Training Log Archive: jennycas

Meredith must get up even earlier than I do!
(Of course, if I hadn't walked the dog first, I would have had time to finish this after all.)

C • I thought you left very pro... 2

Attack of the Killer Masseuse
I was halfway through a lovely swim when I realised this appointment was at 8am, not 8:30...so the swim was never completed!

Leisurely plod up the creek to Long Gully & back with Zara/Callum & Fern. Back at the Hillyard household we watched Paddy enthusiastically shoveling gruel into himself (with a little help from Tyson).

G & I took my parents to Seacliff to watch the 9:30pm Brighton/Glenelg fireworks and because they were so well-behaved, bought them ice cream afterwards :)

Went for a drive after work, to run a couple of the short courses (2.3-2.7km) which AK had set for Arrows training a month ago. Struggled to read the control features at 1:10 000 (was originally mapped at 1: 7 500 I think, and so the features ended up more like 1:15 000 size - and in some cases, pretty small on the ground also) on the first loop, but got better (or more familiar) at it and after a couple of loops decided I was having fun and could manage a couple more before it got too dark to see in the forest (had to take my glasses off because they were ruining my depth perception). Mostly managed to lift my front foot up over stuff on the ground okay but was surprised by how much my trailing leg trails and I catch random things with my back foot. Got home at 10pm and then made dinner!

Sleepy swim before going to work. It poured wintry rain on the way home (for some reason I was expecting it to be nice & warm like Darwin).

Conversational jog around Hawthorndene with Fern. I was extremely tired even though I wasn't the one who had been up all night with a baby...

Slow stagger from home to try out a new pair of Asics ($100 @Athletes Foot in Casuarina Square; should have bought 2 pairs) and stretch after 4 hours on a plane. Rather sorry to leave S&L&E behind (is anything cuter than a baby when it sneezes?) although it will be a relief not to spontaneously have sweat drops manifesting and dripping from my elbows/trickling down my crevices.

C • I hate.. 1

Drove to Charles Darwin NP, admired the view of the city across the mangroves then ran around the numerous MTB singletracks in the national park, occasionally getting confused at various junctions even though I did have the O map - tracks get a wee bit overgrown at this time of year (so I chose not to go cross country) - and finding an abandoned mini control flag in the process. Was dripping with sweat, or maybe moisture from wet bushes (although there wasn't much rain overnight) by the end. Quick lap of Parap markets afterwards then we hung out with S&L for the day while E napped peacefully.

Spent all of yesterday afternoon grazing on Zoe & Andrew's excellent Christmas spread, at which baby Eleanor was the guest of honour, (although Susanne's gluten-free Christmas cake/pudding, made when she was about 12 days into Waiting For Baby, came a close second...) and then G&I met up with friends at the almost-deserted waterfront in the evening so didn't get to bed until nearly pumpkin time.

Therefore I left myself a bit late to get up & run out to East Point, but actually the breeze coming off the sea made it not too bad and I even felt a "cool" gust on the way back. Saw a novel bird in the monsoon forest which I identified upon return as a rainbow pitta.

C • My Dad and I saw your paren... 1

Susanne's Boxing Day Amazing Race around Nightcliff, which she found time to organise while Waiting For Baby and which was attended by a significant portion of the TEO club.

I've always wondered, while watching many seasons of the Amazing Race, whether I wouldn't be better off racing with my sister rather than my spouse, because he would let me wuss out while she'd tell me to get on with it? That turned out not to be the problem today; rather, it seems that while G&I complement each other in many ways, we are both a little too autonomous to really be team players :) and both think literally rather than laterally.

None of which explains our near-failure to discover our team's first clue attached to the bushes on the back fence...so we were last out of the starting blocks by a long way, once we had pieced together the puzzle found in the clue envelope. It was easy though to find the nearby location of the object photographed and made into the puzzle (jabiru statue), and extract the next clue therefrom, and find the next clue thereafter (on the water meter), but then we came a little unstuck by not also reading the complementary instructions in our map pack.

We marched off up the street to no. 13 (more on this later) and then George said "did you read the questions?" and I said "what questions?" It turned out that on the map (printed on the back of an O-map - what else) were 3 locations at which questions could be answered and that the set of 3 correct answers correlated to a street name written in Cyrillic, which teams were to translate into English using the Russian alphabet also printed on the back of the map) and the sets of incorrect answers correlated to different street names, so you had to get the answers right and then the street name right, in order to find the street which had a piece of kerbing graffitied with the words that had been photographed and stuck to the meter box.

