Training Log Archive: Bash

Kudos to Carbon's Offset (Mike Brown) for his excellent performance at the 2nd hottest Western States Endurance Run in the event's 40-year history. He trained hard and developed his strength and running technique in addition to spending lots of time on mountain trails with Carbon. It all paid off when he was still running strongly after 100 miles! :) He finished early this morning in 25 hrs 50 min.

Everyone - including the winner - went more slowly this year in the heat. Over 100 of the 369 runners DNFed including big names like Hal Koerner, Dave Mackey, Gordy Ainsleigh (the original WS100 runner), Joelle Vaught and Bryon Powell (owner of iRunFar.com). That's right... CO beat all those top runners. ;)

For the play by play and some pics, check out the comment threads on CO's log. Congrats to Ang for being a terrific pacer for the final 40 miles - and to Ang's boyfriend Matt for working as support crew throughout a hot day and a long night.

To Shed.

From Shed.

Rode from Inglewood to The Shed via Forks of the Credit with 'Bent and Coach LD. After a great lunch, we came across from Erin to Belfountain and took trails back to Inglewood. It was a nice mix of riding - road, single track, rail trail, muck, rocks and puddles. We shouldn't have ridden the trails south of Grange Road though. It's clay so the drainage is poor, and the trails were pretty goopy in places. Fun trip!

Nice to be in the forest.





Coach LD had a close encounter with some goopy clay.

I want to give my ankle a little longer to heal so alas, no trail running today. I'm getting worried about my readiness for UTMB though so I went hill training with trekking poles, an ankle brace and the 6 kg pack I'd prepared for yesterday's WT course test. (Nice to use it for something!) I just hiked quickly instead of running. I'll be doing a lot of that in UTMB so it's worth practising. I found some good hills in Glen Haffy while listening to podcasts. Didn't see anyone else.

Carbon's Offset started running Western States at 5 a.m. California time. At 4:30 a.m., it was apparently "chilly". That will be a nice reprieve before the 40C temperature forecast later in the weekend. Updates will be on Carbon's Offset's log. Currently, they're under the comment "Sounds like you've got a..."
http://ar.attackpoint.org/log.jsp/user_10785

Also, there's lots of race info at the links I posted yesterday.

Excellent news offering scientific support for what I want to do anyway: Longer running races may be less fatiguing and damaging than shorter ones.

From Outside Magazine: "Compared to a group of runners competing in races a quarter to a half as long (e.g. UTMB), the Tor des Géants racers [300 km] showed less muscle damage, fewer inflammation markers, and less-altered neuromuscular function."

Perfect. Now I can rationalize like crazy
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/13...

Carbon's Offset is 2/3 of the way through the Western States Endurance Run 100-miler, and he is totally rocking it! He's paced himself like a champ and has been steadily rising through the ranks. Ang is running with him now to pace him through the last 40 miles. Temperatures reportedly got up to 108F on the course but it's cooled down nicely now. He should finish around mid-day tomorrow.

Standing 1-legged with eyes closed to improve proprioception. I seem to do better on my bad ankle. Go figure.

Harps and I had a WT course test fail today. A section of the 401 was closed, backing up traffic on Friday of a holiday weekend and messing up our already-tight schedule for a long day on the road and in the woods. On top of that, the updated forecast of 40 mm of rain with thunderstorms didn't bode well for our biking speed on trails, let alone our holiday weekend happiness. I love playing on the Canadian Shield but some days there's no place like home.

Congratulations to Carbon's Offset who's doing the prestigious and notoriously-hard-to-get-into Western States Endurance 100-mile Run tomorrow just 13 months after his first ultra. He arrived in California in time to enjoy a "massive heat wave" in the western U.S. The forecast for tomorrow is 39C, rising to 40C on Sunday. And it's a little more humid than usual.

Ang will be pacing him for the final 40 miles so I hope she packed her cooling shirt.

