Training Log Archive: Bash

More "Daily Show".

January training hours: 46:15

Thanks to our O training camp, I spent over 18 hrs orienteering this month. Running time was 6 hrs, which would be OK if we had enough snow to do my usual amount of skiing and snowshoeing, but I'm getting tired too quickly when I run, so I will need to do more. I'm happy to have managed 6 hours of core/leg strength exercises, plus a bit of yoga. That was one of my 2006 training goals, and it's already becoming a habit. What's really nice is that I can feel the difference.

Excitement is mounting in the Tree Hugger camp as one of our own team members, Brittany Webster, begins competing today in the Junior (under 23) World XC Ski Championships in Slovenia! Brittany has only been skiing for a few years, and had been overlooked by the folks in the skiing elite. Then, after a great finish in a recent race, she was whisked out of high school and over to Europe with the junior national team. In her first international race, she was leading at the 5 km point, then had a bad fall that knocked the wind out of her. She finished 4th, just after a Canadian woman who is going to the Olympics this year. Wow!

The funniest story so far was when they got off the plane in Europe, and she was watching huge ski bags coming off. When she asked, she was told that team members had been limited to 13 pairs each this season. Then her bag came off the plane, containing the only 3 pairs of skis that she has ever owned, and everyone laughed. And then they got concerned, and contacted the Fischer factory in Italy, which immediately sent her two new pairs of skis. Wow.

Her boyfriend Pate Neumann, a long time member of the Tree Huggers mountain bike team, has also raised some eyebrows in the XC ski community recently, and will hopefully be competing internationally next year as well. They are both 18, so they have a long time left in the under 23 category before they would compete at the senior level. In the meantime, we are making plans to go watch them in the 2010 Olympics!

Hard Core Conditioning DVD.
Ouch! But at least I'm able to make it all the way through now.

Bent and I jogged over to the Palgrave CA parking lot.

First orienteering training session with the new Caledon Navigators Club. Yes, I am now a full member of two orienteering clubs, which will mean more O time and undoubtedly more V time too. (Volunteering.) It sure was a treat to arrive at an O training session on foot, and it was excellent to see a dozen enthusiastic people out on such a nasty, cold, rainy morning. We broke into groups, and I coached a relatively new orienteer. I had no map case in the pouring rain, so decided to make it an exercise in map memorization, while letting my "student" lead the way. Lots of fun, and she is a great runner, so the trail running was a good workout.

Hardwood Hills with Bent, TheMinister, Gazelle and Gazette. We'd asked TheMinister for some skate-ski coaching, and he did a great job - although he was pretty tough on us for a Saturday morning! Lots of skiing up hills without poles, and he explicitly prohibited us from using our "lowest gear", even on the biggest hills. Great workout - it would almost count as interval training. Beautiful sunny day, but really too warm for skiing by the time we left. The last hour felt like being on a treadmill with the resistance turned way up.

I now feel comfortable enough on skate skis that I will definitely use them in the ARC winter race in March. That might even be a good excuse to do the race solo one more time. However, there are still surprises with this new technique, and one high-speed fall today wrenched my lower back pretty badly. I'll do lots of light stretching over the next few days and keep my fingers crossed.

Leg exercises are feeling good and have given me a wonderful excuse to watch Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" occasionally. My bad knee is reasonably functional these days, and the strength/stabilization exercises really seem to have made a difference. I still need to be careful with my knee and am worried that spring mountain biking will bring back the constant pain. Anyway, things have gone a lot better than I expected they would back in the fall, when I was afraid that I would have to take up knitting as my main hobby. Who needs cartilage anyway??

My body is telling me that I need a rest day before a busy weekend, so unless I get inspired for some yoga later, that's probably it for today.

Accompanied Bent and BulletDog on their run to work, since I had a dental appointment in their office. Due to a minor spousal miscommunication regarding the amount of time required between wake-up call and departure, I stumbled out the door without my caffeine, knee brace or brushed hair - and ran pretty much all the way at a good pace with my eyes closed. (Why is it that night owls like me always seem to pair up with crazy-cheerful-energetic-in-the-morning people like Bent??)

Unfortunately, Dr. Bent diagnosed a large cavity that, due to its location and rapid onset, has likely been hastened along by my carb-loaded adventure races. :-((

Ran back home from Palgrave - only one minute slower than the run in, and there is a net elevation gain in this direction. Since I was still basically asleep at the time, I'll take it.

