Training Log Archive: jennycas

TGIF. Glad I have only one more work week like this before holidays but I pity the poor bugger who will be covering my leave. Bright spot was going to see The Great Gatsby (with F&T, Bun & Biddy). It's an impressive (body of) work of art, especially in 3-D.

Ran with Fern from hers across to the golf course, up past the lake and down the creek from the train line. Took a while to warm up despite the warm evening, but last night's painful DOMS from Tuesday's intervals had mostly gone. Nice chatting pace :)

A not-particularly-successful long run where even though I broke it up into 10-min segments they seemed to be a long time in finishing. Kept thinking how much more enjoyable a run of similar duration was at WOC trials with a map in my hand. Across to Mitcham and Brownhill Creek past the caravan park then up behind Carrick Hill and down through Waite (if I am still traumatised from the saga of the appeals and course cancellation at the March NOLs then I guess Adrian and OHOC are too). Nice morning and scenery but I should have had painkillers with breakfast. Actually, maybe I should have had breakfast...

200, 400, 600, 600, 400, 200, 200 (200m recoveries). Not sure if I could have pushed harder but these were fairly consistent and my knees didn't hurt. It's nice to actually be able to run fast enough for once to get some endorphins!
42, 1:35, 2:29, 2:27, 1:35, 42, 43

W/up/down plus floats.

Shepherds Hill, Eden Hills and home, with a headlamp and in time to then go to Easter 2015 committee meeting (which wasn't too bad, or at least more productive than work). Pretty tired but I needed the fresh air and headspace. Knees didn't hurt until later (after a couple of hours sitting in meeting).

Decided I would go to street/park O at Hawthorndene/Coromandel Valley (Frank Smith Park) because I was too tired for a proper long run. And as per my theory, I definitely felt better running with a map. There were some big hills though and I can see that I am really unfit. Still gained on and eventually overtook James Fuller who started 2 min before me - he really mustn't have been trying.

Last one for the season, but September's not far away. Hip was pulling tightly and time was slow. My calves need to play with the foam roller.

Got some fresh air after a day of necessary - and successful for once - retail therapy. Much as I hate braving the wilds of Westfield Marion (AKA 'The Jungle'), it was weirdly therapeutic to spend money; the minute that ANZ security rang me to tell me that someone had tried to use 'my' Visa card at a hotel in New York and therefore they were going to cancel it for me, I suddenly thought of all these things I desperately needed to buy! Took the corners pretty cautiously. Didn't tell my bike that I had also spent some of today looking into the possibility of replacing it with a proper MTB...

Knees feeling their age today but it was a nice crisp night. Zara & I ended up doing the trainline-steps-lake loop in reverse, and we finished off by going through the hawthorn-thicket maze because I wanted to see the maze now that it's been 'rejuvenated'. It's rather underwhelming, even in the moonlight.

Shepherds Hill, Eden Hills, Bellevue Heights, Flinders Uni. Nearly got stuck with courtyard-building works in Sturt campus but followed the steady stream of students through a building to find the way out (something you're not allowed to do in sprint races). This should have been a good run because it was a nice drizzly morning and everything is fresh & green in the park - but legs never felt good running. Knees seem to be tight from hip to ankle.

Probably should have done this yesterday, 'cos I was pretty stiff then. Annoyed to find that I had apparently used up my last (virtual) ticket last week. I know I've twice counted back through my log and even taking into account the days I took friends to the pool, had only reached 29!

With the girls: Liv, Bun, Emily & Biddy. A bit stop-start because we were all feeling a bit flat. Probably not surprising that on a girls' run, by the time we got to the cinema on O'Connell St, 3 of us were desperate enough to ignore two notices saying "toilets are for patrons only" and so Liv put on her best manners to ask politely if we "could use the bathroom", which request was instantly granted. Must go back there and watch a movie some time :)

Wow, I had nothing in my legs today, and wearing spikes made them even more hammered. Trotted across the hillsides fairly cleanly but had to walk a surprising number of the steep little pinches out of each creek. Good course from Steve, made use of the linear ridges and we got into some really nice mallee at the north end of the map. Was buggered afterwards though, and even more so after driving home - but all 52 of our rogaine control sites are now tagged and waypointed :) Estimated distance to get them all: about 80km.

