Training Log Archive: Bash

A little outdoor running, jumping and ski bounding in the dark - some cardio mixed with strength.

I'd planned to go out longer but just as I was leaving, I got an agitated phone call from 'Bent. As he started to run home from work along Hwy 50, AdventureDog was startled by a revving truck, yanked his head backwards out of his collar and ran away. 'Bent was pretty sure he saw ADog take the underpass beneath the highway, which is their usual route home. From there, it is more than 4 km to our place with a number of choices to make in the trail network, as well as a golf course and two more roads to cross. AdventureDog had never done it alone, certainly not in the dark. Yikes.

By the time he phoned me, 'Bent had already gone more than 1 km along the commute route while calling AdventureDog's name. (Which is "Logan" when he isn't on Attackpoint.) No sign of him.

I was dressed to go out training so I pulled on some extra layers and grabbed a whistle. I couldn't go too far from the house in case the poor pooch somehow made it here but he would hear my whistle if he was nearby. 'Bent and I have been through this kind of thing a few times with our four dogs over the years and we've had occasional differences of opinion regarding appropriate collar tightness. My head was spinning. I was thinking that I would really miss him - and the dog too. ;)

Luckily, 'Bent found ADog about 2 km away from where he had disappeared into the darkness without a collar. He had crossed a busy highway (using an underpass), navigated from a trail network up a steep hill onto a golf course, crossed another road and located the small opening in the fence to get into Palgrave Forest & Wildlife Area where he made the correct turns on the trails to get himself almost to Duffy's Lane before 'Bent finally caught up. Phew!!!! Our little boy is paying more attention than we think - thank goodness.

Hard Core Live with Caron.

One of Caron's infamous Hard-Harder-Hardest classes.

After pretending to be patient to make sure my bronchitis was truly gone, I took the plunge and did a twilight trail run at Glen Haffy with AdventureDog. It was a gorgeous day and tomorrow doesn't look as nice.

I have a 50K next weekend and my only real training for it was the 50K I did a month ago - and I was very poorly trained for that. So...

The first half of the run was 50/50 snow-ice and wet leaves, which turned out to be great because the footing was so uncertain and slick that I had to go easy. I tried to run slowly up all the hills but I also ran slowly down. The Dingle trail was mostly bare; the valley must be a little warmer.

I made the rookie error of typing "sunset Palgrave" into Google and failing to check the date - not to mention that I failed to consult my own memory from yesterday. I now have two things in common with Rory Bosio since I had to finish the last 2K of my run by the light of my iPhone. (The other thing Rory and I have in common is that she entered UTMB both years that I did, however, our commonality diverges there since she won both times! At least my light never failed.)

AdventureDog isn't supposed to run off-leash in the dark but he stood out in his anti-hunter orange vest and came back whenever I called him.

So far my lungs seem OK with it but if they're going to protest, it'll be tomorrow. It felt amazingly good to be back on the trails.

Caron's boot camp with 'Bent. We were suspicious when the circuit training was only 4 stations X 4 minutes with 1 minute transfer time. After we finished that, she revealed her evil plan - Tabatas for the rest of the class. How can 20 seconds seem so long? The killer for me was the set (8 sets, actually) of fast partial pushups with elbows tight against the body, isolating triceps. I just collapsed on my face for the 10 second breaks. It's ski poling season so having some triceps would come in handy.

In the words of Commander Cristina (or whatever her rank used to be), I may have unsicked myself at last. This was the first time in the past month that my head and lungs have felt normal all day. Fingers crossed...

First ski of the season!!

'Bent, AdventureDog and I headed out the back door into Palgrave West and K-Bash Woods. It was the kind of ski you would never do in spring after being spoiled by several months of gliding along rolling trails and wading through backwoods powder. But in November, we're happy to head into the forest and ski on sticky, wet snow with occasional leaves, pine needles and grass. We'll take whatever winter we can get! We did some bushwhacking and trail clearing. Awesome. :)

O Cup Kick-Off - the start of another fun winter orienteering season. We even had snow!

Thanks to the Stars (and to their childcare providers) for putting on three events in a day for the price of one - two O Cups and a training session in between, all at different locations. It was truly above and beyond.

The first and longest race was the Kick-Off at Homer Watson Park. It's not a huge park but there's a wide variety of terrain and some of it is really hilly since this is the edge of the Grand River Valley.

I mostly had a good race although I oriented my map like I'm supposed to, then proceeded to read an upside-down 9 as a 6, so my route was: 5-9-6-7-8-9. I wondered why Nick Duca didn't follow me when I bushwhacked down that hill!

I ran at a very moderate pace since the last of my bronchitis is still not gone. The real test will be how I feel tomorrow. Last week I felt like crap for a few days after running on Saturday.

I won a pair of socks as the top woman. Good thing AdventureGirl! wasn't there. ;) I left a big bottle of rum on the prize table, which was scooped by the junior winner.

Sadly, my Ambit failed to record the middle part of the course; I guess it hadn't found Kitchener yet. It seemed to record altitude OK. I've tried to guess distance from someone else's track.

Memory-O Training at Breithaupt Park

This was a fun exercise and a great way to use a small area. At the start there were a few copies of the map but we couldn't take them with us. There were about a dozen control circles. In addition to the start/finish, two of the controls were marked "M" and you would find a copy of the map there instead of a flag.

The idea was to visit every control, finding it by memory. If you could, you would try to remember the controls on the way to an "M" control, then you could check the map again and try to remember a few more. Fun!

O Cup #2 - Starry Nights - the first-ever Night O Cup
McLennan Park

So much fun! We were running around a hilly area, mostly open, sometimes through vetch (thanks for the ID, Outdoorsmama) that grabbed our shins and tried to fling us onto our faces. I only went down once but I caught myself a few times. I made a note today to tell Caron how much yoga helps with balance during orienteering races.

We also ran on grass, through open woods, through playgrounds and parking lots and around a school.

I made a 1:30 error near the beginning when I somehow thought I was running past #6 on my way to #1. So confident was I that I didn't even deviate 2 meters to check the code. But it *was* #1, which should have been obvious in hindsight. On the bright side, it meant I got to run through more vetch.

There were lights bobbing around everywhere and a lot of smiles. I think Hammer accidentally stumbled upon a new slogan for the O Cup Series. ;))

As soon as I finished, cold rain mixed with wet snow started pummelling us, which made the drive home an adventure.

Thank you, Stars!