Training Log Archive: jennycas

Along the creek, to the pool, then home again. It was a crisp morning when all's right with the world - and was also a reminder that soon I may need to break out the gloves which Fern gave me for Christmas, and that I had meant to invest in a pair of bike knicks, oh, about a year ago!

C • knicks 13

Got hungry halfway through. Water was blissfully warm after riding.

Attack of the Killer Masseuse
(Hour of Pain)

I don't normally like the bubbly talkative types but this girl had strong thumbs and her chatter kept me just distracted enough to not actually swear. Afterwards I could hardly walk so I went and stood in the water at the beach for 10 min and that was good. Then Sheridan & I went for coffee at the new place along the train line (The Pantry on Egmont), which was also good, and there was an open inspection around the corner from there so we had a stickybeak - and we kind of have a similar haircut so I hoped the agent didn't think we were buying a house "together".

Such a nice autumn afternoon that I drove out to Largs with the vague intention of doing sand dune intervals at the Snake Pit. After warming up, jogged a lap, decided that the sand was too soft for proper intervals, so ran up the beach to the North Haven breakwater, on the way back ran in the seaweed as much as possible, did another couple laps of the sand dunes then ran down to the Largs Pier. Of course, when you reach a jetty, you have to follow it to the end, so I did (running on a jetty can make you seasick if you look down, I discovered) then came back and did a final lap of the Snake Pit, timing it for curiosity, and it was 3:19, which I'm sure is not much worse than when I have been struggling with the 4th or 5th interval on previous occasions.

C • snake pit 2

In hindsight, this really should have been a rest day, but I didn't work that out until I was halfway up the hill. Knew that I was very tired from my legs having kept me awake in the night after Belair, but figured that if the run made stretching easier then I might sleep better tonight.

Tried to focus on where I was placing my toes but in the end just gave up and ran hard. Didn't feel as tight/difficult as last week and got maybe another 70m out of this. It was a toss up, though, between my legs and my lungs, as to which was the speed-limiting factor.

Last of the daylight Belair Thursday runs until October!
Warmup/down for fartlek 21 min
Lake-train line-Lower Waterfall-steps loop with Fern, Tyson, Simon, Zara/Callum 54 min. Legs felt okay and surprisingly not lactic - maybe they had residual endorphins from earlier?
Running Zara home across the golf course 11 min

Seemed to have better reach and coordination today than I have had for a while.

The usual. I will say that this always makes my shoulders/neck/wrists very tight - one reason why I haven't graduated to long rides in the countryside. Can't help but wonder whether Reuben really needed to cut the stem down? The angle of my wrists on the handlebars doesn't seem right but then I am not an expert.

To the weir, then the foot of Montefiore Hill, including runthroughs which identified how lactic my quads were from running downhill on pavement last night.

I had talked the others into doing hills - figuring that the grass verge of Montefiore Hill would be kinder to my legs than the track - but when I got there, legs didn't want to play. I made them suffer for their recalcitrance, though: 8x 300m up the hill on a continuous loop with reasonably fast downhill recoveries only a few sec slower. On the first one, literally everything hurt, from head to toes, but particularly my long-lost stomach muscles. The subsequent hills didn't get any more comfortable, but neither did they get a great deal slower:
1:40
1:42
1:44
1:43
1:42
1:44
1:46
1:43

C • On ya Jenny 1

Slow shuffle back to Mackinnon Pde. Bridget was even more stuffed than I was. I asked her for advice on core stability stuff and stretching and Simon for advice on what I'm doing wrong when running. He says I land very flat-footedly and don't push off with my toes. That would be right, because I am trying deliberately to land as flat as possible so that my ankle doesn't roll - pushing off is when it's most likely to roll out. That would also explain why I felt like I really didn't have any bounce or forward momentum tonight and why, generally, when I land, the impact just travels straight up my hamstrings and is absorbed into my butt.

When I got home I lay on the floor and got George to to dig his heels into the tight spots of my hips/bottom/ITB. This required me to swear a bit (which I try not to do in front of my physio), but it subsequently meant that for once I didn't wake up in the night with pain.

From John's at Magill up to First Falls (nice to see water trickling over) and back via the Giant's Cave. It is lovely to be in Morialta when everything smells damp. I took the creek track on the way back because it's less hard underfoot than the road and the others waited for me at the park entrance but I didn't know they were waiting. Then apparently they gave up and ran very fast downhill which I wouldn't have been able to keep up with anyway. It bothers me a bit that everyone else has the time and energy for amazingly long runs and I don't even have the energy for short ones. But at least I am more relaxed this week now that postgrad lecturing is finished (and went well).

Started a couple min after Steven Dose, some slight wombles not reading the map well in the circle at 1 & 3, caught Steve at 6 where he must have made a mistake, chased him through the next few controls but he was drawing away. Finally lost sight of him when I mistook a large earth mound for a knoll at 17 when it was mapped as a high point, and ended up 100m too far along the creek. Saw him again in the distance towards the end around the 7th & 8th crossings of the main creek (would you believe it's actually flowing out there?) and ended up 14 sec down on him. Had been feeling very tired beforehand and am exhausted now, but forgot about this while chasing Steve*. Still more out of breath than I'd like though.

(And dad was happy with 80 min for the 4.2km moderate and coming second on course until he realised that I'd gone around twice the distance in a similar time - but then he's over twice my age...)

*Oh, and hamstring didn't twinge at all - but it was surely agonising when I was rolling around on the 'spiky peanut' last night!