Training Log Archive: Bash

Thanks for the enthusiastic support of the photo contest. I received 9 entries from athletes living in three Canadian provinces (four if you count Fort Frances as being so far away as to be outside Ontario) - and also from people in the U.S. and Sweden! I will select the winners shortly.

For those of you who haven't seen all the entries, check them out! All entrants except MoeD and 'Bent put a comment on my log on Wednesday, so you can just click on their name beside the comment, then click on the "Training Log" link on their profile.

It's the 15th Anniversary of the Caledon Hills Cycling shop, and it seemed only right to go there by bike. Richard was using his good bike for the first time this season, and I hadn't touched my bike since the winter adventure race in January. I know, I should go to the basement and use our trainer all winter like the *real* adventure racers do - and I even thought about it occasionally with some guilt - but apparently I'm not that dedicated. The major thing I noticed today was that my rear end was not happy in a bike seat. It had begun to get used to the good life, but it's time to get saddle-sore again.

Initially, we had the plan to have lunch in Inglewood near the cycling shop, but the bike preparation went slowly. Then we had a couple of false starts after locking up the house, closing the garage and bribing the dogs with treats. "Aaack - my winter pedals are still on, and I can't clip in." Open the house, open the garage, greet the dogs, get the tools, change the pedals, bribe the dogs, close up the house, and go down the driveway, then "THWUP! THWUP! THWUP!" on 'Bent's bike. Arrggghhh, must get the big toolbox. Back to the house, open up, greet dogs, etc. We finally made it onto the road at 1:30 p.m. with a 90-minute ride ahead of us. Definitely too late for lunch!

The rail trail is in pretty good shape with occasional soft spots. A lot of horses have passed by and left deep hoofprints and other, um, signs of their presence. The highlight, unquestionably, was going over the new trail bridge over Hwy 10. It used to be a death-defying act to get across five lanes of speeding traffic. Great use of tax dollars, for once.

Fun time in Inglewood. I got new running clothes, so I will be inspired to go faster, obviously. I supported Salomon in honour of our friends and sponsors, Team Salomon/Suunto. Dropped in for a quick visit to Knobless and Gorgeous, where we discussed the latest updates on our plans to visit the Galapagos Islands together later this year. :-)

'Bent and I met 3PinJim at 6:15 p.m. for a trail run around the Hilton Falls Bruce Trail & Side Trail loop. This will be our last long run before the Giant's Rib Raid, and I'm pleased to report to my teammates who are reading this that I didn't injure myself in spite of large portions of trail that consisted of leaping from one pointy, moss-covered rock to another, or stepping carefully to avoid deep, runner-eating crevices.

There was supposed to be some small advantage in doing our run in similar terrain to the GRR, but the trail was so uneven that I barely lifted my eyes off the ground - and just when we got into easier terrain, it got dark, and I didn't want to push my luck with only a small beam of headlamp light standing between me and a re-sprained ankle! The trail was drier than I expected at this time of year, and when I dared to take fleeting glimpses into the open woods, many places looked dry with good visibility. However, the flat areas on top of the escarpment are great places for wetlands, and I noticed that some of them looked VERY wet.

Aside from not daring to look at much scenery, I'm very pleased with how this run went. It's my longest run since the Hudson Highlander in October, and the first time that I've had the nerve to do a training run with 3PinJim, who is an ultrarunner. I'm sure I couldn't keep up in a shorter training run when he would go faster, but tonight's pace was challenging, yet still possible. I guess that's a good sign, since we'll be doing Raid The North with him and LoTox this summer. I'll have an advantage then anyway, since I'll be carrying the map, and I can always declare an unnecessary navigation stop if I secretly need to catch my breath.

As always, 'Bent looked like he wasn't even breaking a sweat. (Although I know better, since I do his laundry.) He and 3PinJim chatted the whole time. They are both mad inventors and gear geeks, so there's always lots to catch up on.

