Training Log Archive: 'Bent

While Bash raced CCC, I went out with Leanimal, Phatty, Weeanimal and E-dawg for a light recovery stroll near the course in Switzerland. Of course this involved something like 500m of climbing, where Wee did blazing fast intervals up then waited up for us.

Nice spectacular views, then back down, where Wee demonstrated some Killian-esque descending style. I am known to be pretty good on the descents, but at 8 years old Mari already had me close to full speed in sections to keep up, on rocky terrain no less! My post-race legs were especially impressed.

Not to be outdone, Ewen ran with me on the road bits, and he’s got some serious running form coming on too.

Later we cheered on the CCC leaders at Trient, and patted dogs.
Great to spend time with the clan, and the kids are awesome.

C • Yay, for Bash! 2

Event: OCC
 

OCC This was a tough one.

OCC 2019 from Richard Ehrlich on Vimeo.

At the start I was stuck in a very slow-moving washroom lineup (c’mon folks, more veggies and less cheese!) so I ended up starting well back.

Traffic was jammed, stop-and-go. I was feeling strong and moving up, despite taking it fairly easy. The big climbs felt easy, and legs were good. I was slugging back Infinit, and had some coke at Champex-lac.

At Trient I refilled my bladder. Given the heat I put more Infinit in for the electrolytes. I had a soft-flask of water to sip too.

Unfortunately my dreaded 6-hour stomach quit right on schedule and the wheels fell off. I couldn’t take more than a couple of sips of the Infinit, and my water flask ran dry pretty soon. We did cross some nice streams- wish I had a filter!

At Vallorcine I finally got some water, and barely kept it down. I lay down in the medic tent for a while, puked a few times, but finally I could keep down some coke and a bite of watermelon, so I headed out. I dialed it back to a brisk hike with some light downhill trotting, but still couldn’t keep anything but water down. The last major climb up to La Flegere was basically a blur of nausea. I took a break there but couldn’t keep a single sip of coke down. Ugh.

I managed to shuffle-jog back down to town, and got a burst of energy from Mari and Ewan (and Lee, Phats and Bash) cheering me on to the finish.

I was toast from running 5.5 hours on zero calories.
It was still spectacular scenery and an amazing race in many aspects.

C • Oh dear! 9

C • Video is great 8

Shake-out run with a group including Zach Miller and others from The North Face team, as well as average runners. Met up with my buddy Alan Li from UTMR who is doing TDS tomorrow.

C • Have fun! 2

Another trip to Italy for lunch, this time under the mountain. We took the bus to Courmayeur, cable car up to the aid station rifugio and had a gorgeous hike up. I ran down and did some moderate hills.





Next up, lunch at the family-owned restaurant suggested by Meg-eh back in 2013, and the best gelato ever.

C • Pics 1

Hike from Brevent. Did a little running up and down too.
See Bash’s log for pics.



Nice dinner by the river.

We took the cable cars up to the Aiguille du Midi at 3800m for some thin-air acclimation.



For the first time we’ve been up here, it was totally clear and dead calm and the Panorama cable car to Italy was running, so we decided to take it.

Great decision- it was absolutely spectacular.

https://youtu.be/tp5qW0M5ClM









We had lunch in the Rifugio Torino, which was in thick cloud, but the way back was clear again. We hiked a bit from the mid-station, before the trip back down.

Made it to Chamonix. Pics in Bash’s log.
Despite a jet-lag headache, we managed to stay up and tour the town, procure the requisite wine, cheese, coffee and croissants.
Also tartiflette for dinner- death by cheese.

C • Mmmmm.... 1

Easy jog to work with the big boy. Transported a MegaZucchini for a staff member to turn into loaf.

Commute with AD. Ran into the elusive BGY on the trail!

Commute with the big boy. Easy pace on the return in the (dry) heat.

Ran trails north of 9 with AD. Some of my favourite local trails with hills, some technical bits, some open fast doubletrack, lots of shade and 6 swims for the pooch.

Pushed hard- last hard run before OCC

C • OCC! 8

Short but fast 2-dog run in the ‘hood.

Rest of workout 1, more core and rehab, and a difficult haul of a big wood load out of the bush, split and stacked.

Rehab and part of workout 1.

Run in Hockley Prov Park with the Birthday Bash. Summer splendour.
Nice dinner at the Bluebird later too!

Ride in with AD and night ride back.

