Training Log Archive: Craney

Good to do another race here since the last one at Easter only used some of it. Cracker course with some shorter tricky legs on the slopes. Tough going though - quite stony and also a shed load of climb. Felt a bit dehydrated from the start, so it was a bit of a struggle. Kept moving ok though with reasonable momentum on flat/down and generally spiking most of the controls. Particularly liked the control on the old car in the middle of thick pines - no idea how that got there. Got very slow on the ups in the final third and, in oxygen-debt, started navigating the wrong leg for a bit - picked it up quite quickly though. Good fun.

Ran home from the race via the edge of Farrer Ridge. Although feeling very slow, keeping going wasn't too bad.

Steady run from home, up onto and along Isaacs Ridge and back home via Farrer. Lovely day again, but I felt pretty ordinary - just really weak on the uphills and lacking 'zip'. Kept going ok though.

Not shaping up to be a big week of hours this week. Unless I do another rogaine at the weekend...

Travelling home from Alice Springs. Basically the reverse of Friday but with more scratches.

Second half of the World Rogaining Champs. Despite being tired, the first 3 hours of night were quite fast as our route took us along some flattish valley floors, so we made quite good shuffly-running progress. However, from around 3am to 7am we were zig-zagging through steep rocky country with quite a bit of low spinifex. The difference in pace due to being forcibly pegged back to a walk on some of these legs was quite surprising - in hindsight we may have picked a better route to avoid some of this. Popped another couple of caffeine tablets to keep awake and eventually made it to dawn. At this point finishing our planned route looked a touch optimistic, but we cracked on and finally hit the next drinks point at 7am.

Food, sunshine and a good chat with some friendly volunteers at that drinks point perked us up no end and, almost out of nowhere, we were back to actually running. Also, because the terrain was flattish again, we were covering distance much much more quickly and it dawned (pun intended) on us that we were actually going to have time to add some extra controls in - one was obvious but there were now limited options to find other extensions. Oh well, cracked on anyway. Got into a bit of a head-to-head with some South African adventure racers who had a tow-rope but were moving quite well. At our last control we still had an hour left but were quite achy and the only way to add in more points would be to climb up a ~50m vertical cliff - not wise. So off to the finish happy that we'd done more than our plan, kept moving well the whole way, and no real stuff-ups to speak of.

While eating at the hash house we found out that Robbie and Kathryn had beaten us, but it wasn't until the presentation itself that we found out we'd come 2nd, which was a very nice surprise to say the least. Then passed out into a jet-laggy style sleep for a bit. Also slept very well that night.

So a great all round experience. It was amazing country (just like the Australia you imagine if all you know is Crocodile Dundee), a very cool map and a superbly organised competition so I'd like to think we'd have enjoyed it however we'd got on. But a well-executed plan and strong progress meant a nice result as an additional reward. Very pleased that after a sleep, food and hydration I only had a little residual stiffness (and several splinters) to show for it.

No GPS, but evidence suggests we covered around 82km with 5000m climb.

C • Awesome 8

First half of the World Rogaining Champs at Ross River Resort 'near' (by NT standards) Alice Springs. First part of any rogaine race is to spend 3 hours faffing. It was particularly amusing at this rogaine at 9am when the officials said go and everyone (including us of course) rushed forward to get their maps then went and sat down with a pen. Obviously in the end not that amusing as it does always turn out to be quite (understatement) a physical sport. Anyway, the best part of the planning stage (in hindsight) was that Grace brought some levelheadedness to the process and prevented my usual over-optimistic self from going wild when confronted with a cool map with lots of exciting looking contours, terrain and tantilisingly high-valued controls in far flung places. We ended up picking what looked like an achievable and efficient ~72km route.

Having said that, the first 7 hours was still up a massive mountain almost entirely exposed to hot sunshine and no drinks points. We did this well, not getting too sucked into the head-to-head running racing other teams were doing through the first 3 or 4 controls. After about an hour we climbed the big mountain range and were all on our own waking-up some of the controls. I liked this bit - we had great views, had some peace and were going strongly. It got dark as we cut through some spinifex near the All Night Cafe. I was encouraged by the fact that the spinifex (the densest area on the map) really wasn't that bad despite having almost complete dominance over any pre-race conversations. Had a 17 minute break at the All Night Cafe while quaffing tea and scoffing burgers and cakes. Then on into the night...

First 5 hours of night were much blacker than I expected - mainly because there was no moon. A couple of small wobbles (not spotting a path junction in one case) but reasonably accurate. Sleepy tiredness and some aching kicking in, but both of us still moving ok. Although darkness and conservatism meant that was predominantly quick walking. Mentally a bit confused by being in longest ever training session territory but not even half way. Moon eventually came up around 10pm, but spent a few hours lamely sitting near the horizon behind cloud. Around midnight we got to our 2nd drinks point which was almost exactly halfway on the route we'd planned => no time for extensions but also on track to do ok. Grace wonderfully whipped out some caffeine tablets and nurofen at that point, which I eagerly took and suddenly (almost uncannily) felt miles better.

Travelling to Alice Spring day - a day of characterised by a number of changes including winter to summer, 1-year-old dependent to freedom.

Lots of packing

HFW fairly gentle.

