passed by. It's always a little sketchy to cross a busy road on tow, and we ended up waiting with some policemen until we had a Walk signal. The firefighters were long gone.

We got to a school where we picked up our bikes. From this point on, if you wanted to change between bike and trek shoes, you had to carry extra shoes for the rest of the race. I had decided to stick with my Pearl Izumi bike shoes for the entire race. They have a good tread for running, but they clacked on this 2K pavement run! This link shows a newer style, but the tread is about the same as mine. This plan worked really well, since it gave me extra time to review/adjust the map at TAs, have a snack, etc. while the others changed their shoes.
http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Pearl_Izumi_Alp_...

We started biking with the friendly policemen and passed them on the next open stretch. One of them called out, "Hey, cars never pass us on the highway!"

After crossing Hwy 90, we were on a trail that stopped at a river. Our instructions were to go 100 m east of the trail, and we would find ropes strung across at a relatively shallow part of the river. The volunteer there said it would get "belly button deep". We looked at 5 foot-tall Rocky and assumed that he wasn't talking about *her* belly button! We had to hold our bikes up high to keep them out of the river, so the ropes were only useful for getting in and getting out. The far bank was a steep mud slick. I ended up throwing my bike up the bank, then crawling up the ooze, grasping at weeds to pull myself up. But my hot pink hair ribbons stayed intact, and that's the important thing.

With all three of us on the far bank, we just needed to follow a grass path along the bank to get back to the trail we'd been on. Blocking the grass path was... the firefighter team! Where did they come from? They didn't seem to be moving or doing anything. We excused ourselves and went around them in the tall weeds, and within a few seconds, we were back on the main trail, which turned into a gravel road. The other team was right on our tail - maybe they weren't sure of where to go. We discovered that if we maintained a good pace line, we were able to make time on them, so we pushed hard on this section, eventually entering CFB Borden and dropping our bikes to find two CPs on a topo map.

There was an obvious attackpoint to CP6, and a less obvious one with the same distance of bushwhacking. I picked the less obvious one, which meant we didn't lead anyone there. We hit some big deadfall, but it sounds like everyone had the same problem. I was impressed that my two teammates - who are blessed with strength but not height - were able to scramble over everything we encountered. It was nasty! After CP6, we kept the Mad River in sight, touching on two northern bends before taking a final bearing toward the bend where CP7 sat by a pond. We met Pete Dobos and Padre Andre here, racing with green and black camo on their faces - a very high SPF, they said. It was a thick bushwhack up to the road, but fairly short.

The volunteers at the TA said we were in 8th place, which got the adrenaline flowing. We didn't see the firefighters again, but I think we kept imagining that they were right behind us!

After a speedy ride through the base on deserted gravel and paved roads, we dropped our bikes at the start/finish and received an orienteering map. We had 7 CPs to find in any order, and CPA near the finish line had an obstacle course, so we left it for last, It was a pleasure to adventure race with a real 1:15,000 orienteering map. There had been a few changes since the map was made, but it was still awesome. We went around counterclockwise and met Milhouse at our 1st CP, which was his last one on the way to the finish line where he, Dave Corner and John Blackwell won the race overall.

Near one CP, we met Team Flashover in the road. We asked what they were doing, and they said, "Waiting for you, Barb!" (One of their strong team members was a track star at my public school in Brantford many years ago - small world!) The control was at a trail junction about 30 m off the road, and I guess they hadn't seen it because one of them ran in with Mrs. Gally to punch the control. Ironically, they were the only 911 team that ended up finishing ahead of us - by 3 minutes - and we helped them do it!

Before punching the final CP, we had to do a military obstacle course - loads of fun. We had to haul ourselves over walls, swing along a row of monkey bars, crawl through sand, balance on poles and ropes, etc. I'd like one of those in our back yard. At the end was a toonie slingshot for charity, but we didn't have to hit the target, so I didn't try to figure out the contraption - just shot my toonie at the ground. Rocky hit the target, and Mrs. Gally was close. People hitting the target received draw prize tickets, and the volunteer generously handed a toonie back to Mrs. Gally saying, "Here, you've got time to take another shot." "No, she doesn't!!" Rocky and I said. But she quickly hit the target, then we ran up the final hill to the finish line - yay.

