Training Log Archive: Daviding

4 miles around Hamlin, shockingly not-sore after sunday's adventure.

Columbia City street scramble with nat and alec. We planned a good route and executed well, tried to avoid some of the hills but there were too many and we ended up doing quite a bit of climb. Apart from having to walk a little on the hills we ran pretty much the whole course, I'm a little skeptical of the distance but gmap-pedometer doesn't lie, right? http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4608063

C • #35 to finish... 1

decided to find the mysterious "grace cole nature park" that is supposedly soomewhere in my neighborhood. Set out at about 630 having looked at the google map briefly beforehand with only a rough idea of where the park was, and not a good strategy for getting back. my house is up on a hill above the lake, and to get to the park I had to run all the way down the hill, over a little, and then back up the same hill in a different spot, making a three-quarter-circle if you can picture that. I didn't have a watch or anything with me, but by the time I got to the park I could tell I'd already ran somewhere close to three miles, even though as the crow flies the park is only a mile away from my house (hence the three-quarter circle to get there). The park was supposed to have a nice little hilltop with a meadow and wildflowers, but I wandered around the main trails twice, circling the whole park, and couldn't find the area. I even went off trail a little bit but all I found were people's backyards :P At the point, I was getting fairly tired, I'd been out for a half hour and done a lot of hill climbing. I did not want to go back the way I'd come because that would mean another half hour of running and even more climb. I vaguely remember from the google map that there were too dead ends that almost touched each other and it looked like there might be a way between them. I couldn't remember which dead end it was though, since I remembered there being several on the map. Exiting, the park, I went up the first dead end I saw, but it didn't look like there was a path at the end. I kept going however, and saw a gap in the ivy with a little staircase leading up. I followed it and ended up on a dead end in my neighborhood, only a mile from home. Success!

ran around the neighborhood a little before dinner.

Georgetown Hood Hunt with Alec. Very clean run except for two little mistakes- being tempted by the staircase at number 5 and having to go the long way around to get to the tiles, and going half a block too far on 12 before realizing our mistake and turning around. Our route was:
3-1-2-4-10-20-24-25-26-23-22-21-19-18-8-9-7-6-5-11-13-14-17-16-15-12

Back to my normal shoes, in this 75 degree heat they dry out quickly. I ran at 6pm, which might not have been the best decision since it was quite hot and everyone was out walking their dogs. I hate how people walk their dogs off-leash in Hamlin, it's really disrespectful to all the runners and there's signs everywhere telling them not to. I have nothing wrong with them playing fetch on the field or anything but the trails are supposed to be for runners and walkers. If you have to stop every quarter mile because you don't know whether the crazy-looking dog ahead is friendly or not, it really ruins the experience. There are designated off-leash dog parks not too far away, so if it's really that much of a hassle they can go there. I'm really sick of it. I know the park staff try to come in and police it but they're so understaffed and stretched too thin that they shouldn't have to worry about a problem that can be easily prevent if people just stop being selfish. sorry for ranting, just one of those things that really bothers me, i don't think anyone reads this anyway so it doesn't really matter i guess. c'est la vie.

Was so exhausted after Saturday that I took a rest day on Sunday, even though it probably wasn't good for my body. Back to the grind on Monday, had to wash off my shoes after the back-to-back meets so I ran in an older pair, which didn't feel that good. Luckily blisters are healing up quickly, still don't know what to do with this hip thing though, it keeps coming back. It feels like a muscle problem, not a joint problem, but I've done all sorts of stretches and they don't seem to help.

long long long COC ultimate-o course in the eastern WA heat. I botched the first couple controls terribly but didn't make too many mistakes after that, ended up with a solid time although it should've been a little faster. I had some conservative route choices because I wasn't reading the contours too well, so I stuck to trails more than I needed to. My running ability far outclasses my orienteering ability at this point so I tried to play to that strength by using the trails when realistic, but I know if I want to get better I need to work on my map-reading ability. But on a 12.5k course where finishing is the main goal I have to be realistic. My route up on routegadget here: http://www.5z.com/urban/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi?...
The course itself wasn't *that* technically challenging, but the heat and length played a huge role in the difficulty.

Met up with some track friends in Madrona and went for a three mile run to the lake and back. Weather was great and we took it easy so it was a nice run. My legs were still bugging me a little from the nettle stings, but likely they go away quickly so it wasn't too bad.

After running we played capture the flag for an hour and i half, we were all pretty competitive and every was on the track team so they were good runners, meaning i was very exhausted by the end. We played in the back corner of my friend's neighborhood on dead-end streets, with an alley as the mid line and side alleys providing access to each side. It's actually just the perfect place to play and we had 4 to each side, which was enough to keep it interesting. In both games I found the enemy flag first but was tagged in the process of bringing it back. I sat in jail and watched as the other team found my flag and brought it back, unable to help. It was a little frustrating to lose like that, because usually finding the flag is the hard part and after that you should win quickly, but I still had lots of fun. It was good to see people after a couple weeks of not seeing them.

Not satisfied with running and capture the flag, we went to the park to play soccer! Unlike capture the flag, it was less evenly matched, since some people played soccer and some didn't. We were all reasonably tired so it wasn't too competitive, and people were mainly goofing off and showboating for cheap goals. Again, lots of fun.