Silly walks to entertain ThunderDog upon my return.

Around Palgrave West with BulletDog

6 times up and down Raspberry Hill in soft snow with poor traction, so lots of work. As I started up for the 5th time, BulletDog took my arm gently in her mouth to try to stop me. Dogs just don't understand intervals.

While watching the fallout from the election on TV... sigh...

Yahoo - finally made it all the way through Caron Shepley's "Hard Core Conditioning" DVD. It gets easier toward the end, actually. Either that, or else maybe I actually USE my lower ab muscles once in awhile, so that part didn't seem so bad. I'd like to try to get through this full core strength routine once a week, then supplement with a few crunches on a couple of other days.

Today should have been a rest day, but right outside my door was a deep blue sky, fresh snow, and a forest that looked like a glittering crystal palace thanks to freezing rain from the weekend storm. I was intrigued by Bent's discovery of a groomed skating trail in the forest 2 km away, and I was curious to see what it would have felt like to use skate skis in Saturday's race, given that some of our route was off-trail.

Today was a good test, because there is plenty of debris on trails from recent storms and logging. Icy branches are drooping and blocking the way in places. Part of my rolling cross-country route to the skate trail included a single track trail. So it was a good test of how a relative newbie can get by on skate skis in less-than-ideal conditions.

I have a strong bias toward classic skiing, but I would have to admit that today's outing went shockingly well. I had a couple of falls, and there was one time when my ski tip hooked a branch and twisted my bad knee. I have less control on downhills than I have with classic skis, especially when I have to be nimble to avoid debris. But overall, it was great - loads of fun, even on the ungroomed trails. It's not often that I get to have a brand new adventure in my own back yard, and I'm excited to have another fun way to spend my time in the woods! :-)

Thomass Greenwood - made a last minute decision to do this event late last night, and was lucky that they'd printed a few extra maps. I realized just as they handed out the maps that I felt very dehydrated from yesterday's race, in spite of all the water I'd been chugging this morning. And by the time you can tell you're dehydrated, you're usually pretty far along. Anyway, I started off behind the *real* runners as usual, but fortunately we came to a big steep, slippery descent into a valley just before the 1st control, and my kamikaze tendencies allowed me to pass a bunch of people there. But after that, my legs reminded me that I'd done a good amount of running yesterday, and they were a bit fatigued. My nav was OK, but there were 2 controls where I was slightly off and had to relocate. Total mistakes while navigating my chosen routes (ignoring the very likely possibility that my route choices were not optimum) probably totalled less than 2 minutes, and for someone at my level, it would be arrogant to complain about that. Mostly today, I was just slow, slow, slow.

Congrats to GHO's Marianna Weber for winning the race!

Leg strength exercises. Although my legs feel well-used (maybe even abused) after this weekend, I felt reasonably strong. It may be time to start adding weights to some of the exercises to up the ante.

My pre-Christmas knee damage seems to have settled down, and nothing feels like it's rattling around in there right now. My kneecap hurt while biking yesterday, and we only went about 18 km. I'm wondering if it's going to be biking that I have to cut down on, rather than running.

Salomon Adventure Challenge - Mansfield

FAR Winter Adventure Race at Mansfield.

Luckily, they had hired a minister as the course designer. Allthough we still had 50/50 grass and crunchy snow at 9 p.m. the night before the race, his prayers were answered after we went to bed, bringing a storm that dropped 20 cm of the white stuff. Woo hoo!

Tough call about which skis to use - and we'd brought a van load with all the skis we own! Until shortly before the race, we'd been told that skate skiing was banned on classic trails, plus we could see some off-trail routes that we wanted to follow.. So we went for classic, which was probably NOT the right choice, although Bent and I are new skate skiers, so it's hard to say. During the captains' briefing, they announced that skating would be allowed on classic trails after all, because they hadn't been track set. Not sure, but that might have changed our strategy. Anyway, since it was -0.5C before breakfast, I waxed purple for 0C, and took red along in case I needed more grip.

There was a Lemans start where we ran up a hill to CP1, then ran back down to put on our skis. We could have done this better in a couple of ways, but it was only a few minutes lost, so no biggie. Then we put on our skis and headed up the hill to the trails. Not sure if the temperature dropped after breakfast or if the elevation difference had an effect, but the new wet snow stuck like bricks to our skis. Yikes!! We stuck it out for 20 minutes, trying to wear down the wax, but finally had to dig out the scraper. Whatta waste of time! After that, we skated on our classic skis when we could, and they were better for the off-trail stuff we did.

