Training Log Archive: Bash

Salomon Dontgetlost.ca Snowshoe Raid - Blue Mountain, Collingwood

After five great years at Horseshoe Resort, the Snowshoe Raid moved to a new venue. It's fun to navigate in different places and Collingwood is a great place to spend a weekend, so a record 117 teams signed up. Half the participants were women, which was nice to see. Many thanks to Dee and Logie for hosting us at their beautiful chalet.

Dee and I raced together again this year and planned our route with mapboard, pins and string. We weren't the only ones to do it but as usual, we got a few comments!



(This is one of Frankenjack's excellent photos that I've "borrowed".)

Dee doesn't look at the map much while we're racing but she reviews it carefully beforehand. She asks good questions and challenges our assumptions so we definitely end up planning a better course together than we would separately.

Harps and Logie got some outside assistance from Harps' daughter Sara, who is clearly a budding orienteer.



The challenge this year was that it was a rogaine-style 3-hour course where we also had to get a fair distance from point to point. We started in Loree Forest where there were a number of checkpoints to find in hilly terrain, then we had at least 7.5 km of running on roads and trails to get to the finish line, not counting any extra distance to look for a few CPs along the way.


Hammer and 'Bent

About 70% of the points were in Loree Forest and it would take good planning and will power to leave that area soon enough to get back to the finish within the 3-hour time limit. I predicted that 1 out of 6 teams would be overtime but I was insanely optimistic. Less than one third of teams finished the course within 3 hours!

We were bussed up (up, up, up) to the starting line. Dee and I ran a clockwise loop around Loree, dropping the three northernmost CPs, including the highly valuable #62 (a choice we struggled with and still aren't sure about). We also dropped 74 & 75, which were low value. We'd set a couple of cut-off times where we might have gone for additional controls but we were running a few minutes behind there so we kept going. We left the aid station near the southeast corner of Loree Forest with 80 minutes to go, right on our plan.

With a 3-month-old baby keeping her up at night, Dee had worried about her return to fitness but she was strong today. In the snowy hills, we moved at a similar pace but on the flats, she pushed the pace higher than I would have gone on my own. I felt sluggish for some reason so this was really helpful.



My nav was fine but not stellar - no disasters but a little sloppy in places. Snowshoe navigation is different because you have to balance the benefits of your personal route preference vs. the ease of following tracks that help you move faster, even if they aren't going exactly in the direction you want. A couple of times, I got careless and we had to move along a narrow ridge looking into re-entrants on both sides until we spotted our flag, since I wasn't 100% sure which ridge we'd ended up on. Dee asked good questions, shared local knowledge and spotted flags in the distance.



The last section of the course was a 5-CP Matrix that travelled downhill through an unused ski area. We could have split up to get CPs separately but elected to work together and get four of them. We finished with 9 minutes to go so we probably had time for another control but if the time had been tighter, we probably wouldn't have had the nerve to stay out in the Matrix for as long as we did. We defended our title in the female division with 520 of 740 points. Thanks for a fun day of playing in the snow, Dee!



Hammer and 'Bent won Masters, and Phatty and Leanimal won Coed, so there was a good showing from the Caledon contingent.





Congrats to Nick and Feet for winning overall (again)!

Great to see so many friends. Big thanks to Getawaystix for all his hard work in organizing another excellent event!


Harps (3rd overall with Logie), Sara, Amy


Tiny and M&M - 2nd Coed


Rick and Keith - 2nd Masters


Ace Photographer, Frankenjack


Mrs. Tiny, volunteering for two


AdventureGirl! - 1st Junior with grandparents Mr. & Mrs. GHOSLO


Etoile and GHOSLO


BugsinTeeth, Simpy (unable to smile after coming in overtime) and Funderstorm (who had a great race with Marcus)

I started sneezing in the car and by the time we arrived home a few hours after the Snowshoe Raid, I had a full-blown cold with no forewarning. It's no fun to be sick but it's nice to know that there may have been a reason for the lack of zip in my legs today.

Easy ski at snowy Scenic Caves. Beautiful! Pics later. Getting ready to Snowshoe Raid!

'Bent and I just registered for our first-ever marked course ski race - the Cookie Race in Kananaskis Country, Alberta, aka the Kananaskis Ski Marathon. (We've done the Canadian Ski Marathon a few times but it's a tour, not a race.) We're doing the 42K marathon distance. We'll probably only do this race once so we might as well go crazy. Carbon and Mike will be racing too!

The bad news: Many of Canada's best nordic skiers, including the national team, are based in nearby Canmore. So we will get our butts seriously kicked.

