Training Log Archive: Bash

It turns out that Rotorua was the site of the World Mountain Bike Champs a couple of months ago - who knew? We rented (actually "hired") bikes and headed out to the amazing Whakarewarewa Forest. Every trail had a totally different character - huge redwoods or big lush ferns or open shrubby territory with big bushes covered in yellow flowers. For a long time, I just couldn't wipe the stupid smile off my face. What a great way to explore a different country! Unfortunately, the bike didn't fit me perfectly, and I'm accustomed to clipless pedals, so I had one fall, and it was a bad one. Let's just say that my injury caused pain in an area that will prevent me from wanting to go biking in the near future. :-( However, it was still an awesome day!!!

Explored the fumaroles, boiling springs and bubbling cauldrons of mud in the Te Puia thermal area in Rotorua, New Zealand. The Pohotu Geyser put on a great show for us - about 30 m high. It's a good thing it was all so interesting, since we hadn't been to bed since Canada, but we needed to stay up until evening to fight jet lag.

I didn't intend to take an entire week off training and can't remember when that happened last, but finally the lack of preparation for our NZ trip caught up with me. It's not so much the packing - it's all the things to do because we're going away, e.g. arranging a house sitter, clearing a path through our disorganized house for the house sitter to walk on, upgrading the security system, paying bills, taking dogs to my parents' place a couple of hours away, GST return for my business, sending materials to important meetings that I'll miss, etc. Anyway, we're heading out shortly, and whatever has been forgotten... well, it's just too late. 'Bent and I will try to keep in touch on AP when we can. OK, I can't put it off any longer. It's time to go sit in airports and airplanes for the next 26 hours or so. Bye for now!

Attended the 1st birthday party of Bullfrog Power - the clean, green electricity company that powers 'Bent's office, four Ontario Walmart stores, Cadbury, the World Wildlife Fund, and the homes of author Margaret Atwood and musician Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip. The Bullfrog people know how to market - it's cool to watch how smart they are. The hors d'oeuvres were yummy and different, and the other guests were approachable and interesting. Hammer's new favourite book, "Heat", was out on a table, and I flipped through it - interesting. Definitely not your usual cocktail party.

If you live in Ontario, check out Bullfrog Power. (Oh oh, I hope Eddie doesn't read my log!)

Set out controls and took them down for the Indian Summer O Fest. In spite of some last-minute, mostly-behind-the-scenes-but-not-entirely crises, it was a very successful day. The weather couldn't have been much nastier, with pouring rain and cool temperatures, so we expected a lot of no-shows. But 50 people showed up for the introductory clinic, nicely managed by Backwoods, then we probably had another 30-35 experienced orienteers join us for the afternoon races. Because recent Caledon Navigators media coverage has highlighted juniors, we had a good turnout in the age 7-12 range. A lot of work - I'm exhausted now. But it was well worth it to see so many smiling faces, proud to have completed their first orienteering event.

Event: Trek or Treat
 

Out at Glen Haffy with ThunderDog in nasty weather, putting up streamers for Sunday's event. Major crises in our map printing plans today. I wasn't supposed to need to be involved at all, but may end up spending tomorrow afternoon getting hundreds of colour copies instead of packing for NZ - argggh.

Trek or Treat was billed as Canada's first night trail race - and it was an awesome time. (Although I do think the NavStock 15 km night adventure run should get some credit, since it involved running and navigating on and off-trail.)

'Bent and I have been busy, so we started looking around the house for costume ideas in the final half-hour before we had to leave. This didn't give us a lot of scope for creativity. We decided to promote Bullfrog Power's clean electricity, since we both own lime green jackets, SCUBA goggles (like frog eyes), and lots of Bullfrog stickers, and 'Bent even has a sleeveless Bullfrog running shirt from Sco-Fo that he wore on the outside. It wasn't a real costume, but it served the purpose of making us uncomfortable while running, which was the whole point, I think! There were some great costumes, particularly on the people walking in the 5 km event.

