Training Log Archive: jennycas

Breezy chilly sunset run up Hillrise and down through the Panorama singletracks (encountering only one bike) before a tasty dinner meeting. Actually forgot about my face at some points during the day, so it is slowly improving, I sincerely hope...

Over to Mitcham and along the muddy singletracks behind the caravan park; even though it was too dark to see the flowing Brownhill Creek, I could hear it bubbling. Legs felt better at the end than they did at the beginning. Having a lot of trouble with my jaw lately though - maybe wisdom teeth are overcrowding my mouth?

Attack of the Killer Masseuse
It appears that the reason why my knees didn't hurt at all on the descent yesterday was that I was bracing with my butt muscles...

Walked up Mt Lofty (as hundreds of other people were doing) with a friend, had brunch at the top (where it was 5 degrees), walked back down to Waterfall Gully (where others were queueing up for our car park). Lovely hike but it was over too soon; 2hrs is hardly proper rogaine training although a reasonable opportunity to test out spinifex-proof shoes.

Escaped from conference and the sun was actually briefly shining, so I thought I'd go see the waterfalls. Made it past Deep View & up Central Track ok then ran out of legs, or maybe lunch (which this conference doesn't provide), at about Moores Rd. Knees weren't great on the way down Colonial Drive which is hopefully just due to 3 days of sitting. Falls were scenic rather than spectacular but there was enough water for me to hesitate at the stepping stones below 3rd Falls - feeling a little off balance today.

I have since identified the small rat-like creature which I saw making its way up a tree and vanishing into a hole as a yellow-footed antechinus. That's exciting!

Around the river again, this time admiring the city lights, after a long day of conferencing and before meeting G for his work's midyear drinks night at a rowing club which is approx. 300m from the Convention Centre but "you can't get there from here" from its North Tce carpark.

Feeling a bit better today, or maybe it was due to the anti-inflammatories, and had been at a conference in the city since 7:30am (at which time the sun was just rising, unlike last year in Copenhagen when it had been up for about 3 hours) so when it stopped raining I went for a run along the River Torrens to see how much water was going over the weir. On the way back, I encountered a multitude of Crows fans crossing the fancy new footbridge. Since when do we have Thursday night footy in Adelaide?

Last 3 days I have been just generally tired and achy/feverish and more specifically very tight in shoulder/neck/scalp/jaw leading to difficulty eating, with which I normally have no problem...

Event: Paddy Pallin 6 hour Rogaine
 

"Sometimes you're the windshield; sometimes you're the bug"
(The Bug, by Dire Straits, from On Every Street, 1991. Nowhere near as good an album as any of their earlier work but the title track made it worth buying.)

Today I felt as flat as a bug on a windscreen, which was a pity, because I love rogaining, but I couldn't even muster up any enthusiasm for planning a route while we were sitting in the car watching the rain on the windscreen, having left Tracy's at 6am to get to Catherine Hill Bay ("Catho" to the locals) south of Newcastle. The map was deceptive; only about 3km wide in a strip between the old Pacific Highway and the coast, with the course basically divided into 2 halves by a narrow section with a new housing development being built on an old coal mine site meaning that you had to take the beach past it both ways. We planned to complete the southern section which included some cross-country legs in 'white' forest, and some out-&-backs on tracks through coastal heathland to coastal headlands, and then see what else we had time for, but I didn't have a good feel for how far this might be or how fast I could go.

Right from the start we were off the back of the pack running down the road to 23, and getting further behind by the minute. I didn't have the energy for the rock scramble along the beach below the cliff from 32 so just splashed through the incoming waves - wet feet don't matter! By the time we were heading out to 101 on the rock shelf beyond the 'island' Cath & Paula were already coming back from it and I knew there was no way I could keep up with them :(

But it also seemed that I had left my brain in the car, and was looking at the map & compass as though I'd never seen them before. Kept thinking that east was west, and north was south, and estimating distance as though it was a 1: 50 000 map, and I couldn't seem to go up hills, or down hills, which were 'slippery when wet' (not sure what shoes would have been suitable in this terrain; even trail shoes wouldn't really have helped on the clayey tracks. Perhaps O shoes? But my bad foot wouldn't have managed 6 hours in them). My teammate, while very patient, must have been thinking that he hadn't signed up just to drag around a second Navlight tag attached to a pair of legs with no head connected!

And I was thinking that I just needed to be home curled up in bed, which was such a pity, because I love rogaining, and 6 hours are my favourite...about 2 hours in, Blair basically asked if I needed to quit, and I said no, so he suggested that we leave off the SW corner, which was worth 340 points but involved some long cross-country legs, and do the coastal section sooner, then the 5km trek with no points back to the north part, and then see what we had time left to do.