Fun race with great teammates! It's always a treat when you race in a new team combination that clicks. We're waiting for the final standings, but based on the manually posted results, it looks like we were the 6th ranked team overall out of about 80 teams. (A team of two police officers was faster, but they were unranked.) Our dream goal had been to finish ahead of all the coed teams, and... mission accomplished - woo hoo! I used this as an excuse to eat 3 pieces of fried chicken at the mess hall - something I never have, and it was soooo yummy.



The Milton Basement Tree Huggers ('Bent, Tiny and Tommy Hillflyer) had a great race, finishing 2nd overall. Milhouse's team took the victory as expected, but only by a margin of 12 minutes in a 4.5 hr race, so our boys should be very proud!



Thanks to Mr. & Mrs. Flatfoot, STORM, Sherpa, Vin and all the ESAR gang for another well-organized, fun event. There's a reason you guys sell out your races. They rock!

Not feeling any worse, so all the cold-preventative measures must be working - yay.

I've never had a flat while biking, which has contributed to my lack of bike repair skills. But I got a flat today in the driveway while pumping my tires for tomorrow's race, and I'm proud to announce that I managed to fix it - thus achieving the skill level of an average 6th grader. (Although I made 'Bent do the final sweep to check for pinch flats since I didn't trust my newfound abilities.)

Taking it easy, drinking plenty of fluids, not pushing my lungs or legs, taking ColdFX and vitamin C... No time to get really sick until Monday - and of course I'd rather not.

I think all the pieces have finally come together for our trip to Sweden - hotels, mountain lodges, 18-hr train trip with sleeper car, flights to and within Sweden, bus schedules, backpacking trip (except I don't have a map), luggage storage while we're backpacking, rental car for the part of the time, mountain marathon, pre-and post-race banquet registration... PHEW. With a not-so-speedy Internet connection and a country that seems relatively unconcerned about credit card security, this was more complex than I'd expected. But the mountains and the saunas will be worth it! (If not the food...) The only down side is that we are going to have to pack a big bushel of money. Nothing comes cheap in Scandinavia.

I thought I'd successfully fought off the bug I started feeling on Monday, but it came back with a vengeance tonight. Sniffle, achoo. Apologies to my ESAR team - I'll be heavier on the tow rope than I'd hoped.

Argghh, I can't believe how many people in Sweden want me to e-mail them my credit card number or type it into an insecure website. Are things really so different there?

Crossfit run with Slowrunner, joined by Leanimal partway through. We ran the HVT from the Wellness Centre to Duffy's Lane, then back to the 82 Steps for some Crossfit and hill intervals. After the final hill, we chatted off the clock for a bit, since Leanimal had to go back the other way. I started to feel mildly dizzy, but it faded. It happened again after we ran up from the bottom of the valley and stopped at Hwy 50. It didn't go any farther than that, and Slowrunner was ready to catch me if I started to go down! Kinda disappointed - I'd hoped the fainting thing would be a one-off. Slowrunner said it was a particularly hard workout today - I find it hard to judge, since they all feel tough to me. And I am fighting off a cold, so my breathing isn't great today. Anyway, it was still loads of fun, and we all agreed that it was way better to do this with friends.

Crossfit + Hill Intervals

10 Jump-ups to bridge deck
8-15 Push-ups (I kept decreasing)
20 Jump squats
25 Dips off the bridge (I think I cheated and did less on one of these)

Then run up the 82 steps (about 105 m out and back - very steep trail) and back down again. (This distance is included in the run above.)

We did 4 repeats, and on the final one, Slowrunner said this was her last one. She had announced 5 repeats up front, but Leanimal and I interpreted this as meaning that she had had enough. After all, she had run about a million miles on the weekend. Of course, neither of us spoke up and insisted on doing an extra repeat ourselves. Turns out Slowrunner had simply miscounted - and Leanimal and I just let her do it!

We're collecting ultralight gear for our mountain marathon in Sweden. We're also using it for a backpacking trip beforehand, so we don't want to sleep in a garbage bag and heat our food with a candle. But it's going to be close! ;-)

Our Tarptent Double Rainbow has arrived - 1135 g. A big thunderstorm hit right after 'Bent pitched it, and we got to see how it responded. It's like a rock in the wind, but it got a little wet around the edges, so we'll want synthetic sleeping bags.

