Training Log Archive: jennycas

Work's been chaotically frustrating the last couple of days and since I couldn't decide what to try to finish off first if I did stay back, I decided instead to drive across town since it was a nice cool evening. Up to Deep View and into 3rd Falls with the gang (B&S, Sarah, Stefano, Nick, Angus) then up to the main road and down via Pretty Corner by myself. The path below 3rd Falls is even more washed out than I'd remembered it, maybe because of the post-Christmas rain event. I'm a bit sad that I was away at the times when both of the Big Storms Of 2016 happened :(

Pleasant pondage. Tried to focus on coordination rather than on the question of how one nation can be so selfish as to close its borders to numerous other nationalities, and so foolishly arrogant as to not fear repercussions from its actions? I guess we're not in a global economy any more, Toto. But if DJT wants to ban terrorism he's going to have to ban the internet.

I was actually first to arrive at Bridgie today! Think everyone was a bit tired this morning...certainly my legs made hard work of the Bowling Green Lane loop even though it wasn't too hot yet.

As soon as I finished work I hightailed it to Goolwa, hoping that I would at least make it to this afternoon's training on the dunes between there and the Murray mouth before the controls were brought in. As it turned out, there weren't actually any controls out there, but it's still amazing that such a high-quality map was basically made by Stefano using LIDAR with very little actual fieldwork required (helps that there's no tree cover). I'd been a bit concerned upon reading back through my AP log of the Oceania 2013 NZ trip, that I might have forgotten how to read sand dunes, but I felt as though I did pretty well today - only one obvious mistake and that less than a couple of minutes. Probably some small fritterings away of time in the control circle but I can't have been too far wrong each time or else I'd have ballsed up the next leg, which I didn't. Fairly slow because I walked anything remotely long-grassy, and also I wasn't very fast up sandhills; am thinking that I do need to go out and do some laps of the Snake Pit at Largs on a semi-regular basis.

Photobombed the group photo as I went past the finish on my way from 15-16. BTW, I'm not the one who captioned this picture: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1373608956...

It's impossible to explain how much happiness orienteering gives me...and the best bit was that I made it home in time to go out for a romantic wedding anniversary dinner with Geoff at Jolleys Boathouse :)

C • Orienteering gives me much ... 4

C • An incomplete understanding of the Adelaide region's geography 2

By the time I'd made it home and showered before bed last night it was after 11pm and I was absolutely wrecked at work today; am getting too old to be up that late unless it's on a rogaine. So I decided to skip Athelstone tonight because I have to work tomorrow morning.

Australia Day Seacliff to Hallett Cove Run! I don't think I've done this on the correct date since...2 days before our wedding. And I hadn't realised that the SARRC/SA Trail Running mob still maintain the tradition. Except that they started from Brighton Jetty at 7am, and we (Bridget, Simon, Stefano, Andrew, John) started from Seacliff Yacht Club 2km south about 15 min later. So we were passing people who had to walk the stairs, all the way. There are 4 big sets of stairs, and I hate going down them, because I can see the ground beneath and it really freaks me out because I'm not good with heights. Going up was fine, although legs sometimes a bit lactic at the top, strangely enough. Once we got into the conservation park, it was really nice along the clifftops, and the waterfall is still flowing after recent rains. I decided not to go up around the sugarloaf on the return trip but did finish off with an extra loop above the caravan park at the end.

Happy not to have done the extra 4km to/from Brighton, although I've looked up my 2012 log and found that the 17km distance only took me an extra 10 min back then; clearly I've lost a bit of fitness in the intervening 5 years (actually, lost a lot at one point when my knees were bad but have regained - rogained? - some since then) and so I need to invent a 3-month pre-WMOC training plan :)

Wow, over 30 people turned up for this! Mass start all lined up on the cricket pitch at the main oval, then everybody raced straight to the first control except me (memo to self: don't have the work phone in the same hand as your compass because it stuffs up the bearings. Guess this is karma for my sledging Angus about going off the map last Sat!).

When I got to 1, which was the pivot control, I stood there and looked at my map until I could finally find no. 2; the numbers were really hard to read and my headlamp kept slipping sideways, so I struggled quite a bit with reading the map and also where I was putting my feet in the long grass. Plus, legs were pretty stiff from this morning - I have no idea how so many people ran about 15 min. Still, it was great fun and very cool to see the string of lights as people headed round the various loops.

