Training Log Archive: Bash

'Bent and I did a Bob Miller course - which is a classier way of saying that we stole his training idea from yesterday and did the exact same thing today. It's a fair trade since he borrowed our canoe to do it. The first part of the session was a paddle from Inglewood to Terra Cotta on the Credit River.



Flat Stanley has to return to Australia tomorrow so we brought him out to see another Canadian activity firsthand.



The water wasn't quite as high as it was yesterday but it was still moving quickly enough to give us a fun ride.



This part of the Credit River is Class 1D. The "D" stands for "Dog" and anyone who has paddled fast moving water with an active pooch understands the increased degree of difficulty that entails. (Entails... giggle!) "Sit, Mocha, SIT!"





We portaged around three old dams but for the most part the fun came from avoiding low-hanging trees and the occasional small strainer.



There was still some ice on the vegetation and big hunks of break-up ice along parts of the shoreline.





We thought there was public land for a take-out at the Winston Churchill Rd. bridge but we were wrong. We paddled a short distance further but now the river was veering away from the road. Uh oh. We tried paddling upstream to see if we could get back to the bridge at least. Nope, the shore was crawling by as we paddled at 100% and we had half a kilometer to go. So we pulled ashore at the far end of a private property and knocked on the door to ask permission to carry our canoe up their driveway. The guy was nice about it but some landowners along the Credit are less friendly so we got lucky.

So much fun to be out on the water in March!

We stashed our canoe in a cedar grove near the road and removed a few layers before running back to our van in Inglewood.





Note to self: On a real Bob Miller course, it's always a good idea to look at a map. We headed north up a road that we thought would lead us to the rail trail. When it turned west unexpectedly, we figured we'd better head over to another road we actually knew. No biggie, it only added 2 km to our run (argghh).

Nice to see 'Bent running quickly with good form. Unfortunately, he was feeling his knee but he has been training hard lately.



Most of our time was on the Caledon Trailway which was 90% mud with the remainder of the surface evenly split between ice, snow and frigid standing water.

Afterward we pigged out on excellent sandwiches from the Inglewood General Store. Highly recommended!

'Bent and I rode a loop starting in Caledon East on a fantastic, cold, sunny day. We'd planned to start on the Caledon rail trail and were surprised to find long stretches of ice and rock-hard snow. Things were going OK until I did a 360 on some ice (while remaining upright) and 'Bent skidded out when he heard my surprised yell. So we moved onto roads for most of the ride. It actually made things harder because of all the hills and winter-damaged gravel roads. We climbed the escarpment a few times on the way to The Shed Coffee Bar in Belfountain so we definitely earned our reward.



That and a slice of chocolate zucchini loaf = a healthy lunch. (Zucchini is a vegetable.)

Thanks to Coast to Coast, I kept biking regularly through the fall and winter this year. As a result, everything felt much better than it usually does this early in the season - especially hill climbing. Yay.

We stopped at Caledon Hills Cycling in Inglewood to shop on our way back. By the time we got home, we were wearing big smiles and mud from head to toe. Awesome.

Very proud of our longtime Tree Hugger teammate and friend VO2Max (Pate Neumann) on his 5th place finish today at the National XC Ski Champs in the 50K mass start skate. No, he didn't medal at the 2011 Champs. (Last year he medalled in the 15K skate which wasn't offered this time.) But today he raced consistently with the front group for 50K and was leading the race after 30K. After 2 hrs 7 min, he finished just 46 seconds out of 1st place. To put that in context, only 12 guys finished within 5 minutes of the leader. At least four 2010 Olympians finished behind him.

At age 23 with only 9 years of skiing experience (half as much as most of his competitors), he's getting better every year and we hope to be in Sochi cheering him on in 2014!

If anyone happens to be interested in working at "ground zero" (event HQ) for the Wilderness Traverse 24-30 hr adventure race on the Aug. 19-21 weekend in Haliburton, I'm looking for a friendly person to hang out with me and help with managing communications, updating the live news on the website, etc. Sense of humour is mandatory.

Benefits of the job include Internet access, the opportunity to use cool lingo on the radio, free pancakes, first dibs on all the race gossip, a nice GUATS T-shirt, protection from the elements, accommodation, and a healthy distance between you and all those sweaty, grimy racers for most of the weekend.

The negatives include sleep deprivation and the eventual return of the sweaty, grimy racers.

