Training Log Archive: jennycas

Hmph. Unley pool is closing for the winter - just when I've finally overtaken Blair (figuratively speaking). There was an end-of-season BBQ today for the loyal patrons (read: refugees from other pools which closed over a month ago) and the smell of sausages & bacon on the air was disconcerting each time I breathed in. On the last lap I had a head-on collision with another girl - given that I was so far left I was tangling with the lane rope, I couldn't work out how she came to be on my side, but I think she was overtaking someone else.

Short suburban jog to loosen up after an afternoon of tetanus exposure - I mean pruning rose bushes.

To the bottom of Pony Ridge and back. I could tell I hadn't done this for a few weeks, also that, to my mind at least, I am still a bit feeble. (Be very careful not to misconstrue the punctuation in that sentence!) It was nice to see firetailed finches along the creek. Near the caravan park I again came across the kids from Scotch College out running with their PE teacher. There were less of them than I saw a month ago, and they had made it further up the creek than previously (the demographic looks like year 8-9 cross country).

I announced that I felt more human today, and Bridget promptly informed me that I sounded robotic! Same run as last Thursday, except that Zara is now sick, so nobody got a tow from Callum tonight, and Steve Sullivan appeared with his son Aidan, who is 14 (15?) and kept up easily with his long legs. I felt okay(ish) but am not convinced that I'll have the energy for a 24km trail run with nearly 1000m climb on Sunday!

C • Next time.. 1

Came home from OASA council at 11pm last night, minus a voice. My god, the meeting dragged on (and wouldn't have been any quicker if I had shut up sooner). Then I slept for 9 hours :) and just managed not to be late for work!

I did my best to stay upwind of all the coldy people I encountered at work and orienteering over the past week, but somewhere along the way, I obviously failed.

C • cough cough 3

This was the SA middle distance champs - except it wasn't quite. Even the first control seemed to take a long time to get to, and I had trouble reading the map so briefly entertained the thought of it being 1:15 000 but when I looked at the scale it clearly said 1:10 000. Then I overshot 3 on a downhill leg by completely ignoring an indistinct track, thereby leading Fern astray (sorry) and settled down to navigate efficiently and ignore the weirdness. Every leg seemed like 50% more effort than usual, but I put it down to the fact that I was getting sick, until I bumped into Blair at the drinks control and he muttered something about the scale being wrong. My suspicions confirmed, I kept on, sometimes a little too high or low on a control but generally pretty clean. I saw Tyson a couple of times, as the guys only had 7-800m more than us (officially) and he was running strongly despite having done the long course yesterday.

When I finished Phil Davill (course setter) looked at me and said "do you think something's wrong with the scale; it was too long, wasn't it?" OOPS! Admittedly Phil ended up being his own controller for this event because Michelle had broken her ankle a while back, but I'm kind of surprised that neither he nor anyone else had got out a previous copy of the Rawnsley map and remembered that it was at 1: 15 000.

I am fond of callitris (native pine) - except when pushing through the young scratchy stuff - and don't mind giant orb weaving spiders (the biggest problem with ending up wearing one was trying to clean the web off my glasses) so was looking forward to this race. John did well with the course. I took the ridges rather than the creeks mostly, nearly got confused towards the end of the long leg because the dark green wasn't really that thick, but saved myself okay. Unfolded my map to see that I only had 1/4 of the course to go so pushed a bit harder. Felt like it was a good race, except there was no one to race against, the way it turned out.