Mike Garrison

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Always striving to push my limits and see how good my best is.

Mike Garrison

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Monday, February 23, 2009

There's fast, then there's fast.

I went down to Yellowwood Saturday for the ICO orienteering meet.  I knew from Michael Sapper that the blue course was going to be especially tough.  Long, with lots of climb.  So, I actually did what I guess was a little bit of taper the week prior to be as rested as possible with the hopes of putting in a good run.  Felt good the morning of the event and I got lucky with the weather as the rain and freezing rain had just transitioned to full on snow right before I started. 

The course was hilly for sure and I found myself walking more than one of them.  I only had a few spills due to the conditions and thankfully none of them were too serious.  The Salomon Speedcross trailrunning shoes are great on the steep hills.  Saw lots of the "locals" out there and it looked like everyone was having a blast in the snow.

Anyways, I had a pretty good run and as I was finishing I figured I had lost maybe 5 minutes in nav blunders and dropping my compass once, (gotta get a new thumb compass).  I didn't feel like I had run as hard as I did at the EC West Side meet, probably due to bigger hills, but I didn't slack either. My time was around 1:48 and as I finished the guys told me I had finished in 2nd place.  

I wasn't surprised.  I actually thought I might have come in around 3rd or 4th.  After rattling off the names of the people I knew that I thought might have out run me (with no responses to the affirmative) I guessed that it was the "guy in black that looked like he knew what he was doing", that started just a bit before me.

It was in fact that "guy" that was faster than me.  And not only did he put up a faster time, but he put one up TWENTY MINUTES FASTER than mine.  Seriously?  I'm no track star, but I'm not exactly slow either!  How did I lose 20 minutes?

At first I couldn't figure out how it was possible that someone ran that course that fast, but the more I think about it, the more I realize how much room for improvement I have.  The biggest lesson learned for this meet is reading my map while on the run.  I usually slow to a walk to read my map so I can see it better, and to avoid that oh-so-common O-Meet Face Plant.  However, I know that competitive orienteers can read their maps at a full run, and do it well.  That alone would have been good for another 5 minutes on a course of this length.  So, there's 10 minutes right there.

And I don't even have to get any faster to get that 10 minutes...  (Just smarter and more coordinated.)

Big thanks to Sapper, James, Cristal, Ryan and Kirk for directing this meet, it was a blast!

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Power Training - there just might be something to this...

I've been taking a "power cycling" class at the JCC for 5 weeks now, two night a week.  Without getting into all the gory details of how you do this type of training, you essentially train based on your power output (measured in Watts) on a spinning bike rather than speed or heart rate.  I can say with certainty that I am feeling some positive effects of the training.  Now, I haven't gone outside on a bike to see how well these effects translate to the real world, but I'm hopeful!

Friday, February 6, 2009

Running legs

Haven't run outside for almost three weeks and I'm meeting Grossart for a morning run tomorrow. 9 miles. This should be interesting...

update - Well, we finished up at about 8.5 miles in just about an hour. Felt pretty good, but we'll see how the legs respond when I wake up tomorrow! (which is thankfully a rest day.)

Monday, February 2, 2009

Not the same

I have unfortunately discovered that downhill skiing followed by beer drinking is not a suitable replacement for cycling if you want to become a stronger cyclist. It is however very enjoyable in its own right...