Next up was a course on the golf course, with no actual controls but most of the circles were on the tee boxes. I was pretty tired by now so just decided to jog around with Zara & Leith but I had trouble keeping up with them. As Z said, it's a good thing we don't run this fast when trying to read the map on rogaines!

Attempted a run last night (as Sara is my witness) but legs said no so I went home and stretched instead before 2018 Nationals meeting. Immersion-therapy this morning was pleasantly uncoordinated.

Short run but it felt tough (and not just on hamstrings/hip flexors). South Road may be reopened under the tramline overpass but the pedestrian/cycle path thereover is not, and a lot of cyclists were playing chicken to cross Main Sth Rd.

To/from Eblen Subaru where car was being mechanicized. Managed to avoid the rain in evening. Looks like $1000 expenditure is the magic threshold for getting a complimentary bottle of Eblens-labelled wine?

Big group this morning! We took the direct route to Mylor - new Heysen Trail then Wilson Rd, and the others took the Bandicoot Trail back, but I didn't want to be out for too long after getting sunburned yesterday, and Liv wasn't feeling great, so we took the shortcut back up Mi Mi Rd (now I know where it goes through) and then I convinced her that it wasn't that much further to take the old Heysen Trail down Mountford Ave into Engelbrecht reserve and up the other side, finishing off by the waterhole on Cox Creek. But of course the trail is so rough down into and up out of the creek crossing where the bridge is washed out that we had to walk a fair chunk of it and actually got back after the others. Good adventure though :)

Just around the suburbs. Corked quad from running into a tree stump yesterday (while busy looking at my map!) doesn't seem too bad.

Put out the controls in the southern part of the map, but the felled/windblow pines area took me longer to get across than I'd anticipated and so I was in a bit of a hurry with the last control I placed, which may have been higher up the 'rocky spur' than it should have been (sorry guys)!

Did the training course starting from the northern end of the map, and really enjoyed the first part in the native scrub, despite making a #navigationfail parallel error on 2: ending up too high so I could see the clear ridgeline beyond, and translating that to being too far north when actually I was too far east, so then I went south instead of west. Mind you, I was around Angus and Nick quite a bit for the first half-dozen controls, and they were faffing all over the place!

Legs died at basically the point where I got to the controls I'd already put out, after the long leg down the road which really hammered hamstrings, and then my hip flexors didn't want to lift over the fallen logs. In the end I skipped the last 2 controls, but paid for it because the shortcut I took back to the cars was across some hideous open felled stuff with long grass, potholes and rows of brashings which made The Slump seem quite pleasant.

Legs hurt so much driving home (new O shoes didn't give me blisters, so that's a win, but it's because I wore thinner orthotics - and O shoes don't exactly have much cushioning) that I thought I'd try going for a swim this afternoon. Is it normal to not break the surface of the water at all when kicking freestyle*?
*my style is very free

This morning when I woke up I seriously wanted to go back to bed, but the dog wanted a walk. And if I'd stayed home from work (which I never do) then I couldn't very well go orienteering tonight, which I was looking forward to doing. This was a struggle though; Marino has lots of hills and I had nothing in my legs. Also didn't choose the optimal route, starting out northwards when the finish was 100m north of the start, meaning that there's an extra 200m I didn't need to do. Definitely did not choose the best climb-minimization option, and was very tempted to just get 15 controls but instead, for all 20, went into the scrubby open bushland at the southern end of the map to get my legs scarified by thistles. Great views from the top of the hill but - like last weekend - I was disappointed that there wasn't a control on the lighthouse!

Had arranged to meet AK at Flinders Uni prior to the Arrows' Snap Sprint Series meeting, in order to test run his courses for the Feb 3rd event, and I thought I'd maybe sneak in running up a couple of hills beforehand, but when I left work I found that I had a very flat tyre:( It was 38 degrees, and I couldn't even get the jack out of its hiding place in the boot - possibly because it had expanded in the sun or maybe just because I'm a complete girl - so I called Andrew for a 'taxi', and begged Geoff to come change the tyre when he finished work (5 min away, and he said it only took him 5 min). I'm not proud of my actions, but I am very grateful for the assistance!

Anyway, we decided it was too hot to run around Flinders Uni so just walked all the control sites. (Probably for the best because I am feeling rather achy and sore-throaty.) Missed the storm because of being inside eating pizza @B&S' but when I got home our crab-apple tree in the front garden had fallen in half.

The idea for this exercise was that one person has a map and stays back at base, the other does the running to controls, and both have mobile phones so that person A can direct person B around the course. This concept made me uncomfortable because I don't believe in holding mobile phones to one's head for any longer than the bare minimum of time (and also I think I'd be pretty unco running and talking at the same time).

