Training Log Archive: apope

Belfast Training Camp
Morning of Day 1
Exercise 1: Attackpoint exercise. Awesome
Exercise 2: 4 x intervals with Mike, Ake and Jeremy. Running too slowly but pulled off a few sneaky controls when the others were slightly off

Afternoon day 1
Exercise 1: corridor O'
Exercise 2: control pick. Running hard in a pack

Intensity was a bit lower than last week. And it was quite chilly!

New 1:4'000 map by Cobus which was quite interesting.
The course required lots of fast running which didn't really happen for me. Was down on Nic up to #25 of 30. Managed to sneak ahead in the last few.
Bit of a slow recovery with the map 'error' at #10. And a bad angle into #21 for a small-ish mistake. Otherwise it went quite well. Not tricky enough or running fast enough to feel rushed or out of control

warmup, 6 x 300m alternating swim and paddles pb

MEN - Splits

Grosvner to Leslie and back along William Nicol.

Another 3000m Squad Trial. Did the first one in 11:18 at 167 ave and 177 max
I was hoping for a better improvement. This time had an easy weekend compared to 2 big weeks last time. But again, complete lack of any 3000m specific training.
Whipped by quite few juniors, and not excited to hear Cian's time. At least I was running on my own, so the reality of being beaten by 15 year olds doesn't hurt too much :)

Warmup and long cool down.

Another few hours on the feet. From Drakensburg Sun, up to the grotto through the forest. Back along the road.

With Tony down to the Don Wachope's farm - Mountain Splendour. We did their 10km MTB loop and cycles back up to our campsite. Mountain Splendour looks like a good place to visit.

Run with Tony down the mountain from the contour path. It was steep and the legs are sore

About 6 hours on the feet. From the Monk's Cowl parking lot, up to Blind Man's corner past the Sphinx. Ran down Keartland's Pass to Nandi and Sterkspruit waterfall.

Fighting the rest of JHB on the N3... Off to the Monk's Cowl area to camp at Dragon Peaks

1:15 improvement on last time in the K1.
Quiet TT - had some help on laps 2 and 3 but on my own after that

warmup, 4 medley's, 4 x 100 on 2:00, 400m pull, 4 x 100, 2 medleys, cooldown

Nice and easy with Magi

And a bit faster on my own...

A bit late, so not much warmup or kicking. 50 kick. 6 x 300m alternating paddles and pb. cooldown

Quick run on the 'mill

Amazingwe Kinetic Race with Wiehan and Lizelle.
Mukked up the 1st leg a little by forgetting to get the generator and having to go to it last. Maybe a pen to draw some lines before hand?
Some traffic on the cycle, but somehow we got near the front of the crowd by the paddle. Cyanosis left the paddle as we came in. 5 min?
Followed the railway too far - we were supposed to be on the Oberon track over the mountain. 5 other teams came with us. I should have been a bit more sneaky about turning around. But we recovered ok - just us and Do It Now left at the top of the track. They got ahead on the (slightly) technical riding. We pulled a bit back up the hill.
We got quite close to them again on the last hike. I took a tigerline to the start of the zip line, while they went around. We almost beat them there. The zip line, short run and obstacle course home.
Good race.

10 long laps in the K1

Spinning before the FLEET end of season breakfast. Still rainy out

Turned out to be quite long. Out to do a lap of Emmerentia with Jane and her new bike. No rain, just lots of water off the road. And some mud. Not a bad day considering the rain

Heart ticking a bit slowly to start with, but it got going

Warmup, 6 hills, dark sky, back to the gym, big storm.
The night run was cancelled due to the storm too. Was hoping hills and the night run could work as my long run for the weekend...

TT with Lizelle. Slightly faster than before. Maybe its time to upgrade the boat

New shoes!

warmup, 4 x (100 kick, 2 x 100 paddles, 100 drills), cooldown

From gym, down west and back along summit. HR a bit high for the effort level

"Metrogaine" from Kinetic Rivonia. In a pair with Magi. We chose a pretty good route and had a good run. Nougat for our efforts.

warmup, 200 kick, 6 x 200m alternating paddles pb and swim, 8 x 50m hypoxic (2, 4, 6, 8 strokes/breath), cooldown.

Really well planned and organised by the Tshwane AR Club. They're getting good at it.
So we knew we were starting near Olifants Nek dam. We didn't go west to Rustenburg or east to Breedts Nek, so my google earth scouting useless...
Raced with the XPD team: Danie, Lizelle and Wiehan. Danie was a bit sick last week so underpowered.
We started at 11pm. So most of the race was in the dark, but with my lights I'm starting to enjoy the night racing.