Drove 200m down the hill from the house and realised that front left tyre was very flat. Limped back up the hill and Superdad - in his element - changed it before I could even say "ooh, that's buggered". He then offered to drive into Burra (any excuse for a drive) to get a new tyre while Z & I tagged some more controls. Parents drove past us parked near the woolshed gate as we were about to set out; 8 controls, 12km and 2 1/2 hours later (with quite a bit of jogging) we headed back home for lunch. Dad said "Did you find the tyre I left you?" I said "What do you mean?"

Turned out he had left the new tyre next to my car (passenger side) when they drove back past it but we didn't notice because Zara opened the gate for me so didn't get in the car until I had driven through the gate, and I had no reason to look around that side when I got in! Anyway, that changed the afternoon's plans from tagging controls via the Bri Glen end of the map to going back (via the tyre) and doing them from Ulooloo. 13 km took us another 3 hours - there's some trickssy controlss in there, my preciouss - and it was after sunset when we got back to the car. Only 7 km in a straight line from the night event but it took us over an hour to drive around to there!

A fairly cool night - I wore a thermal although I could have got away without it and when we were driving home afterwards it was already about 4 degrees - and a nice course, which I enjoyed although I wasn't really hurrying (something to do with already having covered 25 km today) and in hindsight I can see that I made more mistakes than I first realised. Including hitting a creek below the junction instead of above and running right instead of left. Also I bypassed the Tjuringa Nightclub - yep, a 'bar/disco' in the bush - when I should have used it as an attackpoint!

Morning involved landowner-visiting and drinking cups of tea (and getting chased by a helicopter - not really, but it was flying very low checking powerlines wherever we went - and I am terrified of helicopters coming after me) so it was after lunch before Zara & I got out on to the map. Walked 18km on Ulooloo, starting with tagging the control site at Hell's Gates. Had some difficulty finding trees to hang controls on out the back of the range, but tagged the trig point on Scrub Hill (706 m) just before a lovely sunset, and did the last couple of controls in the gathering dusk. Got back to the house on the hill (and mum's roast dinner) well after dark and without being aware that I (probably already) had a flat tyre.

Going bush rogaine-setting with Zara and parents for a few days. Sure beats working for a living :)

A bit disappointed with the time. Feel as though I should be able to go faster but legs don't know how. And of course coming down is not good for the knees. I did enjoy the drizzle and the morning views but am kind of sad that I used to be able to do long runs all over the hills without thinking much about it and now I am mainly going running so that my jeans still fit!

C • Time? 3

Attack of The Killer Physio
5 weeks = definitely overdue. But given that I felt worse immediately after last month's physio and have only just now started to come good, clearly lots of things other than lack of physio are contributing to tightness and fatigue.

Used the last of the daylight to go and see if the creek was flowing, which it was. Felt sort of okay running but no energy to spare and knees always require caution.

Mopey soggy day. How did it go from bushfire weather to being winter, over the weekend?

Fairyland, with Tracy, at nice chatting pace. It was a perfect afternoon for running along the river, and the flannel flowers were out! Squeezed in between (successful) family mother's day lunch in Penrith and going to the airport - for which we were in plenty of time until hitting a traffic (taxi) jam right at the entrance road and eventually we checked in with about 90 sec to spare...