It rained for the entire 6 hours, and I think I must be a fair-weather rogainer. I haven't been so wet since the NZ WRC in 2010! Might as well not have worn a raincoat because all it did was impede my running and the day wasn't actually that cold; plenty of people were just in t-shirts. Also the fundamental purpose of a raincoat is to keep things dry, whereas by the end I even had puddles inside my coat pockets, thereby completely dissolving my stash of salt tablets. But there came a point where it was just rather good fun to splash through the streams which had once been tracks, and admire the creeks which had turned into waterfalls among the rock shelves and palm trees.

And even though I was incredibly slow through the terrain, I turned back into a proper rogainer for the last 90 min, actually thinking about how much time we had left and which controls we could get depending on how long we took between them, and we finished off by getting a couple extra which was satisfying even if they were worth only 20 points each - in the end, the 8 controls we got after the Catho Pub still gave us 60 points less than the 4 down the SW corner would have done - and after the finish it was good to chat to Carolyn (tinytoes) while drinking hot pumpkin soup before wrestling my damp self into dry clothes before the drive back to Sydney. Since both Blair and I had booked 8:30pm flights there was enough leeway to not be stressed by the traffic jam encountered right at the entrance to the airport, but that's something which Geoff & I will have to keep in mind in 2 weeks' time.

C • And.. 7

Flew into Sydney 9pm last night but Blair's flight was delayed and by the time we'd picked up a hire car and got to Tracy's it was after 11pm so when I woke up to the sound of rain I wasn't desperate for a run but wanted to stretch legs before OA Board workshop so Blair & I went out and did the Faryland loop in pouring rain (which ironically, cleared up as soon as we got to the meeting venue @Homebush) which was very scenic but I struggled with lifting my legs and had to walk up all the stairs, which does not bode well for 6 hrs tomorrow. Also could have done without finishing the meeting after dark (which is about 5pm in Sydney at the minute) and then driving around for an hour in search of a supermarket - I was absolutely wrecked by the time we got back to Lane Cove.

Nearly didn't get out for this, and nearly couldn't see where we were going in the fog. Afterwards I think Zara & I stood and chatted for nearly as long as we had been running!

North Adelaide loop with B&S and John. A bit faster than when we have the kiddies with us but the guys kept having to stop at the lights so it was possible to catch up every so often.

We got back to Darwin about 4pm Sun, after car-shuffle at Florence, picking up my car at the Tourist Park, being surprised to see Geoff and Eleanor there when he was supposed to wait in Batchelor for Zoe to drop Lachlan off and me to come along (but he got bored because the markets were finished over an hour ago, and there's no phone reception which was why I'd told him to stay put) but anyway he got back into Batchelor not too long after Zoe & Lachlan or before me. Sounds like the kid had a great day playing while Sus was busy with the weeds stall, and she fell in love with a pumpkin so G bought it for her! Staying with Zoe and we were all fairly stuffed but ventured out and found the yiros & ice cream vans at Nightcliff Jetty, so that was dinner, and a pleasant evening except that my foot was being really annoying.

I could hardly put weight on it during the night, so it was totally illogical to go for a run this morning, but I wanted to try to stretch it out and also it was a nice breezy morning (the last couple of days, people have kept commenting on how much it's cooled down since the Dry arrived on Friday) so I went up to the uni - sprint map probably needs some alterations by now - and back via the bridge across Rapid Creek, past the Jingili water gardens which I'd never been to before until we took Rhubarb (Andrew & Zoe's dog) for a walk last night.

Anyway, this gave me a good appetite for breakfast which we ate at the museum cafe with SLE and then spent some time on the beach before farewelling the others and heading to the airport. Smooth flight but we were greeted at home by the neighbours holding on to Meatloaf dog, who'd somehow managed to escape during the hour between my parents leaving our place and us arriving. *sigh*

I never heard the ultra runners get up at 4am for their 6am start at Wangi Falls, and was very grateful that Zoe and Kate (from Katherine) had already left a car at Wangi yesterday, so all that was necessary was for Lachlan, Dan, Kate and me to squeeze into Zoe's car for the ride to Florence Falls, start of the half marathon, while Uncle Geoffrey took Eleanor into Batchelor for a morning of babysitting while Susanne ran a weeds management stall at the monthly markets!

Terry's track notes, and verbal briefing at the start, were beginning to give me the impression that the Tabletop Track might not be so much of a track as a trail, especially when he emphasised that the trail is well marked when you are on it, but it's easy to get off it by following the wrong footpad through the grass, and if you haven't seen a blue trail marker, or a streamer, for a while, go back to where you last saw one. So, not actually even a formed singletrack, then...