So I decided to memorise the course (SE corner of Adelaide CBD) and run around without a map. Did the first course in 2 parts, coming back via the start/finish to look at the second half, and that was fairly successful - although I should have written down a list of control numbers because in a couple of places Stefano had put 2 different controls only about 5m apart. Then I did another course all in one go, but that was easier because a lot of the control sites and route choices were now familiar to me. It was really interesting trying to hold the mental picture of the map in my head and even change orientation with each leg.
18:47
15:34
One thing I noted was that it was better for me not to consciously think that I would be turning left or right, I just remembered which way I needed to go relative to my current trajectory...sometimes I'm a bit dyslexic with east & west on control descriptions, too! Interesting also that I have a lot of trouble with verbal directions given to me, because when I hear them I am too busy trying to make the map in my head and don't properly sequence everything I'm told. So I would probably have found the exercise as it was intended to be, quite difficult. I'm also really bad at drawing maps in order to direct someone else :(

Legs didn't feel *too* bad yesterday (I noticed a colleague was also walking stiffly and it turned out that she'd run the Hobart marathon on Sun then flown back from Melbourne in time for work on Mon!) but I was very tired - probably from the early mornings on the weekend - and crashed out about 8pm. Decided to run before it gets too hot today so trotted over to Mitcham and followed Brownhill Creek down as far as the old orphanage on Goodwood Rd then headed for home.

Below is part of a message received from the Two Bays Organisers :)

"The Course Tampering Incident:
So here's what we know...The course was marked correctly on Friday.
Then a checking team set out on Saturday to go over all the bushland sections. They went through the McLaren's Dam area at 3pm Saturday and all was good. But some time between then and race time Sunday some comedian shifted ribbons from the usual trail across the dam, and placed them to lead runners into the loop behind the dam. Fortunately that trail naturally flows back onto the Two Bays walking track and only adds about 550 metres. Once the front runners did it, everyone else followed until I was alerted and ran in to fix the situation. Probably about 70% of 28km runners ran this extended version of Two Bays. No 56km runners were affected as they hadn't yet hit the area."

Hahahaha...I actually preferred the course with the extra loop behind the dam!

For those who don't know the route, this is a trail run with over 900 people crossing the Mornington Peninsula from Dromana to Cape Schanck (there is also a 56km lighthouse to lighthouse version which attracts over 200 intrepid runners): http://www.twobaystrailrun.com/iTheTrail.html

This is actually the 4th time I've run it (2011, 2:38; 2012, 2:40; 2014, 3:00) and while I know that I'm older and slower than ever before, my goal was not to be any more than 1 min/km slower than when I first did the run 6 years ago. Starting out, I knew that I was going to be very slow going up the Arthur's Seat climb, and about a million people went past me (they'd probably been caught in the bottleneck at the start) but it was a bit of a worry to be among people who were walking before we'd even left the bitumen. This guaranteed my being among walkers as soon as we got to the singletrack ascent, but there was nothing I could do about it except join the queue, thinking about all the energy I was saving for later on :) Even when the single trail flattened out around the back of the hill, passing people wasn't that easy, and since I hadn't taped my ankles I was watching my feet pretty carefully.

Finally got some wriggle room on the big downhill to the dam, which we then went left around - I'm not sure why, when the course has always crossed on the dam wall other years, but then that maybe explains why the course has previously been a bit shorter than the advertised 28km. The first hour ticked over already at the 8km mark; I'll need to get a move on! After all, when you get into Greens Bush, it's still not even halfway, and there's a couple of long slow uphills on the road before then...on the second of these, the leading 56km runners absolutely flew past in the opposite direction. The leading guy, who ended up doing 4:09, probably weighed less than me (admittedly not hard).

But once I got into the bush, things flowed really nicely for me. It was a cool cloudy day - I didn't even take a hat - and sure, there are lots of little ups & downs, yet the sneaky uphills following ferny boardwalk creek crossings didn't seem as hard as I'd remembered, and the trail was soft underfoot, even sandy at times. And I started passing people. Some of them passed me back, and later I passed them again, and mostly they stayed passed thereafter!

