Training Log Archive: jennycas

I've been standing up and bending over a bit lately when writing in casenotes, because I thought sitting was bad for hamstrings - but now I think bending might be part of the reason my back is so stiff. Felt absolutely awful when I started running, and for much of the way Zara was repeatedly zooming past me in and out of courtyards as though I was standing still. Simon set a good course, and even though I do know the area pretty well I still had to think. Plus I lost about 30 sec all up on some bad exit directions where I didn't make sense of what I was reading. While picking up controls, I wondered if I could in fact have taken more efficient route choices (I generally tried to avoid having to lift my legs up stairs), but I reckon Simon had set the options to be pretty even.

Gosh, there's an awful lot of gear to be packed up and hauled home by B&S and F&T each week!

C • Flinders uni event 4

1 - Splits

Fern came along to ride with us so we went up Saddle Hill road and down Queen Jubilee Drive. Really annoyed because hamstring was reasonable this morning after a rest day yesterday, then started twinging towards the end of work and was quite horrible for all of the run. I'm a bit apprehensive as to how it will feel about 4 hours' rogaining in 2 weeks' time. Also, it's so frustrating that I haven't done anything specific to cause this problem and yet it has the potential to take months to resolve, if 2011 is anything to go by.

I was sure that Troy and Tyson had said last night that they would be going to Morialta, but I'd waited until 10 past and had seen no one, so set off on the world's slowest 3-falls loop by myself. Very tired legs, tight calves and an inexplicably twinged adductor meant it wasn't very comfortable to start with, but got better as I forgot about my aches and pains and admired the view. It's a great place to run! There was a massive koala sitting on the track in front of me at one point, and a grey heron flew up from the pool by 3rd falls (still trickling after the rain 10 days ago).

It was too nice an evening not to go for a run around Hawthorndene, down to Frank Smith Park and back through the pine forest and the orchard, with F&T and Troy. My corked thigh didn't exactly agree with my enthusiasm... also my upper arms have been really sore today (I guess they took the weight when I went down).

I'll be up front and say it: this course was too long, with a winning time of 20 min rather than 15 - and that's at Hanny pace! Also it was rather poorly set; although I do realise that some last minute changes were necessary due to the building works, there was absolutely no need to make the women come all the way down the scaffolding stairs just to make them punch one control (the men's no.1) and then go straight back up the stairs to the next control. And there was also no need to hide controls in the cupboard under the stairs, I mean the crawl space under the buildings where it was too dark even to see the control numbers.

It wasn't a good sleeping night as my stiff back woke me up with discomfort and even Panadol before warming up didn't help much with mobility. It wasn't a good start to the race as I got attacked by a puddle on the way to the first control. Slid out on a patch of mud when cornering and went down, bashing my thigh painfully on the kerb. Sat there and sooked for a few seconds then punched the first control and hobbled up the scary scaffolding staircase. Plodded through the controls in the school ok, didn't worry too much about the one which was in the wrong place (wrong side of a wall, effectively; I will comment that these courses were printed with Corpse and the controls didn't always seem to be centred as exactly as they could have been!).

Ran slap bang into Mace as we rounded a corner from opposite directions (this seemed to happen a lot to people throughout the course), hastily apologised and then I took a closer look at where control 6 was - at the bottom of those bloody stairs. Now I hate heights, but I couldn't very well go down them with my eyes closed, so I walked down. I could, however, find an alternate way up to avoid having to take the stairs a 3rd time, and as it turned out this route was marginally more efficient - Clare Baker had caught me at 6 but I beat her into 7, and then for the next few controls she was leaving as I arrived so my routes mustn't have been too bad.

I wasn't very impressed with control 10 though - another "cupboard under the stairs" scenario, described as being at the end of an undercover area. Fair enough, but we'd come at it by a corridor through the middle of a building and the map showed a small dead end next to the main corridor. It didn't, however, make it clear that this cul-de-sac was a flight of stairs below the main corridor, and so I looked in the identical cul-de-sac a flight of stairs above. Little things like this took the gloss off the course, I will say. I understand that it's almost impossible to map a campus on a hillside when walkways start off at one level and finish at another, but some control sites are just better off not being used.

Which is not to say that I didn't still enjoy the course, as I really do like orienteering for the navigational challenge of it and this was suitably challenging. I don't think I lost much time navigationally, although a couple of my route choices could have been more efficient. Sadly, it's just that I am so very slow these days that I probably shouldn't be running elites (roll on W40?) but then again, maybe I can offer to come last each time as a community service :)

C • Control/course printing 19

Event: NOL Round 1
 

Roma Street Parklands. I kind of knew this was a bowl of greenery above the train station but not how many winding paths, elevated walkways, water features and water dragons there would be. I also kind of knew that my unofficial relay team wasn't going to achieve anything special so when Mary (Vic girl - who'd turned up 10 min before the mass start) came walking back halfway through her first leg saying she'd accidentally gone in to the out of bounds, and pulled the plug because she thought she'd be disqualified anyway, I wasn't too fussed.

Waited for the frontrunners to come through (and a few more) then picked up my map and proceeded to enjoy myself. It's a great little area, expertly mapped by Wendy, who had then set 4 separate courses for each team so that each course was run by one or other of the team members but very few people actually ran the same pair of courses as each other (I had C then B). Was running pretty cautiously, but this didn't stop me from running on to a walkway thinking I could get down it at the point I needed to, then having to backtrack. Only did this once though, but at another point was daft enough to read a control description 'open area' as being on a paved area and so looked on the wrong side of the hedge. Also not sure that I took the best route around the lake.

Guessing that I lost about 90-120 sec on the first loop; it took me 19:07 whereas after a break and some spectating, I headed out on the second loop, which was nominally 100m longer but didn't seem quite so complicated (or maybe I knew the traps now) and took me 17:32.

Griffith University, Mt Nathan Campus. Seems strange to have a cluster of university buildings set in the middle of nowhere, I mean potentially (in)flammable jungle. But the course was really good; many legs where if you lost concentration partway through you could end up in the wrong alleyway or courtyard, and more route choice than is often the case within more of the legs than usual. Really had to take the time to read the detail, and often to work backwards from the end of the legs to see what traps there were before making the plan. The lines weren't always cut quite enough to show where there were no gaps, which was a bit frustrating, and more than one person mentioned finding unmapped stairs, although this didn't trouble me. Not being very good at running up & down stairs did, though; wish I wasn't so tentative! Belinda came through me a minute at about the spectator control I think. It was a great atmosphere with everyone running everywhere. I could have done without waiting for the caterpillar trail of presumably new uni students to cross my path, though.