Training Log Archive: jennycas

Event: ACT Champs Carnival (NOL Round 3)
 

Fairly grumpy before I ran (due to general work-life-OA balance considerations) and really grumpy after I ran. I don't often come back saying there were some B-S controls! First one was partly my fault as I didn't have a good attack point into the vague junky thickety stuff, but I saw unmapped bits of rubbish which I thought were mapped man made objects, and I saw bits of paved area which weren't the mapped ones, and then I saw the random tent which was a bit disconcerting, and then I saw the men's control but couldn't work out what it was on in order to relocate. So all that wasted a good couple of minutes, amd a few other people had variations on the same problem.

But the control which really pissed me off was no 8 (8 on the men's as well) where it was mapped as an undercover area with the light grey symbol, but also contained a garden bed (fernery) which wasn’t mapped and which led me to check other alcoves, completely not not understanding where I was, much less that I could go through the ferns to find that the control was hidden right at the back of this (also described as corner of paved area where the better descriptor would have been path end). I just don't think there is any excuse for using as a control site an area where the ground doesn't match the map.

The rest was okay I guess; I didn't get caught up in any of the dodgy mapping of passageways or underpasses but some of my route choices were too wide. Lauren passed me (4 min) just before the map changeover and Nicola Blatchford (1 min) had caught up to me because of my errors, but didn't get away after that. I was shocked to hear 26 min as my time, but of course, the course was a bit too long for everyone. We should have had rather more than 100m less than the men!

Coffee had made me less grumpy but feeling no less flat. It was a lovely autumn afternoon out at Orroral and I wandered around reading the signage for the old tracking station (interested to see the footprints of the buildings) and photographing the autumn leaves and kangaroos, then decided I'd better go for a run since I'd come all this way because I quite like granite, even though I was completely out of breath by the time I got to the start.

Anyway, it was nice forest in a green, thick, hiding-the-rocks sort of way, and I mostly found the rocks quite successfully because I was having to walk much of it - legs just wouldn't lift. A minute on 8, maybe, where I left the track too soon, and then I caught up to Katelyn through the open stuff and Kathryn caught both of us when we went back into the green; unfortunately I got my angle of attack confused and started heading up the wrong gully. Took a couple of min to work out that one, eventually caught up to Katelyn again, and Anna Dowling. Watched the Bruce-train storm through at the finish.

BTW, whoever expected that 5.4km for the women compared to 6.0km for the men was going to lead to equivalent (35 min) winning times at Orroral?

Managed generally to have both arms moving at once, which improved efficiency. Not sure why I am so bad at this - perhaps because it's psychologically the equivalent of having no feet on the ground?

C • Butterfly? 2

Creek plod with Zara/Callum, F&T. Hot & cold patches of air were annoying. So were knees, breathlessness, general fatigue.

Oh, and Tynomite taught Zed a new word: discombobulated :)

Mayday ride. Legs lacked power and I probably asked too much of my knees but there were no Mayday calls. Not happy that the neuropathic patch in my groin/adductor is back.

I didn't really want to do intervals because of the impact on my knees, but I wanted to stay at work even less (am so over work just now). Anyway, when Bridget said the juniors were doing a 3km TT that sounded okay to me, not that I had any idea how good or bad my time might be. And 13 min certainly leaves lots of room for future improvement!
4:18 (very out of breath, and this didn't improve)
4:27 (the back straight is rather dark indeed)
4:16 (chasing down Liv but I didn't catch her)

Around Hawthorndene and into BNP with B&S, Tyson, Troy (while the rogaine champion rested on her laurels). Most of me felt better than on the weekend but knees were the exception to this.

Put out tapes for one of the control picking exercises while Simon taped the other. Took me a while because it's not always easy to be certain of the right little gully among the rocks. Also I was so tired I was practically walking. It was misting rain, too.

These courses were recycled from a couple of years ago but this time we had the Kennedys, Sally and Lauren along, plus Bridget and Simon and myself. I was a couple of minutes faster this time but I had put the tapes out (backwards round the course) and I already knew some of the "traps for young players".

The second course should have been physically easier as the pine sections hadn't been felled but I was really tripping over everything by now as my knees got unhappier, and hadn't had a drink for about 3 hours - took about 5 min longer than previously (also stuffed up the first control, but only by about a minute, unlike some people who found 5 instead of 1 and never knew it...)

Rode the Amy Gillett bikeway (old railway line, alongside main road) from Charleston to where it finishes just north of Oakbank, and back again. Curiosity has been satisfied; I don't need to repeat the experience.

Am left wondering how "just going out to training" turned into an 8 hour day! Also am rather disappointed that after what was for me a fairly successful Easter I seem to have just gone backwards over the past month with no real explanation, and now have no real expectations of next weekend (apart from the selection of an Australian team).