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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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Running for jet lag

I had heard that it helps.  It does.  I ran the first afternoon I got to Denmark on a recent business trip, (for the record I had been up for around 30 hours at that point and for whatever reason traveling is WAY harder than racing.  I don't understand how as you're sitting most of the time...).  After dinner I went right to sleep and got up the next morning and ran again.  Since my body didn't really have a frame of reference for the new time zone getting up early didn't really feel like "early".  That first day I felt fine, and I didn't really feel any effects of jet lag during the rest of the trip.  

There were even trails right behind the hotel but most morning I was running a paved path along the fjord.  I can run trails in Indiana, not a lot of ocean front opportunities here!  I have to admit it was easier to motivate for those morning runs knowing the scenery I'd be enjoying.  

As it turns out there was a permanent orienteering course in the woods behind the hotel.  Didn't figure this out until my last day there, but next time I will have a map waiting for me as one of the employees at the company we were visiting is a member of the local club.  It might only be a trail O course, but it would still be pretty cool to be able to say I've done some "international orienteering".  :-)

Anyways, lesson learned for this trip is when traveling across more than a couple time zones, bring your running shoes!!

Oh, and one more thing.  I have never seen so many janky rusted out bikes in my life as when over there.  But it's damned impressive how many people use bikes for transportation.  Then again, they actually have these things called "bike lanes" over there.  Fascinating concept...

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posted by Garrison at 4:17 PM 1 Comments

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

What do you call a Danish in Denmark?

Turns out you call it "one of those" and you point at it.  At least that's what I did.  Just got to Denmark and haven't slept in 30 hours or so.  I'm not sure why I feel more exhausted now that I do after racing 30 hours, but I did get a chance to run a few miles along a fjord this evening and that was pretty cool.  Actually it was cold, and windy too.  I'm hoping that I'll get to run at least once every day that I'm here, we'll see how it goes!

posted by Garrison at 4:56 PM 0 Comments

Monday, March 23, 2009

New Bike!

Got a "new" bike this week.  (Used from eBay, but new to me).  It actually fits, which is nice.  Road it on the Thursday night Nebo ride and on a 60 miler with Michael, Cristal and a few other folks (rode to Avon to see how Dave was doing after his knee surgery).

It's amazing what a few centimeters can do when it comes to fit.  It will still take a few rides to get used to the new body position, but so far so good!

On another note, the few "hills" that we rode on Sunday (if you can even call them that) felt good, I'm really looking forward to riding some hills for real at some point this spring.

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posted by Garrison at 4:58 PM 0 Comments

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

I'm insane

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

It's funny how frequently I've found myself thinking of that quote when considering human behavior.  My recent behavior at the annual ICO Conquer the Crossroads Rogaine for example...  I got to run the 6 hour course with Eric Henricks from Team Friends and we had a blast.  However, for the 5th time in 6 of these rogaines that I have participated in my team finished with a frantic death march to make it in under the time limit.  (And for the 4th time, we were successful.)

We ended up winning the 6 hour division by a narrow margin over Soupbone Expresso which was cool, but I feel like we worked a little harder than we should have.  We didn't pick up a single control in the last 4+ miles, and the last 3 miles or so we had to cover in under 25 minutes.  Not the most painless way to finish the day!  One of these days I'm hoping to do well at this event and finish at a casual jog.  Maybe even with a few minutes to spare.

All in all it was a great day and I really enjoyed competing with Eric rather than against him.  He's a regular at all the O-meets and always puts in a good run.  It's always kind of a crap shoot when you put two navigators on one team, but I think we did an excellent job keeping each other in check on the course.  I can honestly say our navigation was spot on the entire race and we wasted almost no time looking for controls.  Now, route choice on the other hand, maybe could have used a little work.

On the 12 hour course Carol's Team consisting of Eric Buckley and Dave Frei, both from Missouri, did an outstanding job clearing the course in 10:30 or so.  Great job guys!

Thanks to Jerry, Frank, Carrie, Dave and everyone else that helped out with the event!

posted by Garrison at 3:14 PM 0 Comments

Monday, March 9, 2009

Attackpoint.org

I've known that this site was out there for some time now, but only recently really took the time to check it out.  It's actually a pretty nice online training log that allows you to easily enter workouts then see some graphical and numerical summaries of those workouts.  (Not always a good thing if you haven't been training all that hard.)

These logs are viewable by other users, which will either be fuel for some competitive motivation, or a source of temptation to exaggerate your training...

It also has an event calendar (I added a lot of the local AR and ICO stuff) where you can record your intent to attend events as well as a nice results database.  

The site has its roots in orienteering so the results are very much customized to O.  It can actually record splits from O-meets that use electronic punching.  (ICO borrowed OCIN's e-punch system for the Bear Creek meet last December.  VERY cool.)  You can then slice and dice the results from each course at the meet and even check out your overall ranking amongst other site users.

If you get a few minutes you should check it out.

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posted by Garrison at 8:31 AM 0 Comments

Thursday, March 5, 2009

15%

It doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm pretty happy with it.  It's the net improvement I saw in my average 5 minute "LT" Wattage after 8 weeks of the power cycling class I took at the JCC, taught by Whitney Diggs .

(For those unfamiliar with the term, LT means Lactate Threshold and in this context represents the power output that is the absolute max you can sustain for a given period of time.  For the class that I took we would do three five minute tests where the goal was to keep you power output, measured in Watts, as high as possible, while keeping that output steady.  After completing the three tests the numbers are averaged and that was established as your "LT".  This number was then used as a basis for our training efforts throughout the rest of the class.)

The class met twice a week for 8 weeks and each time Whitney had a new combination of painful workouts for us.  The variation in how she hurt us kept me from dreading the class as I never knew what to expect.  I certainly felt like I was improving a little each week, but it was nice to have those tests to quantify that improvement.

I'm sure a lot of the gain came from the mere fact that I was actually disciplined in my training during the 8 weeks, but I also felt like the workouts themselves did a good job of focusing on improving your power output in different ways.

Now what does this mean for my riding and ultimately how does it help in an adventure race?  Well, if one of the urban races has a stationary bike challenge, I'll be better prepared for it I suppose...  I haven't been on a real bike since finishing the class, but I'll be surprised if the consistent efforts don't translate to better riding all around.

We'll see!

posted by Garrison at 2:46 PM 0 Comments

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Stupid ways to get hurt

There are a lot of likely ways to get hurt when your main sport involves mountain biking, ropework, running through the woods in the dark and paddling in the cold.  The probability of getting hurt when doing one of those things only gets amplified by the fact that you're frequently doing them when malnourished and sleep deprived.  So, it's expected that you might get "dinged up" now and again.

What you don't expect is to throw your back out getting out of bed in the morning.  Apparently standing up is much more dangerous than you might imagine.

That, I believe, qualifies as a very stupid way to get hurt.  At least I have some believable lies I can tell about much less stupid ways that I managed to hurt myself...

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posted by Garrison at 9:58 PM 0 Comments

Monday, March 2, 2009

Mileage

So I ran around 15 miles on Saturday which, depending on your perspective, is either ridiculously far, or an easy "maintenance run.  (For me it's somewhere in between.)  I had originally only intended to run 10-12 but got talked into going farther.  Anyways, it went better than I would have expected and I didn't feel too awfully sore on Sunday.  Good sign as I'm hoping to start adding more volume leading up to the first race of the year.  (LBL Challenge )

posted by Garrison at 10:29 AM 0 Comments