The place was full of people we knew - lots of fun. We didn't get the rain that was forecast, and it was warmer down by the lake, so I realized at the starting line that I was *way* overdressed. Too late - we took off on the 9 km course, following Vin on his bike. The park trails were all wide and well-surfaced, but there were some serious climbs and descents in the valley to separate people. At several locations, there were "haunters" in scary costumes, who would jump out of the trees or just reach out menacingly, usually accompanied by a scary soundtrack.

It didn't take long until I was running by myself, which was almost legitimately scary, since we were on trails in an urban park after dark - a place I would never go on my own. For long periods of time, I couldn't see anyone ahead of me or behind me. The trail was marked at intersections and with occasional glow sticks, but there were long stretches where you just had to trust that you were on the right track. After 10 minutes of seeing faint lights ahead and no one behind, I began to seriously consider bailing out to the nearby subdivision, because I thought that I must be one of the last runners in the 9 km race, and it might be better to just run back on roads and call it a night. My stomach wasn't feeling good, thanks to a snack 3 hours before the race that I shouldn't have eaten - slosh, ouch, slosh. Eventually, the terrain changed so I could see that there were still people behind me - phew. I also managed to pass a few people ahead of me after the water station, which I didn't stop at.

Then I pulled the trick that 'Bent pulled in our 5 Peaks trail race. Yes, that's right - I made a nav error in a trail race with a marked course. The trail popped me out onto a road, and I could see glowsticks along the road to my right and to my left. I slowed to a walk and went right, since I could hear the finish line sounds coming from that direction. But it didn't feel right, and I could see some 5 km walkers coming toward me. So I turned around and checked the other direction until I saw the entrance to the final cemetery before the finish. About 40 seconds lost - rats. When I reached the finish line, there was a 2-minute gap between me and the next runner ahead, which explains why it was so lonely out there most of the time - and luckily, it also meant that my nav error didn't affect my rank, only my time.

So... I was stunned to see the results. I was 2nd of the 18 women in my category, and 45th of 112 runners overall. Huh? And here I was thinking of abandoning the race because I thought I was the last one, and I must be holding everything up. Even better news - 'Bent won his category, and placed 15th overall. Our AR teammate, 3PinJim, finished right behind 'Bent for 2nd place. Martin Rydlo won overall, and Kevin Tearle (GHO Eliminator Champion) was 2nd overall in the 5 km race.

So it was a great night for people we know, and the prizing was incredible. 'Bent got a gift certificate for another pair of ECCO shoes (to add to the two pairs from past ESAR races). Good thing he likes them a lot! And I got a pair of really cool, lightweight Leki trekking poles. I have a small collection of Leki poles, but these ones are the lightest and nicest yet.

It was a well-organized, fun, lively event, with lots of work by Sherpa and the Arnolds. I'm sure it will be a lot bigger next year, as people tell their friends about it. There were some impressive, hilarious costumes. The one downer was that Race Director Mark A's foot was run over and broken by one of the ambulances that attended the event to keep things safe. Mark is also the Race Director of the annual Emergency Services Adventure Race, and has just moved from police work to become a firefighter. He couldn't get in the ambulance to go to the hospital, because he had so much work to do with the race. Very ironic - and it looked painful too. Good thing there were so many Leki poles around.

Hard Core Conditioning DVD with 'Bent. I finally bought a soft, ball-shaped weight so I can follow along when Caron says things like, "If you have a weight, hold it at your chest". For some of the exercises, it doesn't feel much different, but for others, it really increases the degree of difficulty.

Caron is attending our orienteering clinic and race this Sunday. It will be very tempting to make her run lots of hill intervals, do 200 sit-ups, then orienteer with a big weight tied to her compass. ;-)

While watching the Daily Show. Today Jon's main target was himself, after he threw out the first pitch at a Mets game and bounced the ball before the plate.