The "ski scramble" section was fun, with 4 CPs to visit in any order. If you skied on a trail, then you had to ski in the designated direction, but you didn't have to ski on trails.

Because of all our problems, we were shocked to be in 8th place (out of about 50 teams) coming off the ski. I guess some teams must have had it even worse.

We transitioned to biking on very snowy roads, with occasional Close Encounters of the Scary Kind with SUVs, pick-up trucks, snowmobiles and snowplows. We got Bent towing TheMinister, who has been sick over the past month. There was a big climb where we gained elevation that took us from bottom to top of the nearby downhill ski resort. An all-male team had passed us at the bottom, and when I saw them walking their bikes, I couldn't resist pedalling past them all the way to the top. :-)

We dropped our bikes and started our trek by following a marked route up the escarpment - very steep and slippery. Then we headed a couple of km cross-country toward the highest hill in the area. At first, there were tracks going on my bearing, then they turned in a direction I didn't like, so I struck off on my own and broke trail, which probably slowed us down, but I hate not navigating in winter races! Bent had TheMinister on tow for the trekking section, and I was impressed at TheMinister''s ability (which I do not share) to be towed through tangled forest and down slippery hills.

After the first hilly trek, the next two portions of the trek became a run through the bush in well-worn tracks (although not always easy footing). We passed two teams in this section, then crossed into Mansfield and booted it to the finish. It wasn't our best winter race result, but considering TheMinister's recent injury and illness, it was better than expected. We finished 9th, just 3 minutes out of 7th. Most importantly, it was a beautiful winter day and we had a great time being outside in it! :-)

Big congrats to our friends Hammer, Tarno, Adidas PL&A, Tiny, Crash, Rocky, Gazelle and Gazette who all had awesome races!

Slippery trail run around Palgrave West. It's been awhile since I've tried to go fast, mostly because the pooches have found interesting things to investigate in the woods, and I've needed to track them down. However, BulletDog lived up to her name today, and I tried to run at what I imagine my 5K race pace might be, if I ever did 5K races.

So... you might ask whether I actually ran 5K, given that I was out there for 20 minutes. Well, that's not a polite question to ask a lady!

As, Bs and Cs around the yard and down to the mailbox (checking first to make sure that no cars were coming that might see me doing silly walks).

In packing for this weekend's adventure race, I stumbled across some gear that hasn't been used in some time, including the Camelbak that I used in the RTN Champs in September, still full of fluid. To get the lid unscrewed, I finally ended up in the workshop using a C-clamp and vice grips, after I'd tried several other methods without success. Then the weird thing was that it wasn't slimy inside. Apparently if you leave Camelbaks long enough, there is another stage BEYOND slimy. Very scary. I am sharing this information with Attackpointers as a cautionary tale.

Crunch, crunch. Ooofff!! Today I made it little farther in Caron Shepley's "Hard Core Conditioning" DVD. It's getting a bit more possible - which is a good thing, because I was developing some awesome upper abs (the early part of the DVD) and completely flabby lower abs (the later part of the DVD, some of which I still haven't seen). And really, when was the last time anyone walked up to somebody and said, "Wow, you have a really nice 2-pack!"

One of those adventurous days you can only have when you live in the boonies... Thanks to the freezing rain, it's a skating rink out there, and no vehicles can come down our dirt road. It's about 2 km to the nearest paved road. I tried to go out in my AWD Subaru Outback and did most of a 360 before I realized that I'd be doing well just to get back into our driveway. Which fortunately I did, plus I made it another 120 meters slightly uphill on ice to our garage. Ironically, I was going to town to pick up a pair of YakTrax Pros from the hardware store. They would be useful today.

So I called Bent at work and let him know that he was going to have to come home from work on foot, sick or not. He had worn street clothes, and didn't have his usual gear for jogging 4+ km cross-country in pouring rain at 0C. I offered to start jogging from this direction with my backpack full of Icebugs, toque, gloves, headlamp, etc.

We get power failures more often than in urban areas, so I did the usual prep before leaving - filled several big containers with drinking water (our well pump is electric) and turned up the furnace in anticipation of losing it. Then off into the rain with BulletDog.