Fun evening! And it feels great to have my major training outing of the weekend done by Friday night.

C3 Training Night - Hill intervals and faster sections.

C3 Training Night - the rest of the run. Coach Hans (not Coach Sudden) advised me to push my hips forward when I run. It improves posture and "gives you another gear because the muscles can work better in that position". It's going to be interesting to experiment with this a bit. No question that Hans (a triathlon age group world bronze medalist) has amazing running style. All his energy moves him forward - no motion is wasted.

Hard Core Thursday Live. The nastiest one was the following:
- Lie on your back with your legs straight up in the air.
- Put your hands behind your head, and lift your head and shoulders off the ground slightly. Hold.
- Keeping your left leg pointing up, lower your straight right leg until it hovers a couple of inches above the ground. Hold.
- Do about 20 crunches while holding your legs in that scissor position.
- Do the same with the other leg (but of course).

OUCH!!

Tonight's theme was holding positions for a really long time until they seemed a lot more difficult than they did at the start. Got some great hamstring stretches in. We attempted the crow pose, where only two hands touch the ground. 'Bent was looking really good, and I had it for an all-too-brief moment - then crashed my skull into the yoga mat. I think I'd better practise on our soft carpets at home.

Hey, don't forget the training photo contest finishes at midnight EST on Friday. So far, we only have 2 entries - from 'Bent (riding his 'bent) and from MoeD, who (in a radical move) posted a photo of himself actually doing the training described in his log for that day.

Since the entries are coming in so slowly, I'm going to resort to entering people myself. Here is my favourite photo of Slice training. We were in the same event, but did this crossing at night - and thus (probably fortunately) never saw the scenery.

LINK workout - just the lower body part, plus some of my old leg workout. Earlier today, K/O came over to review and correct our form on some of the exercises. I like this stuff - must do it more!

2nd week of G-TNT in Caledon. This time it was just Leanimal and me heading out onto the Humber Trail. The weather was incredible - temperature in the high teens. I was wearing my May running clothes - short-sleeved shirt and capris - and Leanimal looked at me in shock, because she was wearing her usual March running clothes, including winter tights. As it turned out, we were both overdressed. We still encountered a number of patches of ice in shady places along the trail, but this week the main story was MUD. It's great to have someone to go play in the mud with me. Good company made the time fly.

Leanimal and I are taking on contenders for the Women's North American Rogaining Championship this summer, so I'm planning to do more long runs so I don't slow her down too much. Since I have made all of my past rogaining partners sick, she is a very brave person.

I've logged the first half of the run as level 4, since it has a lot of uphills, and we ran up them all.

Returning home after our turn-around. Mostly downhill-ish or flat, although there were two steep uphills. I wasn't too sprightly on the climbs in this direction though. Gorgeous day!

Had to be very efficient today - not much time because we had to tidy up for a public open house to demonstrate our home solar system. 'Bent, BulletDog and I ran to Glen Haffy via the Bruce Trail Side Trail, including the long, steady K2 climb. We spent a short time running a hilly section of the main Bruce Trail, then returned home. The trail was icy in many places and muddy in others. Should have worn spikes, but I got fooled (yet again) by how dry and snow-free it looked from our living room window. I think we can expect some slippery running in the Giant's Rib Raid.

As the winner of Urthbuoy's photo contest, my prize is the honour of hosting the *next* Attackpoint photo contest. I'm going to stick with the theme from the original contest, so just include a photo of yourself training in your log, and put a comment on my log to let me know about it. Entries must be received by next Fri. March 30 at midnight. The winner will get prestige - and possibly a little more.

To insert a photo from another website into your log, surround the following with these < > .

img src="http://www.your_springtime_tulip_dance.jpg" width="400" height="300" border="0" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="10"

Looking forward to seeing y'all!

