Training Log Archive: Bash

'Bent, BulletDog and I explored both sides of Palgrave travelling cross-country by snowshoe and visiting places frequented mainly by deer and coyotes. When we hit trails, we would usually run a short distance then plunge into the snowy bush again. It's amazing how different a familiar area can seem when you don't use the trails. Awesome! :)

Wishing you and your family a happy, healthy 2013. If you're making New Year's resolutions, a creative approach may make things easier. :)

4th annual Waterfalls of Hamilton (WoH) run, hosted by the very hospitable Trav and Baloney. This year 45 people ran trail loops of different lengths from the Hottage and visited some of Hamilton's beautiful waterfalls. Hammer had prepared a map with all the waterfall CPs and optional shortcuts.



Conditions were fantastic! I think this is the snowiest WoH we've ever had, which made for a slow, wallowing run in a few places. Great rehab for my gimpy foot, which got to move in all directions. Everyone loved it.



I started with the group who planned to do the whole enchilada (15K). People kept dropping off until just 'Bent, Zoolander and Hammer finished the entire route. Hammer distinguished himself by inadvertently taking a pee break in front of some property owner's security camera.



I asked the fast boyz to stop waiting for me somewhere around K2, then finished at a more relaxed pace. I had a nice chat with an XC skier who wondered what the heck we were doing, and I got some waterfall pics too.





The most interesting part of the route was the optional shortcut from the top of Tiffany Falls to the bottom. Looking at this photo, it started directly above the falls, then descended toward the left side of the photo below the cliff, then plunged straight down the steep slope.



It was extremely slick and I had to do the last 5 m of descent as a bum slide while trying to slow the pace by grabbing at random bits of snow with my hands. (I didn't want to go too fast since I was bum sliding over a few small rocks.) I had two thoughts as I did this descent alone in the quiet valley:

1) If I don't get back for lunch, they'll know to look for my body here first.

2) It's hard to believe this run is being hosted by a *lawyer*!!! ;)

Great run, yummy lunch and coffee, excellent conversation with friends, and an episode of Zoolander and Turbo's new show "Boundless", which was really entertaining. It is time for Hansel to hand over the Mantle of Vomit - to step down from the Pinnacle of Puke. Turbo is the new Baron of Barf in our crowd.

Thanks for a great time, Traveloney!

(Time deducted for waterfall viewing.)

Thanks to 'Bent for preparing a wonderful New Year's Eve dinner tonight - lobster tails, mixed veggies sauteed in garlic, baby potatoes. He was a little surprised, however, when I pointed out that it wasn't New Year's Eve... :)

Short, fun ski around Hardwood Hills with Leanimal, Goose and Coach LD. Conditions were excellent, although Highlands Nordic has more snow up high. Wintry driving. The main event of the day was lunch with Phatty, Leanimal, Hubnukin', MooPoint, Goose and Coach LD. Alas, the children were napping when we arrived, although Monster appeared briefly just before we left. No sign of Weeanimal nor of 'Bent, who stayed home to try to recover from his cold - and avoid sharing it.

'Bent, Coach LD and I went up to Highlands. There is lots of snow - gorgeous! The trails were soft so it was a better day for classic, which suited me just fine. For some reason, though, it was one of those days when things didn't click. I had trouble with wax and with numbness/pain in my feet as I experimented with ways to tighten my new boots, which are light and comfortable otherwise.

Whenever I got the little distractions sorted out temporarily, I tried to work on a few specific things from the Silverstar coaches. Not all at the same time since I would usually forget one thing when I worked on another!

- Bending forward from the ankles. Whenever I see a photo of myself running or skiing, my knees and ankles are never bent as much as it felt like to me when I was doing it. So today I took a page out of the Carbons' running drills and tried to keep my lower body low, exaggerating the bends in my knees and ankles. It felt excessive but if I looked down, the amount of bend seemed about right.

- Chest up. (Or as one coach described it, "Nipples up!") Lower back straightened and pulled in to strengthen core and improve posture. "Fashion model" hips up front leading the way.

- Poles close to body. Push arms back farther and let poles go way back.

- Full weight shift.

- Weight on all toes spread out evenly like yoga mountain pose.

- Double poling with lots of core.

