Training Log Archive: jennycas

I now have lights attached to my bike so I can ride over to Fern's after dark. I also have both wheels attached, which wasn't the case partway through Saturday's ride when the quick-release lever spontaneously demonstrated its effectiveness! (I must have clipped it on a post walking my bike through the train underpass - I realised as I crossed at the lights that the lever was undone so I stopped at the next corner to do it up, and as I braked, the wheel fell off...)

C • Can't trust 'em 1

A pleasant run from Fern's (minus Fern who is still unwell) with Lauren, her brother, Tyson, Simon, Troy, Bridget. To Lynton, across the bottom of Randell's Reserve in the dark, through the cemetery, across Brownhill Ck, up to Carrick Hill, down past Unley High.

Shepherds Hill, Eden Hills, Blackwood, Belair, Pony Ridge, Brownhill Creek and home. I haven't done a proper long run for ages, I think I've been scared of them since Cradle. (I used to say that you are only ready to do another 24-hr rogaine when the psychological scars of the last one have faded; perhaps the same applies to ultramarathons.) Had no energy up hills, could feel myself losing momentum as soon as I hit the slightest incline, but from the BP at Belair (63 min) it's mostly flat or downhill so I managed to increase the pace, apart from the fact that the Pony Ridge switchbacks were slippery (I saw 3 guys pushing their mountain bikes up, wonder where they were going to ride down?) and the singletrack along the creek rather slushy. The last few weeks my quads have seemed to fatigue quickly - it's a proximal weakness. I'm not sure why, but am inclined to blame running at night where I strike the ground very flat-footedly.

C • Great run 2

Didn't know what to do with myself on a Sunday where there's neither orienteering or a road race, but then Vincent brought around a full set of prototype courses for the Aust long champs :) And now it's after 3pm and I still haven't achieved any housework...but I've thought of an advantage to George's not being an orienteer; I don't have to hide the maps from him!

Squeezed in between catering for parents' garden club breakfast and a site visit to Para Wirra for the club relays with Tyson/Simon/John. It wasn't raining when I left home, or I may not have gone out...by the time I turned around at the far end of the valley it was absolutely bucketing down! I felt sorry for the little old ladies from the Mitcham Historical Association who were standing patiently with their umbrellas to tell anyone who cared, about the historic manure pits, as part of History Week. When I came back to Muggs Hill Rd there was water flowing across the ford, and I was soaked already, so I rode through :)

I actually put on my running gear and headed out the door before deciding that my knees weren't happy and a swim would be more pleasant. So then I was running late, and put a bit of effort in. And less strokes per lap were needed than usual. Maybe I almost found some rhythm.

C • weekend running? 2

Tyson and Simon decided that Bridget needed to experience going through Echo Tunnel at night (it's brighter by night with torches than it is going through in the day). Then we went up past both waterfalls to the tap at the top of the park, down Saddle Hill Rd (my knees didn't like the descent) and back along Long Gully. It was nice to talk to Zara for once :) Oh, and it turns out that Bridget goes to uni with my cousin!

100% family stuff. After Beth's funeral we went back to the farm at Nairne - Grandfather is 94 and has lived all his life less than 10km from where he was born. Was good to catch up with various relatives etc but Susanne and I want to know why our Sargent cousins are all so much taller than us! (It's the Casanova cousins who are all short and round like me).

The 30s on component of tonight's fartlek, assuming we did 20 of these. Took a while to warm up, then my shins got a bit grumpy, but it wasn't too bad.

So, the session was actually 30s on, 1min off, around the north Adelaide loop with Susanne, Tyson, Simon, Bridget, Lauren, Robin & Adrian. Also we did a lap of the uni loop as warmdown.

Housework usurped the place of running. Not that I would have done 6 hours of running anyway. And now all the camping gear from the weekend is unpacked and the spare room ready for this week's interstate guests. And I still hate housework.

