Training Log Archive: jennycas

Pretty stiff today. A reminder to wear the right shoes & orthotics, particularly given that the ground is already as hard now as it usually is in February. Disappointed that I noticed the first tinge of colour in our apricots on Saturday and two days later the lorikeets have almost decimated the crop.

Not many of us this morning. Took the old Heysen Trail to the waterhole on Cox Creek, up the hill on Osterley Ave, down into Engelbrecht reserve, up the hill on Mountford Ave, down the Strathalbyn road for a bit, up the hill to Mylor CP, lap of the park, down into Mylor (one of only two noticeable descents on this run) for a drink at the school, up Aldgate Valley Rd (still don't know why everyone else seems to like it so much) then Zara & Lauren continued into Aldgate and Andrew, Marco & I went up Nation Ridge Rd (how come this route seemed to have so much more climb than if we'd taken Wilson Rd?) and down the new Heysen Trail back to Bridgey.

Procured coffee from the Organic Market afterwards and delivered it to Fern, Liz & Susanne, who were walking with their offspring in Belair NP :)

Spent the day at Para Wirra helping Bridget with sub-junior training; a jam-packed day which has replaced the Year 7 camp hosted by Jeffa & John for so many years. Bridget & assistants kept nineteen 11-14 year olds out of mischief on 4 different courses. In return for putting out & collecting controls, I received a tasty sausage from the bbq lunch :)

Also begged a cup of tea from Jeffa to keep me awake! Had thought of going for a run when I got home but legs were hammered from the hard ground and old O shoes - and the weekend papers beckoned.

Don't seem to have time or energy for much outside of work this week, although the fog in my brain from the impact when I stood up suddenly after bending down beneath an open filing cabinet drawer seems to have lifted. Didn't tell that one to the OH&S people.

Finally got away from work in time to go for a run, but had to be somewhere for dinner at 7 so this was short. Not sweet though, because I was exhausted and my knees painful.

Disconcerted to discover that unbeknownst to me, one lucky person in Sydney has had their gym membership fees regularly paid out of our home loan savings account since July...I think it's an honest mistake (account number transcription error by Crunch Chatswood) but still need to get the money back!

C • OUCH 5

Heysen Trail to Strathalbyn Rd, towards Mylor CP then down to Cox Creek, Taminga Grove under the freeway and back up Silver Rd from Verdun, finishing off via the waterhole on Cox Creek.

I struggled from the beginning with very tight hip flexors - and actually my groin had been quite bad last night after standing all evening in unsupportive sandals - and never really got above a plod for this run, but it was a good chance to catch up with Steve, and Zara, and Ethan kept up valiantly and appreciated a tow up the hill from Callum towards the end.

The rest of the day seemed to vanish with social stuff including the WA AGM (everyone there a bit shell-shocked about Jennie Bourne's sudden death) and family-visiting (Eleanor doesn't understand why I think she's so hilarious). This didn't get any of my OA Conference papers written...

Before a long day of house-tidying, window-washing, and party-organising. When we realised a few weeks ago that there would be 50-60 people coming to dad's 80th I had arranged a roast-meat-&-salads caterer but I was still frantically dusting (don't seem to have been home on weekends to do housework lately) when she arrrived and I had to ask the first few guests to help blow up the balloons!

Party went well and cake-decorating was a success; rosemary sprigs for trees, chocolate snowballs for boulders and controls made out of the orange & white parts of licorice allsorts :)

C • Window cleaning 6

To/from pool, because G was parked behind me and I didn't think it worth taking his ute.

