Training Log Archive: Bash

Ran around Palgrave East trails in cold rain. Along the way, I checked out the nav challenge for Coach LD's Bolton Fall Fifty party on Sunday, hence I can't make my GPS track public. The distance should work out perfectly, which is important for this event, although nav errors could lead to higher distance than the Coach's age warrants. Oh well. :)

I'm trying my HRM again since we'd like to look into 'Bent's crazy-high HR to see if it's related to his stomach problems in long races. I might as well get familiar with my numbers again. Looks like this was mostly a Maffetone-paced run, which is fine.

Throwback Thursday

Hard Core Live with Caron

'Bent and I brought Mocha to class tonight since we didn't think she was feeling well enough to stay alone that long. All the excitement perked her right up for a little while. There was another dog, Jackson, but our regular class dog, Betty, was away. There are a few poses that my shoulder cannot do right now but I was able to keep up for the most part.

Learned something new today. You can watch Facebook popularity wax and wane in real time. When I first saw this, there had been 16,000 "unlikes" in the past 24 hours. It takes a little while to get completely set up.
https://www.quintly.com/facebook-live-statistics/j...

Not sure this is the race for me.

If you encounter an alligator on the trail, it's because the alligator is trying to warm up, not because it is looking for food. If you are running past the alligator simply move to the other side of the trail. If the alligator is across the trail run behind the tail end of the alligator. If the alligator gets spooked it will try to return to the water. Don't put yourself in the position between the water and the alligator. We will have park staff and volunteers on the trail to deal with alligator issues during the race.

In case anyone is still thinking about UTMB, they have delegated the rating of their qualifying races to ITRA (International Trail Running Association). The good news is that more consistency will be introduced into the race rating process. The bad news is that no North American races have chosen to join ITRA at this point. So there are currently no UTMB qualifiers in North America in 2015.

I wrote UTMB to comment on this out of interest (I'm not trying to qualify!); they aren't sure why this has happened but the ball is in the court of North American race directors. It is no longer possible for racers to contact UTMB directly to request that a race be added. Most of the races in North America that are tough enough to be qualifiers are ones that regularly sell out so it's not likely a high priority for them to buy an ITRA membership and go through the evaluation process. I would guess that the North Face Endurance Challenge Series events might still get points since they share their title sponsor with UTMB - but technically, they're not supposed to.

At least *something* positive is coming from climate change.
http://news.discovery.com/history/century-old-note...

Two weeks since we removed the tick and 'Bent has no Lyme symptoms so far. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, be careful.

Rest day, unless you count about 500,000 e-mails and a few phone calls. Great to get out for a forest hike with Mocha. She's fine today - at least she *was* fine until our stupid propane gas detector had a false alarm and traumatized the pooches for an hour. Eventually, she settled down to watch TV.

Gotta love democracy but don't have to love the results. Caledon elected several good people today but there was some dirty campaigning that worked. This will not be our most productive Council.

Congrats to former Tree Hugger teammate Brittany Webster on winning her age group at the XTERRA World Championship in Maui and finishing as the top amateur woman overall! Time to get back to her XC ski training; she has a big race season coming up.

DontGetLost Peak-2-Peak

Well, that sure was fun! This year's P2P was a hilly 2-hour score-O in the Dundas Valley with all the controls on hilltops or knolls. The 20 controls were assigned values using ski ratings - green, blue, black diamond or double black diamond. The range of values was large - from 20 points for green to 150 points for double black diamond. There were 1,000 points available in total.

Incredibly, this event attracted 200 runners! It is just past the peak of autumn colour so running in the Valley was spectacular - a nice preview for Raid The Hammer. I headed west first, picking up lower value controls on the north side of the main trail. It wouldn't be a score-style event if GHOSLO and I didn't play leapfrog in the early controls due to his superior nav, and today was no different. I found two Walk-the-Line controls on my way to e=MC2 (3 controls: 2 hills + 1 muddy) without trying too hard, which was great.

