Training Log Archive: escondido

busy at work lately, so morning dreadmill run; incline of 2.5 for 45 mins

Early morning ride through the DV (road plus technical trail).

Early morning road run along the waterfront. Trying to up my speed over the next couple of months.

Event: Storm the Trent
 

Matt and I teamed up to compete in the highly competitive male team of 2 at Storm the Trent as team Cool Runnings. This is our second year of racing AR and our first attempt at STT. The day started cold as my sleeping bad did not insulate as well as planned! Camping was cold but we quickly warmed up in the morning as the day proved very warm.

First thing was a ~7km run from Tweed back to Trudeau Park and the transition area. With the sun shinning hard we quickly learnt that it was going to a hot and could have done without the tights. We were just behind the leaders and completed the run in ~35 minutes.

Onto the ~7.5km paddle which consisted of 3 CPs arranged in a triangular fashion on the lake. Due to a mixup I brought the wrong ends of the kayak paddles: two female paddle ends does not work and we were thus relegated to canoe paddles. Our question as to whether kayak paddles offer an advantage over regular canoe paddles was answered and we lost a few spots to other teams on the canoe section.

We vowed to improve our transitions this race and we did very well on that front. We quickly changes shoes and were out for a ~40km bike. We did not refill water, which would later come to haunt us - lesson learned. We excelled at the road bike portion of this leg of the race. Once we hit CP3 we moved over to trail riding. We lost some time here as other better riders passed us. Our team will be working at technical riding over the next few months. Once back on the road we continued onto CP4 where we were in search of water and found it at a fast flowing river! A quick refill of fresh cold water, how satisfying.

We had to drop our bikes at CP4 and find 3 CPs on foot, ~2 km. We decided to keep the bike shoes on for this section and it worked out well. My hamstrings started to cramp really badly half way up a steep hike. I downed eLoad, munched on crispers, hit my muscles, crawled in hope of continuing up the steep incline. I just did not want to stop. The pain/muscle cramps lasted 5 minutes and then passed. We hit all three trekking CPs and jumped bakc on our bikes for the ride back to the finish (while picking up another 2 CPs on the way back).

Once again our strong road riding kicked in. We had 2 other team of 2 males in sight and I quickly made it my goal to beat them to the finish. With our strong legs and good navigation we overtook those 2 teams and caught another 2 teams on route as well. One of the CPs on the way back to the finish line was tricky as you had to keep an eye on the map. At one T-intersection there was an arrow pointing right. But many teams didn't realize that there was a CP just to the left of the T-intersection at a bridge. We saw a couple teams cycling back because they missed the CPs. Matt and I kept an excellent pace of 28 to 32 km/hr at this late stage in the race. With 1 or 2km left till the finish line I noticed my front tire was flat! Not now, not now! I put my weight back and carried on full blast to the end. It worked and I rolled in with not much pressure left in the tube! Whoo!

What a great race. Lots of fun. It really pushed our endurance as we gave it our all. Thanks to Matt for pushing me through the run, and also thanks to Matt for putting up with me pushing hard on the bike. Also thanks to Squirt for cheering us on at various points of the course. Couple takeaways include improving our trail technical riding and paddling. Official results put us at 8th out of 33 Team of 2 Male Trek - we are supper happy with that result.

Thanks to STORM for a very well-run event. It was like clock-work. The volunteers were amazing and the atmosphere was excellent. Will update once we get our offical timing tomorrow.

C • Great report and race! 6

Climbed 21 stories.

Event: Frontier Adventure Challenge
 

Good race, great weather, oh the mud. We accomplished what we set out to do, complete the race without injury!

We were middle of the pack for the first bike section. After changing shoes we hit the trek CPs right-on and were back on the bikes back to TA1. On the way back I took a photgrapher's dream come true flip over the handle bars into a massive mud pit. The mud...it was everywhere. Change of clothes back at TA1 and then a smooth paddle out and back for CP7. Although we definitely had a head-wind for both paddles! At CP9 we had the choice to go for the advanced CP, however we agreed pre-race that if we did not make CP9 by 2:30 we would auto go regular course. We were there at 2:40. So onto CP 10 and CP 11 which were just mud hells. Riding was really slow. We were short-coursed at CP11 at 4:50 (cut-off was 4:41) and headed to the finish line (better off I think because a few teams commented that CP13 was tricky to find and I don't think we would have made it in the 8 hour time limit had we done the final trek). Last leg to Deerhurst was slow with many climbs. Great time out there, definitely did not feel like 8 hours. Thanks to my teammates for a fun time and a great race.

Credit to William Young for such great photos as:



Organization of FAC was great right up until the banquet. 3 hours after closure of the course and there was no comment from race staff on what was happening. Awards and lots of prizes were sitting on the tables, but nothing was happening. A few quick updates would have been nice, even some comments from the race organizers welcoming everyone back from a good race-day. Also surprised that they didn't have pictures or video rolling showing the days events (even past events). At 9pm they finally announced that they were having difficulty with sportident and that verification of results were being done manually. We finally gave up on them and left. The atmosphere in the banquet hall after the race was depressing. Not the type of place to hold an AR post-race party. Music was drab and the place was too stiff for my liking. Still awaiting official results and pictures 2 days after the race.

C • Short coursed 3