Got it? We managed to identify/decipher the street name after going to only 2 locations, so headed off to number 13 Kurrajong St, because, as we read it, the handy hint attached to the water meter had been to "add 10 to the number of MM on the meter" and we'd seen the letters MM written in 3 places on it. What we had seen but not registered was that the full text printed in 3 places on the meter was 50MM (presumably pipe diameter) and so we were in fact looking for house no. 60! In the end we ignored house numbers and just looked for the writing on the kerb, which took a while, but when we found the clue in the trees nearby (where I also spontaneously found a geocache!) there were still 2 other teams' instructions in the bucket, so we weren't last.

The instructions were, as we headed up the beach in search of the next clue on an old well, to make a broom from found objects. Gleefully I added an old thong (flip-flop) and George some red & white safety tape to some palm fronds to make something which looked like Nanny Ogg could almost get airborne with a running start, although her cat Greebo would probably have fallen off. Sheepishly I carried my broom through the small throng surrounding the coffee van at Nightcliff jetty to find the survey marker which had on it a photo of the site of the next clue, the direction of which was to be identified by lining up the nearest casuarina and pandanus trees with each other. At this site, we were to choose an object from the array within the hollow stump, which object could be swept along by a broom...do you see where this is leading us?

...Back to the start line, where one of us (me) was to be blindfolded and then guided in sweeping their chosen object (tennis ball) through a short obstacle course (somewhat like a single hole of mini golf) by their partner (long-suffering husband) while other people laughed at them (Susanne said she couldn't watch because she laughed too much and her stitches hurt). This was an excellently hilarious way to finish off an ingenious challenge which was certainly the most fun I can recall having on a Boxing Day (sorry Tyson)!

C • Massively wonderful 1

Staggered down through the botanic gardens to Mindil Beach then up past Vestey's Lake to Fannie Bay and bach through Parap. Nice morning for it and not *too* sweaty but my legs were pretty buggered.

C • Please pass on congrats. 1

Spent the morning on a plane to Darwin and the afternoon making the acquaintance of Eleanor Clare Hallett!

There may have been more beautiful babies born in the history of mankind, but I don't have proof of this...

After putting another coat of paint on the walls and before the new grandparents came for 'Christmas' dinner. Nice afternoon for some time to myself!

C • Was wondering 6

Trotted over to Mortlock Park and did 6x225m on the grass just as it was trying to rain. Hence it was rather humid, but not like Darwin will be...

Attack of the Killer Masseuse
After which I spent the afternoon putting a coat of paint on the lounge room walls at Avenue Rd, ending up rather stiff anyway.

Uganda has a World Cup orienteering team???

C • Will believe it when I see it 1

Arrows' novelty run around Nth Adelaide from Glover Playground, where AK had turned the permanent controls into a score event and given each of us different time limits with the threat of complete disqualification if we were even a second late. Foolishly I went to the control by the Women's & Children's hospital early on, meaning that after I had done the riverbank precinct and was at the control behind the zoo my options with only 7 min remaining out of my 40 min limit were to go straight back, past the hospital control I'd already been to, up the hill and probably be late anyway, or to take the footbridge behind the zoo, collect the remaining 3 controls for fun and definitely be late. I chose the latter, and struggled because it was already 30 degrees, but 'twas a fun way to get a run in.

I left home before 6am so that I could put out controls at Rocky Paddock for 8am training. Driving through Oakbank-Woodside the car thermometer implied it was 7 degrees. When I got to Mt Crawford forest all the gates were closed so I had to park at the headquarters and head up the hill. Used courses from the club relays a couple of years ago then blanked out some of the legs and left pieces of map at some control sites :)

Takers for the control picking/map memory extravaganza were AK and B&S, so 2 of us got course A and 2 course B, then swapped for the second course, picking up the far-flung controls as we ran, then did a control picking race for the last 10 in the best part of the forest.
18:50
21:24
11:15
Legs felt ok today once they had warmed up and since I knew pretty much where the controls were, tried to concentrate on terrain running technique.

Adrian Uppill kindly set a couple of sprint courses tonight and quite a few of us went along. My legs were pretty hammered but that didn't mean it wasn't fun.
Mt Barker Tafe/Primary 1.6km 12.34
Cornerstone College 1.6km 13.18

Dug out some previous sprint courses around the creek and tennis courts in Belair and went for a run or three. Tried to actually read the map and navigate accordingly rather than just running towards something which I already knew the location of.
1.6km 12:08
1.8km 12.23
2.7km 21:34
which is a couple min slower than the event last summer but I did take some suboptimal route choices, and anyway, I am slower. Legs managed to lift over stuff ok although knee nearly spat the dummy after second course, which was a bit frightening, because it has to get through the whole of Oceania without doing this.