Then I picked up the Dog Bone controls and headed down to Vertigo. I found the trail through the dark green vegetation but apparently veered off to the east when I hit open forest. I was aiming for the wrong spur and must have ignored my compass to go there. On the way, I noted that some fences had been removed from the map to make things tougher around this difficult control. (Um, NOT.) Then I got down the hill and didn't see any flags in an area where multiple hilltops were supposed to have flags and we'd have to choose the right one. Huh? I squinted more closely at the map and realized there was a fence hidden under the out-of-bounds lines. Oh crap - I ran back to the other side where there were 5 flags waiting at the bottom of the right spur. I could see the different hilltops and knolls on the map but wasn't 100% sure which one was in the centre of the circle so I lost a minute checking flags here.

It was a tough call whether to go for the double black diamond Bullseye control in the southwest corner of the map, given that the finish was in the northeast corner of an 11X14 map and, oh yeah, I'm not a very fast runner. I knew I didn't have enough time for it but I really wanted to try a double black diamond control because they were so interesting. This one was a little hilltop most of the way up K2 that we had to find using contours only.

After that, it was a mad dash for the finish line - almost 5 km of hilly running in 37 minutes. I picked up one control south of the main trail on the way back but didn't dare pick up any more. If I'd paid attention closely enough to learn that the points deductions for late arrivals had been reduced below the already-low level of 10 points per minute, it would have been worth picking up more controls. [Edit: Hammer said this would be fixed.] The last part of the run was level 5 intensity, and I'm still feeling it now. With all my ultra training, I don't experience that very often! I made it to the finish line with 23 seconds to spare in the 2-hour time limit and managed to win masters women. Excellent job by Funderstorm, who came out in front, 680 pts to 670! When I left, she was sitting in 2nd place of 65 female racers - nice.

Great fun! Thanks to Anvil, Dana and Hammer, whom I think were the organizing team. Excellent idea to use the ski rating system. So nice to see so many friends. 'Bent, BGY and I had lunch at Domestique, where we chatted with DD11. Fun day out.

And then it got less fun. After my shower, I heard strange sounds coming from the living room. BazingaDog was upstairs, and Mocha never causes trouble so I flew down the stairs. The poor thing was having a grand mal seizure. I could only comfort her and wait and hope and cry. When she first got up, she was agitated and wouldn't stop pacing. She fell down a bunch of times but we weren't able to stop her from walking around. BazingaDog was terrified and refused to come back in the house after I put the two of them outside.

She is fine now. It's almost certainly cancer-related so I'm not sure how much investigation the vet will do. Instead, I read up on dog seizures this afternoon so we know how to help her in future. If it lasts longer than 2 minutes, she is at risk of overheating so we need to cool her down. If it lasts longer than 5 minutes, she needs to go to the vet immediately for anti-convulsants. Other than that, all we can do is prevent her from hurting herself and try to soothe her without touching her head. (She could accidentally bite.) Very scary and sad, especially since she was galloping around the yard 20 minutes earlier. :(((

And just like that, it feels like our extended fall colour season is nearly done. There are still some leaves left on trees but most of them are down, and wherever they are, they're getting dry and crunchy. We can't complain; this has been an extra-beautiful autumn.

I drove to Glen Haffy to see the beautiful deciduous forests there. I was also interested to check out a scheduled cadet orienteering event but I must have been too late in the day. I'd planned to run longer but it was seriously treacherous with ankle-deep leaves obscuring roots, rocks and erosion.



It was beautiful though.

Get Out There Mag has a nice idea for the 200 (!!) of us doing Peak-2-Peak tomorrow. A poppy would be a nice touch too.

One of the cool things about working with people who are new to something is that they bring new ideas - sometimes really good ones. The teacher I volunteered with yesterday had done a little Scout-style orienteering as a child but was new to the idea of navigation racing.

It has only been a few days since Star Tracks but she had already made up a little course at the school using QR codes where the kids would find them, then use their phones to check the QR code and get clues for finding the next one. Simple and brilliant!