2 hrs came at just over 17km, and now I couldn't remember quite how far it was to Boneo Rd, but I thought I'd be able to do nearly 10km in the next hour as the course got easier. I could see that some of the people around me were finding it hard work though, and walking quite small inclines. Boneo Rd was at 22km (officially, anyway) and just after that I started to get calf cramps and had the fearful thought that it would be a long way to the finish if I had to walk, but the magnesium tablets kicked in and all was well. I deliberately walked the stairs at 25km though, and heard one woman say to another at the top "we made it up those bastards" (did think at times that it would have been nice to have a girl friend to chat with along the way, as others were doing - Zara, next year?).

Fast feet came up behind me at 27 km and I let her go, not being in this for a chase, but about 400m later I went past the same lady without even trying...definitely this was a race which got better as it went on and although I'd been thinking at the start that if I got a time over 3:10 that would be an indication that I needed to quit these runs, now I'm thinking that since my official time was less than 5 min slower than 2014 (when I got held up in the shoe cleaning queue for 3 min), maybe I just need to do proper hill training and get into a better position going up the road from Dromana, before the single track begins. Then again, I have delirious thoughts about doing the Pichi Richi marathon again one day too...

C • Dam wall 9

Event: Melbourne PAS Surf Coast Series 2 - Point Lonsdale
 

G & I flew into Melbourne early this morning, drove to the You Yangs and walked up Flinders Peak (I got the impression that for the locals it's the equivalent of walking up Mt Lofty) where the views were a bit hazy, then to Geelong in search of lunch (the cafe by the swimming circle is unfortunately in hiatus so we were starving by the time we found somewhere open), met Blair's train, drove to Point Lonsdale for the orienteering, crossed on the ferry Queenscliff to Sorrento and stayed with Blair's relatives at Blairgowrie ahead of Two Bays.

The orienteering itself was a score event, which doesn't usually appeal to me but this was a scenic area with sand dunes and beach (probably wasn't the optimal route choice to run along it) and lighthouse (why was there no control here?). Pity the black & white photocopied map didn't really do justice to the locality. Anyway I took walking trails as much as possible because they'd be softer underfoot, and knew towards the end that I was going to be a little late for 50 min because of this, but there were no controls it was worth leaving out to guarantee being back in time. As it was, I think I should have been penalised 10 points but they seem to have forgotten about this - and anyway it didn't affect the placings.

It was raining on the pool, and at approximately the same temperature as the water therein, so was quite pleasant. Coincidence (I think) that my goggles kept leaking - and so I lost track of laps and did some extra. Brownhill Creek had been dry when I went into the pool but was flowing merrily when I emerged. Just suburban runoff I guess.

A labyrinth of control stands greeted me on Belair oval but I hardened my heart against them and headed for the hills, because I'm a bit concerned about the fact that basically everything I ran for about 2 weeks over New Year was flat, and there will be a BIG HILL first up on Sunday. So I did the lake-trainline-steps loop, and the goal for this was to push harder on any ascents. Which I think I did quite well, but then I had to stop in a melting puddle at the top of each climb to catch my breath. Gradually it got a bit cooler as the sky clouded over but by then I'd kind of run out of oomph. Ended up having to walk down the steps from Long Gully station because they are so derelict and overgrown, with blackberries and fallen branches, so I don't think we can use that route any more. Pity, because it made up one of my favourite loops.

C • working bee 3

Pleasant evening for a ride along the creek with a bit of a headwind AKA gully breeze. Geoff tells me that we will be missing the Elvis Festival in Parkes this weekend - I wouldn't want to be those guys wearing a wig & jumpsuit* when it's 41 degrees!

* I somehow doubt you'll ever catch me wearing a wig & jumpsuit, whatever the weather...

C • Heatwave at the Elvis festival 3

One of those days where, because it wasn't particularly busy at work, I noticed just how tired I was, and couldn't even bring myself to do those little maintenance tasks which normally wait for a quiet moment. So anyway, going for a run after work achieved something, I guess. Up Hillrise, Tunnel X over, secret trainline crossing, cemetery. Calves still a bit tight from the other day - Kayanos were comfortable but only for about the first 90 min.

After AOTKM, jogged along the creek (wish I'd seen it flowing after 60mm of rain a couple of weeks ago) very slowly indeed - but quads felt better at the end than at the beginning.

http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/1407002872 AKA Crafers Return from Ave Rd. That's all I need to say about it, right? The steep descent of Tilleys Hill Rd may have been detrimental to my hip flexors and the last half hour through the suburbs degenerated to a Cliff Young Shuffle. But at least the sun didn't come out until I got home.