We picked up a Varga Triad alcohol stove at MEC, since apparently that is the fuel we will find most easily in Sweden. It weighs 28g and is about 1/3 the size of a muffin. It may take all evening to cook our dinner, but the midnight sun in Lapland is good for that! Besides, 'Bent loves fiddling with camping gadgetry.

Rats, I was going to do light training today, but I feel a cold or something coming on. Nooo! I hope it's not tuberculosis or flesh-eating disease from swimming in Lake Ontario during Saturday's race. With ESAR coming up, it's time for serious evasive maneuvers - and no training until my Crossfit date with Slowrunner tomorrow.

'Bent and I planned to ride to the Shed today, but the pooches had a long day alone yesterday while we went to Toronto. Between our guilt and the so-so weather, we decided to walk the dogs and watch a movie on the trainer with BulletDog and ThunderDog happily curled up beside us. "Whale Music" is pretty good so far.

I'm spending tonnes of time making complex plans for our trip to Sweden. I assumed that a remote mountain station with 400 beds 150 km north of the Arctic Circle would always have space available. But no, there is a 5-day "hiking race" bringing 2,000 people to the area. Only in Sweden!

Random observations:

- I've been asked twice to submit credit card information via insecure Internet methods. Not gonna happen.

- English translations are good in comparison to translated Japanese instructions for electronics, but it can still be amusing. Here's some info on a hotel I'm considering in Stockholm: "In our guest house the charm is not only impregnated in the walls." That one's high on my list, since it sounds like charm will be impregnated all over the place! (Oh yeah, and it's cheap by Stockholm standards.)

Toronto Orienteering Club's "Why Just Run?" race on the Toronto Islands.

If you weren't there, you missed a great time on a sunny day! WJR provided a nice challenge for adventure racers, and it was also a fun venue for families who could have a picnic or go to the amusement park after the race. A stainless steel water bottle was the swag, and there were loads of good draw prizes. 'Bent got a $25 gift certificate for Running Free.

Michael Johnston created a very clever format for the 10K Adventure course. (There were also simpler, shorter Beginner and Sport courses.) The rules were so deviously complicated that we were sure Nick must have been involved in developing them, but both parties denied it. It was easy enough to understand - just hard to figure out the right strategy.

It was like a Score-O, except that the point values of the 12 controls varied depending on which order you hit the control. For e.g. the course setter might say that #1 was worth 1 point if you went there first, but it would be worth 8 points if you went there 6th or negative 8 points if you went there 11th, so you had to be careful.

We got a 12X12 "Controls vs. Sequence" grid showing all 144 possible point values at 9:30 a.m., then we got our maps at 10 a.m., and we had to punch the start control within 10 minutes after that. (Yahoo, what a nice new map of a fun sprint area!)

Four controls were mandatory, but the rest were optional. It was a heck of an optimization problem. Each point earned would take a minute off your time. Nick Duca won the event by visiting most of the controls quickly, but some people did well by visiting fewer controls, which gave them fewer points, but their base time was low enough that they did OK anyway.

I felt good about my choices in the first half of the race. It didn't always make sense to visit two adjacent controls in sequence, but it also didn't help to run super-long distances between controls just to get more points. (As 'Bent learned.) You had to remember that 1 point = 1 minute, so there was some balance between proximity and point values.

As I approached a control on a little island about 5 meters from the main island, a racer came toward me saying, "It is impossible." I could see the flag right there, so I just stepped into the chilly water that quickly rose over my head and swam across to the control, much to his surprise. He laughed, turned around and did the same. I had to suppress my squeamishness. When I kayaked on Lake Ontario by Toronto years ago, I remember trying soooo hard not to splash droplets of that polluted water on my face... oh well.

Unfortunately, my points value grid floated out of its case during the swim, so for the 2nd half of the race, I was flying blind as far as the points went. Luckily, the map indicated which controls were mandatory. I hit one mandatory control that turned out to be worth minus 8 points - grrr. One fun control was in a big hedge/fence maze. I saw the control within a minute of entering the maze, but it seemed to take me forever to backtrack and find a way to get to it. Can't wait to see my GPS track! I'm not sure if it was efficient to do the maze points-wise, but it sure was fun.

At the end, they subtracted your points from your minutes, and I ended up with 11 minutes, good enough to be the top woman and (more importantly) ahead of 'Bent by 30 seconds after an 80-minute run for both of us. That meant he had to buy lunch. :-) If I hadn't lost the points grid, I probably could have carved another 8 minutes off that time, but I still wouldn't have come close to Nick, who won overall with an amazing time of something like minus 21 minutes! Wow!

