Training Log Archive: Bash

Turns out Hingo will be overseas on business from next weekend until APEX, so he brought a bin of gear over to review. Great opportunity for us to do more specific planning. Hard to believe it's only one month till we'll be racing!

After the gear chat, we tested our lights with a quick night run around Short Bruce Loop. All is well although the Night Lightning is definitely more comfortable on a helmet mount than a headlamp strap, especially if you're running. If any Night Lightning owners have good solutions for running with them, please let me know!

Many of us live in areas where wild turkey hunting season opens tomorrow and closes on May 31. In 2010, Ontario hunters reported over 9,000 turkeys taken during the spring season. (There is also a much less active fall turkey season.) Hunters are allowed to shoot from half an hour before sunrise until 7 p.m.

Some public forests with hiking trails are open to hunters so be aware of the hunting regulations in your area. A hiker was shot and killed a few kilometers from our house several years ago and the hunter was acquitted because the judge ruled that he had obeyed all the laws governing hunting in Ontario. Thus it is our responsibility as people who do outdoor activities to learn about hunting seasons in our area, wear bright colours, avoid areas that are popular with hunters, etc. You can get info at http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca - but set aside lots of time because they don't make it easy for the uninitiated.

Just because an area is prohibited for hunting doesn't mean you can let down your guard. A couple of years ago, there were turkey hunters out on opening day shooting their guns in Palgrave Forest and Wildlife Area and even on our property. If this ever happens to you, phone the Ministry of Natural Resources and they will rush right over in a week or so. Phone the police and they will drive around the block, then tell you they're busy and you shouldn't bother them with minor issues like people illegally discharging firearms on your property. Phone the Conservation Authority and they will sigh sympathetically and tell you that they've had no luck with the MNR or the police.

You can probably guess how I know that.

I'm visiting my folks in Brantford this weekend so I met Kirikou in Paris for a ride along the Grand River to the far side of Brantford, staying on the north side on our way out and returning on the south side until we crossed the bridge at Brant Park. I was thinking "relaxing rail trail ride" but there are a few surprising hills near Paris (trail doesn't follow the old rail line there) and when we hit a major headwind on the way back, it was almost as good as hill training. (I use the word "good" in the most positive, "the wind is my training partner" sense.)

The hourly weather forecast had said rain all night, cloudy at 9 a.m. and sunny at 10 a.m. It looked like crap when we first met but at 9:57 a.m., the sun broke through and it ended up being a fantastic day for a ride - as long as we didn't mind getting splattered in the face by the mud puddles.



Afterward, Kirikou saw a cool-looking deck on the far side of the Grand River in Paris which turned out to be the Brown Dog Coffee Shoppe. Awesome atmosphere sitting outside overlooking the river where we saw several canoeists on the fast-moving water. There's a great menu so this cafe would make an excellent destination ride (or paddle). Since K and I each live with brown dogs, we had to have Brown Dog Mochas. (I even have a brown dog *named* Mocha!) For nutrition, we ate fruit in the form of a fresh-made apple fritter - so hot we had to wait to eat it.

Training is hell sometimes...



Great to catch up with Kirikou - can't believe it had been 7 months, and with a new job and parenthood fast approaching, he and Mel have lots of cool stuff going on.

Welcome back, Attackpoint! As most people know, the site was down because of an outage (still ongoing) of a cloud from Amazon Web Services.
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/21/135614890/amazon-ser...

Many thanks to Ken for hanging in there, drinking lots of coffee on our behalf, then finally making the tough decision to restore AP from a back-up taken two hours before the outage. As one person commented on Attackpoint's new Facebook page, "Have started realizing how boring the Internet is without AP." ;)
http://www.facebook.com/attackpoint

This made it so clear that AP is not about the training log which I could do in Excel if I just wanted a few numbers; it's about the great people out there. I missed you guys! :)

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it...?

And if I manage to convince myself to run the hilly Hockley Loop but Attackpoint is down so I can't tell anyone, where's the fun in that?