I wonder if we could use QR codes to implement permanent O courses at a very low cost - just laminate little cards and attach them to trees. Ideally, we'd have an app that records the time of visit, which seems like it shouldn't be that hard to do, then it could be like Strava.

From the American College of Sports Medicine: a 7-minute circuit workout designed to reduce injury in ultrarunners.

30 seconds each, as many as you can or as long as you can, with no rest in between other than to change stations. Circuit may be repeated if time and fitness allow:

1. Jumping jacks
2. Wall sit
3. Push-up
4. Abdominal crunch
5. Step-up onto chair
6. Squat Lower body
7. Triceps dip on chair
8. Plank hold
9. High knees/running in place
10. Lunge
11. Push-up and rotation
12. Side plank

About 10% of Star Tracks MTBO racers and volunteers were teachers, including two newbie navigators, both of whom asked me to introduce some of their students to orienteering. The first session, with a colleague of Coach LD's at Humberview Secondary School in Bolton, was today. The next session is planned for November with a grade 12 physics teacher who thinks orienteering would fit well with her unit on magnetism. Cool!

Today's session with Miss Rice was easy to put together since it was at Albion Hills, and Mick generously offered to put my course into the mapping software. After an intro, we sent the students out in teams of two, except for one local mountain biker who was given permission by the teacher to race solo because he is in the park regularly.

It was a 12-control score-O where students needed to stay on trails. In addition to two orienteering maps, each team was given an Albion Hills Summer Trail Map with post numbers and trail names that they could use to relocate if they got lost. At least one team did. They also had my cell phone #. Out of about 10 teams, two of them phoned me - one to ask for directions and the other to let me know where they were when they were late.

The solo student got all 12 controls and returned in 50 minutes - fast! Most of the other teams got 4-8 controls, and about half of them returned after the deadline. The rest returned less than 5 minutes ahead of the deadline, which is better planning than most adults on a score-O course. There's such a wide range of abilities and enthusiasm at this age, although all these kids seemed to give it a reasonable shot.

Four kids just hiked random trails in the northeast part of Albion, hoping to see one of the four controls up there. No luck. When they returned after half an hour, I offered to orient them at a nearby trail junction. Suddenly, it made sense and they ran off right away to a control. When they ran back out, they were smiling and kicking themselves at how easy it should have been the first time.

The event winner didn't need to leave on the school bus because he lives nearby, and the teacher suggested that he might be willing to help pick up controls on his mountain bike. We divided them up but in the end, he was so keen and fast that I only made it to one of the controls before he did. So I sat in the sun and checked e-mail and waited for the flags to be returned. Quite a luxury!

As I was packing up the flags, it occurred to me that a volunteer probably isn't supposed to be alone with a student. It wouldn't have popped into my mind except that Coach LD had mentioned that I should get a criminal record check to be eligible for future youth volunteering, but it was OK this time because I wouldn't be alone with them. Also, a U.S. teacher friend of mine lost her job last month when a much larger student falsely accused her of physical assault. After a brief flicker of distress, I decided to just pretend it was the good old days when a teenager could chat for a few minutes with a lady older than his Mom after helping to take down some flags. Sad that we have to think about that stuff but I get it.

Hanging controls for the Humberview high school session. If we use the same course in future, allow about 90 minutes elapsed time. Time deducted for stops but time and distance added for control hanging on the east side, not recorded on my Ambit.

Picked up exactly one control out of twelve - the only one I got to first!

After mega-stress yesterday in my role as Orienteering Ontario prez, today I get to introduce some excited high school students to the thrill of running around in the woods with a map. If it weren't for the fun parts of volunteering, no one would ever do the rest of what needs to be done. Now let's just hope that high school students are fun...

Out-and-back on the Bruce Side Trail to Centreville Creek Rd. while listening to Danelle Ballengée's TA1 podcast. It's interesting to hear her perspective on safety, i.e. she is a little horrified as she looks back on some of the things she and other top racers did back in her EcoChallenge and Primal Quest days. I was *very* safety conscious as I listened, running at an easy pace with careful foot placement because the roots and rocks were hidden under fallen leaves.

