Training Log Archive: Shep

At Collins Creek. Mass start hagaby. i wasn't feeling so positive about this - hearing the word lantana in the terrain description brought back the nightmare of the long day at easter, and the map notes said the lantana wasn't accurately mapped, the termite mounds were "unreliable", and there may be more erosion than is mapped in the gullys. awesome. so the first control was straight down a vague hillside to one of these unreliable termite mounds.... missed it!

my knee was feeling real bad, so i took it real easy on the first loop. made a few little mistakes too, but i think it was impossible not to on that map! vague-ish spur gully, weaving around vaguely mapped lantana looking for unreliable termite mounds which were everywhere. the rocky grounds were sightly more reliable (although often covered with lantana) but the erosion gullys were good (i reckon the area would have been better as a middle distance only using the 2 sections of erosion in the south east of the map). upped the pace a little bit on the second loop but never really went too hard but just kept the same speed right through the 3rd loop too. came in to start the 4th and final (and short - 1.6km) loop and didn't hear anything about my place, and didn't see maps on a lot of posts so figured i had heaps of guys in front of me. i just jogged around the last loop with my knee getting sorer feeling sorry for myself. maybe we only had the first 3 maps on our posts cause it turns out i had a big lead so won the race by about 6mins over oli mitchell (great result from him beating mass start muz into 2nd!). couldn't believe we'd been going nearly 100mins (i'm running without a watch for about the first time in my life thanks to my suunto breaking again).

i didn't think this race was too bad, but i think thats only cause i ran the long day at easter...

Sprint at QUT Kelvin Grove. One of the most difficult sprints i've done i reckon. right from the start - there was no clear way to get through the buildings! everyone was in the same boat but still by the time i got out to the road i felt like i was behind cause i'd been going so slow trying to read my way out of the maze! went ok, but without any real speed and knee hurting running up and down the hills, until 9... we had a pivot control for some reason (and with no warning in the event info) and i ran from 9 almost to 14 before i realised. only got myself to blame - all the info is there on the map ;) knowing it was only part 1 of a 2-race day i didn't get too bothered and kept racing without any more dramas to the end. lost maybe 35 seconds so i'd have been smashed by Schmolle anyway who did about 15:15. impressive - that was a difficult course i thought!

(Real) Chasing start from this mornings first round, at UQ in St Lucia. I went out in 4th, about 50 secs behind Schmolle, 40 behind Oscar McNulty and 10 behind kEEly. Just followed thos guys to the 1st - they all went right and so did i - i didn't wanna risk losing time to them. left would have been better though. got on kEEly by the first and was head to head with him until the split at 8. very careful to do the phi in the right order after this mornings debacle. was reasonably clean and smooth and was pretty happy to see kEEly come into the end of the split (16) just behind me. had him on my tail up to 24 (made a couple of little misses on the way there, like over-running the little stairway near 18 on the way to 24, i went back the 15m or so, got the same split on that leg as oscar who went left which i guess was slower). we caught Schmolle at 24 and so i had him and kEEly on my tail 25-26-27. i saw what was left after 27 - a few hundred metres of running with 2 easy controls - and though &%*# i'm gonna get 4th... but i punched 27 first and put in a bit of effort and managed to keep those quick youngsters behind me to get 2nd (no way we were going to catch oscar - i pulled in a bit of time on him but not much). we were sprinting to the line and didn't punch till maybe 10 secs after we finished, so our times are wrong.

great fun race. awesome course set (and map made) by the Bomb.

easy jogging around north lyno ridge. did 4 x 30secs efforts with a good 2min jog recover. left knee feeling terrible, really sharp pain if i load it up. very close to cancelling flights to QLD tomorrow... but it actually feels better running fast for some reason.

cruise in to work.

run home from work, pretty dark but didn't have lights... did a bit of fartlek.

easy cruise around the ridges with the ayups. feeling terrible, tired, knees sore...

warm up. didn't have time to warm down before the presentation.

at Rosenthal Creek. I love racing in granite, and this one didn't disappoint. tricky sorta first 4 controls, although the first one was easier than it should have been given that we had to climb so much to it from the start which meant i was going pretty slowly to it and had plenty of time to read everything on the map. so i hit the first 4 ok, about 15 secs behind craney after that section. then i was a bit stupid coming out of 4, tried going straight down the gully but got pushed left and had to climb down the big cliff etc, then down the big white gully and around the rocks on the side. very messy - should gave gone east out of the control to the track. didn't lose too much. hit the lead at 6 and held it from there with good splits on 7 and 8. really struggled up to 9 and 10. heavy legs, sore back, sore knee. i'd caught parto at 9 and at least i could see he was struggling a bit too. i kept trying to remind myself everyone had already done 3 days of racing! got the win about 3mins ahead of final day muz and pulled in 4 mins on simon, not enough to get him overall thanks to the big mistakes yesterday but got back past keely to get into 2nd overall.

EPOC 217ml/kg
TE 4.4