Training Log Archive: Ari-o

Two days in NYC with a cold, sucking down day/nyQil to stay functional. Did a few minutes of med ball at a hotel this morning. Hope sleep tonight will have me better tomorrow.

Played med ball with my dad a willing thrower.

Still battling a cold but that's no reason to ski a 25k rollerski in Central Park. Two laps around the park, and some fun times on the streets there and back. Not too fast with some traffic, slow wheels in the cold and a hacking cough every now and then. Now to go eat all the food!

Hit the stairs this morning in the rain and wind. Not feeling great, so I took some recovery time on some downhills, but didn't go particularly slow. Luckily I had dry clothes to change in to for the run home, because the alternative was being very, very wet.

Run to NP and part way home. Rain!

Cold run. Not that it was cold (it was drizzly) but that I had a cold. Felt sort of okay, and only started hacking lots when I got to Whole Foods for dinner.

Well-deserved day off. And getting a cold. Great

Event: NEOC: Blue Hills Traverse
 

After yesterday's fun, there was a pretty good chance I was going to get halfway through the Traverse, sit down in the woods, and not be able to go any further. But apparently training from the summer has held up, and I can go do lots of stupid things in a weekend and still walk. So that's good.

Cold day for the run. Carpooled over to the start with 7 in a minivan with Aims talking about how much he's skiing up the downhill slopes at Wachusett. Idea? It is a long drive. We ran around a bit (waiting on someone else's track, i.e. Alex) and found the start in the woods. It was quite chilly, so we stood down below a hill for a while, then were marched to a trail for the start.

1–I started running east with Giacomo and someone else, then took a hard right, avoiding the green swamp. My legs were a bit heavy from yesterday so I bid them adieu and fell in with some others. Went straight from the trail junction to the open trail, due south using the sun as my compass, then up some craggy rock instead of around after the road, losing time. Better choice would have been to stay east to the road, run the road and then hit that trail. Hit that trail and followed it around to the control rather than bashing. Probably lost more time.
2–Trail ran around the dark green and then straight up the hill to the next trail around the green. Followed the spur down to the right hill. Spike.
3–Went way low to avoid the rocks. Helped up the hill by some other folks to the control.
4–handrailed off the highway fence, which I thought was a bad idea but then I hit the road before everyone else. Spiked the control by looking at my map, again before others.
5–Running now with Ben G and someone else (maybe Jonathan-who-dropped-his-map). I was going to trail around to the right but then the trail over was steps and an easy November Projectesque run up. Then at the top the trail I wanted to take was closed and well brushed in. GAH. So I had to bash about in the thicket before regaining it. Which was fine, because when I found everyone else, they were looking around for the control, which may or may not have been behind the right rock near the "trail approx" trail. (Note to self, when setting courses, avoid "trail approx" areas.)
6–Bashed down to the road, followed other to control. Spike?
7–Back up to the road, followed now-angsty Alex around to spike. Well, thanks to Alex.
8–On-road feed. Spike.
9–Spiked ahead of Alex.
10–Spiked behind Alex.
11–Alex and someone else went left, but I went right. It was the right way to go, as I got there a minute ahead of everyone else. However, I couldn't find the control (maybe because it was mis-hung) and since Alex said I went to the right place, spike. (Apparently this was a mistake since it took time to find the gd control.)
12–So excited about my good orienteering and route choices, I did some more good O, right towards 13. It wasn't that far out of my way, though, and I hit 12 with everyone else.
13–And then we all bashed over to 13.
14–Very proud of this O. Took the trail around to the junction to the west with Jonathan-who-dropped-his-map (JWDHM) following. Went left to the end of the green and started counting spurs (out loud, to JWDHM). That helped. Counted three spurs and walked right to the control. Well, ran/bashed through a tree.
15–Saw Alex running alongside from a weird angle. "You looking for 14?" Yup. Up. Bye Alex. But then I slowly navigated through the woods th spike the next control but she did so more quickly. One joggle to avoid a greenbriar patch, though. This is where I yelled to Alex "look, Alex, I am doing the orienteery thing! yay!"
16–Ugh. The control was actually pretty easy to find. You found the slight dip in the road (slight) and went north to the rootstock. The issue is that there were about a dozen rootstocks in the woods there, and this was the only one mapped. Note to self: don't put controls in the woods if the map is not correct.
17–Trail, stone wall, spur, spike.
18–Field, bridge, spike.
19–Took the trail until I saw rocks, found the curve in the road, attacked the cliff, control. Really helped to be narrating to JWDHM.
Finish–Took a roundabout route down the road, and I think I dropped a place. Oh, well.