This was a beautiful, cool sunset run - almost meditative... until the first gunshot. At that point, I ripped out my earphone, yelled "Hello" a couple of times and quickened my pace. Then came the second gunshot, really loud, then another one. Then I remembered the gun club on the same block of land. They usually only shoot on Wednesday evenings and weekends but maybe it was a special occasion or a wedding or something.

No Power Yoga class tonight because my bad shoulder was too bad. Ugh.

Nice editorial from the Globe: "After the Attack, we're still Canada"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/editor...

It would have been a spectacular autumn day for a run but the news reports made me feel sick to my stomach.

Oh, Canada... :(

For people outside of Canada, this happened inside our Parliament Buildings this morning. And that's not all, and it's not over yet. :(((

I'd planned to run to Glen Haffy and back before dinner but my shoulder was so painful that I just stayed here and did volunteer work. Gotta get that fixed. Blah.

On a more cheerful note, here's a new use for your old beer bottles.

I went out for a short trail run before dinner and suddenly a voice in my head asked whether I had re-assigned control pick-up for three controls after one of our volunteers had to head home to relieve his babysitter. There was so much going on that I may have handed his map quickly to someone else but I couldn't remember for sure.

So instead of a little toodle around Palgrave, I turned right and ran to Albion Hills to visit the three control sites in question. The controls were all gone, and two of the locations didn't have any flagging tape either, so it looks like one of us did it, and all is well. While I was there, I ran to a few other control locations to remove flagging tape that was still out. By the time I got back to Palgrave West, it was raining and so dark that I could barely see the trail. Any longer and I would have been running by iPhone flashlight.

The endless autumn leaf show continues to dazzle.

Don't mess with ultrarunners.
http://trailrunnermag.com/people/news/article/1515...

Event: Star Tracks Mountain Bike Orienteering
 

Star Tracks results are now posted. Thanks, Mick and LJ!
http://stars.whyjustrun.ca/events/view/1603

Thanks to so many of you for supporting the inaugural Star Tracks MTBO event. Registrations soared in the last few days, and I know a few of you helped by promoting the race to your friends. I pushed it hard because I think there is room for some MTBO in southern Ontario, and if we had a poor turnout, it would probably be another 5 years until some club tried it again.

If you have suggestions for improvement, please write me or comment here. I have ideas for things we could do differently but you were out there so you know more than I do. There are always lessons learned in a first time event.

So many people helped out in various ways - putting out controls, vetting controls, taking them down, promoting the event, providing snacks, taking photos, etc., etc. My co-organizers, Mick and LJ (Michael Lucente and Laura Smith) put in a ton of work at a very busy time, just before they welcome their second son. Mick and I have been exchanging e-mails since July as we updated the map to reflect the past few years of trail changes. I got the fun part - riding the trails - while poor Mick had to keep changing the map every time I discovered some new anomaly. Big thanks to Mick, LJ and everyone who helped out. We are lucky to be part of such an incredible community.

Goose went out in the dark to place 7 controls last night (thank you!), which left me 13 controls to place this morning. Veinbuster appeared unexpectedly at the park gate so I had a helper - thanks! I got to do some extra hill training when I realized halfway between #13 and #14 that I had the flag for #14 but its stand was still lying on the ground by #13. Gorgeous morning. I should get up earlier and enjoy more mornings.

Fast last-minute pre-race ride to search for missing control. Found it and problem was resolved with the help of Goose and Mick.

Goose was going out after dark to put out some SI controls for tomorrow's race. Since he hadn't been on the course before and I hadn't checked my tiny ribbons for awhile, I used this as an excuse to go for a trail run in Albion Hills and hang much longer ribbons that would be more easily seen in the dark. Not that Goose couldn't find the correct locations but it was a cold night so it would be nice if he could just confirm the ribbon locations.