C • Big run 2

The pool was a bit too warm, too chlorinated, and too full of humans, but otherwise ok. This was after a broken night's sleep (minimum 31 degrees, and I turned the aircon on at 3am when the dog got rowdy, then off when the smoke alarm started up at 4 - hope the ancient ducted evaporative system isn't overheating) so I picked up a strong coffee on the way home. And walked the dog while still in my wet bathers, then shared an iceblock with him!

Hmm...think it was still about 36 degrees for this one (although when I got in the car afterwards, it was reading 47!) and I had to walk up a number of hills despite having foamrollered this morning so that I could feel like a functional biped. Thankfully getting all 20 controls didn't involve a great distance - and there was cool juicy watermelon at the end :)

C • mmmmmmmmm 1

Not one, but two, mazes, a mirror image of each other, greeted us on Belair oval :)

The idea was to start in matched pairs and each do opposite versions of a course which started with controls in one side of the maze, went externally to a pivot control, and then back into the other half of the maze, effectively doing the same course again but in reverse. Since this was designed as a knockout competition, it was very important to be ahead at the halfway mark...or so you might think. I actually found that I sped up a lot in the second half, because all I had to do was remind myself of where the controls were placed and then do the relevant leg backwards. Which may explain why I somehow made it all the way through to the fourth round, where I was paired against Angus the speed demon, and was so excited at being not *too* far behind him at the pivot control that I went into a bit of oxygen debt on the final maze and, on the very last control, got halfway there then got confused because instead of just taking the route which was in my head, I actually looked at the map - which I had turned around 180 degrees!

Just maybe, my legs might be running a little bit faster these days, and my brain hasn't caught up yet...

C • aha 2

Had intended to do a bit more of a run, but legs said no. I guess I've made them run 9 days in a row now.

Maybe I'm easily annoyed, but when I booked flights to Sydney for myself & Geoff for Mar 4/5 weekend on the basis of NSW sprint champs being @Cockatoo Island on the Sunday, preceded by a sprint @Rookwood cemetery on the Saturday, I certainly didn't expect those events to then completely vanish from the ONSW calendar - and I am now more than a little pissed off!

C • SA Sprint Champs 5

Similar format to the last time we did a sprint relay here - teams of 2, each person runs twice. I was paired with Dante, who runs very fast. And even though I had a bit of trouble with getting across the creek, because the channel seems to be more washed out since recent rains, I tried to run hard and we actually came in first!
6:32 (0.7km)
7:32 (1.0km)
5:52 (0.7km)
The bad news came when Kate Marschall was looking at her map and saying "I punched the same culvert control twice, but the codes should have been different" and then both she & I realised that there were 2 culvert controls, very close to each other. Might have been 15m apart on the map but they were closer on the ground (and the one we punched twice by accident had an unmapped barrier around it so the control was hanging from this whereas the other control was flat on the ground) and given that it was my second-last control of the race and I honestly thought I had already been to all of the controls which were out there, I didn't even check the code but just focused on how I was going to get across the creek next up.

Suitably humiliated now. Feel as though I am becoming far more scatterbrained when orienteering than ever I used to be :(

Beforehand with the group for 12 min and afterwards I went down the creek towards the forest & back which was 9 min each way.

Surburban jog after the flight home (Geoff's driving back later in the week). Stomach was uncomfortably full of airline dinner but I appreciated the lower humidity compared to Sydernee. We took our niece & nephew tenpin bowling AND minigolfing today in order to retain favourite auntie/uncle status :)

From Glenbrook (after lunching there) down to Jamisontown via Lapstone Station - found a connecting path from there to River Rd. Lots of people out boating and jetskiing on the Nepean. Cloudy breezy afternoon; tired legs were glad of the net descent.

A bit sorry not to be orienteering anywhere today. I really enjoyed the Christmas 5-Days; pity I only go to them about every 10 years. Anyhow, we spent the day driving to/from the Glow Worm tunnel at Newnes (about 2.5 hrs each way, so marginally better ratio of time on foot to time in car than the Gloucester Tops) which was interesting, being in an old shale-oil railway tunnel in the Gardens of Stone NP, but I was a little disappointed in the quantity of glow worms, being seriously spoiled by a couple of previous rides in boats on underground rivers through amazing glow worm caves in NZ!

Was a bit ashamed of lunch having been courtesy of McDonald's at Lithgow (nephew's choice, and it was raining at the time) so went for a hot-and-steamy jog after getting home to sister-in-law's. The roads go every which way through Glenmore Park, which would make a good street-O map. I think there's one out this way?