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

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

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