Training Log Archive: jennycas

The shortest Shepherds Hill loop, after sunset. I knew I would run out of light, so I took a torch. This illuminated all the puddles, but not the best way to get around them! The creek was creeking mightily, and in some places flowing along the track. I had fun, even if my knees didn't.

I unearthed my umbrella this morning! Seriously, I have no idea when it was last used (3+ years ago?) but the way this winter is going, it could get a frequent airing.

Jog to the weir on the Torrens lake with Robin, Simon & Bridget. Water was flowing out of the weir gates but it wasn't as speccy as I'd hoped. I lent Bridget my jumper (bought for $2 in an op-shop in Maryborough, Vic, during 2003 nationals week) and afterwards she gave me an excellent cookie (her home made ones are better still). My knees were still protesting, though more feebly than yesterday, but I definitely needed fresh air and exercise before the Aust Champs Carnival meeting, from which I escaped at 11.15pm!

Annoyingly, I yet again don't have a functional splits watch. Hopefully it's just a flat battery, but when my alarm went at 5.30am on Saturday it then wouldn't stop alarming, and in the end I had to wake George to ask where the small screwdrivers were, and take the back off the watch before it would shut up! So then I did the rogaine with my analogue watch which has no numbers on the clockface, and told Steve the wrong time to write down on the intention sheets at most of the controls :(

I rode over to Fern's in the hope that this might loosen my knees up. After running around Panorama and Lynton with Fern, Tyson & Simon, I had to concede that not only do my knees hurt, my shins are attention-seeking also. After riding home in the rain I was exceedingly cold - possibly needed to be wearing more than just running gear when it's 10 degrees?

Secret Controllers' Business - 2 hours

I don't know which hurt more when I woke up on Sunday - my knees (ITB) or my head. Dehydration, I guess, because I only drank 1L during the 6-hour (it's ironic to have a hangover feeling from not having been drinking). Anyway, I convinced George to chauffer me to the Barossa and after 2 hours checking control tapes on the Tanunda Creek map (Aust Long Champs) I felt much better. Gosh, it's beautiful up there! Takes a little while to get inside the mind of the mapper, as the apparent shape of the rocks varies depending on your direction of approach, and some of the boulders are almost 2-dimensional; you'll see what I mean in about 3 months' time. The description for the spectator control is "7m high boulder cluster"...that's not giving anything away!

Afterwards we were (unfortunately for the household budget) not too late to go to the Angas Park dried fruit factory in Angaston, where we spent over $200, to George's surprise (but not mine). If anyone hasn't already factored a visit to Angas Park into their nationals week, I'd recommend that they do so (pity we couldn't get sponsorship from them).

Bundaleer Forest, near Jamestown. I'd talked Steve Cooper into doing this with me; he was worried about holding up for 6 hours, but I knew he would be fine. We'd decided to drive up and back in one day - this involved leaving town at 6.30am, and for most of the drive up the car said it was 4 degrees outside! It became a beautiful clear day, and we never stopped running for long enough to get cold. The terrain was a mixture of pine forest, eucalypt plantation and grazing country with some big hills in the south which we decided to tackle first, leaving the flatter stuff for the end, making sure our route didn't miss any controls that we'd later regret not going to. We doubted being able to clean up the whole course, but were pretty sure that Dave Talbot and Ryan Cox would do so.

We were pretty evenly matched - I'm faster on the downhills and road running but Steve powered up the big hills in a way that I just couldn't. At the top of the range to the west of the hash house we were rewarded with views across to Mount Remarkable in the northwest, and the Hallett windfarm in the east. At numerous controls we were rewarded with chocolate thanks to the sponsors (this was an Asthma Foundation fundraiser and so ended up with 130+ teams and quite a lot of sponsorship - I was relieved to find that "sponsored by Santos" didn't mean having a bucket of oil at the control). The best control was "sponsored by Nippy's" and had fruit-box drinks at it, but the juice was so cold that I got an ice-cream headache from it.

At about 2hrs 45 we saw Dave Talbot and his teammate (not Ryan) going the other way, and they were running up a hill, and had done about half the course already, so we were sure that they would be able to clean up by getting the 43 & 73 which were immediately south of the hash house and didn't easily link to any other controls. We got to the north end of the map at about 3hrs 45, and at this point Steve said "if we get back to the hash house with half an hour left, we'll be able to get those last 2 controls". I told him I admired his optimism!

In eventual fact, we had 35 min left, so dropped our packs and tackled the slog up the hill to 73. I looked down as we passed where 43 would be and spotted it in an open gully, so knew exactly where we had to aim for on the way back down. Steve was cramping but I fed him some jellybeans and we finished at a trot, with 5 min to spare. It would have been easy to just hand in our control card and say "we got the maximum score" but I checked it twice to make sure we'd really been to all the controls, because I couldn't believe it. I was also disbelieving when I talked to Dave and his mate Mark, who he'd recruited at the last minute because Ryan was injured, and found out that they didn't make it to 43/73, so we had beaten them! (I guess that marathon runners have great endurance for 3-4 hours, but then fall in a heap.)

