Training Log Archive: Bash

Here's a photo of the Salomon Giant's Rib Raid winning navigator - Bender - as he demonstrates his bushwhacking technique in yesterday's rather damp event.

Only 3 weeks until the FAR Deerhurst race, so it's time to get mountain biking outside. 'Bent did a fine job of preparing my bike for spring, and it felt smooth, and my legs felt good. Amazingly, there is still so much snow and ice on the north part of Duffy's Lane that it's tricky riding - or hike-a-bike if you'd rather not risk a fall this early in the season. We still have lots of snow in the woods, some of which is deeper than my hiking boots - I wonder if we'll still have snow around here in May! Fortunately, the rail trail is all melted at last.

We rode out for about half an hour, then turned back. Nice sunny day - too bad we didn't have this great weather for all the SGRR competitors yesterday. On the way back, we met Mrs. Eugene and a couple of their cute kids out for a hike. The kids had found a dead opossum, and since I've never seen a live one, we dropped our bikes for a minute to go take a look. Looks like a giant rat with a Rudolph The Reindeer nose. Apparently we can expect to see them around here more often with the warming climate.

Rodney Yee DVD - Power Yoga for Flexibility. Nice...

Event: Salomon Giant's Rib Raid 25K Adventure Run
 

Salomon Giant's Rib Raid - an excellent event, thanks to the hard work of a whole bunch of volunteers, including the usual creative race course design. And three big cheers for Phatty, who has worked tirelessly to turn the Dontgetlost.ca runs into the Salomon Adventure Running Series, which has attracted the attention of other sponsors and created a tonne of excitement - not to mention the best prize table I've ever seen.

Hingo injured himself a few days before the race, and Slowrunner graciously agreed to join us on short notice, in spite of her well-known aversion to bushwhacking. Good thing she didn't know the race would take place in rainy 8C weather in a forest flooded with icy water!



Actually, we all agreed that the weather was a non-issue. We were dressed properly, and the ice water wading actually felt good on our calves - and our knees - and occasionally even our thighs.

Unfortunately, we got off to a bad start with some nav problems today.



Things went smoothly until we crossed 6th Line, but somehow we wandered off the Bruce Side Trail that we were supposed to be following, and the map was blank other than the trail, so there were no clues as to which direction we'd wandered off it. Normally, we'd have gone back to find the last tree marking, but unfortunately, we were in an area that the Bruce Trail *used* to pass through, so we were able to locate a few other markings, including turns and so on. Soon we realized that we were nowhere near the real Bruce Trail - something that was reinforced when we had to follow a quarry fence for a long distance in a direction that we didn't want to go. By that time, I'd figured out which side of the BT we were on, and we followed a compass bearing that led us to the trail. Sigh. A lesson that I should have learned by now is that things have a higher risk of going wrong at times when I am sure that the navigation is easy, so I get complacent.

Case in point: the next section, the Lass-O. The CPs were so close together that we started off on a very rough bearing, figuring that we'd see the first CP so soon that we didn't need to be overly careful. We hadn't accounted for the wide, deep, frigid, branch-tangled marsh that we had to cross, which pushed us too far to the left. Oblivious to the problem, we looked for flags in a couple of wrong places before finally bailing out to a trail and returning to a known junction to start again. Between this error and our Bruce Trail follies, it appears from the splits that we lost about 30 minutes in silly errors early in the race.

Other than that, things went pretty smoothly - other than maybe some loss of the sense of urgency that you feel when you are running closer to the leaders. That's OK though - we had a good time and enjoyed the different challenges that had been posed for us. My personal favourite was the section where the map was blank, and we had only verbal instructions and photographs of features to go on. The photos had been taken when there was still lots of snow, so part of the challenge was trying to imagine what the feature would look like without snow!

Our team worked well together. Slowrunner pushed the pace nicely on the trails - I can see why she would have no trouble with the Canadian Death Race. Even though conditions were especially tough for adventure running today, she never lost her smile. There were numerous slippery, mossy rocks with crevices in the woods, but luckily we all managed to avoid serious injury, even though I slipped and banged my bad knee twice. (The lawsuit is in the mail, Griz.) The only potential issue for me is a wrenched lower back from a towing incident on trail. I've got my fingers crossed that it's just a short-term thing, but I'll have a better idea tomorrow.

Here is 'Bent on one of the trails. As we got here, I called back, "Hey guys - the good news is that we've made it to the big trail. The bad news is, there's a *heck* of a current running along it!"