Well-organized event by TOC, and there are still two more WJR events this year. The format will be different for each event to keep us on our toes.

Feeling tired today, so thought I'd take it easy before tomorrow's race.

Trying to bump up the quality of my running training, so went out for an iPod-on-the-Rail-Trail run. This was the first time I'd used my iPod since the marathon last December, but I find it a good way to keep the speed a little higher.

Ran from Humber Station to Mt. Hope and back again, turning off my Garmin and iPod for the road crossings.

Outward run: 26:51 5:35/km
Homeward: 27:36 5:43/km

Boston qualifying pace, but it looks like I'm only good for an hour or so! Oh well.

Worked on:
- keeping hips forward, leaning from the feet and not from the waist (from C3 coaches)
- keeping movement in a forward plane, not a side-to-side one (as observed by Caron at the halfway point of my marathon - and quite noticeable when I get tired)
- engaging calf muscles for the rear leg push-off (from C3 coaches)
- using each leg equally (an interesting tip from Sid's log this week)

It sounds like a lot, but these things seemed interconnected, so it wasn't hard to remember. What was hard was trying to hold it together when I got tired.

When I got into the car, I was hit with a brand new, intense pain in the muscles around my lower right back ribs. I think I'd better take it easy on the upper body strength stuff until ESAR - I'm clearly a wimp.

I took my car to the mechanic in Palgrave first thing this morning. He tightened one nut to fix the problem, then refused my money. Sometimes I think I should ask for a refund on my engineering degrees - or maybe on my husband. ;-)

'Bent and I continued with our plan anyway - a bike ride from the village into Albion Hills, then an awesome, long single track ride. We only saw one other rider and a small number of bugs, so it was nicer than an evening ride. It was my first long ride in Albion this year, so there were a few surprises - small re-routes, new logs down, some deeper ruts, etc. It's been a wet spring, and there is more mud than usual, but the drier trails have benefited from the extra moisture and stayed in excellent shape.

It was super-fun, and 'Bent was riding really well. I rode almost all the twisty, rooty, loggy stuff that I've ridden in previous years, although I took the chicken route a few times in the first hour. Need to do one more long bike ride before ESAR, since the Flatfoots always design a course with good biking.

Oooh, I want to do this some day!

Coast to Coast Mountain Biking across Scotland

Slowrunner (aka IronWoman) is not going to let my fitness waste away on her watch, so we went out on the Humber Valley Trail for a combination trail run/Crossfit session. It's been so long that I made a nav error looking for the start of the trail, and I nearly took Slowrunner out with a hard bodycheck. We ran from the Wellness Centre to Duffy's Lane, then back to the creek at the bottom of the last big hill before the Wellness Centre. Using the bridge, boardwalk and steps, we did a bunch of pull-ups, push-ups and squats, then ran 200 meters uphill to the trail junction where it splits off to Bolton, then back down to the bridge. That was one repeat, and we did five of them, with Slowrunner fitting in more strength exercises than I did. Then we ran up the final part of the hill to get back to the Wellness Centre. Fun!!

This was the strength part of the session.

Pedalmag.com posted a report on our MTB-O race. Leanimal and Milhouse are in the same set of headlines as Floyd Landis! And Scooby and Rocky get 15 minutes of fame as well.
http://www.pedalmag.com/index.php?module=Section&a...

Around Palgrave West, just as cold rain was starting. The woods were alive today! I ran into the same loose rottweiler twice. She was friendly after her owner called out to her from behind, but she had a nervewracking habit of freezing totally still, then charging me when I got close. If I didn't love dogs, I would have been freaked out. Then I came around a bend at the Wheelies' place and ran into two men sawing logs - no, they weren't asleep; they were clearing trails.

The running went well - I felt like I was pushing hard, and I worked on keeping my hips forward which Coach C3Hans (not to be mistaken for Coach Sudden) says will engage different muscles and make running more efficient. I find it a good way to fight my naturally bad running posture.

Attended the Dufferin Arts Council meeting to hear GHOSlow's presentation on the work that he and Mrs. GHOSlow have done to find painting locations for a large number of Group of Seven works. Wheelies and Abbotts were there too, so it turns out I could have carpooled. Based on the murmurs in the audience, I'd say that people were blown away. Great presentation!