I did the Red loop first, which included several kilometers that were soft, slippery and not track set. There were also a couple of side loops that hadn't been groomed at all this year, so we had deep skier-groomed tracks. I met 'Bent and Coach LD on one of these ungroomed tracks at the top of a big hill. I gave them a small head start, then headed down. My skis were trapped in what Arthurd might call "death canyons" - although the tracks weren't icy, just narrow and 30 cm deep in heavy snow. As I looked at 'Bent and Coach LD, I was thinking that they'd better not fall because if they did, there would be no pretty way for me to stop in these conditions at this speed. Fortunately, they never fall. I admired the frost-covered trees for a moment, then looked back and they were both down in front of me near the bottom of the hill. !!! Turns out 'Bent had flipped when he hit a body-sized crater. Coach LD fell to miss him, and I immediately did the same. It was *really* hard to get up again as we wallowed around in the deep, heavy snow, then it took us all a few minutes to pull the snowballs out of our hats and jackets. My hair froze into a white, tangled mass. Yay, winter! :)

I've been looking forward to trying out my new Salomon Snowcross shoes for a long time so today seemed like a perfect day for it. I ran Bruce Loop with a couple of extra hills to test the spikes. Most of the trail was 10-15 cm of uncompacted snow - like running on a beach with fine sand the consistency of flour. The shoes felt great - warm, comfortable and good traction on packed snow. (No shoe gets traction in loose, deep snow.) I think I'll need a 2nd pair of light socks to make them feel snug enough but they should be great for O-Cup races. 'Bent flew by with BazingaDog set up for skijoring and BulletDog acting as his rabbit.

Rodney Yee - Power Yoga for Flexibility. This was good but today I could have used even more.

Snow at last! I'm eager to try out our shiny new membership at Highlands Nordic but it would have been a shame not to ski out our door today. After all, that's why we wanted to live in this area. 'Bent and I broke trail through 10-15 cm of snow. We never got more than 3 km from our house as the crow flies but we skied over 20 km of trail in Palgrave East and West (mostly without duplicating) and did about 1 km of bushwhacking on skis. Partway through, I got the idea of mapping some of the trails so we took a few strange routes. It was great Snowgaine training!

There is no base but conditions were pretty good. Some of the trails were straightforward while others were more "technical", e.g. scrambling over big fallen logs or weaving our way through reeds over our heads. (I'll admit that some of these trails are no longer open officially.) It wasn't a great place to practise our technique from the Silverstar clinics but we hope to do that tomorrow. Awesome to be skiing at home!

Hope everyone had a good Christmas! My Dad used to be a keen photographer, and he recently took the first step on a project that's been on my own list for a long time - getting hundreds of old Kodachrome slides scanned in. We had quite the Christmas slide show! These days I'm usually behind the camera when our family gets together for the holidays but it wasn't always that way.

Merry Christmas to my Attackpoint family. :)

We'd hoped to ski today but there was a skate race at Highlands, and Hardwood Hills suggested rock skate skis (one of the few types missing from our quiver). So we decided to wait for a little more snow to fall, and instead we joined Gary Black to run the Milton Quarry Loop.



Gary had posted this run on the Run Trails Ontario Facebook page because he hoped to find a couple of running companions while he was home from Ottawa. It caught on like wildfire, and 16 runners showed up this morning! It was a fun, chatty run. 'Bent, DoubleDown_on11 and WandAR were the other Attackpointers; I recognized almost everyone from their Facebook photos and had met most of them in real life before anyway.



Thanks to Alexa (DD11's wife) and Barbara for the wonderful Christmas goodies. 'Bent and I went home by way of The Shed to get lattes and paninis. I'm feeling pleasantly fatigued now. I've purposely done less running over the past couple of months to give myself some recovery time so we'll see how my body responds to suddenly doing 43+ km over the past 28 hours. The good news is that my gimpy foot didn't squawk out there - at least, no worse than it does when I'm walking around the house.

DoubleDown_on11 and I were talking about how the Milton Quarry Loop compares to the full Hockley Loop. It's almost the same length - about 2 km longer, and the time/km is similar. Today's loop was relatively flat but quite technical. It was great training for agility, strength, balance and mental focus. It would be soooo easy to turn an ankle so I was uber-cautious. Hockley Loop, on the other hand, is great training for hills and strength. Both loops have some smooth sections where you can take a mental break and just run. I look forward to doing this one again!