And here we are at the finish line, still smiling and ready for the BBQ. Thanks to my Tree Hugger teammates for a fun day of splashing around the forest - even if it wasn't the most perfect race we've ever had!



Big congrats to our friends on Team Salomon XT Wings - Bender, Slice and AndyCam - the coed team who won the whole thing! Best result by Caledon Navigators was Team Salomon-Suunto - Phatty & Leanimal + STORM (2nd Coed and 5th overall), then Crash - 3rd Coed and 6th overall. Team Over The Hill - Goose, Rocky & Scooby - made an impressive debut, placing 5th Coed and 9th overall. They really should enter Storm The Trent, since they have the right skills for the MXR Canada competition. Yay, CN!!

Stretched out my hips, legs and injured lower back post-Raid. After a couple of years of yoga, I now crave it when my body feels tight.

By popular demand, here is the GHO Flying Pig MVP award that Sid will take home this year. Hammer plays the role of Vanna White in this photo.



And here is the 2006 winner, MrPither. Ladies, try to control yourselves.

I've often thought that our rolling country road would provide some nice, moderate hill intervals, but it's more fun to run out the back door into the forest, so I've never tried it. I noticed recently that the two blocks of our road west of the highway measure 2.5 km on the car odometer, so that gives me a 5K (approx.) out-and-back-and-out-the-other-way-and-back run to do from the end of our driveway on a relatively quiet dirt road. Today I was just trying to set the base time - the time to beat in future - but I pushed up the hills with a steady pace, which kept the intensity up. Kinda embarrassing to look at my watch afterward, but hey, I never said I was a fast runner.

My new Salomon XT Wings felt great in their first outing, but they now have a fleck of mud on them. I wonder if that's covered under warranty. Phatty...?

Hard Core Live with Caron. She wasn't too evil tonight.

Lots of vinyasas followed by some good stretches.

Quick run while watching the news. Busy with Salomon Giant's Rib Raid registration stuff today. Also, Hingo is injured, so I had to initiate an emergency search for a replacement teammate. There aren't many people you can just call up to do a 25K run through rough terrain on 3 days notice, so 'Bent and I were thrilled when the mighty Slowrunner agreed to join us!!

Beautiful spring day! Trails are still a mix of ice, mud and snow, so Leanimal and I decided to stick to the road for another week. My new Salomon XT Wings just arrived in the mail, and I'm looking forward to hitting the trails to try them out! We did a warm-up around the streets of Bolton, then 3 hill intervals on Deer Valley Rd., 1 painful interval up Glasgow Rd., then 2 more intervals up Deer Valley. Cooled down in a different neighbourhood. Nice day to be out, and good to catch up with Leanimal.

Back to the Wellness Centre for some blasting. My membership only lasts a month, so I need to make the most of it. It's already clear that I'm not cut out for gym workouts, but it's nice to have this chance to get familiar with what's available so that I can go there on a day pass once in awhile. As suspected, the indoor workout shoes that I'd left behind on the day of the evacuation were no longer in the change room. They're in such bad shape that I didn't bother trying to track them down. In fact, if someone at the front desk had held them up when I arrived and asked if they were mine, I probably would have denied it!

It was so hot in the car today that I wanted to turn on the air conditioner, except I would have felt environmentally guilty. So instead, I made my first visit of the season to Dairy Queen. :-)

'Bent and I had lunch today with two good friends we haven't seen for over a year and a half since they moved to Tajikistan - Gazelle and Gazette! They are back in Canada for a few months to have their first baby, and they will be living in Bolton. Great to see them!! :-)

A couple of post-Pig notes:

- In case you haven't seen Wil Smith's log, he took some excellent photos at the Pig - http://www.orienteering.smugmug.com/

- I found it very instructive to review nav guru PG's routes posted on his log, since he raced the same courses that I did last weekend. I feel a little better after seeing that we both made the same big error on #1 on Sunday. I'm still not happy about it - and I'm sure that he isn't, either - but I feel less silly about it now. However, I still feel really, *really* silly about my monster error on #2!

ThunderDog and I hiked to and from Crash's place, travelling through a forest that was mostly full of soft snow. My hiking boots weren't even close to high enough to keep the snow out, and I kept punching through.

Hard Core DVD with 'Bent. It's only been a week and a half since we last did a Hard Core workout, but I could feel that it was a little harder than usual.