Street O starting from St John's Grammar at the top of Gloucester Ave. Which meant that the first few controls resulted in a net downhill. At first glance the 5 southernmost controls on the other side of Gum Grove seemed as good as any to leave out but by the time I was halfway round the Caroline Ave loop I'd worked out that getting the remaining 15/20 would mean having to do a couple of out & backs and that these involved a couple of big hills. Oh well, I'm better on hills than I was a week ago, and it was a nice cool evening, of which the Darwinites were particularly aware :)

Knocklofty hill's been staring at me all week and I seemed to recall the circuit being less than an hour's run when we were staying just off Hill St in West Hobart 5 years ago. But there were a lot of hills to get to Hill St, when starting from Battery Point, and it seemed really hot in the sun despite being only 17 degrees and I started out at the time of Hobart's brief but chaotic peak hour traffic on the one-way system ( it used to be 15 minutes but now I suspect it lasts more like half an hour), and so I really didn't enjoy the first 30 minutes or so and the steeper it got, the more often I had to stop until my heart rate would normalise. Mt Stuart Rd required rests at 2-minute intervals. Might be a bit exhausted still?

Anyway, I thought about going back but I was nearly at the reserve, and Knocklofty really is a nice bit of bushland, with wallabies hopping around enjoying the evening sunlight. The trail has been revamped a bit but it still goes up to the broad summit ("a knoll" rather than "the knoll") and then steeply down, eventually popping out at Forest Road, which goes steeply down some more - after all, the hilltop is at 370m so you have to lose that altitude somehow. Hurried back through the suburbs admiring everyone's rose gardens (it's still spring in Hobart and the climbing Pierre de Ronsard are particularly magnificent), having finally made up my mind that I would go to the conference dinner since I'd lugged a good dress and shoes all the way to the Antipodes.

Probably unsurprisingly, I didn't get going very efficiently this morning - ate some toast at 4:30am then had weird dreams for the next few hours (if I were Blair I would probably just have got up & gone running at that time, but I'm not so I didn't) but by the end of a day conferencing I needed to stretch my legs so headed out along Sandy Bay, wondering why the casino is called Wrest Point (for years I assumed it was West Point), up by the uni then back towards the city with a bit of waterfront to finish, kind of hoping the Aurora Australis might be in port - but its webcam shows it sitting comfortably in sea ice at Davis. Fairly stop-start run and hip flexors tight but I felt better at the end than I did at the beginning. I'm not much of one for sitting still in conferences and keep thinking about all the stuff I could be doing at home instead, to prepare for dad's 80th on Sat.

Sooo tired on Sunday afternoon but I had 3 presentations to be working on simultaneously, which required both chocolate and coffee to keep me awake (not really alert) and I gave up at 11pm, started again at 6am, made it by 9 to the cancer pharmacists' workshop which I was chairing; actually the day went pretty well. Came home about 5, absolutely exhausted, had a snack and then decided I needed a nap before going for a run. Woke up about 4:30am Tuesday...

C • Apparently 2

Wouldn't say I was fully confident about this run given that I never got around to doing anything over 2hrs in training, but feeling optimistic and a little excited, although that could just be delirium due to sleep deprivation (did the clock radio alarm really need to go off at an unspecified ungodly hour in the middle of the night?). The top of Mt Wellington didn't look that far away, really, and certainly not 1270m high.

It took less than 15 min to jog from my accommodation across to the Wrest Point Casino in Sandy Bay on a perfect sunny morning (although a bit longer to walk home again later, especially up the hill to Battery Point) and I had heaps of time before the start, although it then took a couple of minutes to actually get across the start line, being a fair way back in a field of about 1400 people (the 1600 walkers started about an hour earlier, and above The Springs I encountered hundreds of them).

Up Davey St and Huon Rd in the sun I felt quite warm and sluggish but I wasn't going to worry about all the people going past me, just find my rhythm and stick to it. I felt a bit better whenever it was shady, and even started passing the occasional person. Plus it's cooler higher up, of course; by the time we got to the Pinnacle Rd turnoff at Ferntree (450m altitude), my breath was actually steaming! First 5km took about 32 min, second 5km seemed to take forever but it turned out that the 10km marker meant 10km to go, so that 40 min was actually for 6.4km.

The Springs are at about 14km, and it was here that someone was offering fairy bread to runners (also I must tell Meredith about the sign which someone was holding up: WTF Where's The Finish?) and I took a cup of Gatorade which was a bit hard to run/drink with but at least I was smart enough not to tip it over my head as I usually do with water :) While I still felt fairly ok the problem was that my knees were really starting to protest - I've had these shoes for a couple of years & should replace them - and at 16km I had to stop & stretch and let the hordes of walkers stream past me. A good thing that I admired the view here, because it turned out to be a bit cloudy at the top.

