Training Log Archive: revy

Whitehorse ride with Courtney, Liz, Derek, Anna and Ashley. We drove up Mt Mac with a plan of riding Blown Away/Starbuck's Revenge, Goat and then back to Anna's via the Mt Mac trails. We started in the alpine with great views west towards Fish Lake. A bit cool and cloudy but that just made it look very moody. A few good climbs today despite the shuttle assist. Blown Away had some fun optional jumps. A lot of the trails were very loamy - lots of root drops and so much loam that the landings felt very soft. I'm curious how the trails will hold up to traffic but for now very fun to ride. The lower trails got harder and Kid Vicious had some great rock features and steep chutes. I decided to ride back up the road to retrieve the car while the girls continued on to Anna's house. Derek had to quit after Blown Away as his tire failed (which helped as he drove one car down). Can't say I've ever seen such a failure as it essentially herniated sideways in one spot making it unrideable. Ride up the road wasn't too bad - took 40 minutes?

GPS failed halfway and lost the initial track.

COC Middle M35

Ankle was pretty sore and swollen this morning. Wasn't sure how much I would be able to run but once I warmed up and got the adrenalin flowing it seemed acceptable. Clean run today (AP splits says I lost about a minute total over three controls which seems about right). Nice positive race to finish the week. Lots of short legs where the challenge was hitting the control clean. Felt like I started slow but once I had a handful of controls under my belt I picked up the pace. Ran with Rachel May for a fair bit of the middle and then was slightly in front of here for the last third. Other than my route to the spectator control (was too careful as thought the control was not at the field boundary) was quite happy with my routes on the last several controls.

COC Middle - C-10 - Splits

COC Long M35

Long day out there today - partially because the course was long and partially because I lost about 20 minutes on one control. A lot of light green on the map and add that to 1:15000 scale made reading contours hard for me. Very hard to figure out up vs down (so many depressions that looked like hills!). Controls 1-5 were slow but not too bad. Going to 6 I thought I was leaving the trail at a much different spot (underestimated how far I had gone and made the map fit my AP - off course this didn't go well and I had a hard time relocating when the big grassy open slope that should have been an obvious catching feature couldn't be found (should have kept going). Anyway went one direction then the next before finally relocating near the start which was about 800m from the control.

Managed to refocus and continue reasonably well. Small dumb error leaving 9 when I went the wrong direction on the lake, another one from 10-11 where I didn't cut across between trails soon enough. 11 to 12 took me way longer than it should have as I spent too much time trying to stay in contact with the map when I should have just moved fast until I found the big depression. 12-13 was a poor route choice leg (left seemed to save elevation at first glance but really didn't when I realized it was taking me way too far off the line). The rest of the course went OK but felt really slow and my lack of running fitness began to show. My extra distance certainly didn't help. Lots of difficult running today too as the light green forest seemed to have a lot of bushes and mossy holes. Twisted both ankles - the right is pretty angry afterwards.

Very scenic course though, lots of interesting legs, and a nice journey around the map. I guess I ended up with a medal but it wasn't my best showing;)

COC Long - C-10 - Splits

Back to Montana Mtn with Courtney, James and Wakana. We used the uptrail twice today - would not say it is the funnest climb to do multiple times. The descents were great today though. Maggie's and Sporting Wood had some fun small jumps and skinnies. Upper wolverine and goat had great rock features. AK DNR was a fast and flowy berm fest to finish it off.

NAOC M35 sprint warm up and race.

Ugh... can I have a redo? Terrible orienteering on my part today with a huge blow up. Biggest mistakes were in the latter forest controls where the scale really screwed me up and I overan three controls. To make matters worse I did a terrible job of realizing this and didn't make rational corrections (in retrospect) running around with no plan. Also had a few mistakes early on (was looking for 3 before 2 which means I had a great split from 2 to 3, poor route to 4, got confused at 9 due to misreading the map symbols).

I should probably practice more... upon reflection this was only the 4th sprint I've ever done.

C • Sprints are hard! 1

NAOC Sprint - C-6b - Splits

Big loop day at Carcross. Climbed up the climb trail, then up Holey Roads (technically a down) and a steep ATV track to Nares View. Seemed like a fairly relentless up and despite the cool temperature got quite sweaty. Nares was OK - a bit rooty and fast for my tastes. Views to the east were a bit obscured by a small local fire. back across Cariboo and up Sporting Wood (another down trail) to mix up the climbing (most people seem to shuttle here and with only one climb trail things get a bit monotonous for those of us who prefer not to shuttle).

Next trail was MacDonald Creek which is an old power line trail. Felt like a combo of some trails in Kanansaskis and the Chilcotin - adventure biking with nice but not drop dead views. Back along the lake on Wayne's World which I enjoyed despite my tired legs.

Great to get out for a long ride and see a good portion of the Montana Mtn trails but I'm not sure I would be rushing back to ride these ones again. When we asked our local friend which trails she liked the best here Nares and MacDonald Creek were her choices so goes to show that everyone's tastes differ.

NAOC Middle M21 Lewes Lake

Ran up a category today. Never really felt dialled with the map. One 6 minute mistake on control 7 when I wandered in circles when I thought a different saddle was the saddle I wanted. Otherwise lots of small bobbles and never felt liked I spiked anything. Didn't embarrass myself out there but always humbling to see how fast the elites can run these courses. Seemed like a lot of steep climbing today.

NAOC Middle & WRE - C-11 - Splits

Mountain biking with Courtney, James, Wakana, Anna and her friend Ashley. Meandering climb up with some nice views - some double track climbs which surprised me given the terrain should lend itself to having singletrack climbing trails. Descended the Boogaloo trails which were fun. Very nice evening with perfect temperature and clear skies.

NAOC long M35 on the Croucher Creek map. Solid run - perhaps the first race I can remember where I had no major mistakes? My route to 1 could have been better and I lost a minute between 6-7 when someone asked me to show them where they were (it was a kid who was off his map so he needed some direction to get back to his map). Otherwise was very deliberate - especially on the technical sections towards the end. Only had two top 3 splits but still finished third overall. A lot of legs following a bearing and counting features (and there were a couple areas with complicated negative topography with no handrails or catching features). Ran most of the second half with another runner - we seemed to be doing our own things between controls but kept coming together at the flag. Running speed was fine - I spent little time on roads or trails which helped as my forest running is OK but my road speed is poor. Thought the white sections of forest were thicker than I expected a number of times.

C • Congrats! :) 4

NAOC Long & WRE - C-10 - Splits

Event: NAOC 2018
 

Shorter driving day - only 5 hours to Watson Lake. We stopped at Stone Mountain provincial park and rode the Flower Spring Lakes trail. A couple km on a gravel road and then 3 km on a hiking trail through the alpine (treeline is about 1300m here). Certainly not a trail that is ridden (or hiked) much but very scenic. Some hike a bike, some rocky sections, and eventually we left the bikes as it got too bushy. Worth doing for the views. Luckily no smoke here but terrible smoke at Liard Hotsprings from the fire near Dease Lake.