One of the best Christmas greetings *ever*. Céline Bourdon (Animal-O) of TOC did 37.63 km of biking today.

Salomon Store Winter Solstice Run hosted by Ryan Barrett. There was a thin layer of snow on the trails so there is hope! I did two laps and had a great time chatting with a bunch of people. DoubleDown_on11 joined us for one of the laps as a break from Christmas shopping (see below). As always, I stayed there far too long and ended up buying as much for me as for the people on my Christmas list. :)



While driving there and back, I listened to two CBC "Rewind" podcasts. Cool! The first one was on Gordon Lightfoot; the host commented about recent tweets that were making the rounds after Lightfoot performed in the Grey Cup halftime show. Some young football fans weren't sure who he was; they thought maybe Gordon was Justin Bieber's manager. (!!!) I hadn't realized that his career dated back to winning the Kiwanis Music Festival (vocals) at the age of 8. It was fun to hear clips of interviews throughout his career. When I heard Peter Gzowski interviewing him - really well, as he always did - it was all I could do not to cry as I drove. I know I'm not alone in missing PG (the Canadian one) terribly.

The other podcast was about the early days of CBC television. It had some great clips of shows and political speeches from an era when no one knew what kind of future television might have as a medium.

I'm trying to get back into the multi-sport training routine that I had before Coast to Coast two years ago. I felt ready for anything that spring! So I got on the kayak trainer today with a "CBC Laugh Out Loud" podcast - and it wasn't so bad. I never have time to listen to all the podcasts I download so this accomplishes two things at once. Today is the first day of winter so I'd much rather have been skiing or snowshoeing - maybe soon. I paddled moderately hard and tried to engage core, back and legs. I ended up with blisters on my thumbs; I guess the paddling is realistic enough that I should wear gloves - oops.

Included 15 teapots on each side in honour of Coach LD.

'Bent's mother (who is Jewish) gave me a terrific Christmas ornament that honours a well-known Canadian rodent. Naturally, I've named it "Bob".

My favourite yoga class every year... Lights low, big Christmas tree, Patrick Dilkie playing live piano, Caron teaching, guests invited at no charge (we had three), cookies and conversation with friends afterward.

It was already a wonderful day because:

(a) We got some snow after the freezing rain stopped.
(b) I finished some big Christmas tasks so I'll have time for training again.

(c) Best of all, we received a handwritten Christmas letter from our friend Joy who is almost 90 years old. We met her paddling the Nahanni River nearly 20 years ago, and I always hold my breath until her card arrives. We don't know her family and would never hear if something had happened. But fortunately, nothing has - nothing bad, that is. She's been doing 5-6 hour hikes with her club on Vancouver Island (although she confesses that she is now at the back of the line), and she has signed up for 4-day snowshoe trips on Mt. Washington in *each* of January, February and March. And that's just the winter; she has a busy year planned after all that relaxation.

I want to be like Joy when I grow up. We really should go to Victoria and hike with her.

Why I'll probably never be an Ironman.

Eighteen months into this amazing journey, I've pre-registered for Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc 2013. If I'm lucky enough to have my entry accepted, I'll be attempting to run 168 km through France, Italy and Switzerland at the end of August.

'Bent is pre-registered for the 100K Courmayeur-Champex-Chamonix (CCC) event with his entry linked to Mrs. Gally's, i.e. they will either both get in or both *not* get in.

I was over the moon to find this beautiful set of maps of the race route. 1:25,000! :) ***Swoon...***

Here's the list of registrants. If you pick "Canada" or "United States", you'll see some familiar names.

One thing that strikes me about the list of registrants is that a number of people have confirmed registrations already - presumably those trying for their 3rd time. The qualifying standards were toughened up this year so it's possible that fewer people will apply to the lottery but who knows...? Fingers tightly crossed. I will need to come up with an exciting back-up plan so I'm not too disappointed if I don't get in for 2013.

A fun idea for your family's Christmas gathering. Recreate an old photo from 20 years ago. (It's more work than you might imagine!)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/family-ch... (story)

The end of an era... Starbucks has opened in Bolton. Although this is good news for a coffee lover, I'm a little torn since it means that Starbucks will never again feel like a special occasion treat for this country bumpkin.