At 18km I had to briefly join the walkers, a bit demoralised because the sign at the Chalet said it's at altitude 1000m; did the next 3km really each involve 100m climb? Mind you, being at the snowline meant it was possible to see the stream of people going up the road ahead of me, all the way to the top. Remembered the muesli bar in my back pocket and with the energy from this and the next drink stop, plodded my way to the finish mats which turned out to be not right at the transmitter tower, but at the lookout (never complain if the last km is a bit short) and involved a bit of a bottleneck as everyone stood there in a crowd and shuffled forward very slowly towards the lookout shelter where we received finishers' medals, a packet of lollies and water, before hunting for the gear buses among a full carpark of about 60 buses, which were to take us down the mountain in efficient O-Ringen fashion.

Some people found the bus descent on winding roads a bit tedious but I was chatting to Gary Carroll and we were soon at the bottom, shuffling into the casino for our free meal & drink (tear-off vouchers on the bottom of the running number) which was a nice idea; although soup & fruit weren't very filling, the cup of tea went down well and fortified me for the walk back home, $60 well spent. I've had a look at how this run, which bills itself as "The World's Toughest Half Marathon" compares in times to the 27.4km Two Bays, which turns out to be about 20 min longer for the winners. So probably what I did today equated to my doing 3hr for Two Bays in 2014. Think I could have been about 10 min faster today if my knees had cooperated (2:40 includes stretching stops), and think I need to lose about 5kg before the WRC next July - not difficult to do if I make a concerted effort to run a bit more rather than staying at my desk until it's too late, and the byproduct of that process should hopefully be ending up about 1 min/km faster on this sort of run also.

C • Well done! 12

Woke up at 4 for a 6am flight via Melbourne to Hobart. Landed and it was raining - there's no mountain to be seen anywhere up there! Spent something like 6 hours walking and shopping around Salamanca Place and markets (I may have over-compensated a little for the fact that I didn't have room in my pack to bring many gifts back from Europe) and after picking up my running number (should I be worried that the commemorative freebie with it is a thermal beanie?) headed back to my apartment in Battery Point, avoided writing my talks for a couple of hours, then went for a run along the Hobart Rivulet to Cascade Brewery. Wasn't sure how my knees would feel about a sustained downhill on the way back so I kept diverting up side streets and cross roads, partly trying to work out what the route of the P2P will be but I still don't quite understand how it gets from the casino to the bottom of Huon Road. I know how I'll get there though: just follow everyone else. I do have one friend who's also running but he's an M55 triathlete who does 19 min for 5km so will get to the top rather sooner than I do.

Seemed to have a calming effect, unlike this week at work which is rather frantic (and yesterday sort of did my head in. I may have used the unladylike term cluster**** when describing it to G, who'd had a pretty average day himself). I am looking forward to a pre-conference weekend in Hobart where all I have to worry about is the talks I haven't written yet.

Colleagues came to my aid at work this afternoon and so I was actually able to go for a Belair run. To redwoods, up the singletrack to the top of the park, down QJD. Really nice evening for it with golden dustiness overhanging the valleys. Also nice to chat with Bridget on the way up (interesting linguistics discussion) and Zara on the way down. Groin was getting tighter by the minute though :(

Attack of the Killer Masseuse
Not terrible but that may be because I haven't done much running lately.

It was still fairly warm out when I started, although had clouded over, and I had to stop to catch my breath many times while staggering up the hill to Belair. Once there, a bit of a breeze came up and it was quite nice going along Sheoak Rd to the top of Pony Ridge, which I hurried down because I had left work a bit later than planned and daylight was limited. Lovely to be in my valley; not sure why I don't do the Brownhill Creek run more often. And I managed to get through the singletrack section before I completely couldn't see where I was putting my feet. Pretty slow coming back through the suburbs though, but I enjoyed the wind in the trees and their dancing streetlight shadows on the pavement.