Glad I went, as the ribbon had been removed from one of the trickier controls to place in the dark (#9). The same thing had happened to #9 on the Novice Short course so I'm either going to find more missing ribbons tomorrow morning or 9 is just an unlucky number.

I met Mr. and Mrs. Coach Huet hiking in the woods and tried to convince them to come out tomorrow. Mr. CH looked interested - or maybe he was just being polite. Running felt great - loving the colder air! (Sorry, Harps.)

Then I came home to welcome Arthurd as our house guest on her 40th birthday! :)

'Bent texted me at 2:27 of the Vulture Bait 50K to say that he's finished the first 25K. That sounds like a reasonably cautious pace. Fingers crossed that he'll make it through his first-ever ultra without stomach issues. So far so good, he says, but he always feels good at 25K. He is experimenting with some new ideas from a nutritional counsellor.

Pre-race errands around Caledon. I thought I might go out into the woods to put out control stands but I've come up with a better plan that involves the mighty Goose. Unfortunately, that plan allowed me to eat cookies and write e-mails instead of running or riding.

BazingaDog is untrustworthy off-leash so we have very few good outdoor photos of him. Now that he can run around our new fenced yard, I'll have to take my camera out more often. He moves fast! Most of my photos were blurry.

Uh oh, Caron was wearing orange, which always means it's going to be a tough class. Ouch.

Yoga was also tougher than usual - half yang and half yin, lots of strength required. Unfortunately, I wrenched my bad shoulder yesterday when I tripped on a root while running and instinctively flung my arms forward. Thus tonight I had to do modifications for anything similar to a push-up or that involved twisting my shoulder in unaccustomed directions.

I've had no time for a shoulder treatment in the past two weeks and I haven't been doing my physio. Maybe after the MTBO is over...

Photos from my hike with Mocha today, a 1 km loop from our house. It's beautiful up here, hint, hint, so why not try some mountain bike orienteering on Sunday morning? :)
http://stars.whyjustrun.ca/events/view/1603

Mocha can't hike too far these days. Cancer spread into her lungs over the summer so she gets out of breath if she pushes too hard. She has no idea, fortunately, so she keeps galloping and sniffing with doggie enthusiasm. I hope we get to have many more hikes together.













And from earlier this week, BazingaDog and Mocha enjoyed their car ride home from Ottawa. :)

'Bent would like access to my "Find my iPhone" feature for safety when I head into the woods alone. It seems that he has a point.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/15/woman-str...

Just as I was going to declare my cold over, along came a big sneeze! But I think that was just my body's idea of a joke so I went for a short run around Palgrave West. Mocha and I had gone for a hike earlier and the leaves were so gorgeous that I wanted to explore further. Photos to come - from the hike, not from a 28 minute run!

Twelve trekkers have been reported dead near the top of the 17,769-foot Thorung La pass, the high point of the Annapurna circuit, after snowstorms and avalanches related to a tropical cyclone hit Nepal this week. Seventeen trekkers have been reported dead across the country, and a hundred others are missing.
http://www.outsideonline.com/news-from-the-field/A...

Before we were married, 'Bent and I were on Thorung La pass when a tropical cyclone sent a huge blizzard our way. One person in our group froze to death, and the rest of us knew the risk was real as we shuffled along in white-out conditions. When the storm ended, one hundred people had been killed across Nepal. A few days earlier, a mudslide had hit Bagarchap, a village along our trekking route, just before we arrived. Three Canadians were killed there.

This week's tragedy is stirring up sad memories of a beautiful part of the world.

We're new to this and could use some advice from more experienced folks... We pulled a deer tick off 'Bent tonight. It was only partially engorged; he raced Saturday and Sunday, hence it could have been there > 48 hrs. Skin is bright red around the bite, maybe dime sized. Hard to tell if there is scattered rash beyond that since it was itchy and he was scratching through his shirt. He'll call his doc but I'm guessing local docs don't have much experience with Lyme. Any advice from AP Land?