Thomass Eliminator - Mount Nemo

This year's Thomass winter orienteering series extended into spring by a few days, and Mother Nature was so displeased that she pelted us with cold rain. The eliminator format consists of three sprints with short breaks in between - a few minutes at most. Since it's a Thomass event, the sprints are handicapped, with elite runners visiting more controls. After the 1st sprint, everyone gets to continue on to the 2nd sprint, but only the top 16 finishers are still in the running. After the 2nd sprint, only the top 8 finishers are in contention for the championship, and the other participants start a few minutes behind.

I was fortunate to win the 1st round overall, and 'Bent was also in the top 16. It turned out that for my handicap, it was possible to do most of the 2nd sprint as the reverse of the 1st sprint, so that's what I did, making slightly better route choices along the way. All 3 sprints made good use of a small map, and it was never obvious which controls would be the best ones to drop. I won the 2nd round as well - woo hoo! 'Bent also made the top 8 for the final - good for him.

Then my luck ran out - or more accurately, my brain ran out. It's not that I wasn't thinking hard in the 3rd round. The problem was my thoughts, which rotated through the following sequence over and over:

1) Rain is fogging my glasses (which I wear to keep sticks out of my eyes, not for vision correction). Can't see. Better take them off.
2) Gaacck!! Now that I can see the map again, I realize that I have made a horrible mistake. Must run fast to recover lost time.
3) Hmmm, not comfortable running without eye protection. Put foggy glasses back on.
4) Crap, now I can't see the slippery, mossy, rocky ground well enough, and I'm worried about re-spraining my ankle before the GRR. Remove foggy glasses.
5) Gaaacckk!! Now that I can see the map again, I realize that I read it wrong - again.
6) Repeat thoughts #1-5 above.

Needless to say, this wasn't conducive to good navigation, but what really bugs me is that I let these distractions kill my focus for close to 5 minutes, and I should be able to do better than that. Out of six legs in the race, there are only two legs where I wouldn't be embarrassed to show someone the actual route I travelled.

I guess I need to be prepared to do some woods running without eye protection on rainy days, rather than let this happen again - but it really makes me squeamish. My eyes seem to have a natural attraction for foreign objects any time I'm outdoors.

Oh, and Barbie said that after races, I should always identify some things I did well, and not just my screw-ups, so I think I ran well today, by my standards. There were a couple of times when I felt that Thursday's speed intervals had made a difference, since my body seems just a tiny bit more willing to put on short bursts of speed even after just one session. Bizarre and interesting.

In spite of today's implosion on the 3rd race course, I was awarded the prestigious Thomass Toque as the top woman in the 2006/07 winter O race series. The Duke was the top man. Lucky me, I really needed a dry toque after today's event! (For the benefit of my American friends, this is a toque.)

OK, Urthbuoy/Mjolnir wasn't happy with my first entry in the photo contest, so here's another attempt. This time it really is a photo of me training - yeah, just thought I'd go for a little walk around the 'hood. Is THIS the kind of thing the judges want to see?

Minor home crisis. After years of hiding behind different surnames in our married life, Mountain Equipment Co-op finally figured it out and sent us just one summer catalogue "to save paper and preserve the environment". Aackk! Now the truth is, 'Bent and I are all for the environment. It's one of our favourite things. But as much as we've worked at reducing duplicate mailings from every other source, we aren't sure whether ten years of marriage has prepared us to share, dog-ear, and annotate a single MEC catalogue for an entire season. A trip to the Toronto store before they run out of extra copies might be in order.

C3 training. Tonight I did about 8 hill intervals and around 2.5 km of fartlek, alternating fast/slow every time I passed a street lamp. Usually I run while chatting with friends who are a bit slower, but none of them came tonight, so it was a good opportunity to focus and push harder. No way I was catching the speedy guys though, especially the faster-than-a-speeding-bullet high school kid. 'Bent was looking pretty good, and managed to stay up near the front - although nobody came close to catching The Kid.

This is the speedy/hilly part of the intervals. I almost never do speedwork, and there aren't many fast twitch fibres left to recruit after all my endurance training, but I managed to find a few laggards that hadn't escaped yet.