I've never before realised that there are boulders hidden in the bushes by the front gate of the park.

C • I had them As controls on ... 2

Had fixed (the broken strap on) my swimsuit so that I didn't flash anyone this week.

3rd falls loop before OSA meeting. Took all of the 19 min to Deep View to feel remotely warmed up, and after that still pretty slow, although some of that was watching where I was putting my feet (need new glasses as well as new shoes? I think so much computer time at work is making me shortsighted). Anyway, a minute faster than a month ago. Might have been because I was trying to keep Mel in my sights although she got away from me over the rough stuff.

Attack of the Killer Masseuse
Definitely more effective than physio.

Around Hawthorndene with FTP, ATC, B&S, mainly chatting with Fern, which was nice.

Set by Bridget: a couple of short courses without the track network on the map and then three tiny map-memeory exercises. I know this area fairly well and so my main problem was getting in and out of the (dry) creek channel. Pretty warm this morning.

A bit extra, chatting with Zara. I was wrecked! Knee got through this ok but didn't like walking around Mt Barker later on. We got grandfather outside in the wheelchair though, with George pushing him :)

Jogged cautiously around the scatter - knee was ok but it does seem to catch randomly and I'm not immune from ITB twinges either - and for a while I thought 15 controls was going to take me less than half an hour, but I detoured in Waite to see if the toilets were open. The first ones I found were locked already and the second ones in the process of being locked by a security guard. Good thing I'd wasted a few seconds going to the first ones otherwise I may have been locked inside the second ones...

Made it to work Christmas dinner afterwards at the Korean BBQ without being particularly late. This is a smoky affair so it didn't matter that I hadn't showered and beautified after running. When I came home George said enthusiastically "you smell good", tentatively licked my arm and then said disappointedly "but you don't taste like BBQ!"

C • George!!! 5

All yesterday and all today my whole right leg was horrible - and when ITB is tight it pulls on kneecap :(

So after ingestion of anti-inflammatories I took my bike to Belair. For the first 20 min my adductors complained bitterly, but thereafter it was quite pleasant, riding the flattest parts of the park on a breezy, damp-smelling evening.

I struggled up to the BP at Belair, stopping to stretch no less than 3 times, and then I struggled back down, noting how much my knees & hip flexors didn't like this. Getting a bit worried about the potential for evolving a tendonopathy similar to that which plagued me through July-Sept. Sitting in conferences for 6 days of last week didn't help, but neither does the physio seem to have done. (Often my legs are worse for a couple of days afterwards.) Might be time to consider new shoes?

Somewhat distracted by the very real potential for a swimsuit wardrobe malfunction.

Definitely a struggle up the hills, and really out of breath. Legs still hammered from physio. But it was nice to be in the park (and no longer at work) on a summer's evening.

Attack of the Killer Physio
Wasn't really in the mood for pain.

Red Hill ridgeline from Karina's, which is in a slightly different part of Narrabundah from Alex's and so it took me a bit longer than I had anticipated and therefore I was late to the OA conference - oops. But I did see a hot air balloon over the lake and lots of kangaroos near the trig point.

Scatter event around AIS, CIT and the rest of Bruce, getting 18 of 20 controls. Confirmed that I am kidding myself if I think I have any ability to run fast these days. Of course, once it started downpouring, that really didn't matter. Decided to skip the 2 southernmost controls in the bush in favour of marginally less-soggy pavements, but that didn't stop my control card from disintegrating. Good fun, and I remained upright throughout.

It was raining when I left the hotel, so I caught a tram out to the university where I met Peter Taylor for a conversational run around Royal & Princes Parks, then adimired his course-setting for the rogaine in the Warbys (the one of which Prue approved; I think I'd have quite enjoyed it) then walked back to Flinders St to get ready for the conference dinner at Crown (apparently in the ballroom where they hold the Brownlows).

C • wag 3

C • Warby rogaine 1

Pretty stiff this morning, especially through hip flexors. Struggled along Southbank (lots of rowers on the river, and a guy riding his bike alongside yelling instructions with a megaphone; I thought that only happened in England) to the Botanic Gardens then around the Tan. Everyone in the known universe was running faster than me.

In Melbourne for a conference, staying pretty close to Flinders/Spencer St corner. Decided to follow the Yarra from there to its mouth, which included going under both Bolte and Westgate bridges and past the port (sort of). Can't quite get to where the river enters Port Philip Bay, but did then go along the foreshore past the Spirit of Tasmania and back via the top end of Albert Park. Pavement was getting to be a drag by then as were the numerous traffic lights in South Melbourne. I got rained on at intervals, thereby proving that it is summer in Melbourne.