Training Log Archive: TheInvisibleLog

Next in the series. How to jump and register SI in one move as performed by James Robertson.

The jump... note the SI stick aimed at the SI control box whilst well above!

From ASSOC 09

The landing, with the stick already in the box.

From ASSOC 09

The stick stays in despite the residual forward motion as James slips down the slope.

From ASSOC 09

Gave my SI stick to Jools so she could run the spectator race. I planned to do an unofficial run of the Senior Boys relay course. It went well for 10 minute still I twisted my ankle, aggravating the damage done on Sunday in the Grampians. I waited a while in the hope the pain would subside. When that wasn't working I tried to continue running in the hope that would solve the problem. That failed as well.

This was the attempt to run, followed by the painful walk back to the assembly area. I think that is the end of my orienteering for the carnival.

Why orienteering on Brown's Reef is so much fun. From todays ASSOC relays.

From ASSOC Relays 09

Event: Australian Secondary Schools Championships
 

The route choice problem...

From ASSOC 09

The long way round...

From ASSOC 09

The direct route...

From ASSOC 09

C • Nice 2

7.2 straight line
Perhaps my most important race of the year. The venue was the spectator race on Brown's Reef after the ASSOC individual races. We had the Newcastle crew as guests, including Leepback. A loss to him on my home map would have provided an invitation for an eternal AP slagfest. With so much at stake, I went all out, running the terrain as you should... redlining in the course and the heart rate. Spiked all the controls, quite a few of which I had never been to before. Leepback started 4 minutes in front of me and I finished 2 minutes in front of him. Mission accomplished. But was amazed to see I was beaten by John Brock... memo... more training, less lollies.

C • newcastle crew 1

Beehive falls again, then back and out along the Rockwall track. This was a journey of nostalgia, past many climbs that I had shared forst ascents with a number of friends. Most notable are 'Saviours of Somalia' and 'Bicentennial Route'. The former was a grade 20 that we had our eye on but were thwarted by rain on a number of occasions. In desperation one wet weekend I abseiled down and marked the climb with chalk to deceive our competitors that the climb had already been done. The deception worked. Its a quality climb, unlike the other the Bicentennial route. That was our memorial to the hoopla of that year. The sub-tile was 'at least you only do it every 200 years'. Strangely, it looked like no-one much had been climbing either climb.
After all the wet rocky ground of the weekend, I twisted my ankle running back through flat grassy terrain.
And yes, I think I enjoyed the music more than I would have enjoyed the Vic Long Champs.

Event: Victorian Long Champs (SILVA NOL)
 

Folk Music Camps are very quiet in the morning, so I took an 8.00pm 'run'. Run is perhaps the wrong word for the second half of the outward journey. Its steep and very rocky in normal conditions. But this time the route involved climbing up rock slabs running with water hangong over cliffs. I cut the trip short after thinking Irisked doing a Water Minister.

Event: Australian Middle Champs (SILVA NOL)
 

Only one locational blunder, but a mediocre time. My mind was on the Roses Gap Music Camp, and orienteering was something to get over with before driving away. Pity really, as I had chosen to miss much of the first day of the camp to fit in this event. I like the map and I like Warren's course setting. I found the navigation surprisingly easy for my distracted condition. The only minor blunder was assuming a dirt wall would be passable and trying to go straight. I should have been safe and gone round. Maybe thats just bad luck. But I didn;t think about route choice and just went straight. As a consequence I dropped from 6th to 11th over two legs, 6 and 9. Both times I didn;t take the track option. For 6, I just didn''t see it. For 9 I saw it but wrongly assessed it as slower than straight.

C • where are ya? 2

I enjoyed putting out some controls for Evan on Browns Reef/BreakODay.
Only reason I have logged this is to note for those travelling down that:
1. the mid week terrain is open, softer than usual underfoot.
2. the weather forecast is good, after what looks likeit will be a winter weekend.
In other words, I think this will be remembered as a greattwo days of orienteering. Expect very fast kilometre rates. Try for a personal record. Shouldn't be hard for visiting Novocastrians, with perhaps one exception.

C • Hi, tried calling yo tonigh... 2

A morning run around the town of Corryong. Not much had changed overnight. Probably this observation is time-independent.

Off to Corryong today. There is a slim chance of a run in the mountain country, but weathe rlooks less than enticing. Back Thursday.

