Training Log Archive: Bash

4th annual Waterfalls of Hamilton (WoH) run, hosted by the very hospitable Trav and Baloney. This year 45 people ran trail loops of different lengths from the Hottage and visited some of Hamilton's beautiful waterfalls. Hammer had prepared a map with all the waterfall CPs and optional shortcuts.



Conditions were fantastic! I think this is the snowiest WoH we've ever had, which made for a slow, wallowing run in a few places. Great rehab for my gimpy foot, which got to move in all directions. Everyone loved it.



I started with the group who planned to do the whole enchilada (15K). People kept dropping off until just 'Bent, Zoolander and Hammer finished the entire route. Hammer distinguished himself by inadvertently taking a pee break in front of some property owner's security camera.



I asked the fast boyz to stop waiting for me somewhere around K2, then finished at a more relaxed pace. I had a nice chat with an XC skier who wondered what the heck we were doing, and I got some waterfall pics too.





The most interesting part of the route was the optional shortcut from the top of Tiffany Falls to the bottom. Looking at this photo, it started directly above the falls, then descended toward the left side of the photo below the cliff, then plunged straight down the steep slope.



It was extremely slick and I had to do the last 5 m of descent as a bum slide while trying to slow the pace by grabbing at random bits of snow with my hands. (I didn't want to go too fast since I was bum sliding over a few small rocks.) I had two thoughts as I did this descent alone in the quiet valley:

1) If I don't get back for lunch, they'll know to look for my body here first.

2) It's hard to believe this run is being hosted by a *lawyer*!!! ;)

Great run, yummy lunch and coffee, excellent conversation with friends, and an episode of Zoolander and Turbo's new show "Boundless", which was really entertaining. It is time for Hansel to hand over the Mantle of Vomit - to step down from the Pinnacle of Puke. Turbo is the new Baron of Barf in our crowd.

Thanks for a great time, Traveloney!

(Time deducted for waterfall viewing.)

Thanks to 'Bent for preparing a wonderful New Year's Eve dinner tonight - lobster tails, mixed veggies sauteed in garlic, baby potatoes. He was a little surprised, however, when I pointed out that it wasn't New Year's Eve... :)

Short, fun ski around Hardwood Hills with Leanimal, Goose and Coach LD. Conditions were excellent, although Highlands Nordic has more snow up high. Wintry driving. The main event of the day was lunch with Phatty, Leanimal, Hubnukin', MooPoint, Goose and Coach LD. Alas, the children were napping when we arrived, although Monster appeared briefly just before we left. No sign of Weeanimal nor of 'Bent, who stayed home to try to recover from his cold - and avoid sharing it.

'Bent, Coach LD and I went up to Highlands. There is lots of snow - gorgeous! The trails were soft so it was a better day for classic, which suited me just fine. For some reason, though, it was one of those days when things didn't click. I had trouble with wax and with numbness/pain in my feet as I experimented with ways to tighten my new boots, which are light and comfortable otherwise.

Whenever I got the little distractions sorted out temporarily, I tried to work on a few specific things from the Silverstar coaches. Not all at the same time since I would usually forget one thing when I worked on another!

- Bending forward from the ankles. Whenever I see a photo of myself running or skiing, my knees and ankles are never bent as much as it felt like to me when I was doing it. So today I took a page out of the Carbons' running drills and tried to keep my lower body low, exaggerating the bends in my knees and ankles. It felt excessive but if I looked down, the amount of bend seemed about right.

- Chest up. (Or as one coach described it, "Nipples up!") Lower back straightened and pulled in to strengthen core and improve posture. "Fashion model" hips up front leading the way.

- Poles close to body. Push arms back farther and let poles go way back.

- Full weight shift.

- Weight on all toes spread out evenly like yoga mountain pose.

- Double poling with lots of core.

I did the Red loop first, which included several kilometers that were soft, slippery and not track set. There were also a couple of side loops that hadn't been groomed at all this year, so we had deep skier-groomed tracks. I met 'Bent and Coach LD on one of these ungroomed tracks at the top of a big hill. I gave them a small head start, then headed down. My skis were trapped in what Arthurd might call "death canyons" - although the tracks weren't icy, just narrow and 30 cm deep in heavy snow. As I looked at 'Bent and Coach LD, I was thinking that they'd better not fall because if they did, there would be no pretty way for me to stop in these conditions at this speed. Fortunately, they never fall. I admired the frost-covered trees for a moment, then looked back and they were both down in front of me near the bottom of the hill. !!! Turns out 'Bent had flipped when he hit a body-sized crater. Coach LD fell to miss him, and I immediately did the same. It was *really* hard to get up again as we wallowed around in the deep, heavy snow, then it took us all a few minutes to pull the snowballs out of our hats and jackets. My hair froze into a white, tangled mass. Yay, winter! :)

I've been looking forward to trying out my new Salomon Snowcross shoes for a long time so today seemed like a perfect day for it. I ran Bruce Loop with a couple of extra hills to test the spikes. Most of the trail was 10-15 cm of uncompacted snow - like running on a beach with fine sand the consistency of flour. The shoes felt great - warm, comfortable and good traction on packed snow. (No shoe gets traction in loose, deep snow.) I think I'll need a 2nd pair of light socks to make them feel snug enough but they should be great for O-Cup races. 'Bent flew by with BazingaDog set up for skijoring and BulletDog acting as his rabbit.

Rodney Yee - Power Yoga for Flexibility. This was good but today I could have used even more.

Snow at last! I'm eager to try out our shiny new membership at Highlands Nordic but it would have been a shame not to ski out our door today. After all, that's why we wanted to live in this area. 'Bent and I broke trail through 10-15 cm of snow. We never got more than 3 km from our house as the crow flies but we skied over 20 km of trail in Palgrave East and West (mostly without duplicating) and did about 1 km of bushwhacking on skis. Partway through, I got the idea of mapping some of the trails so we took a few strange routes. It was great Snowgaine training!

There is no base but conditions were pretty good. Some of the trails were straightforward while others were more "technical", e.g. scrambling over big fallen logs or weaving our way through reeds over our heads. (I'll admit that some of these trails are no longer open officially.) It wasn't a great place to practise our technique from the Silverstar clinics but we hope to do that tomorrow. Awesome to be skiing at home!

Hope everyone had a good Christmas! My Dad used to be a keen photographer, and he recently took the first step on a project that's been on my own list for a long time - getting hundreds of old Kodachrome slides scanned in. We had quite the Christmas slide show! These days I'm usually behind the camera when our family gets together for the holidays but it wasn't always that way.

Merry Christmas to my Attackpoint family. :)