We met Bent and ThunderDog in the forest halfway, and they were doing pretty well, although we were all extremely soggy. Now we've got the fire burning high, ready for a cozy evening at home, and we're just keeping our fingers crossed that we don't have to face the nastiest hardship that freezing rain causes country residents - the loss of our HD satellite signal.

Around Palgrave West with ThunderDog. I wanted to keep my Icebugs dry, so I wore regular trail running shoes. Just 100 meters from our house, I skidded down a steep, icy hill off-trail and stopped when the foot of my injured leg jammed against a rotten log. Twisted the leg, wrenched the shoulder and smashed down on my funny bone. Sometimes I think that I'm just an accident waiting to happen, except that wouldn't be accurate because accidents never wait very long to happen to me!!! After that, I felt pretty good running - other than the bruising, of course. Still lots of crunchy snow and ice on the trails.

After injuring myself in my attempt to keep my Icebugs dry, I remembered that I needed to try them out to see if they would fit into the pedal cages on my bike. (For winter AR, we take off the clipless pedals to save time and frostbite in transitions.) Because FAR has just removed the mandatory snowshoe requirement for this weekend's event, I want to race in Icebugs for sure, but I didn't know if I could slide the little spikes across the pedal platform while moving. Phew, it wasn't easy, but it did work.

I'd intended to give trail riding on snow/ice another shot, but I gave up after a few hundred meters and headed out onto our frozen-hard gravel roads. Riding conditions were excellent, and I tried to push hard. In previous years when I've used the bike in winter AR, I've felt awkward and out of shape. Now that I'm doing leg strength exercises for my knee injury (even if I am pathetic about doing them regularly), my cycling legs felt better than usual.

Exploring the Mansfield region with Bent, Gazelle and Gazette in anticipation of next weekend's winter adventure race. A fresh layer of snow made all the trees more beautiful, and a chilly wind kept us moving at a good pace. It's been 3.5 months since I've navigated on a 1:50 topo, so it's a good thing we did this, because my brain was a bit slow to make the transition. After overshooting our initial "control", things went smoothly. It was a great day to be out with good friends. The only downer was accepting the inevitability of at least one very long, steep hill in the biking section, which we'd known about from reviewing the maps, but it was a lot worse to see it in person!

Wildlife report: 5 deer, 3 grouse, 1 Siberian Husky, 1 very upset barking poodle wearing a cute red sweater

Bent thought it would be a great day to ride the trails of Palgrave West in preparation for next weekend's adventure race, and I thought it would be better to ride on gravel roads. It turns out we were both wrong. We started through our yard toward our trails and made it about 10 meters through wet snow before giving up in despair. Then I started down our driveway and sank into mud so deep that the top of my tire was submerged.

So... we threw the bikes in the van and drove to the rail trail - which was icy in the good parts, and slushy and snowy in the bad parts. Tough riding and not much fun, I'm afraid. Good news for Rocky and Crash - the winter bike trails are all yours!!

Core and leg strength workout. I went too light on core strength last year, and I can already feel the improvement after the first couple of weeks of 2006 - but it still hurts!!

Started with 100 double-paces each of Silly Walks A, B, and C. ThunderDog kept romping back and forth in confusion, until we finally headed into the woods. We have bare patches on open south-facing hills now, but there is still 15 cm of snow on most trails. With the warm temperatures, it was like running in a Slushee. I ran a few hills, but can't really call it interval training. Next time. My knee hurt for the last 2 minutes, but was OK for most of the run.

Running through 10-15 cm of soft snow in Palgrave West. Good strength workout! About 85% on trails, but had to run into the woods a few times when BulletDog and ThunderDog headed toward some fascinating, remote, interesting-smelling sites. Knee became moderately painful over time, so it's still recovering from my pre-Christmas injury. Luckily, the pain was nothing compared to last Thursday - apparently, my knee does NOT like the steep, slick hills of Ancaster Creek.

Power Yoga for Endurance Athletes - DVD. This time my arms felt stronger, so I didn't have any crashes to the carpet. The pooches participated more than I would have liked - they particularly enjoy the Downward Dog pose. They nearly knocked me flat during one of the balance poses - the Airplane. (Which looks a lot like it sounds - that is, if an airplane had to stand on one leg.)

Inadvertent rest day, thanks to my modem crapping out and throwing a monkey wrench into most things I was supposed to accomplish today. That's the 2nd time in two months Dell has had to send me a new modem. Grrrr, technology.

