Training Log Archive: jennycas

With B&S, Zara/Callum, Nick up Jubilee Drive to the waterfalls (Simon tried to work out what the trajectory of a bike over the edge would be) and down through Echo Tunnel. Legs were pretty tired and hamstrings still rather tight. I staggered up the hill then tried not to trip over rocks on the way back down.

Up via Deep View to 3rd Falls where Andrew & I re-encountered Will & Mel and I convinced us all to run up to Norton Summit Rd and down from Pretty Corner, which is how we came to miss Liv, but found her at the end. Mel's getting good on the ups - and the downs. I couldn't run like that even when I was 17. All the same, I will say that I had expected my legs to be a lot worse than they have been post-BHC.

Hawthorndene run with F&T and Simon, after which I was late for Easter 2015 meeting. Must remember not to volunteer for stuff, 'cos I think I am now controlling the last day as well as setting the sprint...

A challenge, all right. I woke up feeling pretty leaden and for the first 20 min of the run my legs were like blocks of wood glued together with lactic acid. By the time I felt properly warmed up we were at the bottom of the Ghost Tree Gully ascent. Head down, step by step, ignore all the people going past you because you'll be able to catch about 2 of them on the Ambers Gully descent, don't look up because then you'll see how far it really is to the top. I "ran" all of the second major climb on the ridge track also; in fact the only walking I did was when grabbing a drink (there are numerous drink stations courtesy of the local 4WD club - I was envious when I saw them all setting off to drive up the hill) and on the second descent I overtook only one guy, who caught me on the next hill and at the end said it had been driving him nuts every time I passed him on a downhill because then he had to catch me again.

Heh heh. I've got some of my downhill running mojo back. And some of my hill-climbing ability, but there's a long way to go...

C • Great effort 7

Hmmm...slower even than yesterday. I'm really feeling the overdue-ness of physio.

Took my brand new bike (the MTB I've been promising myself since about July, if I ever had a Saturday at home to go bike shopping) for a pootle around the back laneways of Mitcham and Colonel Light Gardens. Even found some mud :)

Verdict: it's easier to ride slowly, and harder to ride fast, than the hybrid. Feels like riding an armchair, basically; almost impossible to fall off, although I'm sure I'll find a way in due course.

http://www.merida.com.au/2014-bikes/mtb-hardtail-w...
I'm slightly disappointed that the equivalent men's range isn't called Romeo.

C • Nice bike!! 9

Not sure why I didn't do this last week...I probably should have. Because I am very stiff just now. Wasn't warm outside of the pond.

The duckpond in Glenalta (site of more than one street O control over the years before we found out the hard way that it's on private land) is for sale: http://www.realestate.com.au/property-residential+...

I love how they gloss over the fact that the 'residential land' is currently at the bottom of a pond:
"To say this is a unique offering would be a tad of an understatement. Just over 1700m2 of land with two street frontages and currently occupied by a large catchment dam. Put simply, this property is a one off. The setting could not be more serene with towering gums, an abundance of wildlife and naturally a large flock of local ducks to keep you company."

Perfect evening for a run; so beautiful in the park, but my legs just didn't want to move. With F&T, B&S, Z&C along the creek through Echo Tunnel, up past Lower to Upper Waterfall, then back down QJD. Beautiful wildflowers in the enchanted evening light. Stiff knees & hip flexors - and now hamstrings. Weird. Hope I feel better running on Sunday.

Thought I felt okay but once I set out realised I was actually pretty tired. Attempted to push through this and thought my legs were turning over okay, but the time says not so.

The lights on the corner of Cross & Fullarton roads were out so I was late and missed the group (although there was a sighting of them later on). This gave me a chance to remember how much I like running on my own, though, and it was one of the best Morialta runs I can remember. Deep View and even Central Track didn't feel too bad; I just kept plugging away and got to the top eventually, where the cloud had rolled in and I felt as though I was somewhere in the Tasmanian high country. Also felt as though it was going to get dark pretty quickly, so I didn't go all the way to Moores Rd but took a cross track down into and up out of a deep enchanted valley, then above 3rd falls to Norton Summit Rd, down to Pretty Corner which I nearly overran in the fog and then down the singletrack on the park boundary so at least the trees blowing in the fierce wind were all on the downwind side of me.