It got cold and dark very quickly, and it took a long time to process results. By the time of the presentations I was wearing tights, thermal pants, track pants, 5 layers on my top half, plus gloves and beanie! By the time we got back to town at 10:30pm I was completely buggered, but we'd seen the partial lunar eclipse on the way home, and were happy not to be camping :)

C • congrats 3

It rained coldly and bleakly both ends of the day and I figure I'll get plenty of that sort of weather on the rogaine tomorrow. (On the bright side, think of all the orienteering emails I've achieved while waiting for it to stop raining so I can walk home from work.)

C • overland track silliness 2

Train line - Lower Waterfall - tank - steps - Long Gully loop with Tyson, Fern, Zara/Callum, Steve & Aidan. (Nicole, Steve says hi, he remembers you & Richard.) Tonight my legs still had the memory of yesterday's hills, so I wasn't hugely sprightly, but that's okay, because that descriptor is reserved for little old ladies trying to get across the road...

Oh, and I've worked out why all the TV camera crews were lining up trying to get access to the gated retirement village around the corner from us, while I was walking the dog this morning. Apparently Julia Gillard's parents live there.

Up through Randells Reserve to the BP at Belair (32 min) and back down Gloucester Ave. I felt good, for no obvious reason. There was a warmish dawn breeze which made me think of spring, but which actually means that the rest of the day will be bloody freezing. I saw a plane coming in to land over Glenelg, but because I was at a higher altitude than it, the optical illusion created was that the plane was sailing on the ocean!

C • Sorry! 1

North Adelaide loop with Bridget, Simon, Fern, Tyson, Robin and Vanessa, also with some untimed fartlek intervals thrown in. These were mostly 60-90 sec I'm guessing. V and I did a lap of the uni loop as warmdown and when we finished everyone had gone already, so we went and had dinner by ourselves.

Tyson: "I can't be bothered running, let's just go to the supermarket."
Bridget: "Let's do a supermarket run!"
Simon: "Let's go down the creek a bit first to make it long enough to log on AP."
Jenny: "First item on my list is 3L milk, so I'll leave my grocery shopping until the drive home."
All of us: "My quads don't like the downhills today :( "
Fern: "Going uphill is much easier" (as we struggle up Keith Rd).
A good time was had by all....Tyson was the back-pack-horse, but we told him it was rogaine training for this weekend!

http://www.sarrc.asn.au/Maps/satccoursedesc_map.pd...

Firstly, this wasn't as steep as anticipated (the race info described 985m of ascent and descent, which turned out to mean 492.5m of each)

Secondly, this wasn't as painful as anticipated, or else I handled it better than I thought I would. Actually quite pleased by how I dealt with it mentally, even though I became all too aware that my core stability and consequently my hill-climbing ability, is sub-optimal currently. Also pleased with my decision to carry a jellybean stash and a couple of salt tablets :)

The contentious age-based "wave starts" didn't really materialise; there was just a string of starters in single file up the slippery singletrack Pioneer Women's trail, and then some overtaking to be done. Next year I'm sure they'll start people based on anticipated time! At about Eagle on the Hill the 50+ guys started passing me - first Harry Waterhouse, bouncy as usual, and then Peter Allcroft, frothing at the mouth about how rude Harry had been in pushing past people at the bottom.

From 50-70 min my neuroma was annoying me, and this coincided with the steepest/roughest climb. I heard footsteps behind me which turned out to be Fern - she's tough on hills! This was at about the 10km mark - 62 min. I was glad to already know (from my Yurrebilla training run) that the Wine Shanty track is by no means flat and that it goes around a number of spurs before reaching Greenhill Rd, also happy to be feeling stronger on this section and I pulled away from a few people. Down Chambers Gully my legs were starting to cramp so I stopped to stretch my hamstrings and hoped that my quads would hold out okay. 20km was at 1:52, so 50 min for the next 10km.

I wasn't sure whether the course was actually 23 or 24km, having seen different distances reported, so didn't know how hard to push the last climb up Dashwood Gully, and then I was surprised by a 500m sprint straight down Dashwood Rd to the finish. I was sure that we were meant to rejoin the Pioneer Women's Trail switchbacks, which was in fact the case, except that the course markers got it wrong yesterday. Probably not a bad thing given the slipperiness of the PWT descent, which only Bridget got to enjoy (on the 12km).

