Hot Time @ Capital City

Over the weekend we participated in an agility competition at one of our favorite outdoor venues, the local YMCA camp.

The courses were fun and challenging. The dogs were happy. But my, it was hot. Here is what the dogs did most of the time we were there:

Luckily there was a river nearby where the dogs were able to cool off a bit.

Agility trials are like the weather. The conditions are not always ideal, you can’t really control it, the best you can do is be prepared.

As sunny and hot as it was, I had a bit of a rain cloud over my head. You see, I backslid into a bit into perfectionist thinking, getting overly frustrated by handling errors on my part; the frustration in turn leading to more errors. I never get mad at my dog, but sometimes I take myself too seriously, and I’m afraid that was often the case this weekend.

In agility, they often talk about how you have to work to maintain behaviors the dog already knows. It’s not a simple matter of you train your dog and you’re done. You have to be vigilant.  For example, I have not held Maebe responsible for stopping at the end of contact obstacles and now that behavior has disappeared at trials. Unchecked, this will deteriorate further to her flying off the obstacles completely.  Time for some contact maintenance work.

For me, I had been at a point where I was just having fun and not worrying about being perfect, but in fact embracing the fact that you cannot be perfect and that of course you are going to make mistakes and that those mistakes are valuable for letting you know what you need to work on. Well, without really realizing it, the more I trained, the more I believed I shouldn’t be making mistakes. At all. Guess how fun that makes things.  So what was good about this trial was that it was an opportunity to reset myself; to do some maintenance work on my attitude.

Despite my attitude, Maebe ended up getting a games title and qualified/placed in about half of her runs. Which is pretty respectable.

Django, my wife’s dog, finished the second day of the trial with a perfect day, which is fitting, because she doesn’t obsess over having things like perfect days. She just goes out there and does her best with her dog and that tends to pay off. I’ve learned a lot from the two of them.

Tri Sprinting @ Island Lake

On Sunday morning, Dharmaspoon Gal and I got up at 4am, pottied the dogs, and headed out for the last (and my first) triathlon of the season. This was a true “sprint”, which means it is half the distance of an Olympic version. That translates into .5 mi swim, 12 mi bike ride, 3.1 mi run.

The first thing you do when you get onsite is you get your registration materials and body marked with your race number and age. Then it’s off to set up your transition area. This is where you rack your bike and lay out your swim, bike, and run gear. There is somewhat of an art to setting things up so that you have access to everything you need when you need it. You also need to memorize how to find your area, even when your bike isn’t there.  In a triathlon, you start in the water and do your swim. After the swim, you run to your transition area, get into your bike gear, and head off to your bike ride. When you’re back from biking, you return one last time and switch to running hear.  The amount of time you spend here counts against your total, so you want to do this as quickly as possible. Which is difficult, because sometimes you want to take a nap. Here is what my transition area looked like at about 5 in the morning, prior to the race:

 

After I get set up, and use the port-a-john, and get back in line and use the port-a-john again, one of my favorite things to do is watch the sun rise over the water where I’ll be swimming while I stress out about whether or not the swim will be “wetsuit legal.” If the water is under a certain temperature, you are able to wear a wetsuit, which, for a crappy swimmer like me, provides an advantage in terms of extra buoyancy. If you know what you’re doing in the water, it may actually slow you down.

 

The swim at a triathlon is an interesting experience. I saw an ad on TV once where they were helping someone train for a triathlon and they were simulating the swim by beating the guy with paddles as he tried to swim in a lake. That’s pretty much what it’s like as people kick you in the head, swim over you, your goggles fill up with fog/water and you have to stop all the time to make sure you’re still going in the right direction. Oh, and many people choose to relieve themselves right before the swim. In the water. Right next to you. I hate the swim. The swim is the most challenging leg for me.  It does however serve as a great warm-up for the rest of the event and does not tire you out too much.  On Sunday, I did as well as I ever do on the swim, maybe a little better. Took about 19 minutes and had the 9th fastest time in my age group. The top swimmers made it out in 12 minutes or so. For this triathlon,  that  included a group of middle-school children.  The really good swimmers usually suck at the rest of the event, so after the swim, you look forward to passing them all on the bike portion of the race. We call this “fishing.”