I decided a while ago that I'd run the M21 course because I really enjoy orienteering at Twigham, and I'm glad I did so. There's something about running through the mallee on a bearing, peering through the trees for a shallow gully to open out in front of you, which is really satisfying! Gerry made good use of the water drop as a pivot control which we came through 3 times. We had shorter legs early on, which I did pretty cleanly except for being slightly off when it came to finding the tiny rockfaces in the circle, then some long legs later in the course which made me think that the map may have been better at 1:15 000, because then I could have thumbed it more closely and my bearings wouldn't have been so dodgy (got in some relocation practice - oops).

This seemed way easier than last Sunday, can't think why! Not dissatisfied with my time in relation to Simon's 65 min, but I'd say 90min would have been a perfectly clean run for me.

C • HappyBday!! 1

To the far end of the Merridee map to bring back a few controls after the OY event was all over. As far as I can tell, people liked Fern's & my courses and the event went pretty well (I spent 3 hours on the start, and only one person got really lost following my pink tapes 1.5km up the hill to get there). We ran out of maps on course 4 (M55 and M65) but the registration had presence of mind to recycle them. Tyson was wonderful helping me & Fern put out the controls, he can be a Wallaringan any time he wants to....

It was nice that so many orienteers came and camped in the mallee, and sat around the campfire and shared the communal YA/WA supper. Oh, and it was particularly nice that they sang Happy Birthday for my benefit. This made me feel a little better about the fact that my birthday is now bookended, so to speak, by the deaths of grandmothers. Very glad that this week is over.

Slugs are sluggish. So was I. Counting didn't help - I think the pool has been lengthened in the last week. Either that or I've got shorter.

Attack of the Killer Physio
I felt less worse after this, because my neck/back/shoulders were no longer quite so rigid (hire-car syndrome).

Poor John, he has a sprained ankle. Poor Bridget, she turned up but her running shoes didn't. Poor Fern, she has so much study to do that she & Tyson made only a brief appearance. Zara/Lauren/Simon & I did the usual Lower waterfall, across Jubilee Drive, down the steps, back along the creek loop. I probably wouldn't have run at all if there weren't other people involved, but I'm glad I did. Feeling very flat this week, but at least now I am better oxygenated.

C • We had pizza instead... 2

Family commitments. Also, my brain is so full that any non-essential jolting of its contents might cause something important to fall out and drift away unremembered. On the bright side, my 4th year student who will be with me on placement for the next month is really good; my colleagues are envious. (Mostly I get lucky but we have had some shockers over the years.)

Processed all the entries for this weekend's events and spent quality time at OASA management meeting. Now all I have to do is re-number the SI units and get the Merridee maps printed...

C • Remebering 1

Monday night run from Tyson's at Glenalta, through Hawthorndene and back, with Lauren (showing no effects from her 1:27 half on Sunday), Tyson, Fern & Simon. My legs felt fine but my brain is about to go into meltdown, I am so tired - and it's only Monday!

I'm seriously surprised that there wasn't someone in the organising club with the sort of sense of humour that would rename this map "Orienteers' Despair". The pine forest in the assembly area looked so flat and innocuous that it was hard to realise that there would be tough scrub and sandstone valleys just below us, but at least I knew this was coming. What I didn't expect was that, quite frankly, the map itself would be a crock of shit! Not so much the mapping or cartography (though apparently the brown lines in the pine forest were meant to be linear logpiles) - but the print quality, which was woeful. Everything was fuzzily pixellated.