If I have somehow sold you on the experience (!) or if you'd like more info, please e-mail me. Thanks!

Interesting perspective on cycling cadence - some of us may be aiming too high. The full article at the link includes a number of references to scientific journals.

"Many people have examined Lance Armstrong’s riding ability and (mistakenly) deduced that for all riders, the best way to pedal well is to spin the cranks at 95-100rpm. However, lets make a couple of things crystal clear:

1. The higher cadence used by professional riders is because they are producing as much as 400-500 watts in time-trial efforts or climbs of 20 to 60 minutes;

2. Recovery from day-to-day ‘tour’ riding is easier with higher cadence riding, so riders chose this as a matter of energy conservation. So while Lance may ride a time trial at close on 100rpm, he is sustaining over 450 watts. Lesser mortals can probably only sustain around 250-350 watts, so cadence can be significantly lower – say around 75-85rpm. This is especially so when climbing where many cyclists can find improved efficiency (and ability to climb) at around 70rpm.

Macintosh and his co-workers have shown that optimal cadence for 100, 200, 300 and 400w cycling occurs at 57, 70, 86 and 99rpm respectively. This casts some doubt on the age-old advice that cyclists should aim for 95rpm because ‘that’s what the pros do’. Sadly though, we don’t all generate 400 watts in time trial and fast climb efforts! In fact, in a review of studies in this area, scientists concluded that ‘the choice of a relatively high cadence during cycling at low to moderate intensity is uneconomical and could compromise performance during prolonged cycling’.

3. Choose a cadence that mirrors your power output; slower riding and warm ups should use a lower cadence while high-effort time trials should use a higher cadence. Unless you’re an elite rider, it’s unlikely you’ll benefit from using cadences exceeding around 85 rpm."

Hard Core Live with Caron. She just about killed 'Bent with the "legs straight up in the air" stuff.

We live in a rural area and it's not unusual to have a dog or two attend our yoga class. Just before we started a challenging section, one of tonight's visiting dogs walked away from his owner and threw up all his Kibble in front of someone else's mat. Amidst the ensuing giggles, one of the guys announced with empathy, "That's OK - it's *exactly* how I've been feeling for the last 30 minutes!" Poor pooch - he seems fine now. Just a little embarrassed.

Ran from our place via Bruce Trail Side Trail to Centreville Creek Road. Slowrunner was coming the other way so we turned off our stopwatches and had a good chat. Trail was 50% ice, 40% soft snow, 10% slick mud so it was a tough workout but the running wasn't always the hard part.

For contrast, I ran back on dirt roads - still hilly with some mud and ice but there was decent grip most of the time so I could aim for Chi running form - or my best imitation thereof. Considering that I've been focusing on other disciplines lately, this run felt good and I was happy with my pace.
Icy trail pace - 6:10 min/km
Muddy road pace - 5:20 min/km

When I got home, I cooled down by climbing over Mt. Tobler. With the APEX Race fast approaching, I will need to add steeper hills to my training.

The Globe & Mail Facts & Arguments essays are often worth reading. This one, by a woman who lost her 31-year-old sister to cancer, is touching; she expresses beautifully a philosophy that I share after losing several friends before their time.

"So many of my friends are scared about aging. Nobody wants to get older. But I feel guilty. I am allowed to get older and Nicole wasn’t. I made a pact to myself last year that I would always welcome getting older, and never sulk in the annoyances that can come with it. It’s a gift. A privilege."

And so it is.

I'm in Geek Heaven - numbers, numbers, numbers. :) Dropped by Walk Run Ride in Bolton to pick up our new Tacx Flow Ergotrainer. WRR uses these trainers in their spin studio where they do an 8-week progressive training program using DVDs from Carmichael. Participants are tested before and after the 8 weeks.

I train at home so I'd arranged to take the test to set some power (wattage) and heartrate zones. The test included some warm-up, cooldown and lighter spinning but the hard core stuff was:

1 min top intensity X 2 with 1 min rest (to "open you up" and tire you out)

8 min top intensity X2 with 10 min rest (the test)

Cadence for all of this should average around 90.

It's March Break and there were a few teenaged boys on adjacent trainers offering friendly encouragement which was nice. The Walk Run Ride guys did a good imitation of Coach Troy to push me a little harder, especially in the last few minutes of each interval.

Power and HR were measured and averaged over each of the 8-minute intervals, then it was fed into a program that provides individual power/HR ranges for Endurance Miles, Tempo, Steady State, Climbing Repeats and Power Intervals (the 5 training ranges in order of low to high power/HR).