So, Simon did the Arrows proud by winning the men's in 1:41, and Lauren likewise the women's in just under 2hrs. Rory McComb did 2:06 apparently, not sure about his dad. Fern & then Zara weren't far behind me, and Tyson's was a valiant effort (was this the longest run you've done, Mr T?).

Poor Lauren could hardly walk by the time of the presentations, she'd strained her groin in a slippery slide. She came up to me with some ice, followed by a girl who I afterwards realised must have been the first aid officer, who started giving me advice on not letting Lauren walk anywhere etc. I looked at this girl slightly blankly and she said "Aren't you her mother?" (I told George last weekend that I wasn't keen on the photos he'd taken of me because you can tell that all my wrinkles are 35 years old....) Anyway, Simon kindly carried Lauren to the car, saying as he did so " Bridget is going to kill me!"

I'm glad I did this race as it's the first long run I've felt confident about since Cradle Mtn. In fact I found myself thinking that the Six Foot Track isn't even twice as long as this. It has a LOT more up and down, though.

C • Told you it would be nice -... 1

Hmph. Unley pool is closing for the winter - just when I've finally overtaken Blair (figuratively speaking). There was an end-of-season BBQ today for the loyal patrons (read: refugees from other pools which closed over a month ago) and the smell of sausages & bacon on the air was disconcerting each time I breathed in. On the last lap I had a head-on collision with another girl - given that I was so far left I was tangling with the lane rope, I couldn't work out how she came to be on my side, but I think she was overtaking someone else.

Short suburban jog to loosen up after an afternoon of tetanus exposure - I mean pruning rose bushes.

To the bottom of Pony Ridge and back. I could tell I hadn't done this for a few weeks, also that, to my mind at least, I am still a bit feeble. (Be very careful not to misconstrue the punctuation in that sentence!) It was nice to see firetailed finches along the creek. Near the caravan park I again came across the kids from Scotch College out running with their PE teacher. There were less of them than I saw a month ago, and they had made it further up the creek than previously (the demographic looks like year 8-9 cross country).

I announced that I felt more human today, and Bridget promptly informed me that I sounded robotic! Same run as last Thursday, except that Zara is now sick, so nobody got a tow from Callum tonight, and Steve Sullivan appeared with his son Aidan, who is 14 (15?) and kept up easily with his long legs. I felt okay(ish) but am not convinced that I'll have the energy for a 24km trail run with nearly 1000m climb on Sunday!

C • Next time.. 1

Came home from OASA council at 11pm last night, minus a voice. My god, the meeting dragged on (and wouldn't have been any quicker if I had shut up sooner). Then I slept for 9 hours :) and just managed not to be late for work!

I did my best to stay upwind of all the coldy people I encountered at work and orienteering over the past week, but somewhere along the way, I obviously failed.

C • cough cough 3

This was the SA middle distance champs - except it wasn't quite. Even the first control seemed to take a long time to get to, and I had trouble reading the map so briefly entertained the thought of it being 1:15 000 but when I looked at the scale it clearly said 1:10 000. Then I overshot 3 on a downhill leg by completely ignoring an indistinct track, thereby leading Fern astray (sorry) and settled down to navigate efficiently and ignore the weirdness. Every leg seemed like 50% more effort than usual, but I put it down to the fact that I was getting sick, until I bumped into Blair at the drinks control and he muttered something about the scale being wrong. My suspicions confirmed, I kept on, sometimes a little too high or low on a control but generally pretty clean. I saw Tyson a couple of times, as the guys only had 7-800m more than us (officially) and he was running strongly despite having done the long course yesterday.

When I finished Phil Davill (course setter) looked at me and said "do you think something's wrong with the scale; it was too long, wasn't it?" OOPS! Admittedly Phil ended up being his own controller for this event because Michelle had broken her ankle a while back, but I'm kind of surprised that neither he nor anyone else had got out a previous copy of the Rawnsley map and remembered that it was at 1: 15 000.

I am fond of callitris (native pine) - except when pushing through the young scratchy stuff - and don't mind giant orb weaving spiders (the biggest problem with ending up wearing one was trying to clean the web off my glasses) so was looking forward to this race. John did well with the course. I took the ridges rather than the creeks mostly, nearly got confused towards the end of the long leg because the dark green wasn't really that thick, but saved myself okay. Unfolded my map to see that I only had 1/4 of the course to go so pushed a bit harder. Felt like it was a good race, except there was no one to race against, the way it turned out.

Short course on the flatter of the Wilpena maps. Nice. Also fast and open. Only one small wobble that I can recall.

My face (not to mention the rest of me) was too far underwater today and so I kept swallowing water (even more than usual) when I came up for air. This probably made me sink even lower in the water but at least I wasn't thirsty afterwards!

