Training Log Archive: jennycas

I tried to remember some of Lauren's advice about technique and swimming didn't seem like quite such an effort today - almost enjoyable.

C • yay 1

To the pool (easy), then to the Uppills' at Hawthorndene (hard). This involved a headwind and struggling up Shepherds Hill into it - and getting swooped 3 times by the wattlebird, which had completely ignored me when I ran past it on Friday. I had already been rained sideways upon by the time I was coming back past my house along Winston Ave and seriously considered piking, except for the fact that I'd arranged for George to collect me from the Uppills' after he had washed the truck for the boss at Blewitt Springs. Of course, when he arrived, Robin & I were nowhere near finished dissecting the OA rules because we were having too much fun (nerds and proud of it) and it turned out that he had only come from home, having piked on truck-washing!

So he was sent forth in search of bakery goods :) then we finally made it to our B&B in Macclesfield about 6pm (copious supplies of bacon & eggs, but no jams or juice - go figure) and the highlight of the weekend was definitely dinner at the Three Brothers Arms. Although it's of no interest to me, their list of imported beers is extensive, and George pronounced the Monty Python's Holy Grail ale very good when it reached its optimum drinking temperature of 13 degrees.

C • Scheduling 2

I was going to test Simon's theory that intervals will make you less stiff, as long as what you're stiff from isn't previous intervals, by doing the hills that I have been meaning to do for a couple of weeks, but either I or the theory failed dismally. First one was 3.01, so that's nearly okay, but then on the second one I suddenly found myself walking up the hill and my hamstrings were just so lactic (actually I'm not quite sure that's possible?) that then I just did a loop around the park - found a singletrack I hadn't run on before - and finished with the last of the hills on the 3 Hills Loop, which was an effort. Should only take 11-12 min to run home from the park but today it took nearly 14, which seemed like forever.

Am getting quite sick of having to tape my ankle and take its instability into account every (other) time I put my foot down. Unfortunately it wasn't hard to believe Kath when she implied that it's not easily re-strengthened. Starting to wonder about a certain 80km run which is sort of hanging over my head already (no, I am not having second thoughts - yet).

The lake/trainline/steps loop with Zara/Callum, Fern, Simon, Lauren (who had just come from doing intervals!). Over 50% of us were still feeling the weekend in our legs but mine were definitely better than a couple of days ago.

Afterwards Zara & I stood around for long enough to get mozzie-bitten and decided that we are definitely going to walk the whole 71km Queen Charlotte Track starting 2 days after the rogaine (with Kay, who is going to hire a bike and thinks that I should do likewise). So now we have to determine where we want to stay each night - apparently the boat drops your gear there so all you need to walk with is a daypack :)

I may have caught up on sleep, but not energy, just yet, and legs were very tight in the morning so the planned intervals fell by the wayside. Secondarily planned evening recovery jog went the same way since George was home early for once and so we went out for dinner and carbo-loaded (for nothing in particular) instead.

C • plans for weekend 2

Shepherds Hill, Eden Hills, Bellevue Heights, Flinders Uni and home. Pretty slow and it turned out my knees and shins were tighter than I thought. Nearly wasn't going to bother with a run but when I came home from work I ate chocolate and then it was necessary to run to justify its consumption. I'm not sure whether that's reverse psychology, or reverse-reverse :)

Bridget & Lauren joined me in the pond while Simon went for a jog in its vicinity and Fern rode her bike up Shepherds Hill Rd (I've long suspected that she's tougher than the rest of us). Lauren kindly informed me that my stroke is better than it was - but there must be other things I'm doing wrong because I'm not getting any faster.

No sore spots - apart from my ankle which I rolled again, on absolutely nothing, while walking home from work. So then in the night I had to try not to lie on opposing knee & ankle, shoulder & elbow, because they were all bitching at me. Even so, I've caught up on sleep quicker than after any other rogaine, probably because of the 2x2hour naps on Sunday afternoon.

C • life experience makes toughness I think! 4

We didn't feel as though we were moving heaps fast in the night - my ankle really didn't like the rough descents and I was very tentative, but the ascents weren't too bad - at least in the dark you can't see that the hillside is something you'd consider a 'cliff" in daylight. All the same, I'm going to do some hill intervals before NZ! The emphasis for this event had always been about practising night navigation, and I'd never wanted to push really hard, so it was nice to take the time to chat to other teams we saw in the night and hear how they were doing.

Around 3.30am we saw Mike/Hugh Round's team at a control (the one with the port bottle, which was well and truly empty by the time we were there) and they expressed surprise that we were still heading north as they were on their way back to the hash house, having gone north first. I said to Z "I don't think we're going to make it as far as we'd hoped, we might have to reconsider the remaining 3 1/2 hours". So we got 2 more controls then it was 4:30am at the NW water drop about 2/3 of the way up the map and we decided to follow the stone wall east across the map, with only 50 + 30pts on the way, so that we could at least get to the 80 on the roads in the very NE corner.

So with 90 min and 11km to go we finally hit roads, or at least runnable terrain, and I put my accelerator foot down, then the other one followed it, and Zara was close behind, and in the end we made it with 10 min to spare, on 1600 points (total available 2560 so that wasn't even 60%). We were beaten into 4th by Olivier and Annika being on the same score but having finished 11 min ahead of us. The Rounds were 2nd, 10pts ahead (but apparently having forgotten to punch a 70 pointer) and Andrew McComb and teammate, clearly in training for next month's WRC, won on 1760, having gone north and been efficient with the gorge. Oh, and we won't talk about Steve & Dave's 1330 for the 6 hour - that's in another league entirely!

We were definitely outclassed but it was a good training exercise. Happy with night navigation, expecting my ankle to be stronger in a month, and intending to spend a significant portion of the WRC planning time weighing up alternate routes and points per km.

Sunce I was home by midday I saw no reason not to spend a beautiful spring afternoon napping rather than attending to the garden, being just a little wrecked! The plan for Monday night, if anyone who ran Black Hill today doesn't feel like running, is to meet at Unley Pool 6pm and go for a swim - the tickets are on me!