Although the goal is to produce all the same numbers over both 8-minute intervals, it is rare for a first timer to succeed - and I certainly didn't. I did manage to have the same average HR (161), max HR (171), average cadence (90) and max power (242) over both intervals but my average power dropped by 6% in the 2nd interval.

Now I can use these zones in training. Carbon also provided me with a spreadsheet where I can do a slightly different test and compare the zones, then design custom workouts to increase power. So cool! :) I will definitely not be doing that 2nd test anytime soon though, as I can't believe how totally wasted I am after a 50-minute workout.

P.S. Carbon, I won't be reading your e-mails anymore because you cost me too much money. First there was this trainer, then I caved yesterday and ordered a new treadmill to replace the one that died. And Urthbuoy, I have to stop talking to you too because you've got me checking out whitewater kayak websites until the wee hours. Still looking for the right boat to match my helmet! ;)

Unbelievable Quote of the Week from Larry Kudlow of financial news channel CNBC, talking about the disaster in Japan:

“The markets are taking this in stride” Kudlow jabbered, “The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/televisio...

After Weeanimal, Phatty's 2nd favourite topic of conversation is athletic footwear. Seriously, never let him look too closely at your feet unless you're inviting a conversation sprinkled randomly with words like "pronate" and "S-LAB". In this video, he's talking about Salomon's brand new "door to trail" shoe, the XR Crossmax, aimed at runners who travel on some pavement on their way to the trails. It's Oscar material for sure. At least we don't need to ask him the Academy Awards Red Carpet question - "Who are you wearing?" - because we already know the answer.

What I *really* wanted to do was bike outside - not that it made any sense with slush on the trails and gloppy mud on our road. So I replaced the trainer wheel on my old winter MTB with the only loose MTB wheel in the room. Hmm... something wasn't right. Oh... blush. I really don't need disc brakes *and* caliper brakes on the same wheel. No luck finding the right wheel so I had to wait for 'Bent the Perennial Bike Builder to rescue his cycling damsel in distress.

Meanwhile, I settled for a short paddle on the trainer, feeling envious of Getawaystix's planned Beaver River excursion in a Cobra demo kayak. Turns out I needn't have been. He and Frankenjack had to change their plans after going to the river and discovering that it is still winter on March 15. Who knew?

While watching The Daily Show.

A friend has lent us the DVD for Chasing Legends, a documentary of the Tour de France 2010, primarily from the perspective of Team Columbia-HTC. It was in movie theatres in early Feb. In case anyone missed it and is interested - or if you're just missing the sound of Phil Liggett's voice - I was thinking we could play it here this Sunday evening, maybe around 7 p.m. Please let me know by Friday night if you'd like to come. Otherwise, 'Bent and I will watch it at some random time. The main film is 90 minutes long and we can choose from 130 min. of bonus features.

Congratulations to our past Tree Hugger teammate Brittany Webster on winning the 10 km classic ski event at the Canadian Ski Nationals today! Olympic gold medalist Chandra Crawford took the bronze more than a minute back.

Bob and I headed to Haliburton on a bluebird day for some Wilderness Traverse course scouting. Incredible weather - fantastic spring snow conditions. I didn't wear gloves or toque; the risk today was sunburn, not frostbite. We were mostly snowshoe running with some running in shoes on soft, packed snow where Yaktrax would have been nice.

Bob floated over the surface in his monster snowshoes while I took regular nose dives in the deep, soft snow in my svelte Atlas Race shoes. That's OK - the important thing is the satisfaction of knowing that I got the better workout.

Some photos have been blurred or cropped to prevent Mike W. and Jim W. from identifying the location too readily. Please e-mail it to me privately when you've got it, boys. Time / distance have been adjusted to add a section where my Garmin was turned off and to subtract photo breaks.



In between nose dives.





Still lots of snow left.



Running downhill on snowshoes = awesome!



There were some uphills too.



We found some pretty sites for winter camping.



Bob felt that my black and white clothing created a "where's Waldo?" effect in the photos.



In one area, we found a lot of very large tracks. I wondered about cougar but when I enhanced one of the photos, I could just see claws so my best guess is wolf.



Bob's strength training program appears to be working.



It's hard work planning an adventure race but we managed to struggle through yet another tough day. I can only hope the racers appreciate the suffering we endure on their behalf...