Training Log Archive: Bash

Happy Birthday, 'Bent!

I had to sneak over to Gourmandissimo to get chocolate truffle cake and deliver it to BGY's house for the birthday feast, so I didn't join 'Bent's group run. I went for a run around Glen Haffy afterward. Snow would be nicer but I love running in the cold. I listened to Randy and Kyle's podcast about ARWC, which was enlightening.

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. :)