The good news: Homemade cookies at all the aid stations!! And dinner afterward with Carbon and Mike. :)

Roads were slippery and I had to take a big detour around a minor accident that was blocking the road into Caledon East. So... not much of a core workout, unfortunately.

I need to get back on top of my yoga. I'm way too tight!

A few of us have been working to get ready for Thomass Caledon (fun winter orienteering race) and ARK Snow Day (activities and a short race for kids aged 6-16, no nav experience needed) on Sun. Jan. 29 at Glen Haffy Conservation Area.

Traditionally, the Caledon Navigators orienteering club have put on Thomass Caledon each winter but the club dissolved at the end of 2011. A few former members are holding this event as our grand finale with the support of GHO (my main club). We want to go out in style so we've hired a professional chef to prepare the post-race snacks. Hope to see a bunch of you there! :)

Princess and I did our first-ever Computrainer session at RIDE Milton. Thanks to Harps for inviting me to fill in when one of the regulars couldn't make it. It was cool that 4 of the other 7 riders were Attackpointers and adventure racers - Nosnhoj, SistaP, Mrs. Gally and Harps. We did a course with a fair bit of climbing in the first half, including one section so steep that I could stand on my pedals in my easiest gear. On the downhills, it's harder to generate power so cadence was key.

Mrs. Gally calls this type of training a "pukefest". No question, the element of competition guarantees a hard workout. At all times, you can see your position in the race, how close you are to the other riders, how many watts and watts/kg each rider is generating, how fast you're all going, etc. This is more intensity than I've done in awhile but I managed to hang with the midpack so I was happy. Harps crushed the rest of us, as anticipated.

Went out afterward for drinks, pub snacks and good conversation with last year's ESAR team (Mrs. Gally and SistaP). :)

Average Watts: 158 Average Speed: 24.9 kph

Leanimal and Weeanimal.



Leanimal, Weeanimal and MyAnimal (BazingaPuppy).



BazingaPuppy, you are *such* an animal!

Sob! :(( One of the leading researchers on the heart benefits of resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, has been found guilty of fabricating and manipulating data for the past 7 years. He has published 26 articles in scientific journals using this data.

A small beacon of hope... red wine may still have heart benefits. But the evidence may not be as compelling when the real data is used.

I guess I can accept this sad news but I sure hope the researchers looking into the health benefits of dark chocolate are a more honest lot.

Interval session with BazingaPuppy on leash in Palgrave West. All of it left-handed (which I am not) since I am nursing a rotator cuff strain.

1) Warm-up - None. Right out the front door, it was, "OMG!!! there's a SQUIRREL!!!!! Climbing that tree over there!!!"

2) Sprint - 10 minutes, icy trails, taut leash. Parts of this were much, much faster than I can actually run - but my legs had to keep moving or else. Similar to being on a tow rope behind Goose. :)

3) Doggie bathroom break. Sniff a few trees.

4) About 20 repeats of:
1 min X Deer/squirrel/bunny sighting (pace = frantic)
1 min easy run

5) Cooldown - None. Post-run recovery dog biscuits consumed with gusto.

Using heavier weights lately. I've got some big mountains coming up!

Many of you have seen this elsewhere on Attackpoint but it's so cool that I'm including it here too. Pathetic has taken the Garmin Forerunner tracks of 4 racers with various handicaps (Pathetic, Bender, 'Bent not taking his handicap points and me) and turned it into an executable where you can watch Sunday's TOC Thomass race play out on the map . I think a 5th racer - a first time Thomass racer - will be added shortly. Really cool - thanks, Pathetic!

For those who aren't familiar with the Thomass format, we are assigned a handicap based on our age and gender. We all have to visit the numbered controls but when we get to a "box" of lettered controls, all racers except elite male are permitted to drop 1 or more controls of their choice. This replay is especially fun since three of us with different handicaps entered the 2nd box at the same time so you can see how well the handicapping worked.

A few notes:
- The map didn't reflect the terrain well near #7 which is why both Pathetic and 'Bent overshot.
- At F, I came back up to the main trail because I had been followed into the gully by a chocolate Lab carrying a frisbee; I knew he was a long way from his owners so I didn't want to go down to the road until I sent him on his way.
- 'Bent didn't do this as a race - he did it as a training exercise where he visited all controls without taking his handicap and made a conscious effort not to follow anyone, even if it meant making an unusual route choice.

Btw, Norton Anti-Virus kept deleting this file immediately after I downloaded it because it was an unfamiliar (to Norton) .exe file and therefore labelled as a threat. I had to disable my anti-virus for a minute to download the file and move it to a safe place.