Took a "rest day" tuesday and justified it by saying i was orienteering the next day, but it was really because i was lazy. Hopefully this will happen less in the future.
On to the race! The meet was put on by Sammamish and I got there right at 5 because I had eaten a couple of hours ago, so I wanted to start right away, finish quickly, and have time to relax and enjoy the barbecue afterwards. Didn't happen quite like that. They were shorthanded and needed people to help put up signs, so Nat and I walked around the neighborhood to do that, took around a half hour. By that point many more people had showed up, probably most of the people who ended up coming, so in my head I was questioning the usefulness of the signs, but didn't say anything. Jeff Grove was organizing the meet and he explained that course 4 was on a very old map and they hadn't actually been on the course or updated the maps at all, they just drove to points near the controls and went on the fringes of the course to set them. They had no idea what the interior of the map would be like. That sounded a little intimidating but the other courses were apparently mostly on trails, so Nat and I decided we would just run it together. No matter how bad the map was, how lost could we possibly get with 2 people planning the route? Jeff drove us and Dave Enger down to the start, which was at a picnic shelter right on the lake, meaning we had lots of climb to make up to get back to the finish. The first control was up an indistinct trail at the top of the hill, and we wandered around the base of the hill looking for the trail for a little bit, thought we found it and started up, then realized it wasn't the right trail about a third of the way up, but kept going because it was mapped as light green, and the control was on the hilltop, so we couldn't possibly miss it. We had to fight much more than we thought, and were reasonably tired by the time we got to the top. Dave Enger had started several minutes after us but caught up, apparently having better luck finding the trail. He went ahead of us on the "obvious" route to the second control, which went down an indistinct trail to a major trail, onward to the control. After our bad luck with the first indistinct trail, we weren't that eager to repeat the fight we'd made up the hill, especially since the trail was not visible from the top of the hill. I suggested we just wander down and try to find it, but if we missed the trail we'd have to fight through dark green to get to the major trail. Nat suggested another route: go up through the suburban area and down a reentrant that would spit us out right at the control. There was no path in the reentrant, but it was a major feature to follow so we wouldn't get lost, and it was only light green. We thought maybe the hill we were just on was mismapped, but this might actually be light green. We got to the reentrant no problem, but to get in from the residential area into it we had to slide down a dirt embankment. We continued down, hoping the going would get easier, but it got tougher and tougher. There were blackberries, nettles, and all sorts of stingy plants and critters, not to mention the bad footing since we were on the side of a reentrant. Both of us were wearing shorts since the weather was nice and we thought the meet would be easy, so we were getting just shredded by the plants. The reentrant was only about 200 meters long, but after 20 minutes we were only about a third of the way down. We wanted to turn back, but going up would be ten times worse than going down, and we weren't sure we could make it up. It took us close to an hour to make it down the reentrant and into the river. Once we got there, the path leading up to the control was not visible, and otherwise we would have to cross medium green to get there. We'd been on the course for well over an hour and had been just completely abused by the plants in the reentrant. With no obvious way to get to the control and both of us tired and in over our heads, we decided to head back. Unfortunately, this meant climbing the same hill it had just taken us an hour to get down, but we followed the river for a little and found a much better spot to head up. It was white forest with mainly ferns, which seemed like a gift from heaven after all the nettles. We came out of the forest into someone's backyard, but didn't care at that point and made it out to the street with no issues. From there it was still another 20 minutes to the finish, but it was all on roads and we didn't care too much at that point. Finally we made it to the finish, it was after 7 and the barbecue was mostly over and there wasn't much food left. I grabbed some water and headed straight home without any food to take care of my nettle stings. I took some benadryl and put some baking soda on the stings, which literally covered my entire front legs from ankle to knee, and on both of my forearms. The baking soda helped a little, but I washed it off before going to bed, and my legs and arms were tingling so bad I could barely fall asleep. It was a terrible day.

Hip was feeling much better, the ice and stretching from the last two days helped a lot. Should be good to go for Wednesday!

Taking it easy with the mysterious hip injury, it was fairly painful at the start whenever I put weight on it but got better as the run progressed. Hoping it will clear up before the meet on Wednesday.

Was feeling good and decided to do 2 loops at Hamlin instead of one, but my hip was bugging me so I decided to do a loop and a half instead. My hip still hurt a ton afterwards, even though I stretched a bunch. Not sure what to think.

Ran the same loop as yesterday and felt much better! Wasn't nearly as out of breath and able to push myself a little more. Time is again totally random, but I know it was definitely faster than yesterday. Will try to go a little farther tomorrow and see how that feels.

Time is guesstimated, all I know is that it was slow :P
I took a month-long break from running after track finished to rest and focus on finals, I knew I would regret it the first week of training afterwards but I needed to take one. I felt pretty slow and creaky running my usual loop through Hamlin, I loosened up by the end but was so tired I couldn't really enjoy it. Every day after should get easier, right? ;)
First O meet is next Wednesday so I have a few days to get things worked out before I race (not that there's any pressure at a Sammamish summer meet). The real test is COC's Ultralong next Saturday, that should be interesting...