Brisk run in with Bazingadog in the cool morning. More interesting when a deer practically jumped over us heading up Thinker’s Hill.
Easy jog/hike home in the heat. FDFs still out, but a bit diminished.

Commute with AD

Tour of C’Wood harbour, watching the wakebarding and the impressive kite festival. See Bash’s log for pics.

4 and a bit climbs of Georgian Peaks. Felt OK after yesterday.
Finished a bladder of Infinit on the first 3 climbs and had to refill.

C • Georgian Peaks vs Nordic 3

Pretty River- Quick first loop with Tarno, then another with Bash, hiking up all the hills we could find.

Swam the boys in very rough Princeton Shores after, then off to Sidelaunch Days for dockside drinks and an amazing electric violin performance! We had to tear ourselves away to go to dinner.

https://youtu.be/lci6M8CFho4

C • Victoria Yeh 1

In the ABC pool. First time ever I actually felt like I got the breathing right-ish and was able to swim freestyle slow and smooth without being out of breath after. It usually feels like an unsustainable sprint.

We’d planned a long run, but on our pre-breakfast walk Bazingadog dragged me to some bushes where he scarfed down something that looked like hot dog slices. He then ate grass and puked it all up. Bash wondered if it might be poisoned, as there were reports of coyotes and nuisance dogs. After a morning of calling my sister the vet, as well as a pet poison control number, I went back to collect some of the hotdog slices to send off. I happened to pass a car with a “Missing Dog” sign and a number nearby. I called them and it turns out the lady was trying to bait her dog back, after being gone for months. So, not poison.

We ended up running the trails at Blue.

Easy pre-dinner jaunt with our neighbours down the rail trail to Georgian and back.

Short jaunt around the local forest, with stops for raspberries.
The white farm dog was out on the trails with the smaller black one. He boldy barked at me, since I didn’t have the mighty Bazingadog to put him in his place.

Burnt Island Lake to Canoe Lake takeout. Rainy day, but not rough.
We tried fruitlessly to find the Minnesing Camp ruin too.
We paddled past Arowhon where we stayed for our wedding, and even scored lunch on Gibraltar rock where we got married. The rock is still amazing. Sadly, the site was full of trash and forgotten clothing. Must go back some time and clean it up.
Out to the take-out, car shuttle, and a stop at AO and Kawartha Dairy before heading home after an idyllic trip.

Short day trip with Aubrey, but things were getting rough so we limited it.

Tried to actually swim freestyle a bit with some solid tips from aquaman Mick. It’s my breathing that is terrible, along with lousy head position, but it was rough out so I got some good snootfulls of water trying to do it right.

Paddled out to the Otterslide river, aka the Frog Kingdom, which kept the kids well amused. We had to get out and haul some shallow bits, and had a nice lunch beside a rapid. More portages today but they were all under 1km, some quite short. Another excellent paddling day.

Once on Burnt Island Lake we spend a while shopping for a campsite, and came across one with a great swimming rock and the Burnt Island Bistro- a wooden kitchen, with a granite “countertop” for stoves. Glamping!

More swims and a nice clear sky at night. Perfect!

Adventuredog and I escorted Mick on his morning swim. Magical dead-calm, misty water under cloudless sky.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/c64Mxg7HUtkQ7TL89

C • nice pics 3

Day trip with J-Lu and Adventuredog.

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipON8WB7FdIYCR...

Thing were way too wobbly and imbalanced to deal with whitecaps, so we transferred the pooch to Bash’s boat and we sat backwards, which worked way better with me closer to midships and J-lu way forward. He really liked paddling with just me, rather than 4-to-a-boat.

C • paddle 3

Algonquin Park trip with the Harrison-Grant and Lucente-Smith clans.
We did a car shuttle, then caught the water taxi to the NW of Opeongo. From here it’s a 2200m portage to discourage the riff-raff. With our group’s big luxury loads, Mick and I did the first trip non-stop with boat and big pack. We ran back pretty briskly to take multiple trips so got a decent workout, as did everyone else. It was pretty warm, but mercifully not killer humidity, and the bugs weren’t bad. Negligible compared with RockstAR.

Speaking of which, the kids were rockstars! Trotted happily carrying their paddles, and packs with their teddy bears etc. Logan the Adventuredog was perfect of course.

We paddled Happy Isle lake, then a series of portages totalling almost 5k into Big Trout, for our basecamp for 2 nights. Gorgeous paddling day, and a nice swim from our personal beach.