As I ran into the native forest I was seething at the sheer illegibility of the map, because I couldn't read what would be a cliff which I was going to do my best not to fall down. Then I seethed some more at having to pass straight by the mouth of a small canyon in order to find the right cliff. Okay, so maybe it wasn't that dangerous and I'm just a complete chicken when it comes to heights or drops, but how would the older non-elite types have felt about it? I was still stewing about this when I over-ran 4 and when I came back to the right gully and read that my control description was a boulder I thought they must have got this wrong because there was no boulder on the map! Closer inspection revealed that all the boulders had printed at rocky ground symbol size :(

Finally I simmered down and figured that I had to work with what I'd been given, otherwise I would never get around the course. I also decided that taking the long way around on each leg was the safest option for my sanity, as mini-gorges just seemed to appear and drop away out of nowhere. I was lucky on 7 to see the control straight away even though it wasn't on the same rockface as the one in the centre of the circle, then at 8 Mace caught me 2 min and we both stuffed this one up. It wasn't on the right rockface, but actually I was too far west when I started looking for it and then went further west when I needed to go back east. Finally saw some boys coming out of it but still took a while to track the control down.

Took the road to 9, climbed left and hit the road on 10 ( between the invisible highpoints because they also had printed at rocky ground size) because I didn't trust being able to find the lower singletrack (apparently it was fine), coming up out of 11 Mace was still looking for it, I never saw her again after that and I never saw any other girls either, except that as I came towards the spectator control I saw Susanne punching the last control and I was so envious of her because she was getting to finish and I still had another half-hour to go.

The last loop was okay but pretty rough going. My control descriptions had entirely sweated into squid ink by then so I misread another invisible high point as a gully on the second last control. I didn't feel that I was flagging too badly but I was surprised to finish and find that I'd been out for 2:10. I hadn't realised that I was slowing down so much but Susanne commented that maybe I had stopped attacking the forest about halfway round. Looking at my splinter collection, I'd say that the forest had started fighting back!

We watched John & Lachlan go through the spectator control within a minute of each other, then when Lachlan finished and we said "have you seen John?" he said "I think John fell off a cliff on the way to the second-last control, I heard him yell!" So Simon & I went out there for a quick look at the topography - in case John was at the bottom of it - and when we came back we were relieved to see him sitting at the finish with his ankle in a bucket of ice.

C • Yelling 9

I like sprints, it's so easy to thumb the map and things pop up exactly where they're meant to. Except for unmapped roadworkers and their vehicles which nearly confused me when I left 8 because they were blocking a junction I then didn't see. But I made a good save and caught Cath at 9, then saw a lot of her for the rest of the course because I took the more direct and interesting options which were slower while she was smart enough to belt around the outside of the buildings. It was disconcerting when my splits showed a couple of mispunches but I think that was because the "find-and-replace" renumbering of controls/units in OE hadn't been done properly yet.

I took longer than I should have to get into the map partly because I was a bit scared of unfamiliar Sydney sandstone and hoped not to be chewed up and spat out by it (and also because I hadn't fully switched off from daughter-in-law/auntie mode after visiting George's family yesterday and then waiting for my sister-in-law to turn up at Macquarie, which she didn't, because she got lost). So unfortunately the first two controls accounted for 10 minutes already. After that, I hauled myself back into focus and started to understand the map better - it helped to think of it as being like the Cascades and so I read the bare rock as much as possible - though I can see that I went too far right on the way to 4 and I was generally pretty tentative, picking things off. At least I'm not a completely slow learner, and so I finished feeling more confident that I'd be okay with navigation for the long. But my goodness, I was a fair way down the results. Anyone would think I'd peaked for the sprint and burned myself out, but I can assure you that's not the case!

From the YHA on Glebe Point Rd, through Bicentennial Park, across to Balmain (up to Darling St, down Darling St, lots of amazing clothes that I can't afford, in shop windows) and to the Balmain East wharf where I had time to stretch before hopping on a Darling Harbour ferry. Found a geocache under the freeway on my way back, had a slight disagreement with geography getting down to the fish markets, then followed the foreshore back around Blackwattle Bay park. Excellent views of the Harbour and Anzac bridges, this was a really nice run even if my back did ache (from the hostel bed).