Stopped near Syracuse last night, then drove the rest of the way home this morning. I probably would have made it all the way home in one shot, but I was feeling quite squeamish about my first race in serious tick country, and I wanted to stop to do a full tick check and have a shower. Fortunately, it looks like the ticks decided to wait for someone to run by who was dressed better or didn't smell as bad. ;-)

Event: Hudson Highlander
 

What a fun day! We started in cool, sunny weather beside a beautiful lake surrounded by low mountains covered in golden leaves. The first leg was a trail run where we ran up to a summit lookout, then came down a steep hill on a streamered route to join a main trail to the final trail run control. Sandy had kindly invited me to run with her, which seemed like a great idea, but like a total jerk, I got caught up in the excitement of the large group and ended up running most of the way up the mountain. For unknown reasons - certainly not due to adequate training recently - my legs felt great today. I ran most of the trail/road sections throughout the race and as much cross-country as I could handle, given the large expanses of leg-grabbing blueberry bushes.

The first orienteering section consisted mostly of long legs of 1-2 km on the Silvermine map. For #2, 3 and 4, I ran into people near the control, which helped me to find it. For #5 and 6, I was on my own. I can't think of the last time I had such a tough time choosing a route as I did going to #6. I literally stood still for 90 seconds, evaluating the different options and finding them all pretty poor. It sounds like I headed a similar direction to Peggy, coming out on the trail just west of the water stop. I crossed the trail without seeing it, but luckily heard some runners going by. I'd be interested in knowing what the fastest route was, because it certainly wasn't the one I took!

After the map exchange (with great food at the aid station), we crossed the road to the larger, more detailed Rockhouse Mountain map where we did #8-20, a mixture of shorter and longer legs. Things went well until after #11, when I made my big, horrible, dumb error of the day. With my huge map folded down to a manageable size, I made the classic rookie error of thinking that down was up, so I took off on a due east bearing for 5-6 minutes, when I should have been going due west. Naturally, I didn't need to refer to my map very often because I knew I was just aiming for a big trail. But finally I realized that the terrain was nothing like it should have been. Rats, that was 11-12 minutes wasted, some of it in a dark green marsh. Other than a few minutes lost looking for #14 at the wrong bend in the trail (along with a group of people making the same error), things went smoothly for the rest of the section, which included some of the more challenging technical nav. (Although experienced Highlanders told me that the nav was relatively simple this year, compared to other years.) From an initial look at the results, it appears that some of my better splits rankings were on the shorter technical legs, and as per usual, I got sloppy on longer legs.

After the final map exchange and yummy aid station break, we headed back across the Silvermine map with one fork. I stayed east to go through the green marsh, since that meant a slightly more direct route to #23. After #24, it was time to blast down the ski hill for one final control before the finish. Amazingly, my legs still felt energetic, although my brain was definitely turning to mush. According to Winsplits, I moved up 6 places on this final map, although I saw very few people.

As always, there was lots to be learned today. It was only the 2nd time I'd used a 1:15,000 map, and this one had loads of intricate detail. It was the first time that I'd raced in a field consisting exclusively of experienced orienteers with a range of ages, all doing the same long distance course from a mass start. In an adventure race or trail run, I'm accustomed to being much slower than average. To my surprise, I was faster than the people in my part of the pack. However, I'm accustomed to making up time through my nav in adventure races and adventure runs. Today it was the opposite. There were people who mostly walked who would arrive with me at several controls in a row, having taken different routes. I passed most of those familiar faces on the final map, since there weren't many controls, and there were long sections where I could run. But the bottom line is that my nav skills need work. It's not that I didn't know where I was or how to get to the next control (except for my south-is-north error), but I obviously could be making more efficient route choices - including better micro-routes. That's good news, actually, since I don't expect my running to get any faster as I get older, so it's good to know that my nav has so much room for improvement.

Great event, yummy post-race food, well-organized, and a very friendly, welcoming bunch of orienteers. Glad I made the trip. I finished within the time limit, which was my goal - 48th of 70 runners, 10th woman.