Projected time for Black Hill on Sun: 93 min, if I get the sleep-and-pasta balance right. I did 90ish 2 years ago and I know I'm less fit now, but I am currently hopeful of being able to manage a decent long-run summer.

C • Black hill 8

Realised at bedtime last night that I was a bit dehydrated/sunburnt from yesterday, and really didn't feel like a long run when I woke up this morning. Got to Zara's just expecting to meet her and F&T, maybe B&S, and cut the run short if necessary, but there was a whole horde including a rare John sighting, Mel & Liv, Andrew K and Lauren who had impressively run 40+ km last evening just as support for the Heysen 105km runners!

We went up the park boundary, down to and up Pole Rd, down and up Coat Rd, down Ironbank Rd, up Sturt Valley Rd, down into the park and through the redwoods, then Long Gully. I generally take about 20 min to warm up properly and at the beginning felt absolutely horrible - then started to improve somewhere between 17 & 22 min but was still no good on hills. Downhills were okay though, to my surprise, so Black Hill shouldn't break me. It also shouldn't be as warm as today. There were lots of stops to regroup and for water, and everyone made it through until the end; a valiant effort!

On first thoughts, it seemed a bit silly to go run around Kooyoora in the middle of October. On second thoughts, I had enough frequent flyer points for a day trip to Melbourne, and could scavenge a lift with Blair, who unfortunately turned out to be broken :( but was an excellent chauffeur, touring some parts of the countryside I hadn't seen before and complying with my requests to stop at bakeries!

It was definitely rather warm in the middle of the day and so I opted for the 4.8km course, of which I proceeded to make a right mess. I'd like to say my compass wasn't settling very well but it's more probable that I wasn't reading it properly. Also I wasn't taking enough note of the 1:7500 scale.

So I overran the second control significantly before correcting and looping back into it from the north, losing 3-4 min, and Clare Baker passed me there. I could see her in the distance on the next downhill leg which was quite green and required a lot of picking one's way through crap; unfortunately I didn't pay enough attention to how far downhill I had gone so stopped short when the gully flattened out, not realising that I had to go below one more line of rock, and although I fairly soon worked out that I was too high, stood on top of a rock for a while trying to make things fit before deciding that it didn't matter where I was because where I needed to be was further down.

So I trotted downhill, still hearing Clare and some green having an altercation off to my left, and worked out the rest of that leg okay although now the scale seemed such that features took forever to come up. The next leg should have been SW up a watercourse, which looked rather green so I intended to take a gully branching off to the right. I crossed the watercourse and headed uphill, reassured by keeping it on my left although none of the rocks I was passing seemed to fit anything on my map. Checked my compass a couple of times and if the bearing was trying to push me a bit further left, I reassured myself that it was okay because I didn't want to be right in the creek bottom.

Then I hit a road...what the? In flabbergasted disbelief I identified it as the road to the north of my previous control. WTF? Seems that I had crossed the watercourse below a junction and followed a branch and then a gully which ran NW not SW, thereby forfeiting all my rights to call myself a competent orienteer. Shamefacedly I turned my compass to the south and plodded along watching the needle verrry carefully to 4 then repeated 50% of that leg in the reverse direction back to 5, and was comparatively competent although ridiculously slow through the remaining 3 controls of the course, even having time to admire the little white everlasting daisies which carpeted the open spaces.

On third thoughts, it's not so much the map which beat me as my own compass-work or lack thereof. Certainly my bearings were much better on the foggy day in July, and Jenny Bourne did 53 min today; I should at least have been able to match that; reckon I chucked away at least 12 min. Oh well, it was still a fun day out and the bunch of native flowers which I bought at the Trentham markets for George's birthday tomorrow survived until I got home at 8pm and gave them to him :)

Shepherds Hill, Eden Hills, Bellevue Heights, Flinders Uni and home. Feeling heaps better than when I did this a couple of weeks ago. Wearing new shoes rather than old does help but also I've finally been doing the sort of training I should have been doing before nationals. Of course, I need to get to the point of thinking of this as a short run (some time between now and Jan 12th).