This was further reinforced by the fact that the 70-odd runners set off at 8:30am, down the steps to the base of Florence Falls, and 5 minutes later completely failed to take the link track which led up to the Tabletop loop, because of a whacking great TRACK CLOSED sign across it! I did see this sign, and wondered about it, but thought the link track must have been rerouted. When we all started to go downhill again, back towards the creek above the falls, I got really suspicious, and at the junction with the track between Buley and Florence convinced the people nearest me to turn around, but not before the frontrunners had gone back past the starting point of the run and down the stairs to the waterfall again, leaving Terry to shake his head - turns out the Tabletop loop isn't officially reopened to walkers after the Wet, hence the sign across the link track, which he hadn't thought to tell us about :)

The link track was pretty rough and ready, and we all scrambled up it wondering what the rest was going to be like. At least the organisers had put out streamers in between the trail markers, so we can just follow them, right? Which is why I found myself about 5 min later yelling at the people in front of me :"Oi, you're heading towards Walker Creek, you need to come back this way!" because out the corner of my eye I had seen a sign which pointed left towards Greenant Creek (correct direction) and right towards Walker Creek (from which direction the 50km runners doing the whole loop would eventually appear) and was the only indication that we had reached the Tabletop track. There was absolutely no such thing on the ground as a 3-way junction!

So, this is how it's going to be, then - Terry really meant what he said. And it seemed like a very long time to reach the fire trail at the 7.6km mark, where the first water drop would be. Possibly because of the extra km I'd done at the beginning, but some people did an extra 4km or so when they went right at the top instead of left, and later on numerous people got overexcited and took the Greenant Creek track when they should have gone another 1 km - and crossed Wangi Creek - before descending to Wangi Falls. So I was being incredibly careful with looking for trail markings, only I also needed to be looking for rocks and logs hidden in the long grass, and dared not try to jump over anything or I'd end up on my face. And also, quite frankly, the running shoes I had decided to wear were woeful for this sort of terrain; no grip on either rocks or dry grass and my feet sliding around so that despite taped ankles I was still rolling them. Oh well, I know for sure not to wear these shoes in Central Australia now.

Zoe came past me just before the water stop but I couldn't stay with her; her legs were too long and I was too busy trying not to trip over anything. It was a beautiful route, though, despite the lack of running most of the time. The trail transitioned between open woodland, regrowth after burning off, swampy marsh bottoms (where a woman who was running faster than me but kept losing the trail also kept squealing about its "snakiness") , creeks lined with pandanus palms and where I always wet both my feet and my hat, rocky outcrops where sometimes we had to boulder-hop, and groves of beautiful native pines. How come I've never noticed Callitris in the Northern Territory before?

There was a gentle breeze, too, and the day didn't seem particularly warm, but I suspect that people can get heatstroke without noticing it and I'd slept fairly poorly the past few nights so was already feeling buggered by the water drop, where I picked up my sports drink and also accepted chips and watermelon (hoping plenty would still be left for the ultra runners) and took a 10-minute breather along with a couple of salt tablets, and set off again at the "it's more important to stay upright and enjoy myself rather than anything else" pace. I was on my own during this section until the upper reaches of Wangi Creek, but that was ok because I quite enjoyed the challenge of hunting for the trail markers. Occasionally a faster runner, who'd obviously missed a turn earlier, came through me and then I had the fun of watching him look for and lose the trail ahead of me.

When it got rocky though, even I couldn't find the trail and had to do quite a lot of stopping and looking backwards to see the last arrow and the direction from which people would have come in order to see it. I even got the (compulsory, complimentary) map out at one point, but should have just realised that all I needed to do was keep the creek on my right. About then a Scottish guy from Darwin came along and we picked our way through the rocks together. I was surprised to hear him say that we should be only a couple km from the Greenant Creek link track, because if the first 7km had taken 70 min, and I'd only been going another 70 min since then, I couldn't be up to 16-17 yet - but in fact the first section had ended up being nearly 9km.

Anyway, I was now ready to have company although I expected him to run away, being faster - but he didn't, and we even had time to chat about other runs we'd done (Point to Pinnacle needs to move over when claiming to be the world's toughest half marathon, I now reckon) since two sets of eyes are better than one when hunting for trail markers, and we didn't take the wrong track to Greenant Creek, and the Wangi creek crossing was a glorious shady wade, and the link track to Wangi Falls was just below it. Only question was: which way to go around the Wangi Falls loop to get to the bottom? I thought I'd remembered that the ultra runners were to start to the west and finish from the east, and so I figured perhaps all runners were to finish from the east side, which my companion seemed inclined towards doing anyway. Apparently this wasn't the correct route (both sides of the loop are similar distance though), but it was nice to come down the wooden stairs and through the grove under the bats and past the swimmers, then what's this? An uphill finish? Only slightly, just the path up to the carpark, but it was noticeably at an incline...and then there was Zoe walking down to get wet already, and a finish chute, and someone ringing a cowbell, and Terry's wife Gay basically doing everything at the finish including writing down times, cooking sausages for finishers and handing out cold soft drinks in commemorative stubby holders.