The thermometer at the pool said 4 degrees this morning. At home it was more like 7 but I guess the pool creates its own frost hollow. I have now used up a book of 30 tickets since October so I will just buy singles for the next 5 weeks till closing date.

This is definitely getting to be more fun! Also getting colder...it wasn't so bad going up the valley but I totally underestimated the wind chill factor on the way back down. Got home and couldn't feel my toes until I introduced them to the shower. Think I'll take gloves next time and a thermal that isn't 15 years old.

C • wind-chill factor 8

6 x hills: 1.29, 1.33, 1.33, 1.34, 1.36, 1.31
I'm sure our recoveries are getting shorter....
I didn't so much gradually get lactic as become increasingly aware that I already was (for no good reason). Tired quads and tightening hamstrings contributed to this effect. Can't really complain though since I was the one who suggested hills.

Warmup 21 min including run throughs etc. Warmdown 15 min along the river. The remaining 11 min was the downhills in between the uphills.

Short Colonel Light Gardens loop before going to Wallaringa meeting. Knees didn't hurt at the time but tightened up afterwards (ITB as usual). Meeting was fine though I had slight difficulty explaining to the committee where we will be assembling on Merridee - a few blank looks when I said "where day 2 of Easter 1990 was" - and then at 4am I experienced a new type of orienteering nightmare: the event setup for a major carnival was a complete schemozzle and I couldn't convince the registration team not to put their tent right where it would obscure the results board! Maybe I should keep track of variations on this dream between now and October (which is only 20 weekends away, and I already know what I'm doing on at least half of them...the rest will have to be secret controllers' business)

12-hour-day-trip to Merridee with Fern & George & Tyson to put out control stands for the OY event in 2 weeks' time. Fern & I really appreciated having the guys' assistance. The map has changed very little in 20 years apart from some of the creeks having washed out further. We spent about 5 hours out in the bush, and I was buggered by the end! Got a bit hot & thirsty too. Took me 45 min just to tape the 1.5km route from the assembly to the start. Knees have been getting gradually more painful (since the rogaine) and are really tight now. It's beautiful up there, as always, despite the dryness and the locusts. Will be a great weekend for camping in the mallee.

Is it sacrilege to say that I like being out the back of Burra even better than the Flinders? The Aust champs rogaine will be in SA in 2012 and SARA has already decided to hold it near Angorichina (I hope that wasn't a secret) where there's no shortage of steep hills and spinifex. Every Aust champs in SA has been in the Flinders. I personally think that interstate rogainers might appreciate the subtlety of mallee scrub for a change, but it will probably be the state champs that I end up setting there in 2012.

Three Hills Loop. Singletrack was a bit slippery after rain because of clay & millipedes. Puddles in the creek but not properly flowing yet. Final hill is short but a bastard when legs are tired. Orthotics aren't sitting quite right in these shoes so my neuroma didn't love me.

I figured I wasn't moving real fast today when it was taking me a couple of extra strokes to complete each lap, but that didn't matter. Pool temperature was perfect and the smell of hot bread tantalising. Still haven't worked out where the bakery nearby would be, but the smell was stronger at the north end of the pool.

C • You don't count that do you? 6

I meant to run in the morning but slept through my alarm - and I needed to! So I attempted to squeeze this in before dark, and almost succeeded. By the end I couldn't see either my watch or where I was putting my feet, but at least I managed not to play in the traffic.

8 mins warmup, 16 warmdown. Tonight's fruit-scavenging raid on the way home yielded a pomegranate.

Most other people were about as enthused by the thought of running up hills as I was tonight so we went along the creek to the redwoods and back. The number of functional headlamps was not equal to the number of people running. (Observation from John, said in a tone of surprise: "I have a dead knob on my head!") Therefore John ran slow and/or I ran fastish on the way back because he was sharing my beam. Now my quads hurt. Also, I am just generally tired (surely not still from the rogaine?) and can't muster enthusiasm for course setting at Merridee this weekend, especially as I'll be away the following 2 weekends as well.