This was a fun run with tunes - my fastest-ever time around the loop, which is a little longer than it has been in the past. The trails are in good shape with a few tiny patches of snow and ice that will disappear shortly and a lot of mud that will be goopier as the weather warms up. In the low part of the Anderson Tract (northeast side), there is no way to avoid the marshy bit so if you like dry feet, start your loop on 5th Line.

There were a bunch of GPS off-and-on moments when I got to the main Nottawasaga River tributary. WOW, it is huge right now for a little river - and full of debris. I just had to explore and stare. Even though the water never gets deeper than 18", you could drown yourself in a kayak pretty easily right now. I now understand why there are so many boardwalks and bridges in that area. It always seemed like overkill till now.

CTS Progressive Power DVD - Class #2, "Driving Your Cadence" led by Chris Carmichael. One-legged intervals followed by 3 X 3 hard-as-you-can-go power intervals. This class introduced me to my new favourite thing to do on a trainer - "stomps" where you go into your biggest gear and pedal as hard as you can for 10-20 seconds while staying seated, followed by a recovery period before a slightly longer stomp. I've always liked pushing bigger gears than I should, and I could maintain a steady 310-320 W for this - higher than I've hit before on this trainer, even as a max. Guess that's the whole point of intervals!

Two important things I learned from Coach Chris today:

1) When you're practising proper pedal dynamics, focus on the feeling of pulling back at the exact bottom of the pedal stroke. At the same time (but slightly less important), think about kicking forward at the exact top of the stroke. You don't need to think about pushing down - that will happen automatically. Most of us spend too much time focusing on that.

2) If snot is not dripping out of at least one nostril, you're not working hard enough in your power intervals.

Catching up on my Daily Shows.

If anyone is interested in doing the 4-day Apex Race in Switzerland at the end of May, there are a couple of teams looking for members. Race organizers can be contacted at http://www.theapexrace.com

The pics look awesome.

Team Running Free (Harps, Relentless, M&M, JRanson) and the Tree Huggers (Hingo, T. Rex, DMallory, Bash) will be there too!

Aeroplan flight to Halifax next weekend - $81
Local seafood dinner - $50
24-hr wilderness navigation race with Crash - $80
15 cm of snow hitting the Maritimes tonight - Priceless

Snow and hail again! That's OK because I was curious to see whether I'd correctly assembled the treadmill from the dozens of screws, washers and miscellaneous large and small parts that came in the box. I thought it might not be happy that 'Bent and I had heaved it unceremoniously around our yard contrary to the BIG WARNING in the owner's manual. Miraculously, it worked just fine. Sadly, it does not have a miles/km toggle which I thought every treadmill had in 2011. I can't think in miles! Oh well, the math will give me something to do.

There is an iPod docking station (yay) which isn't compatible with iPhone4 or iPod Shuffle, which is all I have (boo) but I can still plug into the sound system even though I can't use the controls. Crazy - who knew that treadmills came with speakers? Good ones! Unfortunately, the fast forward button only works with the sound system, not my feet.

Having figured out the basics, I did a warm-up followed by a pyramid of 2-minute intervals climbing up to 10 km race pace, then descending to cool down.

After two trips with a borrowed 31-lb Ironcase bike box, I've decided to lose over 20 lb by travelling with a Pika Packworks bike bag. I was a little nervous about moving from hard to soft case but the reviews are good and there are definite advantages to being able to fold up and stow your bike bag at your destination. I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

Here's the basic info:
<http://www.competitivecyclist.com/product-accessor...>

It didn't catch my eye at all until I read this review by CompetitiveCyclist.com. I thought it was too light. Since then, I've found several other positive comments and reviews, including comments about pro cyclists using it.
<http://www.competitivecyclist.com/za/CCY?PAGE=PROD...>

Video on how it works:
http://www.youtube.com/user/competitivecyclist#p/u...

It's a one-man company and I ordered it directly from the guy who makes them on his own sewing machine. He will ship it tomorrow - $50 to Canada.
http://www.pikapackworks.com/

It doesn't look like a bike so a lot of people buy this bag to avoid paying extra fees when they fly. Don't think I'll take that chance for APEX but we'll see how it looks!