Monday night Bounding Babes - functional strength and ski bounding in random places around Bolton with Coach LD leading the way. These sessions have proven beyond any doubt that I am completely without fast twitch fibres. But it's fun to pretend I can jump!

Here's tonight's program from her log:
http://ar.attackpoint.org/viewlog.jsp/user_9846/pe...

For the first time in who knows how long, I took a full week off running to give my foot some healing time in addition to the strength training and chiro treatments. It just has never been bad enough to stop, so I haven't bothered. A couple of years ago, I never would have imagined that I could miss running at all, let alone this much! I'm now going to start building up again. After all, it may be less than 6 months until my first 100-miler. :)

In the end, it's an ad - but I like it!

'Bent and I did the "Rides: Southern California" DVD plus some warm-up and cooldown. I got some extra riding time in the middle while we paused the DVD so 'Bent could fix a bad chain link. This DVD includes a tough, sustained hill climb - mentally difficult on a trainer! Mostly, I like the DVD with two minor quibbles:

(a) It sometimes looks like the riders on screen are freewheeling downhill while we are supposedly working our butts off going uphill.

(b) They keep implying that we're almost at the top of the hill - then they crank it up another notch. I may have sworn at the TV screen at one point.

Note to self: I was mostly holding 220-230W for Level 9.

Rodney Yee Power Yoga for Flexibility - interrupted briefly by popcorn delivery from Hingo, whose kids had sold it to us for a Scouts fundraiser. Now we have something nutritious to eat during tonight's Survivor Finale. :)

Before more Christmas partying.

When parents text...
http://pinterest.com/pin/34128909648048112/

Heartbreaking news from Connecticut. Why? There are no words.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/live/art...

We should be skiing but when December gives you lemons, ya gotta make lemonade. 'Bent and I rode trails in Palgrave East. Much of the double track was covered with 1 cm of soft snow and ice, so caution was essential. I had a near wipeout on a particularly slick corner, and my winter bike shoes didn't unclip quickly because they're loose. I'm not excited about these shoes; they're men's shoes that don't fit me well, and they're really not that warm. I'm interested to see 'Bent's fancy new "Arctic" cycling shoes from MEC. Fortunately, I made the save and stayed upright this time.

Since it was +3C, where there was no snow, there was mud - sometimes a *lot* of mud - so we had to be careful where we went to avoid causing damage. Much of the purpose-built single track was too soft so we stayed off it. I guess we should have ridden first thing in the morning but we took the pooches to a friend's fenced 20-acre farm to try to wear them out. It's like having toddlers sometimes!

Some Palgrave news... The mystery Christmas tree near the abandoned parking lot is accumulating more decorations every time I see it, including some awesome homemade ornaments made from old bike chain rings. A second Christmas tree has appeared off-trail in a less accessible part of the conservation area. We are inspired to contribute some decorations too. 'Bent wants to add some dreidels in honour of Hannukah.

Other news... The kilometer of Duffy's Lane between the TRCA parking lot and Finnerty Sideroad is always "closed for winter" but in reality, people always drive there and get stuck and slide out of control in a remote area with a steep hill and water with thin ice lining both sides of the road at the low point. This year the town has thrown up big concrete barriers at both ends so we'll be able to use this rolling stretch of country road for running, snowshoeing, skiing, intervals, etc.

Looking for more variety in your Christmas music? This group has an album on iTunes, and if it's all as good as this song, I'm downloading it.

Congrats to local skier Brittany Webster, the top Canadian in today's World Cup 10K classic ski race in Canmore. She finished 38th of 63 skiers.

Great news for iPhone users. Yesterday Apple approved the Google Maps app for download from iTunes.

Sadly, our ski season isn't really underway yet so I need to spend more time on the bike. If I'd taken a break earlier, I could have gone mountain biking on the local single track but since it was dark and almost time for dinner, I decided to do Spinervals 1.0 No Slackers Allowed. This is an interval workout with superspins, ladder, 5-minute time trial, sprints, etc. I'd forgotten how much this makes me sweat! Yay!

BulletDog lay loyally beside the trainer looking up at me with her big liquid brown eyes, waiting for something fun to happen - poor thing! :)

Time includes a few extra minutes of warm-up.
Max watts = 292 (ouch!)