XI - Splits

9.5 hrs to Middletown, NY - by myself, because no other Canadian residents were brave enough to attempt the Hudson Highlander. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) Spent an hour waiting to cross the border. I was advised to say that I'm going to a "running race", rather than attempting to explain orienteering. Somehow the immigration official thought that I was going to be involved in horse racing, but he cheered right up when he heard that it would be ME doing the running. He sent me on my way with good luck wishes.

Going from Buffalo toward Rochester, I drove on dry pavement with good-sized snowbanks along the road. It was sad to see the devastation to the forests. Virtually every tree and shrub was showing some bare, jagged wood where the trunk had snapped or a large branch had broken off. Large trees with flaming autumn leaves had collapsed or broken in half. I can understand why the power will take awhile to restore.

Black clouds chased me most of the way to Syracuse, then the weather got nice and the scenery got nicer. The autumn colours in the Catskill Mountains were gorgeous.

Tonight I reviewed Hammer's maps of the Harriman area to get an idea of what the terrain will be like. Just last week, I was wishing that there were more 2.5 m contour lines at Rocky Ridge to help keep me oriented. Well, it's clear that this terrain has more than enough contour lines to make me happy!

Off to Toronto tonight, then going the rest of the way to the Hudson Highlander tomorrow. I sure hope the roads are better around Buffalo tomorrow than they were today. It's a long enough drive to New York City (almost) without getting caught in the aftermath of a snowstorm. Really looking forward to the event though! :-)

Attackpoint doesn't lie, and today I realized that I've done all of 7 hrs of running training in the past 2 months, and a good chunk of that was in the nebulous category of warm-up/cooldown. I have done a fair bit of orienteering over that period, although that doesn't always mean running for me.

So... I figured that a 26.3 km orienteering race this weekend would be a good idea!?! Yikes!

With the urgency of a student cramming for an exam, I went out for a run around the block, which in our case is close to 9 km of country roads. I pushed myself relatively hard and felt surprisingly good. It's a really scenic route, especially with the fiery autumn leaves, and there are lots of rolling hills. I don't do it very often because of narrow roads, blind hills, summer dust and occasional speeding motorists. Today was really nice though - not too many cars and a wonderful, crisp temperature. I had sunshine at the start and finish, but in the middle, I was running in the first snowfall I've seen this winter. After I got back, we had heavy flurries for quite awhile. Yahoo, I love this time of year!

While watching the Daily Show.

Eliminator Sprint night at Bronte Creek Park. The weather was absolutely nasty beforehand, with wind lashing the rain so hard against the windows that I didn't want to get out of my car. We had a reprieve for the time that we were running, then it started up again as we chatted at the finish. Tonight we did three 1 km sprints, and I was supposed to drop two controls from each, based on my age/gender handicap. I won the first and third loops - the ones where I dropped the controls. On the second loop, I didn't notice that I should have dropped one of the first two controls, and I ended up being the first person to miss the cut for the Eliminator finals. Oh well... the prestige might have been too much for me. It was a fun and friendly event with some different faces, including Sherpa's friendly dogs. A highlight was the chocolate birthday cake and accompanying singing to celebrate the 18th birthday of Justine Scheck. Her parents were both there, and her Mom signed the event waiver for the last time.

Hmmm... I'm trying to remember why I thought it was such a bright idea to join two orienteering clubs... With my NAOC work over (mostly), it was time to head out to Glen Haffy to check Nick dSC's control locations for the advanced course for the Indian Summer O Fest. I ran a little bit, but mostly hiked along, enjoying the luxury of map and terrain that I actually understand! :-) Lots of 5 m contour lines made for good map reading practice and a bit of a workout even without running much. BulletDog had a fantastic time in the cool weather with all the great smells - not to mention a flock of wild turkeys that she flushed.

The SI units for this event (more than 60 of them need to be programmed) are supposed to be delivered to us late the night before. Eeek.

Wanted to spend some Thanksgiving time with my parents, so skipped today's Wine-O. It would have been a beautiful day to be in the woods, but family time is special too.