Core conditioning class. Tonight was all obliques, all the time. Usually, I find oblique exercises to be pretty easy in comparison to other core work, but if you do enough of anything, it eventually gets HARD.

Tonight was Yin-Yang Yoga. We would move through a series of poses slowly, holding them for awhile. Then we'd move through the same series of poses faster, and then we'd take a minute's break in a stretching/relaxing pose. Lots of good balance work, which I think has helped my bum ankle. (Not that I'm planning to stop wearing the brace for orienteering anytime soon.)

Sorry, Kissy - 36 minutes ahead for the week. (But that just means you're faster.)

Here's my entry into the Attackpoint photo contest being run by the Athlete Formerly Known As Urthbuoy. Yes, I know it's supposed to be a photo of me training. But I've decided that training can only get me so far, and my best chance for success is to choose my teammates wisely.

Thought For The Day - from the Fast Trax Run and Ski Shop website:

"In the end, you will be judged not by your wealth, your knowledge or your commitment to mankind, but by how hard you train. [OK, probably not, but train hard anyway, just to be safe.]"

While watching the Daily Show.

First Caledon G-TNT (Girlz Tuesday Noon Training) group event. Leanimal, Crash and I headed out on the Humber Valley Trail in bright sunshine and surprisingly cold temperatures that kept us moving. Usually when I do trail races, I pass people on the hills, and they leave me in the dust on the flats. Not with these experienced off-road runners! I could keep up on the flats, although it was faster than my normal pace - which was great. But they didn't slow down on the steep uphills like most people do, so I had to push hard to catch them after crossing the river. We did have to slow down in a few places where the trail had turned into an ice rink. We all have big plans for the next few weeks, and nobody wants to get injured! Looking forward to getting out there again, and hopefully SlowRunner can join us next time. And maybe Rocky can take a long lunch!

After the run, I thought I'd stop by Bolton's new Winners store, which just opened today. It was obviously a brilliant idea, since all 57,000 people in Caledon decided to do the same thing. It was pretty cool to see Ralph Lauren sheets, Adidas tank tops and Liz Claiborne suits for sale in our little town, but there were big city line-ups for the change rooms and cashiers, so I decided to give up my coveted parking space to the next lucky shopper and try it another day.

Hard Core Monday. It's ba-a-a-a-ack!!

Thomass Hilton Falls West. Beautiful late winter day with lots of sunshine and crunchy snow. Good turnout of friends at the race, including our long lost original Tree Hugger teammates, Hingo and The Minister. Fantastic to see them!

For a long time, I thought of this map (used as the NAOC training map) as my nemesis. After a couple of previous practice sessions here, I had to fight the urge to pitch my compass out the car window and take up lawn bowling. But Coach Hammer took me out there last fall before NAOC and managed to instill a moderate level of confidence, so it doesn't scare me quite as much anymore. Still, I do my best to avoid needing to relocate, because I don't have an eye for 2.5 m contours, and I'm not great at distinguishing boulders vs. boulder fields vs. limestone pavement vs. 1.5 m cliffs, especially in the snow.

Today's race started out with a Waterloo "star" - a series of 1- or 2-control butterfly loops that we visited according to our handicaps. Then we switched to another map and ran down into a small Thomass Box, then a fair bit of trail running was required to hit the controls on the way to the finish. On paper, it didn't look like a course that would work well for me, but I guess the Boxes did their job, since I found myself making the first tracks in the snow from #3 all the way to the finish. I didn't want to stop and look hard at the map just then, but I was a bit worried that I might have accidentally missed something! Because of all the trail running, I was fairly certain that I would be overtaken by a stampede of elites at some point, but I was on my own at the front until Griz appeared from my left about 30 m before the finish. The SI units were taped to a car. Griz and I raced around the car from opposite directions, and had a football tackle moment before I managed to punch the finish a nanosecond before him. Full body contact orienteering is a new twist on the sport - I thought it was enough to wear eye protection!