Surprised to have a still, clear, mild evening for a run around the streets of Corryong before the light ran out. Visited Jack Riley's grave because there was a sign pointing up the hill and I wanted a climb anyway. The Corryong cemetery prompted the thought as to what side of the horizontal-vertical quotient the town lies. Are there more in the cemetery or more still walking around?
Other points of interest discovered...
A bakery/cinema business for sale. With 70 seats it would house a sizeable proportion of the towns population. Probably the legacy of a moneyed enthusiast.
A 70s style sound shell in the Park. I went back with the fiddle after dark to try the acoustics... horrible.

Just stretching the legs to try and recover from yesterdays long run. Not really training or tapering for anything. Not running any of the Long Championships this carnival. I'll fit in a Middle and a relay.

Not much running this week, and not much enthusiasm. A run along the Coliban Race helped make the day enjoyable. Most of my spare time has been spent preparing a workshop and concert for the banjo-jamboree. It was heaps of fun to play obscure eastern european music to befuddled old-time Appalachian music enthusiasts.

Supermarket run.

This was to be the start of the long Sunday morning run season. OK, there was a three hour at Creswick Diggings. Why not do that instead. Well, th eplan had been to miss all orienteering this weekend and go for an overnight hike in the Grampians. Mt William Plateau actually. What happened....
1. Weather forecast was for rain saturday. The grass (noone has lawns these days in bendigo) was real high, and you know the neighbours are looking and thinking.. bush fire risk if they don't do anything. So, we decided to mow before the rain and delay the Grampians trip for a day (Monday was booked as leave). Finished that so decided to go to Mt Alexander after all. The rain didn't come, but wind speeds measured at 110kph on Mt William indicated delaying the walk was a good idea.
2. The family dog (I didn't buy it) took down with idiopathic geriatric vestibular syndrome. We didn't find that out till the vet gave us a name. But when a dog is walking crooked, falling over and looking like death slightly warmed, the friendly thing to do is a trip to the vet. Well, vet says maybe put him down, or maybe tranquilize and leave him here to see if symptoms abate. Ring at 10 tomorrow morning. So no Saturday night drive to the Grampians. Ring 10 next morning (as the maxi is starting I assume) to be told 10 on Monday morning. There goes the weekend hike.
So, long run instead. There was only one place Jools could think of where I hadn't run and she had, so it was off to the Coliban Race. Really pleasant run once we found the channel. Took the wrong track initially and ended up in some lovely open granite country. Rock everywhere. Tuck that one away for another map idea. After 10 metres climb we saw where we were meant to be. Followed the channel track until Jools tripped on a root, and did a spectacular face plan and gravel slide, prefaced by one of those moments of unplanned ballet when the legs can't quite keep up with the torso, but the brain says to keep trying because the alternative doesn't look that pleasant. The alternative turned out to be two well grazed knees, one grazed elbow, gravel rash on the chest and a bruised rib cage. Plus gravel in the mouth and a good winding.
It was clear she wasn't up to the planned 20 k run, being only 2.5 k into the route. Being her always helpful self, Jool's suggestion was I keep going and she would wait at the car. I wasn't going to fall for that one, so it was a slow jog and walk back to the car together, with stops at various water engineering structures that we would not have examined on a normal run. So some good comes from the accident. The plan is to head back and do the channel next week.

C • Poor Bailey :-( 2

A truncated Marne run with all the climb and much less of the gradual downhill run along the channel. The aim was to get the ks up to near 20 for the day after Jools had been deposited at home. There she could finish a samarai soduko (no brain damage from the fall obviously) and watch her first creation in the newly purchased slow cooker. My run was not nearly as successful. I bailed after reaching the top of the range. I think its a bad idea to have a break in the middle of a long run. Legs never seem to leave the jelly stage.

Mt Alexander. An exceptional day in a number of ways. 90 competitors at a local Bendigo event! 30 degrees in early September!
I did feel aggrieved that only 40 people appeared at my Kopoyoora event, 70 at Jools event last week and now 90! But there is an explanation if you dig into the figures. I only offered 125 metres climb. Jools offered 270 and today we had 320. There is a clear correlation! Obviously I will do my best to meet market signals next year. Expect a control right on top of Mt Kooyoora as part of the planned 500 metres climb.
The event went with few traumas other than the climb. Three navigational errors, of 20, 15 and 5 metres respectively. I chose to go out to the road on the long leg. This was obviously a route-choice blunder, which explains perhaps 5 minutes of time loss. The rest is down to lack of fitness. I'll get round to uploading to routegadget soon.