The bike course was a nice rolling course with a couple of very tight turns.  For better or worse, you can actually shave minutes off of your time just by paying money for a really expensive bike. The more you spend, the more you can shave off. The people with the most money have bikes with disk wheels that make a characteristic droning noise as they pass you.  That sound also gives you time to drop tacks in the road right behind you, causing them to spin out of control and off the race course.

I have a middle-of-the-road tri-bike myself, and was pleased to blow past a number of people with custom made bikes several times more expensive than mine.

I ride a single speed to work every day and have to negotiate a number of steep hills without the ability to shift gears, so that really pays of when I hit the hills and can shift gears.

After the bike, it’s time for the run. For the first mile, your legs feel like bricks because the muscles have to get used to the transition from biking to running (the blood has to redistribute itself). Was feeling pretty good at this point and passed quite a few people. The racers all have their ages written on their legs, so you can see if it’s worth passing the person in front of you.

Finally, it’s time to finish. What’s nice about a sprint triathlon is that usually by the time you start to wonder why you’re putting yourself through all of this, you’re done.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I ended up finishing 7/33 in my age group, 42nd overall out of over 300. What I am most proud of is that Dharmaspoon Gal finished 3rd in her age group and got herself a nice liquid prize:

Looking forward to doing it all again next season.

What’s old is new again

This is Tristan. He just turned nine. He is my first agility dog.  He’s fast, he’s reliable, and until a few months ago, I thought he was retired.
From the age of 2 he has had a series of orthopedic problems that have rendered him lame on and off for the majority of his life.  He is intense, even by border collie standards, and as such, is very hard on his body, which I think has contributed to his frequent injuries.  Last year I finally had his structure evaluated and it was pointed out that his lower back was particularly inflexible. It was suggested that we get him under the care of both a chiropractor and acupuncturist, which after some searching and false starts, we did.  The end result of this effort is that Tristan, or “T” as we affectionately call him are competing again, albiet at an easier level of competition at lower than regulation jump heights, with an option to avoid the obstacles most difficult on a dog’s body, a class custom made for dogs like “T., known as the “specialist” class.
Over the weekend, Tristan had two runs and in both, had times that were faster than many of the non-specialist dogs.  Even though we had not really been training, he always followed my direction, doing exactly what I asked.
In the end he got two first places in his two runs, but that wasn’t the most important thing. For me the best thing was simply running him again, because agility is what makes Tristan the happiest, and it brought me great joy to be able to let him do it again.
Below is Tristan's Color's run in which he had the fastest time of any of the dogs that trial:

Capital City Fun

Our friends at the Capital City Canines put on an AKC agility trial last weekend at one of our favorite show places, a YMCA camp not too far from us.

While Robot (aka MannersMinder) babysat Cadence.

We like Robot because it rewards Cadence at variable intervals with kibble. This keeps him quiet and entertained while we go about  our agility day.

Maebe and Django had three runs over two days.

 

They both got new titles, with Maebe getting her Novice Agility and Django getting his Novice Jumpers.

Titles (and placements) aside, what made the trial fun were all of the other factors. There were friends. There were puppies. There were friends with puppies.  There were dogs we like to watch perform.

For me, my favorite moments were watching my wife and Django work as a team and me working with Maebe as we attempted to get a perfect score in the FAST class. And we would have if she had kept her bars up. But, still, it was a blast.  Guess what we’ll be working on before the next trial.

The Legend

Last weekend I ran in my longest trail run of the season (5 miles). It was at a somewhat off the beaten-path state park that features a lake, a large campground, and miles of trails. 

What made this race special is that the park, known as Sleepy Hollow, is haunted by a headless horseman who has been known to chase runners down, lopping off the heads of the slowest of the group…

Oh wait, that didn’t happen. I guess what made this race special was we that got to camp with the dogs at a very nice park with private campsites, that I ran hard and had fun (and placed 4th in my age group 32 overall out of a field of 232), that Angela and Cadence were there to cheer me on, and that all of the dogs got to go hiking, with Cadence starting to log miles towards his pack dog title.