Speedy Sudden came 3rd, so we had a GHO sweep of the podium today. Team Salomon/Suunto had a strong showing too, with Leanimal leading the charge, followed a short time later by Tiny and Phatty. Poor 'Bent had a great day except for a 23-minute split between controls #1 and #2, where he had to relocate a few times. (See explanation above re why you never want to have to relocate in this terrain.) As he points out, at least he will have more Attackpoint training hours than I will.

SlowRunner's strength training program. I like this routine, and I need to make more time to do it. I was stronger at this time last year because I worked harder on strength through the winter. Not sure if it's too late for the spring racing season, but things definitely won't improve if I don't at least try.

For anyone who may have been following the saga (it came up in my training log from time to time), our new and apparently-highly-difficult-to-make-for-something-that-looks-incredibly-simple pine bed finally arrived today, 4-5 months after its promised delivery. It'll be weird not to sleep on the floor after all this time, but I think we'll get used to it, and maybe the improvement in sleep quality will lead to increased enthusiasm for early morning training sessions. (hahahahahahahahaha)

HUGE congrats to Tree Hugger Brittany Webster who just placed 6th at the World Junior XC Ski Champs in the 10 km pursuit. She was 9th in Wednesday's 5 km freestyle event. WOW!!!! Glad we've already arranged our accommodation for the 2010 Olympics.

A quick run around Palgrave West with 'Bent, BulletDog and ThunderDog (for the 1st lap). From looking at our property, I'd assumed that the woods would be mostly clear of snow and ice, but I'd assumed wrong. 'Bent had warned me to wear Ice Bugs, but there were some slippery spots where my legs were spinning wildly like a Road Runner cartoon, and I was desperately hoping that I would regain control before crashing some body part hard on the ice. Fun, and I felt pretty strong, considering that I haven't done much running lately. The pain in my lower calf is still very much there. Ignoring it hasn't been the most successful strategy. A couple more days, and I may be off to see Leanimal about it.

My log is at 9,999 hits. If the next person who reads this makes a comment, you will be declared the official 10,000th visitor, and thus eligible for all the prizes and prestige that accompany that honour.

If anyone knows a woman interested in doing the sold-out MIX adventure race in Michigan in late May, contact Team Adventureheads (www.adventureheads.com) at twagar AT nortel DOT com. This is supposed to be an awesome race, and the two members I know from this team are experienced racers and nice guys.

C3 training run in Caledon East. One of the women who has been running since her high school track days told me that I have an unusual stride. Oh well... I think my legs don't know what to do when they hit a smooth road! On the bright side, I was the fastest woman there tonight.

Caron's Hard Core Live. For the first while, tonight's theme seemed to be "flow from one exercise to another without any breaks", but we finished off a bit more reasonably!

Power Yoga class. Tonight's theme was holding poses for a really long time and breathing slowly - the opposite of last week, which involved a lot of moves between poses. Holding poses for a long time meant that easy poses eventually became hard to hold, especially the balance ones. Fun as always - and no levitating or breathing through the top of my head, like Hansel has to do in his classes.

Road and bayfront trail run with Etoile on a warmish evening with occasional rain. Great company, nice scenery. Almost immediately after starting, I felt a sharp pain in the lower back of my right leg - not a usual place to feel calf pain. It didn't feel like it was something I'd done tonight. It felt like existing damage that I hadn't noticed yet because this was my first run post-SnowGaine. I kept expecting it to stretch out and go away, but it bothered me throughout, and is still bugging me 5 hrs later. Hopefully just a temporary aberration, since I need to start doing lots of running to get ready for the GRR.

Not sure if it's the antibiotics, but I'm feeling somewhat improved today and probably ready for exercise tomorrow. I've spent the past 5 days ravenously hungry, but unable to make much food or drink agree with my body for very long. I didn't turn on the "Sick" flag, since I did a 16-hr race while feeling this way, which automatically makes me ineligible for sympathy.

