Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

Happy Mother's Day Mom! No results up yet from the Dakota Rogaine so no way to know how well your mother's day went :)

C • Rogaine results 2

A very satisfying day 2 of the WCOC meet. Beautiful woods, fun course, happy with my fitness and my result. A few small and a couple medium errors.

A hard enough course that by the time I got home and showered I was adamant that I needed a nap. Will write more later, but the nap has worn off and I'm sleepy again.

Blue2 Day 2: Long - Splits

M-21+ Day 2: Long: Blue combined - Splits

First day of the WCOC A-meet. What a class act the WCOC crowd is. Lots of little details that really made the weekend so wonderful. Whoever had the idea for warmup maps on the way to the start should get a cookie, actually... send me an address and I'll mail some, or just bring them next weekend.

I had an decently good race, some parts were a bit sloppy, some parts were spot on. Much better than last week. Running well right from the start but not in 100% control, overran 1 by not really reading the form-line hilltop, and checked an extra flag on the way down to 2 (silly). 3 and 4 I was right on. 5 I was very nicely on my line, crossed the two trails exactly as I expected which gave me confidence coming down the hillside towards the trail and then finally the boulder with the control. Started to lose confidence when I couldn't see any trail (quite indistinct) and then saw another runner heading over to a boulder on my left. So I checked that boulder and a couple more off to the left before I realized that I was being foolish and I needed to run north and relocate from the stream. Saw the flag as I did this. Shook me up enough to make me want a safe route to 6, so I dropped to the trail and came up the stone wall. Getting through the rocks on the way out of five was torture and I added too much climb for this to be a good route, even though I executed just fine. along the hillside to 7, got too high but saw the boulder on the spur so knew I was on the right contour at the end. Still lost a lot of time to Boris (straighter is better is the take home lesson here). down to 8, very fast. almost tripped on the slope which proffered a scary few moments of trying to regain my balance. In the circle I thought the flag was on the boulder cluster, didn't read my descriptions until I got past the rocks and didn't see the flag. on 9 it was easy to see the boulders as we climbed the slope. I stayed low on the way to 10 because I was feeling tired and didn't want to climb any extra.... the running wasn't as good and I lost a bunch of time to others here even though I executed well (Straight still equals good). to 11 I came past the stone wall and climbed a bit on the trail, coming a bit farther right of the line than I had initially planned... but the running was better so I drifted. Came over the top of the vague hillside and had a moment of disorientation where I felt like I was drifting even further right on the line. But snapped back into focus when I saw a hilltop and cliff combo that I was looking for and then into the control, the flag was wrapped way around the back of the cliff (met up with Ken here too). 12 just follow the re-entrant. 13 I was going well, counting little ridges and got pulled off by a control one ridge too early. I punched and saw the code was off and knew that I needed to go one further. Stayed quite low on the way to 14, only climbing when I saw the bare rock patch above me. 15 I picked up speed sensing the finish ahead. crossed the swamp then up down up and then a quick look at the descriptions to see it was a reentrant and a quick look behind me to get my bearing off a distinctive cliff. Came blazing down to the trail at 16, and saw Corinne going into the control. Legs felt good in the chute.

good enough for the win, and more importantly good enough to beat Boris by just a few seconds :) his race was better than mine, but I was running faster at the very end. (he was waking up controls too, which ought to teach him a lesson about being helpful and volunteering)

Then quickly off to help at start (all running smoothly with the Bundschuhs, Worner/Kohns, and Gagarins in charge) and eventually some control retrieval.

Back to Boris and Kat's place where I did my best to imitate a swarm of locusts. Fun times!

C • A swarm of locusts 3

Blue Day 1: Middle - Splits

Not so much with the running (took the shuttle to and from work today), but a very good day none-the-less. A good and productive day a work, an adequate amount of traffic on the road (except for the 30 minutes of stopped for an accident nonsense about 5 minutes from our very patient and probably hungry destination) and then take out Chinese with Becky and Sam. Yep, life is good.

I like Ian, but that may be because my legs are just used to it :)

Woof, just one of those days where all the plans get thrown out the window. Wanted to running terrain loops in the AM, but didn't get up and going in time. Then wanted to leave work at a reasonable time to get to the park o at a reasonable time... instead I took tail biopsies from 130 mice pups for DNA extraction and eventual genotyping.

Anywho, got to the park-o very late, rushed as quickly as I could through registration to start. It was recommended that I wear leg covering, but I had only brought shorts. I have a reputation to maintain, regardless.

Cleanish run, was trying to cut through the woods to 2, but then changed my mind (woods really do suck on Pine Hill south) when I got out to the trail and then I went around. Everything else seemed pretty good, though I didn't see the flag in the re-entrant at 6 so I went on to the wall and back in. After it was all over, Eric and I went back out to clear out the second half of the course... it got pretty dark.

I forgot that I was supposed to be visualizing what I was going to see next ( a training goal that comes from the analysis of my West Point races) until I was on the way to control 6. Even after I remembered it was hard to force myself to really plan ahead well. Closing my eyes sort of helped, but it is untenable to treat the park-o as both a race and a training session. Should have been more of a training.

I brought my headlamp and finally got out to Prospect to rescue a night-o flag that has been sitting up on a cliff since Feb 23rd. Now I can check that off the list. It's so weird that something small like that can really weigh on my conscience, when all the other random stuff is water off a duck's back.

Running to work. Feeling great.

Running down to the track. Making up the skipped track workout from last night. pretty day to be outside. feeling quite hungry and my core was a little tight from doing crunches in the morning. Already questioning my chosen paces... not a great sign.

So 2x1600 at 8k pace and 4x800 at 5k pace (400 rest after each mile, 200 after each half). So I decided that my 5k pace was 2:34 which I've been okay doing on previous weeks and then I thought well maybe 5:20 miles for my 8k pace.

I set out and just felt like it was really hard. There was a bit of wind, and it seemed to chase me all the way around the track, but I think most of it was trying to run these alone and on slightly tired legs. Overall disappointed in my 800s, wish that I could have pushed a little harder there. Glad that I got out to do the work though.

5:26
5:31

2:39
2:43
2:42
2:43

Then a nice cooldown back to the lab.

Biking to work. not quite as muggy as yesterday.

Alex invited people to join her for a Hill workout and I hadn't done my Monday hills, so I skipped out on the CSU running section tonight and biked out to join Alex and Sam in Newton.

Bit of a warmup around newton before the hills. Alex had maps of pawtuckaway to use for training, modifying a training that Sandra had written about. We were to memorize a short course of 4 controls as we ran up the hill, then draw the 4 controls on the blank map at the top. Pretty fun. After those 4 mini courses we were to plan our route on the short courses and then flip the map over and draw what we'd use to navigate said route on just a skeleton of the course lines and circles.

This hill was more gradual than Summit Ave and it gave a different feeling to running uphill. It didn't hurt as much, but that may be a sign that I was running a little slower because I was reading the map too.

I did 7 reps, which covered all of the exercises that Alex had planned. I didn't quite sweat enough to disintegrate the whole map.... it was in a plastic case fortunately.... but I came close.

Felt great in the morning for my commute to work. Legs happy and peppy. Felt very lazy and unmotivated in the evening, just took the shuttle home and went grocery shopping with Sam instead.