I really did mean to do a strength workout today, but my sleep-deprived, over-orienteered body didn't object when a long list of projects kept me too busy to ever get around to it.

In spite of that, I had my most daunting sports experience today. In the past year, I've survived two non-stop 3-day adventure races, and I've arrived at a control to find 3 bears standing beside it. But those experiences were *nothing* compared to the dread of facing the pile of nasty laundry that Bent and I brought home from a 4-day winter orienteering training camp!!

Final training camp session at Hilton Falls North, just beside the map for the North American Champs this fall. I didn't want to follow footprints in the snow, so started doing the course in reverse after the first few controls. And later, when I started to find footprints doing the same thing, I just started going between random controls that weren't connected on the map.

Let's just say that I'm glad I've set a performance goal for this year's COCs, and not for NAOC!! I have a really tough time relating map to terrain in this area, and it's a good thing that I generally don't allow myself to get discouraged when I'm navigating like a frigging idiot, because otherwise today would have been a downer. The 2.5 m contours are so subtle that I don't always notice them, and I discovered a strange tendency to over-estimate distance travelled, probably because the hills looked bigger on the map than they really were, so I think I was operating on a gut feel that *everything* on the map was small in real life.

Oh well, next time. I raced in this area as a new orienteer and it went OK, so perhaps today's confusion had something to do with getting 13 hours of sleep in the past 3 nights!

The day got better from there with a post-race lunchtime bender at ThePiller family's beautiful stone house in the country. Thanks!

Big thanks are due to Hammer for all his work to orchestrate an excellent training camp. It was a huge success, and a particularly great opportunity for many of North America's national team members and juniors to work on technique, attend informative presentations, and learn from more experienced orienteers as well as each other. Well done, Hammer!!

Thomass National Team Fundraiser in the Dundas Valley. Put out SI controls and checked flags for the non-SI controls. With 5 cm of new snow on top of glare ice, the trails were treacherous, and I worried about being forever remembered as the race course designer who singlehandedly destroyed Canada's entire national team in one morning.

Because I wanted the race leaders to earn their victory, I took pains to approach and depart each control using totally useless routes, so that my footprints wouldn't lead anyone around the course. It took longer, but felt deliciously devious. ;-)

The race went reasonably well, with several lessons learned that will help me to do a better job next time. I was happy to see several age groups represented in the top 10 racers in a field of 90, since I'd had a hard time trying to make that happen, given the constraint of using the World Cup course after the Thomass Box. The winner was a very talented 13-year-old girl, with Mike S. and Hammer rounding out the podium after a sprint finish.

Picking up controls from the race, and shadowing/coaching Bent as he led the way. (He had a good race this morning - I'm proud!) This outing wasn't any more effort than this morning, but both sessions were around level 1.5, so I'll call this one a level 2 to balance things out.

My knee is hanging in there without the severe pain I had on Friday, but it's still twinging. I wouldn't want to repeat the Ancaster Creek exercise anytime soon.

We had more excellent presentations by Holger and Sandy Hott Johansen, this time focusing on their training schedule.

I won one of Holger's old Norwegian team jerseys in a draw, and I'm feeling faster already! Theshadow got a good photo of me wearing it and standing with Holger. It will look great on the Tree Hugger web page, where there is already a photo of me with Ian Adamson, last year's Adventure Racing World Champion.

National Training Camp Sprint race at Rattlesnake Point. In deference to my stupid knee, I didn't try to run particularly quickly. Instead, today's goals were:

1) Keep head up and look around.
2) Try to read one control ahead.

Oh yes, and "don't climb any uncrossable fences". Which I didn't. But I could name names if I wanted to.... ;-)

National Team Training Camp - Group relay exercise at Bronte Creek Park as part of Tiny's harem. We would go out and do a few controls individually, then meet up to exchange maps at a new start triangle further along the course. There were controls close together that belonged to different courses, and we'd see runners nearby who might be going to different controls, so we had to stay focused on what we were doing. Lots of fun and an interesting twist on orienteering training. (Subtracted 15 minutes of "standing around" time as we waited for our group to reconvene at various points in the course.)