I didn't want a sausage, but a swim in the waterhole was just the thing, and I laughed at the Darwinites saying that it was too cold - I thought the water was beautiful :) And while we 5 were eating our lunch, the stragglers who had gone the wrong way started coming in, and also a guy who casually rocked up and turned out to be the first of the nearly 40 ultra runners, having done the 50km in exactly 6 hours. No mean feat when you consider that there really wasn't a track! The first ultra-woman arrived about half an hour later and she too looked pretty cool, and Dan started saying that next year he'd like to do the 50km. Even I think it could possibly be manageable if the weather was similar to this year but it would be helpful to have walked the track previously, to know where the really rough parts are. As it was, my legs weren't really hammered, because of how little I'd been able to run - but my bad foot was really horrible afterwards and in the night I couldn't put weight on it at all.

C • Enjoyed your recount 4

Up at dawn to go insect-collecting with Susanne & Eleanor somewhere out near Fogg Dam, social stuff/shopping/Parap markets during the day, then G & I went to Florence Falls & Buley Rockhole (he dipped the toes of his steel-caps, I got properly wet) before ending up at the Litchfield Tourist Park and entertaining Eleanor while Lachlan prepared for them to spend the night in a tent. G & I actually had a room to ourselves in the bunkhouse full of trail runners though.

We flew into Darwin at lunchtime (I was surprised to see clouds in the sky but apparently our arrival chased away the last vestiges of the Wet), spent the afternoon with Susanne & Eleanor and then I fitted in a short stagger past the museum and along Mindil Beach before dinner at the Trailer Boat Club with Terry Cleary and various interstate runners he was hosting. Run was rather painful, but fulfilled the goal of working up an appetite for dinner. And the sunset later was nice - up there it doesn't get dark until nearly 7pm!

To redwoods, up slippery singletrack, down Saddle Hill on the bitumen with Zara/Callum & Johnnn. Tired legs & brain tonight. Stayed too long chatting to Z afterwards and took forever to warm up when I got home. Not a problem I'll have after Sunday's run!

Up Randell's to the BP at Belair, down Gloucester, being careful on the slippery singletracks. It took a long time to get light and the sun never really came up although the rain didn't arrive until I was nearly done.

Sooo tired at work today but a trot around the river (weir & zoo footbridge) with the gang perked me up enough to stay awake at OSA SI workshop tonight. Foot pain seems to have settled so I am cautiously optimistic that it won't turn into plantar fasciitis - rather I think the tightness was tendinopathy from 24hrs of taped ankles in rogaine.

Plan was to go out to Narrinyeri with Frank and tape control sites after WA brunch but when we were all at the pub at Bridgewater watching the rain pelting down, that didn't seem like such a good idea. It turned into a fairly fine afternoon at home though, so since G&I were going to Steve & Maya's at Stirling East for dinner, I decided to run up there. 65 min to the top of Tilleys Hill Rd, up which I may possibly not have run since Christmas '09*, then about another hour up Charlick to Crafers and down/up through Stirling. Perfect timing as G arrived with warm clothes about 5 min before I did :) Hands were getting a bit cold by the end - somehow I don't think that will be a problem next Sunday!

*edit: can't actually find that I ran up Tiilleys Hill, only down, during Cradle Mtn training - seem to have gone up via either Waterfall Gully or Sheoak Rd at that time.

G&I spent a few hours on a sunny winter's day doing maintenance at Perry Ave so then I ran from there up through Shepherds Hill (bypassing the Eden Field Archers who were actively shooting at targets) & down through Flinders Uni, ending up at Avenue Rd. The evening was cooling down by the end and the ground becoming hard underfoot, which it wouldn't have been if I were orienteering in sand dunes in NZ - sooo envious of everyone who's currently doing so. I hear Estonia has sand dunes, too, but I'm not going to them either :(

C • sand dunes 9

C • Eden Field Archers 1

Sniffles & sciatica. Random stabbing pains all down right side - must be getting old. But am also kind of sad that, due to my line of work, many of the people I deal with never get to become old.

Redwoods return with Zara, Lauren, Angus. Wouldn't have bothered with this on my own but it was nice to get out.

Saw Froat probably explains the sheer exhaustion. Group travel is never good for me - shouldn't have hung around with coldy people on weekend!

C • But you love me! Cough co... 5