Then I got cold in the wind, ate soup and cookies, and went home. Fun event! The map leaves a little to be desired, but I navigated very well and made good route choices. It helps that there's a lot of trail running. I was worried this would be tons or rocks, and while a couple of times I hit my ankle a bit (and bashed up my body) it was good running. It helped that the O wasn't that hard and that most of the controls were relatively easy to find, although I think that after deliberately going around Lynn Woods yesterday it helped me today (same thing happened this spring with Fells/Rain followed by Nobscot). I certainly gave back some time, but my legs felt surprisingly not awful after yesterday. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Everyone parked in the "wrong" lot and we ran around to the start. Had to run to stay warm.

Traverse - Splits

Event: CSU Lynn Woods Iltarastit #5
 

My first Iltaratsit! Because after a 4 hour rollerski, what should you do? Go orienteering. Especially when there's a long O race the next day. I gave myself three degrees of difficulty on this run:

1. I neglected to grab a clue sheet (not a big deal, really)
2. I offered to pick up some controls since I was going out so late (kind of a pain bashing with controls).
3. I skied 4 hours this morning and then an hour later started running!

So that happened.

Actually, while I ran slowly, I managed to keep contact with the map the whole time, and only had a few errors, none major. Controls:

1–Trails and then attacked from the south.
2–Contoured slowly, but pretty much spiked it.
3–Followed my compass well, but to the wrong outcrop.
4–Should have compassed, but took the trail instead. Attacked a little south through lots of green. Saw Brendan!
5–Followed compass well, then didn't realize it was a beginner trail jct control until I was bashing down through the woods.
6–Followed the trail well, and then bashed down to the dry marsh, and then made a big mistake. I was north of where I thought and crossed the marsh and climbed the hill on the other side for a while before realizing I was way off and finding the control. Whoops!
7–Spike!
8–Ran trail to a beginner control and picked it up. From there I made a parallel error one reentrant north, but caught the two big-ass rocks and attacked well from there.
9–Dropped the controls I'd picked up (beginner and 8) at the big-ass rocks since I'd be back through and made another error. Too far right and hit the trail (hard with the nubbly terrain) Then found the control from that, but quite a ways off.
10–Wound up a little north but caught myself, then found the control.
11–Contoured around to find the reentrant with the big-ass rocks, and then climbed out of it to spike the control off the marsh.
12–Lagging by now, with a big pile of controls and wound up in a field of greenbriar out of the control, but slowly spiked this one.
13–Dropped the controls for Alex. Took the trail down to the junction, bashed through to the next trail, then attacked off the trail curve. Spike!
14–Legs feeling heavy, but navigation was good. Spike!
15–I was in the right place, but feel like control was near a rock pile and not a big rock. But the flagging on a tree sure helped; I should have gone there in the first place.
16–Went to the trail, ran to the finish. Actually ran!

So, pretty much good times. Never got completely lost like at Bear Brook, no injuries (like at Bear Brook) and good visibility was nice. This is fun; hopefully I'll be around for a few more next time it goes on. Thanks Alex/Larry/Sara Mae for organization! Now, 5:30 logged today and Blue Hills Traverse tomorrow. I'm going to die.