Yesterday marked the end of the 2nd full year that I've logged my training on Attackpoint.

Looking at the numbers, there are some obvious trends - several of them resulting from the reduced amount of snow and adventure races in Ontario over the past year.

2nd Year on AP (1st Year on AP)

Total Training – 541 hrs (599) Mostly due to fewer long adventure races.

Breakdown by Activity:

Orienteering – 153 hrs (129.5) 2006 was a very fun year for O.
Adventure Racing – 89 hrs (181) Not as many long races available.
Running – 69 hrs (77) Oops, I should be increasing my running.
Trekking – 54.5 hrs (17) New Zealand fun!
Cycling – 53 hrs (53) At least I'm consistent.
Strength – 41.5 hrs (32) Improving, but not good enough.
XC Skiing – 38 hrs (62) Winter came late - sigh.
Paddling – 16 hrs (29) I'm missing Coach Bill.
Yoga – 13.5 hrs (2) Thank you, Caron. This is helping.
Snowshoeing – 10.5 hrs (16) Not enough snow days.
Other – 3 hrs (0)

Day 2 of the SnowGaine. 'Bent and I had lots of time to plan our route, so things went more smoothly today, and we got every control we'd planned except for one 40-pointer that we'd left for an optional side trip near the finish. I felt worse than yesterday, so there was virtually no running, even on roads, but fortunately most of our route was snowshoeing, so 'Bent could just pull me along. The snow got softer as the day went on, so snowshoeing was harder work than yesterday. However, we had figured out the map legend better, so we were often able to choose harder-packed trails. Also, our total distance and climb were less today, since we were cleaning up all the points in a relatively compact area of the map.

There were two 20-pointers along the ski trails at the Nordic Centre, and we'd left them for the end in the hope that we might be able to enjoy our skate skis for a few minutes after hauling them all the way to New York. We got back to race HQ with 32 minutes to go, and had a smooth transition to skis. It wasn't easy in the soft snow, but it felt great to use different muscles and fly down hills. We made it to the final two controls, then dashed for the finish. We were OK for time, but 'Bent was so full of adrenaline that he crashed hard three times in less than 15 minutes of skiing! (And 'Bent almost *never* falls.)

More great snacks, along with a quick and efficient awards ceremony. Congrats to Phatty & Leanimal for winning the Coed category with about 1690 pts, in spite of their penalty, which meant they had 1 hour less than the rest of us to do the course. 'Bent and I were 2nd Coed with 1589 pts, and the amazing veterans Eric & Mary Smith were not that far behind us. Tiny & Nosnhoj were the top Canadians with about 1780 pts, finishing 4th Male.

Great event, and a fun weekend with friends.

Day 1 of the CNYO SnowGaine in Virgil, NY. This is a fun, interesting event format. We got the map about 40 minutes before we started on Saturday morning, and the goal was to maximize our points by visiting controls on one rogaine map, dividing our efforts into two 8-hour days. Any mode of non-motorized transportation was allowed, as long as you took it to all controls. 'Bent and I had brought classic & skate skis and snowshoes, but decided to just head out on foot with snowshoes on our backpacks.

There were a surprising number of bikes at race HQ, and I hope that they all got dragged to all the controls. The eventual race winner, who used a bike, expressed concern about seeing minimal evidence of other bikes in the woods while he was snowshoeing with his bike on his shoulder. Most people were snowshoeing, and there were a few skiers who had some long, lovely downhill runs interspersed with some tough bushwhacking.

After finishing way too early at the Laurentian Rogaine, we made a decision to plan Day 1 under the illusion that we could get all the controls. There was no time for detailed analysis, so we picked what looked like a longer, harder loop for today, assuming that we'd be tired tomorrow. One thing I would do differently in future 2-day races would be to start our loop from the outside of the map and work toward the middle. That way, if we didn't finish everything we'd planned, we would leave the skipped controls in play for the next day.