Top three Google Searches for 2012 :

(I might have guessed #3 but that's it.)

1) Whitney Houston
2) Gangnam Style
3) Hurricane Sandy

More Christmas cheer. It should come as no surprise to anyone that this house is in Texas. The homeowner was recently interviewed on CBC Radio's As It Happens.

Looking for that special Christmas gift for someone who has everything - including the desire for a neck injury? Here's an idea... the SWIH hands-free water bottle carrier.

Want to practise route choice on interesting legs and see what other navigators would do? Even better, you can see which choices worked best in the race the map came from. Check out the World of O's Route to Christmas. A new leg has been added each day of December so you can go back in the history to check them out.

Coach LD's Bounding Babes session. Tonight it was just the two of us cruising around Bolton streets and parks - doing one-legged hops up hills, trying to push each other over the line in the sand pit, doing box jumps onto tree stumps (and depth jumps off), doing teapots and other balance/core exercises on the deck, and running on dark trails. Lots of fun - thank you for putting it together, Coach LD! :)

Event: The Chase (O-Cup race #2)
 

O-Cup #2 - The Chase
Canterbury Hills

Perfect December morning for orienteering - although a little snow would have made it even more fun! 'Bent and I were away for the first O-Cup so this was our kick-off to the winter orienteering season. Hammer designed us a great course with some fun route choices. I heard some comments about the tough climbs out of the steep valleys but compared to last weekend's ultra-muddy ultra-long race, I had a lot more traction today. However, shorter races are not my strength so this was tough!

Things went reasonably well from #1 to #3 (the boxpoint), then I did D-B-A in the box. On my way back to #3, a youngster stopped me briefly to show his map and ask where he was. What I gained in karma points there, I lost in focus. Even though I'd been to #3 before, I blew it on the return trip, heading in too early and losing more elevation than I needed.

After that, I planned to do the longer trail-and-road run route rather than heading cross-country toward the control more directly. The only way this route makes any sense is if you run the whole way on road and trail. Otherwise, you're just going a much longer way for no particular reason. And that's what happened when I somehow got onto a trail heading in the wrong direction and wasn't sure what was going on. I ended up bushwhacking up and down a steep valley and through some thorny stuff until I reached the road. Looking at the map with 20/20 hindsight, that valley was totally unnecessary if I'd been "in contact with the map", as the serious orienteers say. Grrr. The irony is that I appear to have lost only about 2-ish minutes on this long leg compared to people I would normally race close to. So I guess it would have been a good route choice if I'd managed to execute it properly.

Winsplits says that #5 was my worst control. I was trying to sidehill over to it on the south side but it was so steep that I got driven up higher than intended, then had to come all the way back down again. No drama on the last two controls except that as I ran to the finish, people were yelling, "Go Bob! You can catch Barb!" I didn't know if they were serious or just pulling my chain but it definitely made me run up that last hill! I was 12th and certainly didn't deserve any better. Oh, and I beat Getawaystix by 25 seconds. (The O-Cup races are handicapped, for those who don't know.)

Congrats to Backwoods (Nina Wallace) on winning the biannual GHO Service Award. Deserving Athlete of the Year nominees were AdventureGirl!, Getawaystix and Runit. The winner was Runit (Serghei Logvin) who has had a breakthrough year.

After the race, we had a fun club party with good company, yummy fajitas and excellent presentations by Getawaystix and Runit. It was really interesting to get inside the minds of these talented guys as they took us through their races.

The lottery for the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run took place today. This is arguably the most prestigious 100-mile trail race in North America. As a first time applicant, I had a 7.6% chance of getting in, which was perfect because I didn't *want* to get accepted in 2013. For each consecutive year I'm able to qualify, I'll get an additional ticket in the lottery, so I applied this year in order to get two tickets next year.

As expected (and hoped), I didn't get in. Neither did Ang or anyone else I know... except for Carbon's Offset! He had the same 7.6% chance of getting in but he must have been wearing his lucky long johns when he went XC skiing today. Very exciting... I don't think I know anyone who has ever been successful in the lottery. If I'm counting right, two Ontarians - and 12 Canadians in total - were accepted this year.

Leanimal and I ran the Humber Trail from Castlederg Rd. back to Bolton in rainy, muddy, chatty conditions. When we got to Goose and Coach LD's place, the time on my Garmin was 59:24. Obviously, we were forced to run up to the top of Sackville hill and back down again.