Turns out I've been wasting my time training for races that take 40+ hours. Apparently, the sweet spot for me is a little over 20 minutes. Who knew?

The NAOC Sprint was a great time with loads of variety in a short race. We started by Madawaska Falls after running a beautiful riverside trail to the start. I went out for 5 minutes on the little warm-up map since I haven't run on a map drawn to sprint standards for a long time - probably not since the Canadian Champs a year ago. It was a good reminder of what trees, rocks and vegetation would look like and what a 1:4,000 scale would feel like.

Cristina and I had the same start time so I shamelessly followed her to the start triangle. ;) Then she was off like a shot running through the streets of Arnprior. Woo, Cristina. I jogged along at a more sensible pace, picking off controls in the downtown area - stone walls, trees, etc. It was like a ghost town with the busiest streets closed to traffic for us - very cool.

We ran into a residential area and through a little fenced walkway, then ended up on the front lawn of a school at #6. From here it was about 70 m due north to a rootstock in the forest. I briefly considered going straight there but had a nervous moment and decided to run along the schoolyard until I hit the little trail that led right to the fallen pine tree attached to the rootstock. As I look at the map now, it appears to be a dumb choice - about 60% more running to get to a control that was only a stone's throw away. However, this tied for my best split of the day (3rd) and moved me up from 8th to 4th place so apparently my nervousness was well founded. We had a few more controls in the forest, then I missed seeing #11 as I ran by in moderate visibility vegetation. This was a 1:09 error, according to AP. Yipes, it didn't feel that bad but I guess it really shouldn't take me 2:18 to run 100 m.

Soon after that was the scary part of the race where we ran into Robert Simpson Park, which was filled with spectators. We'd been warned there were 14 controls placed within 120 m of the finish chute, only a few of which would belong to our course. I didn't stop to read my map carefully in the park due to embarrassment about everyone watching, which could have led to embarrassment about everyone watching me get hopelessly lost but fortunately I had two minutes of unconscious competence at the right time. I only wasted time (2 seconds) looking for the start of the finish chute, which was just silly because I'd stood for an hour at the finish line before my start, and it had never occurred to me to imagine what the big tree by the Go control might look like if I approached it from the other side.

7th of 28 today, 83 seconds off the podium and less than 5 minutes behind Pavlina. (In our age category, we only race for 2nd place!) She was 3 minutes behind Ted de St. Croix running the same course so maybe it was a little long for the recommended winning times, not that I mind. It was nice to feel things click today - just in time for the event to be over. :(

Then we watched the very exciting North American elite relay championship. At least it *was* exciting until the Americans pulled ahead on the final leg and won the darned thing. ;)

Great job by Orienteering Ottawa on this entire weekend - a class act and lots of fun.

Sprint - Course 3 - Splits

NAOC Long Distance

This was the type of race I was expecting yesterday: only 9 controls and I had to do serious relocation exercises on 3 of them. I got off to a bad start by running directly toward #1 cross-country since it was close, but I hadn't counted on the nastiness of the terrain. If I'd stayed on trails, I could have saved about 5 minutes. I redeemed myself with the 2nd fastest split on the short leg to #2. (I specialize in short legs now, apparently.)

On #3, I had a split of almost half an hour, and it would have been worse if I hadn't run into Etoile, who was looking for the same control and politely pointed out that I'd turned my map upside down! Although we went our separate ways after that, we eventually met each other at the control. [Looking at my GPS track, I see that I was heading straight for the control and only 120 m away from it when I turned onto a trail that fit with my upside down map. If I had continued on my bearing and ignored the stupid trail, I was on track for the best split in my category at #3. Oops.]

It was a spectacular day to be in the woods, and it felt great to run. Although I was messing up like crazy, I was still having fun and trying to do a better job each time I approached a new control. I've seldom had to do that much relocation in one race, and I think I'm getting better at figuring things out - although it would be nicer if I didn't have to do that. I was 19th of 32 in my age group - not good but I didn't deserve better.