BulletDog is healthy enough that I'm going to be able to get away next weekend after all, and Piutepro has kindly allowed me to enter the Hudson Highlander after the deadline - woo hoo! I've been wanting to do this 26.3 km orienteering race in New York ever since I first heard of it. Should be fun, and I'll just be glad if I don't DNF.

NAOC Long Distance at Rocky Ridge. Another gorgeous autumn day - great to be out in the woods. As predicted, I did go "boom" on this course, but not as badly as in some Long distance events I've done. As an adventure racer, I used to think that my best event should be the Long course, but my results have consistently proven otherwise. I'm not sure whether I'm unable to maintain a good level of concentration for long enough - or maybe my slower running speed comes into play more when there is more trail running . Although I'd like to be good at Long Distance, inexplicably I've turned out to be best at Middle Distance. For someone who tries to train for 48+ hour adventure races, this makes no sense.

I pushed a lot harder today than yesterday, and it was difficult going in places - scrambling up beside cliffs, crossing swamps, hauling myself over deadfall and making my way across rocky areas without re-spraining my ankle. It was an interesting and challenging course, with one long leg across the map where apparently we all made different route choices. Things went reasonably well (except for a minute of wandering near one control) until just before #8. I'd been leading the race by more than 2 minutes at #7, then I made an 8+ minute error in the trail network near the end. Grrr - I was so sure that I had a bombproof plan, but I found myself wandering forlornly from intersection to intersection until I finally found a distinctive set of intersections that allowed me to relocate. I felt like a total rookie. It shouldn't have been that difficult to figure out, but my brain just didn't seem capable of settling down and solving the problem, thanks to adrenaline, fatigue, anxiety or stupidity - not sure which. ;-)

In spite of that dumb error, I'm reasonably happy with the race. I finished 4 minutes behind the winner, which was enough to knock me to 4th place in this competitive field. I won a few splits, which rarely happens - including the split to #1, which NEVER happens. Usually I make more errors - or worse errors - in the Long, so today represented some progress.

As suspected, my past-the-peak physical fitness wasn't a big factor this weekend. Even if I'd gone into it with more training, it's very clear that my nav skills need more work than my speed. No sense outrunning my ability to interpret a map.

NAOC Middle Distance - Rocky Ridge

Many people know how scared I am of the terrain around Hilton Falls. Today's course was very technical, and I relied more on compass bearings and pace counting than I have since my early days of orienteering. There were more opportunities to run than I had expected, although there were lots of rocks and deadfall to keep the overall pace down. Also, I stopped completely for a few seconds to plan each upcoming leg.

So here's the amazing thing... In a good field of competitors, I was leading the race with two controls to go. I didn't feel as if I'd screwed up, but obviously my route choice to #10 was slow. It doesn't matter - I'm blown away to have won the bronze medal behind Peggy Dickison and Sandy Fillebrown, with the three of us separated by just over 1 minute. That's WAY better than I'd hoped. Big thanks to Hammer for patiently devoting several hours of coaching time to help improve my confidence in the Hilton Falls terrain.

Once again, I went into this race straight from the registration table, with no chance to mentally prepare. I'm beginning to think that mental preparation is just not good for me.

Not to jinx myself, but I have a feeling that my luck will run out tomorrow somewhere in the Long. I'm not sure I've had enough sleep lately to be able to concentrate that hard for that long.

Ran to the start while chatting with one of the ultra-polite young cadets: "Looking forward to your race, Ma'am?"

Event: 2006 North American Championships (Golden Leaf Orienteering Fest)
 

Pre-race prep for my first North American Orienteering Champs:

Up at 6:30 a.m. to drive to Milton to handle first 4 hours of NAOC registration. Then quick change into race clothes, pack up all the boxes of registration stuff, pick up lunch at Timmy's to eat during the drive to Hamilton, find parking on busy McMaster campus, carry all the registration boxes into Student Centre, work with an excellent team to register a crowd of enthusiastic sprinters, then oh yeah, my start time is coming up - better get outside right NOW. Head was spinning - totally not in race mode.