C • O after ski 3

Left at 7:03 for a quick ski over to Back Bay. No traffic, and made the train with plenty of time to spare. Kind of a weird crowd on the early outbound to Worcester. Wondering if anyone is making an early morning, long distance walk of shame. Of course, everyone was probably wondering "what are those things?!"

Wahoo finally did the Boston Marathon rollerski! So much fun. Pretty much good pavement the whole way, not really sketch hills, and not too much traffic on a Saturday morning (but if I did it again, I'd probably try on a Sunday AM). Shoulder felt good, little blisters on my hands were tolerable, and weather was great, with a nice tailwind at time.

First 3 miles are mostly uphill from the train station to Hopkinton. Train was right on time, but the ADA ramp down to the road was serpentine, and the first bit of road was under construction for a bridge construction. Then a nice roll up to Hopkinton.

I stopped and took a picture and then wheee downhill. There was a utility trench in the roadway that was annoying, but downhill with not too much traffic. Passed a letter carrier in Ashland who asked if I was going all the way to Boston. Yup! Sure am! Framingham had some traffic—one guy pulled out of a Dunks and almost hit me and I got to do the old thwap thwap with the ski basket on his hood—but the angled railroad crossings are actually easier on skis than a bike because you can kind of ski across them. Then in to Natick as the clock struck 10 (literally), with a nice shoulder, some brick crosswalks in Natick, then a good shoulder and good and then great pavement in to Wellesley. Half way!

Traffic through Wellesley but nothing scary and then whee down the big hill to the Charles. Nice to have only a single lane to the 128 interchange, which was probably the sketchiest part of the trip. Highway interchanges are bad for pedestrians, cyclists and rollerskiers. Then another sketchy mile on Route 16 in to Newton with two lanes and no shoulder; apparently there's a plan to narrow it to one lane and add bike lanes. That would be nice.

Past the house I grew up in and right by The Firehouse. Snack time! Ah, my bike ride to school. Up that hill, nice tailwind across Lowell Street, then up Heartbreak, then a nice tailwind across Centre Street, then a nice climb up new pavement to the top of the hills. Roll down to BC was not bad at all, just have to trust in your slowing abilities down by Lake Street.

From there on in it's good skiing, wide roads and not much traffic, except for the downgrades and lights. If you can slow yourself down, it's fine. Took it easy down Chestnut Hill Avenue and stepped in to the middle of the streetcar tracks before hanging a left on an all-way ped signal. Then had to watch all the tracks through Cleveland Circle. Two iffy hills from there on out, at Washington Square and after Coolidge Corner down to Saint Paul Street. Just need to not get going fast and scrub speed, that's it.

Then in through Kenmore, which wasn't bad, and across in to the left-side bike lane under the tunnel under Mass Ave. Whee! Then a right two blocks the wrong way on Hereford but damnit I'm rollerskiing the whole thing (in a bike lane, no less!) and a left on to Boylston for a pretty nice ski down to Copley! Got a picture at the finish line, then skied in to the wind home to go to Iltaratsit!

Felt really great for a ±60k ski. This marathon ski is something that we should all do next spring or summer, some Sunday morning. It's just loads of fun, totally safe if you pay attention and know how to go down hills (and a bike escort in back with lots of lights would be great) and it feels really awesome rolling down Beacon, through Kenmore and in to Copley. I mean, it's probably awesomer to run the gosh darned thing, but that's not as ski-specific.

advanced - Splits

5 hills. Old school.

With added burpees in between. I'm all for NP, and all, but the adding of "spice" is beginning to get a bit out of hand. I'm perfectly happy to show up for hills and do hills, and to show up for strength and do strength, but it really doesn't do any good to do a little strength intermixed with the hills. Just let me run my hills damnit.

</rant>

(Apparently AP eats HTML tags and you have to create them with HTML.)

Felt pretty slow given the activities of the last two days. Certainly didn't go all out. I did try to bound the first block at the bottom of the hill before the grade really sets in, which made it harder. Okay, serious snow speculation time. And trying to figure out why a feature on http://skitrailreport.com doesn't work (but most of the site does! post!).