Event: National Winter Training Camp
 

It's been 2 weeks since I hyperextended my injured leg in a fall, and since then, my knee has had the same "loose" feeling that it had after I injured it (mysteriously) on Labour Day. It hadn't given me any problems, but yesterday there was a twinge when I was snowshoeing. No big deal - I assumed it would go away. But today, after 90 minutes of slippery, hilly orienteering, it came back with a vengeance. My knee feels almost as bad as it felt in September. Horrible timing, right at the start of a 4-day orienteering training camp. I would utter a very bad word at this point, but I like to keep my training log suitable for family viewing. The only small consolation is that this time around, I have more faith that I will feel better some day than I do right now. :-(((((((

Putting out controls for Saturday's Thomass race. Subtracted an hour to account for the time of hanging flags and installing SportIdent stands. Any racers reading my log don't need to worry about the length of race based on how long I was out - it's just that I am totally paranoid about setting my first real orienteering course for such a large and highly qualified crowd of racers. I tried approaching each control from several directions to make sure it was properly located and visible. As mentioned above, my knee began to throb about halfway through. Rats.

Ancaster Creek control picking exercise. I wish I knew what proper flow feels like... I wonder if it's even possible for someone as slow as I am. OK, I admit that sounds negative, but I was feeling down by the time this exercise was done. I started off with a nice jog to the start triangle with The Piller, then enjoyed the physical challenge of the first part of the course. Then at the halfway point, all the slippery, steep, muddy hills made my knee throb again, and I had to choose the nearest escape route to the rail trail. Unfortunately, I was at the farthest point when that happened, with two steep valleys to get across. The run back on the rail trail felt not too bad - it seems that uneven ground is what really hurts.

Urban Night Orienteering - fun course designed by the Nev-Monster. Yes, I know - I should have sat this one out to give my knee a break. It was actually OK on the flat roads and park sections, but twinged painfully in the relatively small wooded sections. Yikes - don't tell me that I might be forced to become a... road runner!! Yuck!

Presentation by Holger Hott Johansen tonight. Two of the most interesting points for me:

1) All of the world's top orienteers get some sort of map of a major competition venue, and use it to set a number of different possible race courses. By the time they run the race, they have thought through most of the possible route choices and race legs. They use all the info they can get from race organizers to refine their guesses about the course, e.g. course distance, location of competition centre, elevation gain, etc.

2) Holger purposely does NOT concentrate all the time, especially in longer races. He works on achieving a smooth transition from "boring" sections (e.g. road runs) to sections where detailed concentration is required.

A short jaunt in Palgrave West through heavy, mushy snow. I threw in a few short speed intervals, as suggested by Tiny, plus 3 hill intervals on different parts of Raspberry Hill. ThunderDog thought I was crazy at first, then she really got into the intervals. (Our dogs would have excellent training logs if we set them up in Attackpoint!) Didn't want to do too much today, because I'll get lots of exercise at the orienteering training camp, including setting out and taking down controls for the THOMASS race.

I tried the other Caron Shepley DVD that Bent gave me for Christmas: "Hard Core Conditioning". I made it about a third of the way through before it hurt too much, so I moved on to my usual leg strength exercises. Obviously I haven't been doing nearly enough core exercises, and I'll need to work my way up to the full 45-minute core session with weights. I'm glad it's tough! I've tried exercise videos before, and they are often far too easy.

For Christmas, Bent gave me "Power Yoga for Endurance Athletes" - a DVD by Caron Shepley, a yoga instructor and occasional adventure runner who helps Barrie Shepley (Simon Whitfield's Olympic coach) run the C3 triathlon training club in Caledon. This was my first attempt at yoga in a long time, but Barrie swears by it to reduce injuries in endurance athletes, so it seemed worth a try. It went well except for a couple of exercises that required more arm strength than I currently have, e.g. "low plank position" and "yoga push-up". I gave it the old college try though - skinny arms shaking wildly as I tried to hold myself up, then the inevitable crash of my body to the floor. That's OK - it's good to have something to work on!

Skiing at Horseshoe - Expert Loop in the Western trail system. There were some lo-o-ong hills to climb! I feel like I'm crawling along when I'm skating, but obviously that's not true, given the distance we covered in a relatively short time. I also felt like the uphills weren't very high compared to the amount of effort I was putting out, but the long downhills proved me wrong on that too. I have more fun climbing and descending big hills on classic skis than skate skis, but I'm starting to really love the skate skis when the terrain is flat or slightly rolling. :-)

Horseshoe - Expert Loop in the Northern trail system. We hadn't intended to do the whole thing, but I missed the shortcut, and we are very glad I did! The winter scenery was right out of a picture book - snow-laden trees and big white hills. We decided to do an optional expert loop marked "Lookout", and when we made it to the top, we were surprised that there wasn't more of a view. It was just the same lovely forest that we'd been seeing all day. OK, no biggie... So we skied 50 m and arrived at the top of a steep chute labelled "Look Out!!". Oh...