The full length of Long Gully then up to Melville House, park boundary to Olave Hill Rd then down through the golden sunset (chilly breeze though) and back up Turners & Rankeys dropping F&T then Zara/Callum at their respective houses. I took a long time to get going properly but eventually felt quite okay.

It's a small blister on my heel, but it's mean. So I rode.

Big group tonight (there was even an unexpected Vanessa-&-Tobias walk-by sighting) and everyone seemed to go a slightly different way up, but converged at the bottom. I took the longer/flatter route to Deep View (my lungs hated me), then into/out of 3rd Falls - still flowing nicely - and down the usual way although the path at the end above the carpark has been realigned. Didn't feel as awful legs wise as I had thought I might, but not sure what to do about my breathing. Was quite enjoying the run and would have gone for longer if it wasn't for an emerging blister and an impending OSA council meeting.

Urgle blurgh.
'nuff said.

So breathless trying to do intervals that I spent the floats crawling along gasping. It would appear that I have no aerobic capacity. Plodded home on a nice spring evening and took the dog for the walk he had really wanted last night when I was too buggered to do anything constructive.

After a pleasant summer's evening where George read his book on the grass while Andrew and I ran around Jamestown before we all went to the pub for tea with the Uppills, we retired to our tents on the lawn in full view of the cabin where we'd stayed in June, woke numerous times to the sound of rain on the tents, and emerged to weather about the same as it had been in June :(

Spent the morning exploring the northern end of Merridee with Andrew to get an idea of how much the map will need updating before he sets the state champs there next year, but was too stiff and weary to run much, especially into the wind (there was hail at one point).

Ran around Jamestown with Andrew K on a course which Robin had overlaid on the aerial photo to see if you could get decent distance/detail out of the town. I was stiff from lecturing in the morning and hot & thirsty from already looking around (and ruling out) Crystal Brook/Gladstone/Bundaleer so was grateful for stops each time there was a (not-entirely-random) Uppill sighting.

Wonder if doing core stuff before bedtime would prevent the morning stiffness? Anyway, this old lady rolled out of bed, did her exercises, then disappointed the dog by running up the hill to Belair & back again. Need to knock at least a couple of minutes off the ascent time, and learn to run faster downhill again.

It really bugs me how most nights my back starts stiffening up from about 4am onwards and I eventually get out of bed feeling like an old lady. Was a bit better after dogwalking so I ran over to Mortlock Park and did 4 laps of one side fast, one side slow. Started to rain before the end - nice.

Got a little slower in the intervals as they went on, and a lot slower in the recoveries...might make a concerted effort to consume rather more pasta and iron, and a modicum less of everything else :)

Also it doesn't seem that either of my new pairs of shoes is particularly well-cushioned; not good to be noticing my neuroma before the start of summer.

Lower legs still very leaden so decided to go for a swim. It was nice in the water although I kept being distracted by a twinge in my hip and thoughts of the lectures I have to write before tomorrow night.

Also thinking about how my personal orienteering benchmarks used to be 3 min behind the winner* in a sprint, 10 min in a middle, 20 min in a long. Can I get back to that? Obviously not in really rough terrain, but am I using my knees as an excuse for not training properly? It does seem though that this year I have had the energy for either work or running but not both, and that nearly every morning I use the excuse of being too stiff and sore but then don't always get around to doing anything in the evening. So if I am not going to do great quantities then I had better make sure that what I do is quality.

*or maybe the placegetters. It's interesting how most of the people running elites these days probably don't remember (or even realise) that when there was a requirement to get a gold badge cutoff time in order to run elites, it was surprisingly difficult to be within 25% of the placegetters at least 3 times in a season.

Short loop with F&T, B&S, Michael Ashforth. Had been looking forward to something longer but realised I was still rather tired in legs and brain (presumably from the weekend, but this seems to be status quo lately). Simon's trying to get us all to run Black Hill in 3 weeks' time. My knees twinged at the thought.