Seems as though I missed a good Bridgewater run - White Gum/Tanamerah Rd's one of my favourite loops - but I was still sound asleep at the time the others started, catching up after all the poor nights' sleep pre-rogaine (which had been complete with rogaine-organising-disaster nightmares). I eventually surfaced after 9am, finished off some rogaine pizza (gluten-free, vegetarian, but I enhanced it with salami) and then did nothing much for the rest of the day; feeling a little under the weather but also I took the opportunity to catch up with myself because the next couple of weeks are going to be pretty frantic; the person who's co-chairing the pre-conference workshop day in Hobart with me has pulled out because he doesn't have funding to get there from Perth and so I have to give his talks as well as my own!

Perfect morning for it, with Buttercup bread smells. Afterwards spent the entire day helping at the 3hr minigiaine, not even leaving the school campus. Approx 130 teams in the end, and not too many no-shows. Lots of families, lots of fancy dress team outfits. 100kg of watermelon (thanks Zara) and $1800 worth of pizza. Amy & Emma did a great job with the course and the most complicated part of the whole event was dealing with all the novelty/bonus points.

C • Great event! I was so glad ... 2

Escape, ha ha, hee hee! From work, that is; there was a lot more I easily could have stayed back to do but not doing it wasn't going to compromise patient safety, and thus there was enough daylight remaining to comfortably plod around the Eden-Hills Flinders Uni loop, even with an extended detour through the university caused by my usual detour (due to the plaza building works) now also being blocked.

Think I'm going to struggle a bit with Point to Pinnacle because it's clearly not just *any* half marathon, not when it takes Hanny 1hr 40 to win. So I'm guessing that my time may be fairly similar to what I've previously run for 27km at Two Bays although whether it correlates to a good day (2:40) or a bad day (3hrs) may depend partly on how well I recover from getting up in time for a 6am flight next Sat, and also on the training I kind of haven't got around to doing properly yet...

Bought about 5kg of lolly snakes tonight to place at rogaine controls. Felt as though I was betraying my principles by doing this because my mum does not believe in giving sugar to children. My dad doesn't believe in Halloween, and neither do I, which made me doubly uncomfortable last Sat night when walking the dog, to see all the families out trick or treating with their kids imaginatively dressed and clutching baskets of treats. I came home and said to G "if anyone knocks on the door, I'm giving them fruit!"

Just then there was a knock at the door and a voice tentatively called out "trick or treat" but by the time I'd decided whether to respond, they'd moved on...I happened to read on someone else's AP log (from the US) that they'd given out something like 600 pieces of candy and 150 toys on Sat night. That's just ridiculous!

Wow, head is so full of rogaine stuff this week, and it's only a 3 hour (for which I'm not even a setter).There was a fair quantity of water flowing in Brownhill Creek, but it wouldn't have been swimmable, or even surf-on-a-lilo-able; we probably got half an inch last night, just at the time when I was vaguely contemplating going for a run, so I didn't.

C • Spoken like a farmer's granddaughter 9

Colonel Light Gardens, at a slow plod, before sorting and bagging maps for 130 teams. The purple-flowering jacarandas, after-rain humidity and smell of jasmine all made me think of being in Sydney. Pity we have to wait until December for the next trip (but Hobart is now not much more than a week away - can begin my Christmas shopping at Salamanca markets unless I'm still frantically finishing off conference presentations).

Just ordered pizza for nearly 400 people for Sat night...

C • Yum!!!!!! Can't wait :) 6

One of the things I particularly liked about yesterday's run was the opportunity to be by myself (have been out socialising on 4 evenings during the past week, which is going to make it look, in the compulsory ABS household expenditure survey which we can't avoid doing, as though all G & I do is pay other people to cook us food - plus last weekend I didn't really get a break from people either) but I stiffened up a lot through knees & groin afterwards and probably wouldn't have gone for a decent run on my own today, so group run it was, then. Heysen Spur trail to Verdun across past The Cedars to Hahndorf, under the freeway & back up Silver Rd. I finished off past the waterhole on Cox Creek which had more water flowing than at Morialta, although that's not saying much.

C • Misleading ABS surveys 10