You can follow checkpoint times here. He's bib #108. The race starts at 5 am Pacific time tomorrow, Saturday June 29.
http://www.ultralive.net/ws100/webcast.php

Live race coverage (consolidated Twitter feeds) from iRunFar.
http://www.irunfar.com/2013/06/live-coverage-of-th...

Race website is www.wser.org

Go, Carbon's Offset!!

Had a nice e-mail exchange today with the new vice president of one of Canada's best-managed companies. It's great when these high-powered executives turn out to be regular folks who drink beer and pull on their well-used Spandex tights one leg at a time, just like the rest of us.

P.S. Congrats on the new job, FB! :)

More Wilderness Traverse course exploration!

Bob and I have been thinking a lot about route choice in the paddle sections this year. That isn't always easy to do since the geography may not support it. When we did our paddle/portage test two weeks ago, we arrived at a planned checkpoint by following our Route #1. (Actually, we'd meant to follow Route #2 but didn't have the heart to leave our nice trail for an overgrown one - which would have been a better choice.) Today we went out for a monster paddle-portage day to try Routes #3, 4 and 5 to that same checkpoint so we could figure out what to do for the race.



We were happy to see that black flies are over! :) However, mosquitoes and FDFs have moved in to take their place. We got a reprieve whenever we got a breeze on open water but it got nasty in the woods at times. I wore a bug shirt most of the day although I rarely put the head net on.

We passed by some spectacular, remote places where it would be wonderful to camp or make a lunch stop. (If only WT testing days included lunch breaks!) Our paddle-in checkpoint volunteers will have nice gigs this year.











Some of our routes weren't obvious. We sometimes started up (or down) a creek not knowing if we'd be able to get our canoe through.



In this case, we didn't. But there was a Plan B.



With the kind of exploring we do, we've had to develop decent skills for dealing with beaver dams. These beavers were some of the more industrious ones we've come across!





Following the beavers around took us into some cool ponds that are seldom visited.





The story of the day was our new discipline: "Portage-O". You just choose a body of water you want to go to, take a bearing and canoe-whack until you get there. Some of the terrain is fairly open but we went through some thicker, thornier stuff where I absolutely did not envy Bob with the 65 lb canoe on his shoulders. I carried a decent load too - a big rubberized canoe pack containing all our gear, food and spare water bottles.



I'm always amazed to see Bob walk into a wall of forest and somehow maneuver a heavy canoe through it. We did over 10 km of portaging today, and it wasn't all on trails. He only had one misstep when he tripped and had to put his hands out as he face planted. (Naturally, this happened on a very nice trail - not while doing anything difficult.) He hit the ground and waited an agonizing half-second for the canoe to land on his back. Ouch! That was hard to watch.

After we'd tried all 3 routes, it was late enough that we saw a nice sunset.



We kept paddling in the fading light and landed near our car just as it became impossible to see anything without a headlamp. Perfect timing! Now we need to look at all the data we've collected from our two trips and select our favourite checkpoint locations.

Super fun day on the beautiful Canadian Shield!

Still sorting through photos but Bob and I put in an awesome day of Wilderness Traverse paddle/portage exploration - out for almost 12 hours elapsed time. In the sea of bugs, we only stopped moving for one significant food and drink break while a breeze pushed us along a lake in the right direction.

We invented a new discipline called Portage-O, which explains why it took so long to do 57 km. Finished after dark and home at 1 a.m. Good HTFU training! Since Bob is the one who carries the 65-lb canoe, this may be the only testing mission where he was more tired than I was at the finish so I got to drive us back south.

Update on Jason "Hammer" Lane's result at RAAM. It seemed that he'd done pretty well for himself but I had no idea *how* well!

After 9 days and 16 hrs we arrived at the dock in Annapolis on Friday morning. In what was the strongest starting field ever, we went out hard and raced our plan.

Finishing in 7th place, Hammer was the only non-professional rider to go under 10 days, won honours as the Top North American finisher, and smashed the existing Canadian record by 16hrs.