Training Log Archive: Bash

Happy Easter to all!

Last night's stretching and hot Jacuzzi bath must have been the perfect strategy. I can't remember ever feeling this good on the day after an adventure run.

Event: Giant's Rib Raid
 

Raced the Giant's Rib Raid with Vmeyer and Kissy as the QuantiGHO Queen Bees. A major highlight was receiving the wonderful Queen Bee Adidas jackets that Valerie got for our team. My teammates flew all the way from Virginia to do this race, which was already a big enough gift!

The weather was a few degrees below freezing, with blowing snow flurries for part of the day. I was afraid I might be cold since I dressed fairly lightly, but my layers worked well. It was an excellent experience to race for the first time on a team with three keen orienteers. It took some of the pressure off, since the buck usually stops with me on the Tree Huggers. For the most part, we preferred similar route choices, and with three navigators keeping eagle eyes on the map, we didn't have any errors big enough to complain about.

As always, the race was interesting and included a wide variety of challenges, ranging from road and trail runs to maps with much of the information missing. About halfway through, Kissy was hit by agonizing calf cramps, which didn't disappear completely for the rest of the run, but she soldiered on in nasty pain without complaining. Thanks to Mick for providing Rolaids. I apparently managed to drop my fancy $100 compass while punching the map at 6C, since we subsequently met the team who hung my compass up on a bush there, as well as another couple of teams who saw it. I'm hoping it was still there when Bender picked up the controls...? Meanwhile, Amanda K from Team ESAR generously lent me her spare compass - thank you!

I kept my team waiting in the Matrix while I ran to 11A and 11C. Nothing went wrong, but it was just a long way, and I wasn't setting any speed records by that point of the race.

No results posted yet due to the Toronto-Montreal hockey game, but we know that we were the top female team, somewhere around the middle of the pack. We won a free entry to Raid The Hammer, and my teammates both said "No!" in the same breath. I'm not sure that we sold them on the idea of adventure runs today, given the non-universal appeal of running long distances with icy-wet feet on a snowy day. Regardless, they both did a great job on their first adventure run, especially given the tough conditions. Thanks for making the trip!

Great job by race organizers and volunteers. Thanks for all your hard work to give us a fun time!

'Bent and I returned to my parents' place where we are visiting for Easter, then got hit by a case of Hammer & Etoile Hot Tub Envy. Then we remembered that my folks have a 2-person Jacuzzi in their bathroom, so we soaked away some sore muscles - mmmm.... Actually, I don't feel too bad, and managed to avoid the blisters that I often get when my Ice Bugs get wet for long distances. We did lots of stretching tonight, and I'm looking forward to yoga in the near future.

Some fatigued muscles after last night's yoga, but hopefully that will be gone by tomorrow. I feel like I really stretched my hip flexors and IT bands.

'Bent and I met my QuantiGHO Queen Bee teammates Vmeyer and Kissy for lunch at the McMichael Gallery. It turns out that the lovely restaurant that used to be there no longer exists, but it was still great to chat and look at maps of the Milton area for tomorrow. Thank you so much for the bottle of wine! :-)

Hard Core Live. The general opinion seemed to be that it was a tough night, but it was the first time that there has been much overlap with the Hard Core DVD, so there was a lot of stuff that I've practised many (many, many) times, which made it less tough.

Power Yoga class. Lots of unusual stretches tonight. I asked Caron and a few willing victims to stick around at the end so I could photograph them for a magazine article.

And now I'm officially resting until Saturday morning, when the QuantiGHO Queen Bees (Vmeyer, Kissy and myself) take on the world at the Giant's Rib Raid. Looking forward to our pre-race strategy luncheon tomorrow! 'Bent will be there, but he won't be allowed to listen.

Unplanned rest day - although the only thing I blew off was a 20-minute leg strength workout, so no biggie. I spent too much time with friends today, and that's really not such a bad thing. I caught up with Milhouse, home from his not-so-excellent adventures in Spain. Then I went for a latte with Pate, one of our teenaged Tree Huggers, and ended up having a fun 3-hour chat about his first season of XC skiing at the national and international level.

The best news is that Pate has agreed to join 'Bent and me for the Tree Huggers' first adventure race of the spring, the FAR Adventure Challenge. Woo hoo!!

G-TNT with Leanimal on the Humber Valley Trail. Almost all the ice is gone, and the main challenges now are long stretches of goopy mud. Oh, and the usual hills, of course.

Leanimal and I missed our buddy Crash on the run. We look forward to her company after the Boston Marathon. We ran into Slowrunner looking good on the return leg of her run and excited about a 125-mile, 6-day Trans Rockies running stage race in Colorado next year. Sounds like fun if I could find a REAL slowrunner to do it with.

Our running time over the distance was about the same as in previous weeks (albeit in better conditions), but I was feeling fatigued - partly from the long training sessions on the weekend and partly from lack of sleep. Last night was 'Bent's Passover Seder, so I got to bed at 2 a.m. and couldn't fall asleep, then ThunderDog became ChunderDog around 4 a.m., waking us up and forcing a major clean-up. Don't know what she ate in the yard, and it's probably just as well. Then I had to get up early to head back to Palgrave. Looking forward to an early bedtime tonight (yawn).

LINK exercises + some blasting. ;-)

Arggghh, I've been without e-mail most of the day, thanks to what must be a huge server problem at my Internet provider. If anyone has been trying to reach me, I really haven't been ignoring you!

It's been tough to judge this training photo contest, given all the excellent entries. In trying to narrow it down, I went back to the original contest description, i.e. "a photo of yourself training". Photos of friends or scenery taken while training also qualify, even if you don't appear in the photo. I didn't rule out other types of entries, but I gave greater weight to photos fitting the original criteria.

I decided to disqualify photos where people were sitting in chairs (sorry, Sid), photos advocating violence between blondes (sorry, Slice), and a photo depicting junk food consumption that Hammer sent me that I'm still trying to forget. That still left a strong field. I think urthbuoy's March 28 log entry probably fits the spirit of the contest the best, but I don't think he wants to hold a contest again so soon. So I will award urthbuoy 5 points for having the photo contest idea in the first place and for submitting such a great entry.

Part of the fun of the contest is the spin-off of the next contests, so I decided to assign a contest winner in each country that entered:

Sweden - bubo

U.S. - Vmeyer

Canada - MrPither -for the Swiss O photo. At
least you were there, even though the photo wasn't of you.

Each of you receives 4 points, plus the honour of holding a photo contest in your log based on whatever criteria you may choose.

The grand prize winner is Vmeyer, who receives 1 extra point for her efforts. Why? Well, Valerie isn't an adventure racer, so standing in mud up to her chest isn't a normal part of her sport. That was extreme orienteering!

So the totally arbitrary AP photo contest points standings now are:
urthbuoy - 5 pts
Vmeyer - 5 pts
Bash - 5 pts
MrPither - 4 pts
bubo - 4 pts
arg - 3 pts