Blogs : Beth Lutz

Day 3: Canoes, Medics and Tetherball, Oh my!

Day 3: Canoes, Medics and Chardonnay Oh my! (And tetherball)

August 26th

Run: 3.75 miles/1.25 mile wu, 4k tempo, .5 mile cd (And 20 minutes all out canoing)

4k split: 18:16

Holy man. That was a tough one. I have gained a new appreciation for athletes who compete in triathletes and other events that require multiple endurance sports. Camp Manitou hosted the 2008 UWEC Cross-Country Canoe Relay today, and the competition was fierce. The idea is simple: there are six people on a team and two of them canoe out to a spot along the shore while one team member runs to that same point. The runner switches with one of the canoers, and everyone returns to the start. Teams repeat this progression two more times, so that everyone runs once and canoes multiple times. There is strategy, to be sure, in the order team members go in the relay. The canoeing portion of the relay is slightly faster than the average female can run the course, but slightly slower than the average guy can run. But I digress.

To canoe hard core for close to 20 minutes (we just kept on going and going) and then try to run faster than a simple trot is HARD. I canoed the first leg for my team and then had to run back to the starting line. I got out of the canoe with my team in first place (Yeah, Kevin!) and then quickly learned first hand that, yes, arms are important to running. And it didn’t help that I was already breathing quite hard.

This workout was all about strength. The running course was extremely hilly, and the canoeing beforehand added even more difficulty to the run. It was a very good lesson in RORing. For the uninitiated, ROR stands for Recover On Run. If you’ve ever raced a course with a hill, you know what this feels like. You get to the top of the hill, are probably sucking gas, but a minute or two later you’re starting to feel (relatively) normal again.  The idea behind RORing is when you get to the top of that hill, you immediately try to resume your normal pace, with the hope that eventually you will recover from the momentary stress on your system.  It’s hard mentally to get going right away, rather than letting up for a bit while you recover, but doing this has made me a much better hill runner and racer.

I managed to maintain a fairly good rhythm while running the 4k course. It took me about five minutes after getting out the canoe to feel at all comfortable running; at the beginning I just set a quick pace and tried to hold it. I was rolling along pretty well when I hit the biggest hill in the course, a 400m long two stage monster that managed to fry my legs pretty good. After that I tried to get some momentum going again, but it was a losing battle. By the time I rounded the cone that marked the turnaround point for camp my legs were dead, and I was holding on the best I could. I managed to maintain a decent rhythm, but I simply didn’t have the strength to mount any sort of finishing surge.

I ran the 4k in 18:08, almost three minutes slower than the time I ran last year. Disappointing? Of course. Surprising? Not really. I have a long way to go yet this season, and I don’t care if I’m running fast now, I just want to be running fast at the end of it.

On a non-running note, spending the day at camp with teammates is awesome. Highlights included playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (the board game version) except everyone answered random dollar amount questions and you tried to make the most money. One of our assistant coaches nailed a $500,000 for me when I “phoned a friend.” Sweet! In between killer games of tetherball, a bunch of people played dodgeball. Most of the time we played with a medic, who can “heal” people who have been hit with a ball. This led to an interesting situation, when at the start of a game a member of the guys team had a situation that needed a real medic. He dislocated his finger, ended up having to go to the hospital, where it turned out that he had a double fracture. Dodgeball: full contact sport.

QOTD

Ben Pierson: MEDIC! AAAAH! I need a medic! (After dislocating his finger playing medic dodgeball.)

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Marci: What?

Beth: Which of the following is not a breed of rabbit? A. English Pearl  B. English Butterfly  C. English Silver  D. English Spotted

Marcy: I’m going to say A…

(Playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.)

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Beth: Molly, before a race I’m not going to tell you to put on your game face. I’m going to tell you to put on your tetherball face!

Rabbits

7:02 PM, August 30, 2008 .. Posted by Anonymous

The rabbits were all ENGLISH breeds, not Danish.

Rabbits

12:09 AM, August 31, 2008 .. Posted by lutzba

But of course. I was just testing you...