My sprint around McMaster campus felt slow, but accurate, and I only regretted one of my route choices when I looked at my map afterward. I'm not great at interpreting maps drawn to sprint standards, so I'll need to spend some time on this. Considering that this was totally not my type of sprint (urban, fast), I couldn't believe how much FUN I had. The weather was perfect, the map was good, the students were interested, the course design was fun - a great time! The race was the only "relaxation" time I had over a 24-hr period, so that was probably part of the fun too. Anyway, I ended up in 2nd place, less than a minute behind the amazing Andree Powers, and just ahead of GHO's new favourite person and SI guru, Valerie Meyer. Better than I expected, and now I'm wondering if I should go into every race with my mind totally focused on something other than racing.

Sprint 2 - Splits

Training at Hilton Falls West. With 360 people coming to the North American Orienteering Champs, I'm guessing that the registrar (me) isn't going to find time to go out on the training map during the scheduled sessions.

It was nice in the woods, but the highlight on this gorgeous day had to be the drive from Palgrave to Hilton Falls - wow! Autumn leaves are close to their peak.

I did a reasonable job out there today, although it feels like cheating to rely so much on bearings and pace counting in this difficult terrain. I realized that I'm drifting to the right on my bearings, but when I went back from the control in the reverse direction, I would usually hit my starting point, so I just need to be more careful. My one big mistake involved missing a trail junction. There were so many leaves down that I didn't notice the trail. So I'll need to pace count even on trails.

Ran into Hammer and MrPither getting ready to head into the woods in opposite directions. Hammer was wearing enough SI units that he could barely stand up, and MrP was heading out to the training area.

Better finish packing for NAOC. Early morning tomorrow (and Saturday and Sunday).

Map memory exercise in Churchill Park. It went reasonably well, although I should probably try to remember more information, e.g. rough compass directions and angles between controls.

Next we went on the NAOC sprint training map in the southeast corner of McMaster campus. Fun! But there sure were a lot of people and vehicles to avoid. Hammer tells me that we'll be in a quieter part of campus for the real sprint.

Back & forth to McMaster from Churchill Park.

Well, the decision on the 2006 Hudson Highlander has been made for me. BulletDog came down with kennel cough today, and ThunderDog may not be far behind, as it is very contagious. As a result, they can't go to any of the places they were supposed to stay over the NAOC weekend, nor can they go to the dental office where they take turns working, over the next 2-3 weeks. Since I absolutely *have* to be away for NAOC most of this weekend, 'Bent is going to be the responsible parent and miss a couple of big family events - his and mine. He's got another big family event the following weekend, so that'll be my turn to stay home and be responsible - thus missing the Highlander. Hopefully I'll still be up to running 26 km next fall. :-(

BulletDog and I tested version 2 of my sprint course for the Indian Summer O. Not feeling very fast today after Saturday's race, but it was a beautiful day to be out - warm and sunny, surrounded by autumn leaves in electric hues of red, yellow and orange. It's going to be a super-fast course with relatively easy nav to suit the mix of orienteers, triathletes and newbies. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict a win by Sudden in 11-12 minutes.

While watching the Daily Show. Sunday's yoga session was good for leg strength too - I should do more of that.

Post-race yoga class at Bark Lake. Signals got crossed, and Geoff announced that the yoga instructor hadn't shown up, since she hadn't checked into a room the night before. Turns out she'd arrived in the morning because she lives nearby. I'd missed the announcement, obviously, so we just assumed that nobody else was interested. I ended up with private instruction, a brief massage, and a chance to complete my relaxation experience by patting her 14-week old golden retriever puppy. Ahhhhh. Felt good to stretch, if a bit painful at times - especially in the hamstrings and quads. I'd never thought of stretching my feet and toes in different ways, but she is a big fan of that, since it is the "foundation of the rest of your body". Might be a good idea.