C • Route choice 5

Cave Laborem!

C • Cave 2

Procrastina rem nunc!

C • Procrastina rem nunc 5

I felt fast last week. The peak has now passed. Stopped because I couldn't be bothered any more today.
Thought for the day.. if direct marketers stamped their advertising material with th a symbol that identified the person repsonsible for distribution to mailboxes, then i could identify who it might be that keeps dumping piles of pamphlets in various places out in the forest.

C • Catalogue dumpers 12

Trip to Melbourne, with five meetings scheduled end on end. Promises to be a doozy of a day.

Postscript. First meeting delayed. Second meeting delayed, and in the end the person booked for the fifth meeting had gone home long before I arrived!

Went back to the scene of the Vic Relays a month or so ago. Ignoring the sign about not disturbing relics, I wandered through the gate with metal detector in hand. Purpose was to detect a one month old relic being the SI-6 card I lost in the said event. Not having a copy of the O-map, we spent a little extra time wandering trying to find the scene of the crime. After a few intermittent expressions of frustration, site was located. Used an old SI-5 stick to set the sensitivity on the detector. Ended up being very high. This was unfortunate as I ended up with many many false positives, but alas, alack, not one true positive. As of last night, the stick is written off. Can't see how I could lose it in an area only 5 metres by 5 metres and with just grass. But I did lose it.

C • next time get a bright blue... 7

Slackness decreed. Gotta taper a la PeelFront.

Can I log all the time spent on start draws as training time?
It would make my total time more than respectable.

C • Log 6

Ran Jools course on Mt Alexander. Son 'Big Ev' described part of the course as 'sorting out the men from the rice puddings'. On leg 7 I confirmed my status as 'rice pudding'. After a clean and strong run through to 6, when I caught a confused pack and led them into the control, I then sped up to get away. That rarely pays a reward and this time was no exception. I blew 6 minutes and then spent the rest of the course trying to catch the pack. Pulled them all in except Obewan. Saw him occasionally in the distance.
Great day and we had 70 people running on the courses (including pairs). There was a strong Melbourne turnout. Something good is happening in the Bendigo orienteering scene this year.
Full evidence of my rice-pudding status can be found here under the Bendigo Rocks 2 event.
http://www.bendigo-orienteers.com.au/gadget/cgi-bi...
Mind you, if you check the event I set last week (Rocks 1) you can see i have heaps of company! You might also perceive how lucky we are in Bendigo to have local events on terrain like this.

C • map/course copies? 11

Got the timing of todays cool change just wrong. I was targeting sub 19 minutes for this run, and was 3 seconds over target. This can be attributed to the change arriving in the last 400 metre so fthe run, thus meaning I faced a strong headwind. Should have left the desk 5 minutes earlier. I'm sure I can blame that on whever sent an email just ebfore that.

I have to talk about the weather. I think Blair would have loved this run. Drove a few k out to the bush. It was blue skies and sunny when I started off with a warm gusty north wind. Half way through the run an ominous dark black mass was approaching from the west. As I finished the run, the cloud bank passed across and the sun disappeared. It was like someone threw a switch on the lighting. The sudden cool breeze was just at the right time. Drove back via the supermarket (Tamar Valley Yoghurt for lunch) and the rain started. Looking back to the east there was a clear divide in the sky between dark cloud and blue sky still visible. The straight line stretched from horizon to horizon. Five minuites later I was back at work and I was in blue skies again. Looking east I could see the blue skies before the front.
Slow run because of a sore achilles. My physio says running won't worsen the condition, just stop when it hurts too much. It didn't reach that threshold so I kept going.

Could do with some sleep. Up late last night doing the start draw for the Oz Long Champs. As we were setting up the start slot structure, the emails for late entries were arriving. At one stage I was googling to work out what class a few people would probably run in as THEY HADN'T TOLD US. Finishing the seeding and split starts tomorrow. Won't be interested in many changes after that.

A very pleasant day for a run. Blue skies and light winds. Maybe thats why I enjoyed raunning 15 seconds per k faster than usual.