George picked me up when I flew in from Melbourne and we met Fern & Tyson, Troy & Andrea at Brighton, went for a run along the beach (well, 5 of us did) then consumed burgers and chips and ice cream. Lovely evening for it and great company; annoying twinge from knee.

Same hill, different day, not dissimilar course configuration. I was running 3rd in an M35 relay team with Greg Morcom and Ruhi Afnan (not enough Arrows to go round so Lauren was in M21 with Ben & Simon) and when Ruhi handed over to me he said "132's not there!" so I knew that he had DNFed and there was no pressure on me - only 2 teams in M35 anyway, but the guys were going round in 64-65 and I took rather longer than that.

Stuffed up the end of the 1.3km long first leg by about 50m and a couple of minutes, then plodded south along the west side of the ridge, overrunning 3 slightly, then plodded north along the east side of the ridge for nearly 2km to the drinks/spectator control above the arena (don't need to navigate on this leg at all) then around the final loop at snail's pace. Lack of terrain fitness really showed this weekend but also I am never going to be any good in this sort of terrain with dodgy knees & ankles. Not saying it wasn't a fun weekend socially and good for spectating the rest of the relay, but by the time I had driven to Melbourne with Bruce & Blair & Fredrik (and I got the really shitty bit of the drive in the darkness with the rain and the truck spray) it was nearly midnight and I was wishing I'd just flown home with the schools' team!

Event: Australian Middle Distance/Relay Championships
 

Hmm, I am not good on hills, particularly the sort with rocky hillsides along which it's necessary to mountain-goat. This was a single hill with steep sides not unlike Mt Beckworth, and I never really got into the mapping, expecting the 'large' boulders to be bigger on the ground than they actually were, and being continually surprised by how small the rockfaces were with controls on them. Anyway, lost a bit of time on a few controls; too high/wide into 2 (Aislinn had caught me 2 min already), too low at the end of the longish leg into 5 but I thought I was too high so kept going down, overshot 9 on a danger downhill diagonal (still thinking 1:15000 from last weekend?) and was too high on 11 - I often tended to climb a couple more contours than necessary. So maybe I wasn't reading the contours very well. Grace came through me on the way to 7 like I was standing still, and Hanny/Anna passed me when I stuffed up 9, and Jas at the end as I was picking my way downhill; she just sped through the rubble. Think I ended up something like 25 min behind Grace - perhaps I should have run W35. Also perhaps I should have had more for dinner last night than Qantas' 'cottage pie'.

C • Cottage Pie 1

Oz Middle Course 2 - Splits

Pootle along the creek on a beautiful spring morning, hopefully not undoing the good work that some painful foam-rollering had achieved with my ITBs. Should be a perfect weekend in Canberra which means I will have to try even harder to not get sunburnt (I was unsuccessful at this on the previous 2 weekends).

C • Sunburn 1

Starting to catch up with myself, just in time for going away again this weekend. Back was twinging last night but didn't comment this morning.

Last of the darkness runs for 6? months. Up the park boundary with Zara/Callum (happy Callum!) and Fern. We had thought about going down Olave Hill but came back along Long Gully instead where my hands got really cold and my (now-no-longer-virginally-white) shoes rather muddy. Felt better running than I had for some weeks, to my surprise.

C • Must've been the calibre of the company! 2

Shepherds Hill, Eden Hills, Bellevue Heights, Flinders Uni. Nearly turned around and went back to bed in the first 10 min but figured I'd enjoy the scenery (if I wasn't too busy looking at my feet) on a blustery drizzly morning with some nice spring smells. I sort of did have fun but was oh, so slow! Incredibly stiff through hips & back, and still pretty tired despite crashing out not long after 7pm last night (which of course led to a wide-awake-randomly-worrying session in the middle of the night followed by some weird dreams).

Pretty weary (have had stiff neck/back/hips since last week either from strange hire car or strange beds, therefore not sleeping well) and the intended plod after work morphed into getting fast food, recounting my fairly average day to George (I definitely didn't anticipate that argument with a colleague) and deciding that since I couldn't even focus on reading the newspaper, I should go to bed even though it was only 7pm. Not sure when I'm going to get my lectures written for next week...