We started out with a long road run, then headed into the woods, travelling west for most of the day. The navigation went smoothly, although there was some debate about the merits of avoiding excess elevation gain (me) vs. avoiding breaking trail ('Bent). Especially on the 1st day as we were getting used to the area, it was hard to know where we might find a well-packed trail anyway, so I didn't want to let that influence my navigation choices too much.

'Bent did well, and towed me whenever it made sense. I'd started out the weekend with a GI bug, and - surprisingly - it turns out that 16 hours of winter racing did not cure me. I felt pretty dehydrated and lightheaded at times - never energetic.

Time was getting tight to get the 100-pointer at the far west of the map, so rather than repeating the Sherpa-Bash Rogaine Dash, we decided to turn back and do a long, stress-free road run to the finish, including several detours to pick up easy controls enroute. Other than the cold rain falling and the SUVs zooming by with skis on top and cell phones blaring, this scenic run was a great way to finish the day.

We were greeted by an amazing spread of post-race snacks - pasta, potato soup, burgers, sausages, grilled cheese sandwiches, homemade cookies and brownies, hot and cold drinks, etc. Hard to believe they can do all this, plus set up a race course over a huge area, for only $35/person.

Tiny & Nosnhoj had a great day, but felt that their snowshoes were slower than the skiers they'd seen. Phatty & Leanimal tore up the course in spite of restricted route choices due to adhering to the private property rules more literally than the organizers intended. (It hadn't been clear.) They arrived half an hour late though, which means a 90-minute delayed start tomorrow.

We were happy with what we'd accomplished, although we wasted 30 minutes on a 20-pointer that should have been used to get the 100-pointer we eventually had to skip. Note to self: Don't wait until halftime to re-evaluate a rogaine route. By then, it's too late - I'm already at my turnaround point. In future, I probably should look at our progress after 1/3 of the time has passed.

Rode the Bullfrog express to Cortland, NY with Tiny, Nosnhoj, Phatty, Leanimal and 'Bent for the CNYO SnowGaine. It would have felt like a long drive on our own, but it was a fun group road trip.

C3 Training Night with 'Bent, after a few weeks away. It was a fairly small group, since a lot of people are away at a Florida training camp, but we were happy to see Crash's car turning into the parking lot ahead of us. Great to have fresh company for the run. It's not often that I get to run with Someone Who Has Just Qualified For Boston!

Hard Core Live with Caron. And oooh, it was pretty hard tonight - especially some of the positions she made us hold. And hold and HOLD!

Tonight's yoga class focused on dynamic position changes, instead of holding single postures. We would move back and forth between two postures for 10 reps, then take a break in a resting position like a forward bend or child's pose. It got my heart rate up higher than yoga usually does, and some of the positions required a good amount of strength and/or balance. An interesting variation! And wow, Crash sure looked flexible in my peripheral vision.

BulletDog and I snowshoed in beautiful late afternoon light, picking up all remaining controls (just flagging tape) from Thomass Palgrave West. We'd gone to Canmore right after the race, so KS had picked up the SI controls, then an irate neighbour picked up any flagging tape visible from the trail, i.e. mostly the novice course, but he did get a few from the Thomass course. The plan had been that 'Bent and Crash would use the course for training, since they couldn't do the Thomass race. 'Bent went out, but when he discovered some flags missing, we realized that it wouldn't be much fun for Crash as a relatively new orienteer. Ironically, the guy hadn't noticed the one and only control within sight of his house. I need to get in a really calm mood, then phone him and make a good impression on behalf of the sport. Apparently, he views the conservation area as "his woods". Hah - everyone knows that they are Crash's woods. When I mentioned it to the managers of the Conservation Authority, they just laughed and suggested that if these really ARE his woods, they've got a few jobs for him.