Huge congrats to AdventureGirl! on her silver medal in F-20, Wilsmith for his silver in M-Elite, Hammer for his win in M45 and Kissy for her podium finish in F45!

Fun to hang out with C-Bass and Revy this weekend on an all-too-rare visit to the East.

Long - Course 6 - Splits

I left a little late for the 1.8 km warm-up run from the NAOC arena to the start. After 200 m, I noticed that I didn't have my SI card - sigh. Back to the van, then I ran a little faster to get to the start on time. I forgot to turn on my GPS for part of this. There were so many great people around that I wanted to talk to! It wasn't conducive to focusing on a difficult race but it was a good problem to have.

This was my first run in my new Fellcross 2 shoes and my first time using a brand new compass that didn't work when it first arrived in the mail two days ago. I always used to say, "Nothing new in a race" but now I'm all about living on the edge.

North American Orienteering Champs Middle Distance

The flat, rocky, complex terrain around Carp is humbling. It's similar to Rocky Ridge and the north end of Hilton Falls - very difficult to relocate if you don't hit a control right on. It makes my head hurt to concentrate that hard!

This was an interesting, challenging, well-set course with difficult footing in a beautiful autumn forest. I haven't done much navigation this year so I expected to get completely lost at least once. I cautiously counted my paces and followed precise bearings, never relying on features alone.

I messed up a few times when I got sucked in by a flag from another course. "Oh, there's a flag in a ditch well off my bearing. I'd better veer off my line to read the control code in case it's the hilltop I'm looking for." But my control was never too far away. So my navigation was a little ragged at times but things never got stressful - although it was getting close with #12, the 2nd last control. :)

10th of 34 in my category, which was better than expected. There were two splits where I came 2nd to Pavlina but other than that, my best split was 10th. It looks like I excel at legs where I run 100 m south between two controls. This skill will not be terribly useful tomorrow in the Long Distance event.

So nice to see so many friends - Revy, C-Bass, Arthurd, Cristina (with apple cider donuts), Kissy (who knocked it out of the park again), Sid & Trudy, Ken, DLevine, Hammer, Starr, AdventureGirl!, Backwoods, Mr. & Mrs. GHOSLO, Anvil, Blairtrewin, Mark A, Sudden & family, Wilsmith & family, Nick, Dale, Mr. & Mrs. Dobos, Smoke, Barb, Izzy (North American Champ), Benoit L, Nick DsC, James and a whole bunch more. That's the best part of a NAOC!

(Straight line course distance: 2.9 km, 40 m elevation gain.)

The DontGetLost crew has taken over all the cottages at Bayview Lodge west of Arnprior. Nice place!



Mocha continues to feel great, and we were happy to have another chance to take her paddling. She is so thrilled when she sees us carrying the canoe to the water. My sweet girl. :)

Middle - Course 6a - Splits

Event: NAOC2014 (North American Champs/Ottawa O-Fest)
 

Congratulations to Orienteering Ottawa on putting together an exciting, fun opening ceremony for the North American Champs! Live band, parade of clubs and nations, hockey orienteering, torch lighting, wild cheering and stomping from the packed bleachers... Nice.

NAOC road trip with pooches

Sneezing today and exhausted - nooo!!! Bring on the ColdFX, Vitamin C, zinc lozenges, oil of oregano, eye of newt...

In the last two days:
- 8 hours of driving
- 7 hours of sitting at the hospital waiting for Mom's pacemaker to be replaced (with both of us expecting it to be more like 3-4 hours)
- 1 hour of fixing (or attempting to fix) technology at my parents' house.
- Less than 4 hours of sleeping
- 0 hours of exercise

Being an 80-year-old involves more endurance and mental toughness than anything I do.

Max HR test... I needed to do a quick check for the MTBO map but was delayed a couple of hours so I drove to Albion Hills. On the way back, as I came down the hill into Palgrave on Highway 50, I saw a black dog playing in the middle of the highway. "Boy, that dog owner will be glad it's me slowing down on the hill instead of some transport truck whipping around the blind curve in the other direction, like it usually is. I'll have to stop and help."