Goose, Phatty and 'Bent started their run at Duffy's Lane North. We had a great lunch afterward thanks to the culinary talents of Coach LD. Annette and Goose Sr. also stopped by. It was a terrific time! It's wonderful to have friends with whom you can just pick up where you left off, regardless of how long it's been.

Signs of the season in the middle of Palgrave Forest and Wildlife Area.

Hockley Loop run on a chilly day! I wasn't planning to get back to long runs for awhile yet but I couldn't resist a last-minute plan to do the Loop with Harps, Leanimal and Phatty. I hate holding people back so I started about 20 minutes early acting as the rabbit, giving them the chance to tire themselves out by chasing me down. Around the 13K mark, I took a 5-minute break to wait for them since I knew from our texting that they weren't far behind, and I was looking forward to chatting.



Great to spend time together on the trail and afterward at the Hockley General Store. We dearly miss our Phatty, Leanimal and Weeanimal but can't blame them for wanting to live in the Alps, eat pain au chocolate and drink wine.

Not surprisingly, I lacked energy today but felt good otherwise until the final 500 meters when the top of my gimpy foot started protesting. I'm not sure if it may have been related to an ankle turn - only a 2 on the scale of 1 to 10 - a few kilometers earlier. Too bad - I was thinking the foot might be all better after I got through last weekend's UltraLong Champs run (almost 4 hours) without feeling it. It appears that I've worked my way up to running 23 km - but not 23.5 yet. :) Patience, grasshopper.

Hard Core Live with Caron. Lots of dynamic work tonight and not much resting.

Power Yoga with C3 friends. It felt great. I almost fell asleep in the relaxation (which is never included in my logged yoga time).

I told Barrie Shepley about the nightmare I had last night inspired by his first Ironman in Arizona last month. We'd exchanged e-mails and he'd mentioned that the C3 club could help me with my swimming if I ever wanted to do an Ironman. In last night's dream, I was with one of the triathlon club members at the start of the course when I suddenly realized that the first leg of an Ironman is a 25 km SCUBA diving course. I was freaking out, explaining that I hadn't done any diving for 20 years. The second hand equipment I'd borrowed was really sketchy too. It was one of those times when I was *quite* relieved to wake up and realize it was a dream!

I considered a trainer ride but it was 1C and dry out so I rode the frozen single track trails of Palgrave, which was much more fun. The IMBA-trained trail builders from the Caledon Cycling Club have done excellent work in there this year. The trails have a wonderful flow now, and someone has been clearing off the dead leaves. The only seasonal challenge today was the dusting of snow on some of the logs and roots - a little slippery at the wrong angle. Amazing riding conditions.

Note to self: It seems that I need to re-learn my cold weather smarts every year. I remembered to wear warmer layers than I would for running or skiing at 1C but I forgot to wear warmer gloves. Sometimes when I was changing gears, I thought my frozen thumb might snap right off! Also, my new winter bike shoes need extra insoles or Sealskinz socks since they are too loose otherwise. I gave myself a sharp tweak in the left knee because it took such a big twist to unclip. Not a big deal - I'll get this stuff sorted out. Hopefully it will be an incredible ski season and I'll forget all about biking for awhile. :)

I copied Coach LD's strength routine that T-man helped her with on Sunday. I didn't have the benefit of T-man here to increase the degree of difficulty so I did the exercises near BulletDog just before her dinnertime. She got in the middle of things and added the extra challenge I needed. However... I know I cheated compared to Coach LD. I did girlie push-ups, for example, and I counted each leg of my mountain climbers whereas she probably only counts the left leg. And when I got down to 20 squat thrusts and 10 handstands, I decided that my upper body felt strong enough, thank you very much, so I replaced that section with 40 teapots (20 each side) and 10 push-ups. That will have to be close enough for a weakling like me!

Fortunately, my dating days are long over but this used to be so true! :)

Here's the scoop on applying to one of the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc group of races in August 2013. Pre-registration opens on Dec. 19.