Stupid burpees. <rant> Going to stop doing these one of these days. It's too close to crossfit bullshit, which is a made up thing to injure yourself and become better at crossfit. Apparently burpees started off as a rudimentary fitness measurement tool, which doesn't mean it's a good training tool. </rant>

So apparently this week I've been doing intensity (charging up stairs yesterday, 3k TT today) but not volume. I am planning to change that! Saturday I think I can swing the 50k Marathon rollerski followed by the Iltarastit at Lynn Woods, and then the Blue Hill Traverse with jelly legs on Sunday. That would be awesome. On a scale of 1 to driving to Ontario, this is closer to Ontario. But it's on this side of driving to Craftsbury for 600m of frozen slush. I am not doing that. Yet.

C • yet 4

Run over to Harvard and a few go-rounds around the track.

TT run around the Harvard Track. Apparently I thought 7:00 meant gun time, not warm-up time. Whatever. My legs hurt from yesterday's stairs, and every time I looked up I saw the stadium and remembered why my legs hurt. Started out a few seconds behind getting @strava started but then picked up some speed. Somehow Strava thinks it was 2.1 miles, but 3k is 1.86 miles, so there. Splits:

1:25 1:27 1:29 1:34 1:34 1:34 1:23

So I could have gone harder through the second half before pouring it on for the last lap. But not bad for wicked sore calves and hamstrings. Fun thing to do, thanks Alex for organizing. Now, 10 hours to November Project which everyone should come to!

Run to Life Alive for mmm mmm dinner and then home.

Some leg swings and plyo stuff staying warm before the TT.

Felt mediocre on the way to November Project, but once I got running I felt great. 30˚ and halfway through I had my shirt off and was pounding up the stairs and going down fast enough that a) I didn't recover and b) didn't get cold. Felt at the end like I'd just skied a 10k hard, which is good, I think. Not sure if it as L3 or L4 but I almost ralphed, so L4 it is! Then I put on lots and lots of clothes. Ran the stairs at a climb rate of 1134 m/hr, which is pretty good considering I descended 1134m as well.

Busy day of running around from one thing to the next to the next. Some Hubway trips mixed in, and a community meeting where people yelled "DON'T TAKE OUR PARKING FOR HUBWAY SPACES, THIS IS A TRAVESTY" and then told me that I am lucky that I haven't been mugged yet walking around Cambridge. Yeah, that's a thing. Crazies.

C • Travesty 4

Run to "deck"

Another not-deck NP. Turns out this might be good, since it was 7 minutes of burpees. The problem? My shoulder is still a bit broken from last week's adventure (Hammer). So I favored my right arm on the push-up part. Then my right elbow started screaming. So I felt extra weak. Oh well.

So here's the thing. If you stay up until 3 a.m. drinking and then get 6 hours of sleep, you can go for a run and feel great. If you do that two nights in a row, no matter how much of a run you go on, you will feel awful.

Which happened.

Lost track of time running Central Park. Such a nice day out. A bit warm, but a good way to sweat out a hangover.

Only three hills today, but three climbs per hill, including a set of stairs. Good times, if a bit chilly in a t shirt and shorts!

Short run after work. Nice weather for it. Then I got to a ton of cops and fire trucks on Pearl Street. Fire! Or something.

Fun day at NP this morning. It was "fire drill" day and were supposed to do push ups every so often. Guess who's not doing push ups? This guy! The whole shoulder thing is pretty much not happy with any resistance. I did squats (the alternative) and my shoulder only hurt a little from the pounding. I had my jacket off about a quarter of the way through, since it was warm (25). Then, pictures.

C • Shoulder 2

C • Tiara 3

Legs still a little stiff from the RTH so a recovery run was in order. Also, going to Whole Foods was in order, to buy more things to put in soup. (And, instead of on-sale whole chickens, we got rain checks for on-sale whole chickens, which is extra awesome, since now we can get chickens whenever we want!) Run was fine, and it was cold and smelled like winter, which was nice. I dressed right, too, which was great. Bring on winter!