And - oh my God - it was BazingaDog. He didn't seem to notice my car at all, as he has had no traffic training since he's not trustworthy off-leash. As I got close, he seemed to notice an interesting smell on the side road heading toward 'Bent's dental office parking lot. I pulled over and left my car unlocked and running at the side of Highway 50 - purse and phone on the front seat - and dashed for him. Luckily, he came to me meekly instead of playing his usual game of keep-away.

I may have stormed into the dental office and used a word that one would not normally say in a business in front of your husband's employees and customers. A plumber was there, and I suspect he let BazingaDog out the 3 doors and gates that are supposed to keep him from escaping the back of the building. I threw all 90 pounds of him (dog, not the plumber) into my car and took him home. Heart is still racing. Office security needs to be improved. On a positive note, it appears that I may have a guardian angel. I only drive past 'Bent's office 3-4 times a week so the odds of me being at that place at that time to save him were really, really low.

So much going on these days that I'm turning into a sloth. I got caught up on a bunch of things (but not everything) after my parents left this morning, then snuck out for a chilly autumn forest tour before the electrician arrived.

I'm certainly not light on my feet but running feels OK so I can probably start building up again. Although... I still don't have any idea what kind of thing I might be training for. Enjoying XC ski season is my current training goal, I suppose.

Early Thanksgiving weekend with my parents. Lots of autumn leaves and good food. No training. I dragged the whole family along on a drive to see the colours, and they patiently waited while I hung MTBO posters in Palgrave and Albion. Big score of the day was meeting the Albion Hills superintendent, who offered to hang posters in places where It wouldn't be legit for me to do it. Nice. Now to see how adventurous the regular mountain bikers are!

If you're planning to attend the Star Tracks MTB-O on Sun. Oct. 19, don't forget to pre-register to help us with our planning. Thanks!
http://stars.whyjustrun.ca/events/view/1603

What I learned about iPhones today - in case it might help someone else:

Remember my hard drive crash? Last night I realized that I haven't been able to synch music between my iPhone and my Mac since getting the new hard drive. Here's something I didn't know (and hence didn't do the appropriate back-up)... If your computer dies, you can't just load the music from your iPhone onto a new computer. You can only transfer the songs you purchased from the iTunes Store. If you loaded music into iTunes from MP3s or CDs, and you no longer have access to your old computer, Apple expects you to restore from an iTunes Library back-up (so be sure to do that!) or else feed in all those CDs again. Oops.

Thank you, Google... An app called Senuti will copy music from your iPhone to your computer. If you need less than 1,000 songs, you can use the trial version for free but even the paid version is only $20. It hasn't been the most exciting Friday night, and there are some glitches but maybe I've finished resolving my Great Computer Crash of 2014. (Famous last words...)

It's that time of year again... Hard Core with Caron.

C3 class. Personal Best (the company owned by Sheldon Persad and Caron & Barrie Shepley) plans to open a yoga studio in Caledon East, conveniently located right next to the liquor store. It will include the only Yoga Wall in Canada to date. Here's what that looks like.
http://yogamelanyc.com/yoga-wall-class

Back to Albion Hills on a warm morning to hang ribbons for Harps' planned test of the Star Tracks race course after work. (Thank you, Harps!) The gorgeous autumn scenery was more than a little distracting but I got all the ribbons up. I parked in a different place and did the controls in a different order to avoid getting into a rut. (Although on a few trails, I got into actual ruts.) I chatted briefly with Coach LD when she rode by, then took evasive action to prevent her from learning anything about the course; she is a podium threat. Some GPS adjustments since I got some of my on/offs backwards as usual.

Star Tracks Mountain Bike Orienteering
Sun. Oct. 19
Albion Hills
Be there or... be somewhere else less fun.
http://stars.whyjustrun.ca/events/view/1603

In Brantford helping my parents today.