I was wishing that someone would pass me so I could watch a good skate skier, and instantly my wish came true (the only time it happened all day). It was Saul Goldman, the owner of Velotique - and boy did he look smooth as he flew along!

Somehow I've managed not to make it to Horseshoe in winter in all my years of skiing. Until getting the skate skis, we were mostly able to avoid ski centres with groomed trails and user fees. It's a beautiful area and we'll definitely go back!

Leg strength training + 75 sit-ups of various types

OK - some New Year's training resolutions:

1) Strength training - min. 60 min/week, including at least two leg strength sessions and more core strength than I've been doing. (Up from 30 min/week in 2005, with delusions that I was somehow doing more.) It seems low, but I want to start with something that I can definintely achieve, so I don't get discouraged and give up too soon. Also, from looking at other people's logs, I notice that 1 hr/week of strength training is huge by orienteering standards. Among my AR friends, Bent and Skidder do more strength training than that, but they are both guys whose physical strength makes a major contribution to their teams. I just need to be strong enough for me - I'm unlikely to be the one who carries the team's heaviest pack or pushes someone else's bike up a mountain.

2) Running form exercises - 1 session/week.

3) Speed and/or Hill Intervals - Min. 1 session/week.

4) Find ways to improve technical orienteering skills. I should have a specific goal or two here, but I'm not sure how I'm going to do this. I'm looking forward to learning more through my GHO Canada GHO involvement, maybe setting a couple of courses, and hopefully some map making.

5) 500 hrs total training (9.6 hrs/week, which is 2 hrs/week less than 2005, but I don't expect to do as many long races, which skew the number up)

That's probably enough for now, since I'm always adjusting my training goals as I go along, and if I have too many resolutions, I'll lose focus.

Racing goals for 2006:

??? Not sure yet. Since starting to adventure race, I've said that 2006 will be my last year in the sport. There was no particular reason to choose this year. I just figured that 4 years is long enough to train for a sport that is so demanding in terms of time (due to multi-sport training and time commitments for races), gear, team organization and money. My knee injury this year was an indication that I might be overdoing it with endurance sports. I couldn't be less of a natural athlete, and I don't know how long I can continue to race credibly against people 10-20 years younger.

Also, our Tree Hugger teammates have increasingly busy lives, and I suspect that it will be harder to get them out to as many races this year. It seems like the logical time to start winding down our team, rather than going into a rebuilding phase with new people.

On the other hand, I absolutely love the physical and mental challenges of AR training and racing... hmmm, what to do?

Outside of AR, some early goals are:

1) Top 3 in women's category of Thomass winter orienteering series - maybe even win the coveted toque with the help of my high handicap?
2) Medal in COCs (may be beyond my reach, given the strong competition there is likely to be when the event is held in central Ontario, but it's good to have a stretch goal)
3) 25+ km trail race - top 3 in age category?? (not sure if this is at all realistic, but I was 4th in the 32 km Iroquoia Trail Test last year)
4) Enter a female team (probably) in the North Am Rogaine Champs, and win our category. (Did this in 2005, and am looking forward to a race where the bears are smaller.)

Oops - just thought of training goal #6:

Introduce the concept of periodization into my training schedule over the next few months.

I've never been good at following training programs, since I tend to go skiing whenever the snow is nice, and I stay out a couple of hours if I don't have other obligations - not because it's a "heavy training" week. But there must be some way to take advantage of ideas like cycles, recovery, building to a peak, etc. in my training. I need all the help I can get!

Today's outing in Palgrave is difficult to categorize. Bent and I were snowshoeing, but it was mostly upper body exercise, since we carried pruners and saws, and worked on opening up several km of trail that were blocked following the snow/ice storm. Good progress! Bent's commuting route is open now. I can sure feel my arms from yesterday's skate-skiing, and today I was made aware of yet another group of muscles. Maybe this is why I get away (more or less) with so few hours of strength training - it gets built into other activities.