Running home with a bag of groceries!

Hmm. Off day I think. Recovery from Raid means I don't want to do lower body. So I could do some core, right? Wrong. I hit my shoulder hard enough that I can't spin my left arm around. There goes the fun on the rollerboard. Or rollerskis. Or core. Maybe I can do sit ups? Harrumph.

Whee Team Giggles!

Alex emails me on Monday: do you want to go to Ontario to go running and be crazy? And I say "yeah, pretty much." Then they couldn't find another woman to be on their team (this is Alex and Ali, of course) and I was it. With a good chance to win the mixed division, and a decent chance to win overall.

Off we went 500 miles to Canada. And in the morning we woke up early, I PRSed which was very good and we went to the start. Alex and Ali looked the map over, and I made unhelpful remarks. Then we took a bus and without any warning started.

First control was sort of a pain to get to; we didn't seem to lose much time by running the road rather than through the brambles and burrs. I was to go to the furthest but easiest-to-find control on the split-up piece, and had to go down a slope and then scramble up it. This was a theme of the day. Then a trail run back to meet the rest of Team Giggles. Also a theme.

Then we sort of galloped through high brush which was kind of gross and missed some faint trails. We were a few seconds behind another team but just missed a stoplight before a checkpoint so we had to wait and couldn't get a cross. Bummer. We did, got checked, and ran off to the second part. Here was orienteering. The great thing about running with two of the top orienteers in the US is that you don't have to look at your map. At all.

A couple controls in we had to jump through a stream. Bye bye dry feet! Luckily my feet currently are in callus-not-blister phase, so this is good. Alex fell behind a bit and we ran with a bunch of others, including two other coed teams, to 5. Ali and I overran it, but Alex yelled us back. But we had competition, and gave them some time with a quick bathroom break.

Then we went in to the part of the course which had all the roads blocked out. It turns out some would have been helpful, but we weren't supposed to use them. The orienteering here was not too bad, but I left it mostly to the rest of the A team. We also utilized the bungee system for Ali to tow Alex (because I have bungees in my car) which worked well; although it meant I couldn't bungee my water bottle to my back, which works VERY well. Learned something new.

We ran out of the road section and in to the woods. We passed the other coed team and I found a hole in a fence which helped us out a little; then it was in to the woods. Thanks to some good navigating, we went right to the flag, then gave some time back bobbling the climb in to 9. Plus we got some nasty burrs and stumbled along pulling them off.

We cut through a subdivision and gained some time (my idea!) and then went up and down a couple of wet, clayey cliffs. I was sort of okay going down the cliffs, but good going up them. Hooray for huts and November Project. Leading in to 10 I found myself in navigator position which was, well, a thing, but found the right way to go and then gave navigation back to the others.

10 to 11 was another steep climb uphill and then trail cruise, but it started spitting rain pretty heavily as we came in to the feed. I grabbed some water and several twizzlers, which are a great feed! Chew them up and stick them in your cheek, and it's like gatorade. Yum. We went up a wet reentrant, then had a very steep climb. I spit out the last bits of twizzlers so I could put my map in my mouth for the climb, which was certainly good for climbing, and only kinda tasted like mud.

12-13 was a trail run where I didn't pay attention to the map. 14-16 was "the void" which was moderately difficulty orienteering, but, again, I let the actual orienteers do the orienteering and didn't look at my map. 17 was back on a trail, and we had a glorious run along the trail to 18.

Then things started getting interesting. Most of the run to 19 was pretty fantastic but then we got to a slidey downhill. I got going a little too fast and went ass-over-teakettle and somersaulted and then slid forward. Got up. Head it? Nope. Cuts and abrasions? None. Dislocated shoulder nope? Cursing? Oh yes. Time to get up and start running again. Yeah team Giggles!