From Bundeena, around the beach towards Port Hacking Point, although I didn't make it quite to the headland and never found the aboriginal carvings because I took the track which crossed the peninsula not realising that I should have kept going up the beach a bit further. Maybe I didn't see that track because at that point it was absolutely pissing rain. George & I flew into Sydney under clear skies (to my surprise, because rain was forecast) and then decided to head south because neither of us had ever been to Royal National Park. When we got to Bundeena - somewhere I've always wanted to go and which turns out to remind me of 1770 (Town Of) in Qld - the sky was suddenly suspiciously black in the east but I really wanted to go exploring so I did. Because of having taken the wrong track, when I hit the east coastline I turned south, exploring rock shelves for a bit (with the rain I was reminded a lot of the Bicheno sprint) and then following a sandy 4WD track which, even when I realised I wasn't on the signposted loop, still appeared to be going in an okay direction for hopefully just clipping the SE corner of town, which it did. Map memory got me back to the car ok, appetite whetted rather than curiosity satisfied. We'll have to come back here another time - I've always wanted to catch the ferry to Bundeena, maybe because it seems a world away from the metropolis that is Sydney. And there's lots more to see and do in the national park, although running the coast track Otford to Bundeena is probably beyond me these days.

C • Just do Otford to Garrawarr... 2

Needed it.

Piffle. Laid my bike down. Spun out on some leaf litter on a downhill corner where the bike path goes under the Brownhill Creek road bridge (have been thinking I need to get it serviced, because when I use the disc brakes the whole bike tries to go sideways). Travelled slightly further than the bike, landed on R knee and elbow - that'll tickle. At least I landed with a bump rather than a slide, it wasn't on my bad knee and I was wearing tights not shorts. Still required a bit of cleaning up when I got home and so I was late for work.

C • :( 6

B&S turned back at Long Gully and the rest of us went up to the redwoods. Greg provided light for Zara & Lauren & they stuck to roads. I took the creek path but the ground still seemed hard underfoot. Elbow smarting but the knee I landed on is ok - more so than the other one, anyway.

After dropping Susanne at the airport. Running late thanks to a freight train. Seemed like a lot of effort was required.

6x225m at Mortlock Park. It was getting quite dark but still warm after the 31-degree day. I was pretty stuffed, but not as stuffed as the last time I did this: 54, 52, 53, 52, 52, 52

Warmup/down to/from the park and recoveries back across the oval.

Warmup loop with the others then, since there was no way my puffy knee was up for intervals, ran upriver to the suspension bridge and down to the uni footbridge with Fern. Felt like a solid enough pace. Certainly enough to work up an appetite for dinner at The Store with F&T, B&S, Bun and the guest of honour from Darwin :) Bridget and Simon regaled us with blow-by-blow descriptions of their respective Saturdays (in Brisbane), when she was a bridesmaid and had to get up at 5:30am for hair & makeup etc, while Simon swanned around playing with remote-controlled helicopters, went sprint training etc and eventually turned up to watch the wedding...

Painful plod from a knees point of view but pleasant company-wise. Around Hawthorndene with Fern, Tyson, Troy, Susanne - yay - and Simon who showed us the house he & Bridget are intending to buy.

I slept better overnight, either despite or because of the wine with dinner :) and woke less painfully stiff than I had been any time in the last week (when I am stressed it manifests as muscle tension). Had never run at Boboyan Divide but remembered going through that area on a 2002 Anzac rogaine at Mt Clear when it was frosty overnight and the creeks were icy. Driving up through the mountains the car thermometer dropped to 1 degree and as Bruce said, it had only 'doubled' when we got to the event. Thankfully the cloud lifted and the sun emerged before I started although there was still ice in the drinking water at the start.

First leg was across the open grassy areas, I detoured to look at the little gravesite and was then a bit right of my line so came into 1 up the gully. Found 2 ok, Sarah caught me and was across the creek and up the granite slab below 3 while I was still picking my way through fallen timber. I must have got past her on the way to 4, a danger leg across a green hillside, and then I felt good running down the track and across the open valley (keeping Ecmo in sight) on the long leg to 5. Susanne (4 min) and Rachel (6 min) caught me here and I didn't totally lose sight of them for another couple of controls. Saw Susanne heading up out of the pivot/water control (which was too low in the gully) as I came in to it, then Sarah caught me the next time I came back to it and we were near each other through the next loop but she got away from me on the way back to the water. After this there were only 2 more controls - weird.