Didn't feel like I had the energy to run today, in between last night's Aust Champs meeting where I realised that I was the only person under 50 on the committee (without meaning to offend anyone younger who was absent), and tonight's Arrows meeting (Tyson excelled in his organisation thereof) where I was of course the oldest present.

Highlight of the day was my personal revelation that massaman curry is improved by the addition of pineapple. On reflection, I think this probably turns it into chu chee curry instead.

Huge turnout tonight, the most people for about 2 years. Also the coldest/wettest start to a run for about 2 years. Apparently last week's fartlek session (30s on, 1 min off) was so much fun that people wanted to do it again. After initially expressing paranoia about slipping on wet roads, I got quite enthused by it. Apparently we did 20 of these, but I wasn't counting. Seemed sort of easy but that may have been because the floats were slower than I normally do my recoveries (is this good or bad?).

Floats looping back past Helen & Katherine who were maintaining a steady chatting pace despite these mad runners doing laps around them.

Included a lap of the uni loop afterwards in the hope that my hamstrings wouldn't completely stiffen up while sitting in Aust champs carnival meeting.

Simon had promised me a flat run and I was glad of this because my quads were just starting to express an opinion about yesterday's long descent of Jubilee Drive. I didn't hear Tyson, John, Eric, Bridget or Fern complaining about the lack of hills either. Destination was the orphanage, where we kind of did a sprint course without a map (I'd heard some fuss about trees being cut down and open space being reduced, but as far as I can see they have made a playground and some nice walking paths) and then we returned via the mansions of Hyde Park, the playground of Heywood Park where, if you see an innocuous pole, DO NOT climb on it, it will start spinning, and it will spin worse when Bridget gets on, and worse still when Tyson pushes you, and then we followed the parks along Brownhill Creek back to Mitcham.

I decided that the SARRC Belair trail run would be a good warmup for the sprint champs. It goes from the golf course car park along Long Gully, up Saddle Hill Rd, down Jubilee Drive (where I re-passed the guy who had got past me on the uphill) and around the lake, at the end, which I forgot to do. I expected to have to go around the lake but the arrows on the ground (made of flour) pointed straight ahead. Supposedly the arrow which told people to turn right got eaten by the ducks....

C • made of flour 2

Not having been a private school boy, I'd never been inside the grounds of St Peter's College before. Nice place for a sprint. Only mistake I made was that straight out of the start I ran into an underpass which had stairs at the far end and for some reason I panicked and assumed that they would just lead me on to a balcony, not up a level and out into the rest of the school - so I backed out and went around the end of the building. Happy with my run (you can see that my splits are fastest when I'm chasing Fern) and with being less than 2 min behind Vanessa - she & Bridget & Lauren were always going to fill the places. Impressed that Steve Cooper took a minute out of me in M45. Realised afterwards that I could have achieved an upset win over Robin had I chosen to run W35 (let's see now if she reads this...)

C • Winning a Class 1

Vanessa & Lauren & I went to Kersbrook to "test run" some of Kay's courses for the Aust Schools' championships. I figured this would be a good opportunity for me to practice lifting my legs over the crap in the terrain, but my legs didn't have very much lift in them by the time I got to the third part of the day's exercise trilogy and I will confess (but not to Kay) that I walked up the hills. I checked out the rock mapping (such as it is) and some other features - so the school kids needn't fear that they will be this slow!

Kay rode out to meet us at Vixen Gully which meant that we had to be creative with fitting 4 people plus a bike in my car on the way back. Lauren managed not to be impaled by the forks being in her lap, and when I got home from dropping everyone else off, having wondered what the rattling noise in the back of my car was, I discovered that I am in temporary possession of Kay's MTB pedals!

For everything throughout the day.

I was going to swim in the afternoon until I realised that the pool closes at midday on weekends from May 1st. Therefore I was in a hurry, and got slightly confused counting laps.