Second interesting bit. At the start, they said "Do Not Go Across 16-Mile Creek." They didn't say "people who do will be DQed" but almost got there. We didn't look at the route choice because they said don't do it. Another team there did. They did the waist-deep wade and beat us by 4 minutes. We could have, because the climb out of there was brutal. I think they should have done a better job at saying "the river is out of bounds" because if someone had taken a slip in the current it would have been bad news.

So up, up, up. Trail run. DOWN (but more control). Feed. Cross the river. Up up up. DOWN! I got to have a very nice ski down the slope in grass and mud, which was great, and then just glissaded the rest down to the river bottoms. This got us to 22. We punched, and then had another brutal climb up a muddy clay slope. I crawled the last bit as my feet got no traction.

Then it was on to pipeline ROWs, roads and trails. Run to the bridge and write down the number. Then run in to the wind some more and off to the finish. We finished 6 minutes back of the winning men's team, and the first four teams were within 2 minutes, so that must have been fun to have been in sight. We were 8 minutes ahead of the next, so we put a lot of time on the coeds behind us in the navigation and big hills. Had we taken the river we would have been two minutes off. And pretty cold.

We had lunch, got our awards, took pictures, and it was off to the races on the QEW, by the falls of Niagara and east on 90 to Massachusetts.

Team Giggles

After 500+ unlogged miles, a couple logged ones with Team Giggles. Happy times, except I felt pretty lethargic from 9 hours sitting in a car. Also, Canada!

Ran some O. I went slow and deliberately with a few fast ups and downs. And guess what? I can actually orienteer when a) it's not all stupid rocks and b) my leg is working. The second part is big, actually. Working legs are important for orienteering, it turns out.

The terrain was great and I was able to navigate by both contours and by compass, which was good. I got to 12 and navigated towards 13 and then decided I didn't want to play in mud/trees/stupid so I ran back. And was the last one back but the only one with dry, not-too-muddy feet.

Guessing here at everything since I didn't have a time or track. Ran back about a mile and a half. Ran a bit pretty fast, but then had to push a bit up the final climb, which was a pretty good climb there, eh.

Good times at NP today. Brought a couple of newbies and ran with one of them up the hill. Decided not to do more than five repeats and not go all out since I do have some trail race orienteering thingy this weekend.

Weird eating habits do not make for good runs.

Ran home from Microcenter with a thing so that we can listen to tunes on the drive to Canada.

Remember that #deckaday thing? When you don't do it for a week, it's a whole. lot. harder. Ugh. Muddled through in decent time; will try to do this every day or two.

Felt really good doing 50 sections today. Think I stayed in a pretty good L3 most of the way around (need a HRM) and finished the 50-flight workout in shorter than last time, and then scurried off to work.

Busy day, so unplanned day off!

Pretty much closest NP ever. 1 mile round trip.

Little sprints across the basketball court a few times.

Planks, wall jumps, sumo squats and some other thing. Not that hard, actually.

Quick run around the river. Cold! Ran through a closed tunnel by the Longfellow and avoided a road crossing. Fun!

Hike in to Zool. A little running, but mostly walking. Planned to go for a long trail run there but took a nap instead. Yum.

Run out of Zool. Ran ahead to go get my rollerboard and put it on top of my car. It is finally coming somewhere more useful than behind the Zealand packhouse! Like, my backyard! This is very exciting. It didn't even blow off the roof of my car. Success!

Ran to see the parade. So much fun. Lots of running down the middle of streets. Saw Lincoln photographing. And some baseball players, too.

Back of the hills, with burpees in between. Having woken up FOR NO REASON at 4:15, I was feeling pretty slow. I didn't hurt myself from burpees (last time was a rock that made my hand bleed) but later managed to kneel in dog shit. I can't say I liked the short hills; I rather like longer runs. Also it was warm and muggy. Good morning.

So, 72 burpees in 12 sets. I don't really get burpees. It's like a push up but then you don't do another push up. Just do push ups. Or dips or whatever. It seems gimmicky.