Wasn't this course meant to be set for an 85 min winning time? Maybe if it had been Badja-type terrain (which I had feared) but as this was mostly quite runnable, probably the women should have had closer to 12 km than 10km. 15 km for the men was certainly pretty right for a target time of 100 min. It was really nice terrain though; similar contour shapes and sometimes even granite shapes to the Darwin NOL long, actually! I like long distance (when I'm fit enough) because you can visualise the contours a lot more and don't have to be continually checking every rock you pass to see whether it's on the map.

And when I checked my 2002 Naasty But Clear rogaine map, it turned out that there were only 2 rogaine controls on the area covered by the orienteering map!

Event: ACT Champs Carnival (NOL Round 3)
 

Fairly grumpy before I ran (due to general work-life-OA balance considerations) and really grumpy after I ran. I don't often come back saying there were some B-S controls! First one was partly my fault as I didn't have a good attack point into the vague junky thickety stuff, but I saw unmapped bits of rubbish which I thought were mapped man made objects, and I saw bits of paved area which weren't the mapped ones, and then I saw the random tent which was a bit disconcerting, and then I saw the men's control but couldn't work out what it was on in order to relocate. So all that wasted a good couple of minutes, amd a few other people had variations on the same problem.

But the control which really pissed me off was no 8 (8 on the men's as well) where it was mapped as an undercover area with the light grey symbol, but also contained a garden bed (fernery) which wasn’t mapped and which led me to check other alcoves, completely not not understanding where I was, much less that I could go through the ferns to find that the control was hidden right at the back of this (also described as corner of paved area where the better descriptor would have been path end). I just don't think there is any excuse for using as a control site an area where the ground doesn't match the map.

The rest was okay I guess; I didn't get caught up in any of the dodgy mapping of passageways or underpasses but some of my route choices were too wide. Lauren passed me (4 min) just before the map changeover and Nicola Blatchford (1 min) had caught up to me because of my errors, but didn't get away after that. I was shocked to hear 26 min as my time, but of course, the course was a bit too long for everyone. We should have had rather more than 100m less than the men!

Coffee had made me less grumpy but feeling no less flat. It was a lovely autumn afternoon out at Orroral and I wandered around reading the signage for the old tracking station (interested to see the footprints of the buildings) and photographing the autumn leaves and kangaroos, then decided I'd better go for a run since I'd come all this way because I quite like granite, even though I was completely out of breath by the time I got to the start.

Anyway, it was nice forest in a green, thick, hiding-the-rocks sort of way, and I mostly found the rocks quite successfully because I was having to walk much of it - legs just wouldn't lift. A minute on 8, maybe, where I left the track too soon, and then I caught up to Katelyn through the open stuff and Kathryn caught both of us when we went back into the green; unfortunately I got my angle of attack confused and started heading up the wrong gully. Took a couple of min to work out that one, eventually caught up to Katelyn again, and Anna Dowling. Watched the Bruce-train storm through at the finish.

BTW, whoever expected that 5.4km for the women compared to 6.0km for the men was going to lead to equivalent (35 min) winning times at Orroral?

Managed generally to have both arms moving at once, which improved efficiency. Not sure why I am so bad at this - perhaps because it's psychologically the equivalent of having no feet on the ground?

C • Butterfly? 2

Creek plod with Zara/Callum, F&T. Hot & cold patches of air were annoying. So were knees, breathlessness, general fatigue.

Oh, and Tynomite taught Zed a new word: discombobulated :)

Mayday ride. Legs lacked power and I probably asked too much of my knees but there were no Mayday calls. Not happy that the neuropathic patch in my groin/adductor is back.