Training Log Archive: Bash

Event: Paris to Ancaster
 

Paris to Ancaster bike race. Great weather and conditions except for one deep muddy section that seized up my wheels so that I had to carry the bike because I could no longer push it. This was my first real ride of the spring and it's clear that it will take more work to get my legs back into mid-season biking shape. For some weird reason, I passed a lot of people on uphills, then the same people would pass me on the flats, then I'd pass them again at the next hill. Bad technique on the flats? Slow bike? Not sure. Bent, The Minister and I tried to stay together as a team, which didn't work well in a crowd of 1000 people, since we were constantly losing somebody and needing to wait. We made a 5-minute Good Samaritan stop when a guy went into leg spasms and pitched onto his face in a gravel driveway. People were riding past him like he was roadkill! Bent helped detach him from his bike, fed him electrolytes, stretched his legs, then got him back on his feet. The final climb up the escarpment to the Ancaster Community Centre was an expected bit of cruelty, but it made the finish line that much sweeter. Fun way to start the biking season!

First day of new training program. Got off to an impressive start by ignoring the alarm for the 7 a.m. running group. At a more reasonable hour, I dragged Bent out to Palgrave for his second long run of the day. (He'd made it to the 7 a.m. run. Keener!) BulletDog and ThunderDog splashed through all the vernal pools, rolled in the remaining snow and generally had a wonderful time. Legs felt good. Tried running CP7-CP8 (from the GR Raid) at an average pace to see how long it would take if I didn't have to navigate. It took 73% of the time that it took us last weekend - and that leg had easy nav. I'm experimenting with this just for fun because I'm curious about what my fastest possible speed would be if someone else were doing the navigating. Has anyone else done similar experiments? As the slowest runner on the team, I'm definitely the Tree Huggers' limiting factor.

Core strength

Thanks for all the good advice. I decided to suck it up and do all that laundry, so once it is dry, I can go back and play in the mud some more.

K/O came by with the training program that she has put together for Bent and me, designed to peak for Raid The North Algonquin in late July. (We had to pick something.) She's letting us skip the Base Training phase, so now we are in the Strength and Endurance phase until late May. The final phase will be Speed. Woo hoo - Friday is a rest day! However, she had lots of ideas about how we should spend our time on the weekend - and then we start our hill intervals on Tuesday. Luckily, I think we have a hill in our yard that should be big enough.

Trail run in Palgrave West and Charlevoix with BulletDog and ThunderDog. Another perfect sunny day. Managed to turn my left ankle, so now the pain is symmetrical (I turned my right ankle in the first 2 minutes of the Giant's Rib Raid.) Dogs found a big marsh to swim in and really annoyed a couple of ducks who didn't want to share. After 2 months, BulletDog still smells of skunk when she gets wet - and still insists on lying beside me when I work on my laptop.

Biking on gravel roads (with occasional mud and ice) and rail trail. Just a short ride to shake out the cobwebs before Sunday's Paris-Ancaster race. And boy, were there a lot of cobwebs - both in me and the bike!
After six consecutive days in the woods plus a muddy mountain bike ride, I have come to a crossroads in my life where I face a difficult decision:
(a) Give up outdoor activities forever, or
(b) Do copious amounts of really filthy laundry and hose off all my mucky shoes.
I will give this matter some hard thought and make up my mind tomorrow.

Drills & Technique - Things to think about today:
1) Keep upper hand approximately the same distance from your chest as you rotate your body. That should give you room to extend as you go into position 4.
2) Plant the paddle and drive - like a pole vaulter.
3) Sit up straight, chin up, less side-to-side motion.
4) I should really get more than 4 hours sleep before a 6 a.m. paddling class.

Intervals. Coach fooled me by running the class past 7:30, so I pushed really hard during what I thought was the last interval. We did a minute of slow backward paddling, which I thought was the start of the cooldown. Mmmmm, cooldown... Then suddenly we were back doing another 10-minute interval. Eeek! As usual, my glutes are more sore than anything else.

Eliminator Sprint race at Spring Valley. I met a lost Sherpa around Control #5 (my partner for an upcoming rogaine and a recent grad of her 1st nav course). I decided to seize the teachable moment, so we stayed together until #10 while I explained different map symbols, what route I was choosing and why, what we could expect to see ahead, etc. I am totally NOT ready to be an O coach since I still have so much to learn myself, but I can already see that helping her to develop her skills is definitely going to help me with mine.

Skills course with the Sherpa. We were supposed to be doing the "golf" exercise where if you look at the map 3 times between controls, that's a par. Any more is a bogey, etc. Objective of exercise is to get into the habit of visualizing the terrain from the map, even though in a race situation, you would usually look at the map more often. We didn't do that this time - we spent our time identifying map features in the terrain, discussing merits of different routes, taking bearings, etc.

Picking up controls from the advanced section of the Giant's Rib Raid. (This was preceded by an hour of driving around to pay the bills for the Giant's Rib Raid, which was much less entertaining.) I made a point of choosing different routes between controls, trying to look at the map as if I knew nothing about the area. The route from 10E to 10C had a really nasty, tangled section. I'm glad we came from 10D in the race, but it was actually easier to find 10C approaching from 10E. It was another perfect sunny day. I found a couple of huge white pines that I could only wrap my arms halfway around. (Our team is called the Tree Huggers, after all.) A beautiful Mourning Cloak butterfly fluttered around watching me for awhile. ThunderDog swam in every mudhole she could find and took off whenever she smelled something interesting, which was often. I left a few controls for Bent's commute home, since he wanted some practice navigating.

Trekking cross-country around Albion Hills, picking up controls from the Giant's Rib Raid with The Pillar, BulletDog and Superfly George. Beautiful sunny day, great company, happy pooches, feet even muddier than yesterday...