Hard Core DVD

Tree Huggers Pate Neumann and Brittany Webster arrived in Europe today for the World Junior XC Ski Champs. This is their 2nd trip to Europe this winter. Their first trip in January ended early when the World Junior Champs were rescheduled due to low snow levels. Here is a hilarious video of a couple of Canada's top junior skiers attempting to train in Austria on that earlier trip. The narrator is their coach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0QEQjlD4HM

'Bent and I went to Albion Hills, thinking that the warm temperatures and new snow with ice crust would make perfect skate-ski conditions on groomed trails. That might have been true earlier in the weekend, but by this afternoon, the trails were icy, rutted, and hard as concrete. I don't think I've ever skate-skied the black trail at Albion HIlls, but it would be awesome in the right conditions - great scenery, lots of hills. Today I enjoyed the uphills (except some south-facing ones that got heavy and soft), but the downhills scared the crap out of me, especially if they had a few ruts and turned a corner in heavy trees. If I'd done a face plant like the one I did yesterday, I wouldn't have ended up with much face left. (I suppose that some people DO spend a lot of money on dermabrasion.) It's funny how two consecutive days of skiing could be so totally unalike. Although we'd brought both skate and classic skis with the plan of spending a few hours there, we beat a hasty retreat back to our place after finishing the loop. The dogs were thrilled.

Safely back home, 'Bent and I took the pooches out to visit a few orienteering controls from the Thomass in Palgrave West. When 'Bent did the course 8 days after the race, several flags were down, and he wanted to confirm the location of control K. The ice crust made for tough snowshoeing, but it was nothing compared to how tough it was to be a Lab Retriever moving through that stuff. Both dogs took advantage of our snowshoe tracks whenever they could. They are both snoring happily now, as is 'Bent.

Went up to Hardwood Hills for some skate skiing while 'Bent headed south to the Bike Show. Amazingly, a day pass there costs about the same as what 'Bent and I paid for 7 days of skiing out west. ($7.50 X 3 visits to the Canmore Nordic Centre - and none of the other places had trail fees.)

It started snowing hard around Barrie, and I ended up skiing with 10-15 cm of fluffy new powder on the trail - beautiful, but not really optimum conditions for skate skiing. Surprisingly, things went well. In Canmore, compared to me, everyone else seemed to skate ski with the speed and ease of Beckie Scott. Given where I was, one of the passing skiers might even have BEEN Beckie Scott. Back in Ontario, I looked relatively good. Best of all, this was only level 3 intensity, even though I went at a decent speed (about 20% faster than last time at HH) in tough snow conditions. I can probably thank the residual effects of spending last week at altitude, since there is no other reason for skate skiing to suddenly feel easier.

I made one serious error in judgement coming down a steep hill when I decided to speed my descent by stepping into the groomed tracks for classic skiing. My left ski slid nicely into the leftmost track, but my right ski slid past the next two tracks and settled briefly into the rightmost track on the double-tracked trail. There was a split-second of wondering whether this could possibly work, then my body decided that I couldn't ski while doing the splits, so I did a major swan dive into the fresh snow. It could have been a lot worse in the knee twisting department, but - luckily - nothing was hurt but my pride.

Enroute to my ski, I needed to stop in at a furniture store and demand a large cash deposit back, since 6 months and many conversations have passed since they promised to make us a bed in 6 weeks. It occurred to me that I didn't look very intimidating in a fluorescent green softshell, Buff and ski tights, so I dug in the back of my closet for a seldom-used "urban professional" coat, hat, scarf and gloves that I could slip on over my ski clothes before I entered the store. I felt like such an impostor! I put on appropriately energetic tunes to get in the right frame of mind while driving over, and "American Woman" was playing when I saw the police officer with the radar gun. A quick glance at the speedometer confirmed that he might want to chat with me, but I guess he had bigger fish to fry. Regardless, I guiltily switched to a Leonard Cohen CD immediately, and drove the rest of the way to the store at a very sedate pace. Miraculously, it looks like we might actually get a bed after all, after months of sleeping on a mattress on the floor, so I gave them a temporary reprieve on returning the deposit.