I love the English translations, e.g.:

This excitement which is born in you is the sum of the promises that you will keep to reach your objective. If it is so beautiful and if life is good, as from today, it is because everything was built patiently, over time, through the values that we all share. Because the strengths of trail-running, are their values, and if they disappear through negligence, the whole building collapses: our races, the others, and just the same desire to practise a sport of exception. The mountain can't do anything...There is nothing banal about your choice of registration. It is a pact that you make with yourself, with nature, the volunteers, the natives and all those who contribute in leading you to the end of the road. When you sign up for this great adventure around Mont-Blanc, think that you will carry a piece of this precious state of mind. Keep it intact!

If you're going to the Dontgetlost/GHO O-Cup #2 at Camp Canterbury Hills in Hamilton this Sunday, consider sticking around for the club's annual end of year lunch and party, which is open to non-members. Tickets are $15 and you can buy them there but you need to send an e-mail to let them know you're coming. Online registration for the race closes on Thursday at midnight.

The party starts at the conclusion of the The Chase at 12pm. As well as food and a few games, there will be presentations:

-- Bob Miller, Canada's top adventure racer, will kick things off with a discussion of what it takes to compete at the top international level in expedition adventure racing. He will show pics and videos from this year's World Adventure Racing Champs.

-- Mark Adams will make a brief presentation on the expansion plans of the Adventure Running Kids program into the Halton and Peel regions.

-- And finally, Serghei Logvin will discuss the routes he took when he won the silver medal at the 2012 North American Orienteering Champs. Find out how he decided what routes to take and how he pushed through to the end of the race after almost breaking a rib. [Serghei also just won the U.S. UltraLong Orienteering Champs on Sunday but as a Canadian, he was not eligible to medal.]

Sounds like a great opportunity for a pre-Christmas AR get-together! :)

Rodney Yee power yoga for flexibility. Much needed after an 11-hour drive home (including 90 minutes at the border) following a 4-hour race.

For those who are interested in orienteering, I've finished my report and GPS tracks for the U.S. Night, Relay and UltraLong Orienteering Championships on Friday to Sunday.

U.S. UltraLong Orienteering Champs
East Fork State Park, Batavia, OH

The Ultralong race was the main reason for my trip; I was excited about this rare opportunity to do a multi-hour technical navigation race solo on a good map. In the regular Long orienteering race format, we usually get one or two long legs that go much of the way across the map offering a ton of route choice. I love those legs! In the UltraLong format, there is a continual ebb and flow of shorter legs and long legs. So much fun! Adding to the interest, three of us who normally compete in our age group - Peggy, Barb B and I - agreed to compete on the Female Elite course for our own imaginary masters podium. This was great since we all enjoy racing longer courses than our age group allows, and I knew it wouldn't be very informative to compare splits with Alex and Ali. It would definitely be fun to compare with women I normally race against in age group competition.

I felt sorry for the organizers when heavy rain started pelting down in the morning. I'm sure some people elected not to start. I've done a fair bit of racing in similar conditions, e.g. this year's Logs Rocks and Steel, so I knew I'd survive even though it made things tougher. After my warm-up, I changed my layers twice since I was getting hypothermic before I started. Fortunately, it seems that I made the right choice and didn't need to adjust anything during the race.

Like many orienteers, I need glasses to read fine details on the map, and they can get foggy on super rainy days. Lots of us had this problem today, *however*, I was the only idiot racer who was so bleary-eyed that I read my map upside down at the start. In my defence, the race began with a mass start on a park road, and as the crowd began running, I was alarmed to note that I had neither compass nor SI card. I remembered that in my many layer changes, I'd stuffed them into a jacket pocket. So as we ran down the road, I was pulling out my gear and not looking at my map.

When we reached the start triangle, I was totally confused because it was clear that I needed to head backward to get to the first control but everyone else was going forward. I ran back a short distance. Strange that nobody else was going back with me... Maybe that wasn't really the start triangle; I asked some nearby volunteers and they assured me it was. OK, I went back and looked for my indistinct trail into the woods but things just didn't seem right. I took off the glasses and wiped them well, then had a better look at the map. Oh crap, I had the road oriented backwards. So much for the mass start helping me! Even once I'd headed the correct direction, I needlessly crossed a deep gully, then wiped my glasses again and realized I needed to scramble all the way back. It seemed that I wasted an eternity getting to #1 but it looks like I only lost 7 minutes compared to Raymond.