The field splitter was a short run around the campsite to fetch the passport. We got back with Olympus and set off on the bikes.

About 300m down the road Danie released he wasn't wearing his pack. Oops. So the rest of the field streamed past us while he went to fetch it. We caught up with most people at #1, with just Olympus, Hawkstone and Xhale ahead. We worked hard, caught them quite fast and then went flying past them. Wiehan and Danie were well out of the comfort zone so in hindsight that was silly. But we held a few minutes lead up to #2. #2 was off the road in an excavation and I knew that just as we found it everyone else would pitch up. And sure enough they did. We rode away again and Hawkstone took a wrong turn, so we had the lead again. They caught us and together we tried an obvious route on the map which turned out to be dodgy grassy track. Just as we finished back-tracking Olympus turned up. The 3 of us rode together for the rest of the leg with Hawkstone getting a minute ahead by T2.

Out of T2 there was an abseil into a hole. It turned out into a big cave system. At the bottom we got given a map and 13 points to find over about 3km - all underground. It was lit up and there were bats everywhere. Awesome! The first time I've got to do sprint orienteering in an AR :) We passed Hawkstone looking confused on the way to #1. Luckily one of points involved a long crawl so we got out of sight. Lots of fun and we managed to get a good 5-10 minute lead.

Back on the bikes and it was pretty much big straight forward roads back to the dam. We rode hard and I think maintained the gap. Until #16, which I'd marked on some houses next to the road. I didn't see the descriptions for this leg's points so I didn't know what it was on. It was also under 'photocopy' join of 2 topo maps. And I think slightly in the wrong place, it was after the left bend in the road. But enough excuses! - I should have marked it better and got the description. So we messed around long enough for Hawkstone to catch and pass us while were slightly off the road. I caught up and got the description out of them - very kind of them. Turned out it was "bridge, upstream of river". So we found it and set off after them. I blew our nice lead...

Onto the paddle where we knew we'd lose time. The first one was on a willow tree on an island. There were lots of islands and the one it was on was not where the circle was! Hawkstone did the same, so not too bad. We got off the paddle as they were leaving transition again.

They chose to swim out of transition. I thought it was worth the gamble running around. Bad move. We lost about 20 min I think. The vegetation was thick and on the other side I went high, got cliffed out and had to come down again. So they had a good lead and I think moved better than us over the last hike. The views were good, but there was lots of climbing. They pulled away. I'd already blown the only tricky part by not swimming. It was straight forward after that.

So 2nd. Hawkstone moving very well - well done. We had a good race - if I'd lead a bit better maybe we would have been closer, but I think without my marking and swimming errors they still would have had us.

We had a fun race. The team's working well. Looking forward to XPD!

warmup, 350 kick, 400 pull, 4 x medley, 4 x hypoxic, 2 x medlely, 2 x hypoxic

Thats more like it from the HR! Maybe the rest day helped.
Lots of fast starters. Settled into 3rd with a guy right on me the whole way. Wound it up as much as I could at the end, but he had me by a metre.
A minute faster than last time. But definitely had to run harder for it.

Longish one with Magi. East to Jacaranda and back north of the highway

Rest week!

1:4'000.
Had a good run. 1 big mistake coming off the bridge to #5. I had a route planned but it involved getting onto a path at the corner of a building. I ran to the wrong building and took me a while to figure that out. Maybe 30 seconds?
Otherwise, should have gone on the low path to #4 but couldn't have known that from the map. Nailed most of the route choices. Bit wobbly on executing the plan to #12 and #13. And could have been significantly faster through 18, 19, 20. Lack of planning.
Only got to 171 HR! Legs were tired and my back is sore from yesterday. But perhaps not (being able to) run(ning) too fast was good for the orienteering. 13 seconds ahead of Nic in the end.

Flat water proficiency done!
Did 9 laps afterwards.
My back was a bit sore so decided against a run.

MEN - Splits

Long morning out... I rode from home to Steven's place to meet Tony and Steven'. Steven sat out because of a stomach bug. We rode to Teak Place, did a loop and rode home. The legs are tired!
45 min to Steven's, 1h20 to Teak, almost 2h00 in Teak, 1h20 back, and a 1h00 slog home

warmup, kick with some swim 50's, 5 x 200m.

10 hill repeats aiming to keep the HR to 160. Hard on the calves