Training Log Archive: jennycas

Melville Caves - start was at the bottom picnic ground and the start punch not quite where the triangle was marked, so from the beginning I had to concentrate very hard. Am out of practice at reading rocks! Managed not to be distracted by the fact that it was a beautiful spring afternoon, or that my back was aching, presumably from the road trip, making jumping and ducking the greenness a bit awkward. Went up the road from 1 then across to and down the track then down the green gully to 2, looked at the track option on the long leg to 4 but decided that wouldn't be using my brain enough so picked stuff off slowly but successfully going straight through the green until I hit the creek, then on the vague open approach to 4 wasn't sorry to be passed by Dave Brownridge as this was validation of my bearing.

Held good bearings and picked off stuff quite well through the next few complex legs, occasionally stopping to lift up the line between controls on the map and peer under it to find the boulder I'd just passed. Almost overshot 5 and did look one minor gully (the one hidden under the circle) too soon on 10 although I knew I didn't need to. Was passed by Dave again on the way into 12; I thought he left it a bit low/too far right and sure enough, there was no sign of him at 13 and he finished after me. Fairly satisfied with my navigation - could possibly have taken some faster route choices but lost less than a minute in the circles.

Didn't exactly warm down, but did finally gather the coordinates from the lookout for a multi-stage geocache in the vicinity and having worked out that the final point was a couple km down the walking track SE from the campground, talked George & Blair into coming with me. There were wedgetailed eagles soaring overhead and magnificent views, and the Wallowa wattle at its yellow best made for some lovely photos out across the rocks.

Terrain loops of Blackwood Forest. 3 laps plus 5 min either side warm up/down. Realise I'm leaving it a bit late to start terrain training the day (!) before a weekend of races at Kooyoora, but it just hasn't been possible to get into the forest lately. It was a beautiful morning and I didn't encounter too much of the traffic-which-others-have-to-deal-with-every-day on the way home.

Goodness, everyone was out tonight! The Ay-Ups were blinding (those of us poor cousins without them hardly needed our headlamps) and it was rather pretty to look around and see a string of lights winding its way throught the forest. Tyson wanted to go "to the tap, the shortest way" and then was heard to ask "whose idea was this?" as we toiled up the hill above the railway line, towards the fire tower. 32 min to the top of Jubilee Drive, 24 min back down Saddle Hill Rd and Long Gully. Along for the run were Brett & Troy, Steve & Aiden, Zara, Lauren, Simon & Fern. Robo-John walked to the redwoods by himself to scare koalas.

Was going to be the 3-hills loop but I was rather tired in brain and legs so converted it to 2-hills. Nice morning and the prickly acacia is blooming in spikes of golden globules. I didn't pick any - because, well, it's prickly acacia!

200/400/600/800/600/400/200 on the uni loop with 200m float between (63-69 sec).
45, 1:34, 2:28, 3:15, 2:28, 1:39, 43. Ran out of lungs before legs for a change.
A goodly crew of schools' team members did some reduced variation on this. Phil's having surprising success with getting them to come to coaching etc - they appear to be more motivated to train than the juniors of a few years ago were :)

Warmup lap of the uni loop plus runthroughs. It was still light at 6pm!
Warmdown with the kids around a subset of North Adelaide streets. Some of the girls were flagging by then, but even so, no whinging reached my ears.

Up through Shepherds Hill as efficiently as possible (38 min) to Fern & Tyson's, where there was an Amber :) then around Eden Hills with them for half an hour, and I peeled off by the fire station to head back down the hill.

Event: Southern Arrows Roulette - SA Club Relay Championships
 

SA Club Relays at Athelstone were organised by the Arrows and John & Luke set some short/sweet courses which still gave people a chance to get their feet wet. Tyson/Fern did the lion's share of very professional organising and I only had to act helpful on the day. I also enticed my parents into running together as a team and because Wallaringa had such a high percentage of the club participating, and a few good results, we won the club trophy!

Visited grandfather afterwards and George mentioned having installed some street lights in Mt Barker recently so we took grandfather for a drive to see all the housing developments springing up on what he used to know as prime agricultural land.