I ran most of the race alone after that with occasional glimpses of Barb B and Dave Y from #5-9, a quick hello to Raymond around #12, and Mintore sightings at regular intervals over the second half of the course.

It rained hard for the first 45 minutes of the race, complete with a few lightning flashes. In addition to my trouble reading the map details, I wasn't spotting flags until I got close. I ran right past #6, believing I was in the right place but not spotting the flag. It took another 5 minutes of wandering until I saw the road and returned to the ditch for another look. I'm thinking that a brimmed hat would be the best solution for using glasses in heavy rain. I'm usually OK in moderate rain but this was a crazy storm.

On the bright side, it was a great day for people who aren't deterred by the elements. It was so wet that it could be hard to distinguish between trails and creeks. Many of the trails are used by horses so there was goopy mud in addition to the puddles. East Fork State Park is full of steep-sided ditches and ravines, and it took some upper body strength and tenuous balance to haul myself up muddy slopes while clutching at saplings. I did a few major bum slides to get down hills. Jon Torrance talked about making choices about where to climb slopes, and how he'd sometimes climb them two or three times because it was easy to slide down a long way if we lost our footing. I got thinking about artificial mud runs and how much more challenging it is to do the real thing. I'm probably crazy but to me, it was like an adult fun park.

There were some terrific route choice legs, including five legs > 1km, most of them in the second half of the course. The slippery slopes and the evil thorns in some areas made it desirable to avoid both climb and heavy vegetation so I used roads and trails more often than I might have. As a result, I ran almost 7 km longer than the published length of the course! That's 4 km farther than Jon Marsden, one of the top racers today.

The steep hills were a strength workout in these conditions but I finished the race with lots of energy so obviously I should have run harder. My gimpy foot didn't give me any particular trouble but my good foot was sore for a few minutes mid-race. My ankle brace chafed the top of my foot for the first time; it may be time to leave it off and allow my ankle its full range of motion for orienteering.

There was some nasty, thorny honeysuckle, and I pulled down a vine with my face. As I ran for the next 15 minutes, I was pulling thorn pieces out of my face and using water from my Camelbak to wash away the blood periodically. I'm not going to look very good for Christmas party season!

I look forward to using the various tools to review splits and route choices. The big news is that our little "Red Masters" group had a good day. Peggy took the silver medal in F-Elite, and Barb B took the bronze - yay! I finished between them but am not eligible for the U.S. Champs. I'm proud to report that I won exactly one split over Alex, the champion. She bet me that I would get her on #17, which turned out to be my best split. She took a more aggressive route choice through bland terrain and arrived at the wrong gully system, which took 6 minutes longer to sort out. I spent 30 seconds fully stopped to plan that long leg, which is a good lesson for me to remember.

Thanks to OCIN - particularly Mike Minium and Cedarcreek - for a well-organized, challenging, fun weekend of orienteering. Thanks to a slow border crossing on the way home, it took 11 hours to get to Palgrave but I'm still really glad I went. It was great to see the orienteering crowd so soon after NAOC. Lots of good vibes.

US_Ultralong_2012_7 Red - Splits

U.S Relay Orienteering Championships
McFarlan Woods, Cincinnati

1st leg relay runner on Team Canada, followed by Raymond, CJRoss and JTorrance. I think this was only my second orienteering relay, and I was surprised to find myself stressed, given that our team was ineligible for the U.S. championships so we were just running for fun. The map near the start/finish was very busy, and it took me about 30 seconds to sort it out. The trail to #2 seemed to be going too far so I turned off early on the wrong indistinct trail but after that, things went OK. The feeling that any error or imprecision would affect my team's result was always in my thoughts, which is weird since I am accustomed to being in that situation in adventure racing. I'm sure that it would (mostly) vanish if I'd done more than two relays in ten years of orienteering. We finished 4th of fourteen 8-point relay teams. Great runs by my teammates, two of whom have represented Canada at numerous international competitions!

Afterward, Barb B chaired a very pleasant OUSA Rogaine Committee meeting sitting on the grass in the sunshine. We communicate regularly by e-mail but it is nice - and very different - to chat in person. Other attendees were Tundra/Desert, EBone and Nikolay.

At a restaurant later, I saw deep-fried avocado on the appetizer menu - perfect for those people who find that regular avocados just don't have enough calories.

Orange - Splits