Attack of the Killer Physio

I dropped hints about needles and was rewarded by 24 of them. Kath was excited by how many crunches she got out of my spine. I didn't tell her that I can achieve that at home all by myself :)

To the far end of Long Gully then up & over the hill, down into the redwoods and back along the creek, with Lauren, Zara, Simon, Bridget. Callum gave a weary Biddy a tow. I didn't feel too physio-fied but my knees didn't like the downhill. Definitely less wooden than yesterday but that is the whole point of getting stretched to within an inch of your life. I think I left an imprint of my foot in Kath's hip!

Shepherds Hill, Eden Hills, Bellevue Heights, Flinders Uni and home. Glad to have done this, which is not the same as saying I was glad to be doing it, as it was a lot of effort and I felt that I was almost in slow motion - but the creek was chuckling merrily in the park and the views were great out over the coastline and the grey ocean, from the top of the hill above the uni. (I like the beach in winter)

I wish there was an easy way of identifying on AP when you've run the same route before. Having trawled back through, it seems that I haven't done this particular run since December - can that be right? (And then I was too lazy to work out the distance.)

Edit: distance measured now, last run on Feb 28th. Time then was 76, not 68, which makes a lot more sense. I was thinking, surely I'm not that much slower!

HEAPS better than Saturday, at least partly because my back didn't ache today and therefore I was able to be much straighter in the water.

Montefiore Hill was pretty popular tonight - there was another bunch of runners (possibly the SARRC mob) going up and back and then a group of footy players appeared at the bottom, belted up to the top, and ran off somewhere else. I was struggling with slow times and not sorry when Simon pulled the plug after 4 hills.

1:34
1:36
1:35
1:36

With Bridget, Simon, Fern, Tyson, Robin. Warmup 15 min including runthroughs etc. 6 min of recoveries down the hill. Warmdown 20 min - we crossed the river at the weir then ran along the south side past the Festival Centre (I cannot believe that they want to put a footbridge across Torrens lake at its widest point to cut maybe 200m off the trip from the railway station to Adelaide Oval) and back across the uni footbridge. Maybe we just happened to all be running at the same pace so that the bridge bounced significantly as we ran across it, or maybe Simon had subliminally influenced us by pre-emptively changing his pace, but either way, we startled the innocuous Malaysian students we overtook at that point. And then my legs still felt like they were bouncing afterwards.

ITB/hamstring was unpleasant driving into and home from town. Hopefully Kath will make it all better on Thursday.

I ran over to Fern's, then we ran up the creek to the bridge at the end of the caravan park and back, with our imaginary Monday Night friends, then I ran home.

C • sorry i was assingmenting..... 2

I had entered for the Joggers World fun run but given that my knees twinged uncomfortably each time I stretched out in the night (ITB didn't like standing around yesterday) and that by the time I had walked the dog this morning I was ready for a nap, I decided against an 8km cross country race (and the nap - so went to see my grandfather instead).

Very tired this morning, and it showed. But I got better value out of my $5.80 pool ticket than I did out of my $5.80 juice at the cafe where Wallaringa's social brunch was held. After brunch a core group of Arrows (Tyson, Fern, John and myself) spent the rest of the day setting up, manning, and packing up the Saturday afternoon event along the Torrens Linear Park. About 25 registrations, some of them families, and it didn't rain on us. The day was finished by reverse-burgling the Cuttens' and Kreminskis' sheds to return Wallaringa's equipment which we had borrowed.

Not so easy to do when your toes are numb, but I got a bit further than last time (not that that was exactly a benchmark performance).

Warmup 9 min, warmdown 16 min. My hamstring/ITB started cramping on the way home, and when I got back my fingers were so numb I could hardly get the key in the front door!

Somebody please remind me before next Thursday that I really need to put new batteries in my headlamp...

With Zara/Callum and Simon (Tyson was keeping an eye on Fern) to the far end of Long Gully, up the hill to Upper Sturt Rd, then back along the rim of the park and through the golf course. No moon, very dark, fairly chilly. It's taking me a while to get used to winter. 8 degrees when we finished and I decided I was too cold to go grocery shopping and cook, opting instead for Thaikeaway, which I am in no way regretting :)

Up through Randell's Reserve to the BP at Belair and back down Gloucester Ave. Started out cold and dark but ended up just nice, though I was in bottom gear going uphill and then my knees/ITB hurt coming down. The sun was about to appear over Mt Lofty as I reached the top of the hill but I didn't get the benefits of its radiant warmth until I was nearly home again.

The others were doing 400s. I am not good at these and didn't feel I had the energy to start an improvement programme tonight. So I did 200, 400, 600, 400, 200 with 200m recovery in between and then I was completely buggered. But at least I am just normally tired and haven't anything particular to be stressing about.
0.41
1.29
2.24
1.31
0.39

Did I say float? I think I was doing the opposite.

Including run-throughs etc.