Good solid run on Stromlo in lovely winter sunshine while Jo had a trial run looking after Florence.

Not the fastest run I've ever done. Thought I'd try out my gaiters ahead of the rogaine.

Friday.

HFW listening to Infinite Monkey Cage.

HFW listening to Infinite Monkey Cage.

Never any intention of running today. A few aches, but seem to have pulled through yesterday pretty well.

Longest run of my life :) Pretty hot competition at the Canberra Metrogaine around Gungahlin - Marty, Rob and Paul all also running solo. Picked a route that would take in all the controls and measured it at about 45km - the others said their routes were about 55km though, so figured it was probably more mis-measurement on my part than finding some sneaky way of saving 10km. Meh.

First ~20km around Nicholls and the Gungaderra grasslands. That was quite pleasant scenery with some nice bits of bush, some new trig points and some housing estates with actually quite nice houses to look at. Felt really comfortable at 5mpks. Then 10km through the town centre and onto Mulligans Flat. Again, fairly interesting surroundings and 5mpks felt fairly comfortable - although noticed stiffness in the hamstrings setting in.

30-40kms took me through Forde, Bonner and Amaroo - McMansion plastic housing tastic. It was here that the stiffness escalated to slowing me down. In fact I stopped to sit down and stretch a couple of times, which helped a bit. Slowed to 6mpks.

40-50kms was mainly through Moncrieff - a big muddy flattened piece of land full of bogans building their dreams. The depressing surroudings didn't really help the fatigue joining my stiffness. Still, I was able to sustain a ~7mpk shuffle without too much trouble. Then 5km more at the 7mpk-shuffle pace through Casey and Ngunnawal, which was ok because I knew I was going to finish and I was in unchartered running distance territory.

Ended up only about 10mins behind Rob but something crazy like 40mins behind Marty. But very pleased to pretty much run the whole way. In hindsight, my pacing may not have been tactically astute, but still it was satisfying to cover 30kms at 5mpks and then settle into a shuffle that felt like it could have carried on for a little longer.

All being well this will only remain my longest run for a couple of weeks...

C • Phew 2

I've been thinking about why democracy is failing when we get these outcomes that less than 50% of people want, and where probably >50% of those who vote in favour would probably prefer a less extreme outcome than the one they voted for.

I think it might be because the options presented are often not really different enough for the average person to have a strong opinion on. I think this happens for two reason. A: there's a bell curve of opinion from extreme left to extreme right, with the vast majority somewhere near either side of the middle. This means when most debates between people occur, it's between someone slightly to one side of the other (rather than far away from the other), and so discussion/debate is focussed around relatively insignificant differences of opinion (e.g. negative gearing or no negative gearing, correct rate of company tax, sell national park for logging or not) rather than significant ones (ban all Muslims or have an open door policy). As a result popular and opposing political parties form where there are clusters of like opinions, and because they need to be different/opposing by definition, the sensible position for these is where the average debate is, which is either side of the centre. B: in the absence of extreme circumstances, opinion is centralised and debate is forced to become focussed on more trivial issues near to the centre--on the other hand, in a war there could be a shift to the right, or in a country with vast inequality and poor standards of living there might be shift to the left (maybe? information asymmetries prevent this in reality).

However, one of these sides must win, so that side is forced to seek additional support from parties/points of view further towards its extreme. This results in power/good outcomes for people with more extreme views than the majority, and the average policy of the winning side becomes more extreme than the average opinion of the people that voted for it. And of course there's almost 50% of people who are very unhappy with the outcome.

In the long run, this evens out but that doesn't make it ok because a) irreversible decisions are made by the party of the day, b) there are inefficiencies of changing government fairly frequently and c) proposed policies that are off to the side of centre are not easily implemented because of the amount of disagreement.

If the focus in A wasn't so much on winning the minor discussions/debates and forming a party to support those views, but instead on calling them for what they were--minor issues to work through--and forming a party that thinks about those issues but is firmly against extreme views on both sides, you'd end up with a central party with just as much credibility (or support) as one either side of it. In the situation of B you could then get something like 70% of the votes, your average policy would match the average point of view of the people that voted for you, all the extreme views on both sides wouldn't get a look in, and you could decide internally which policies to proceed with. So democracy would work better.

Ok, this morphed into the Australian situation but I think the same is probably true of the UK and the EU and all that. And I've kind of made this up without any data. And importantly, even if that did make democracy work better it would still only better reflect what people want, which is typically short-term and not in the long-term interest of the human race let alone the planet. Hmm.

C • Training log hacked? 7

HFW - listening to old series of the Infinite Monkey Cage on the ipod (cheers for the heads-up Shep). Never realised Brian Cox used to be in D Ream.

HFW

Ripper long run from Shep and Jo's with Shep while Jo minded Florence (drew the long straw there) - proper Canberra winter morning with frost and sunshine, and lots of new routes I hadn't been on before (Greenhills, new bridge over the Molonglo, Bluett's West and back of Stromlo). Shep seemed to have a spring in his step, so it was fairly hard work for me.

Afternoon run home from Farrer after Grace had voted.

Lunch run with Tomas around Red Hill suburb mainly. Not feeling it today.