Training Log Archive: jennycas

Poor neglected* Merida Juliet, cogs going rusty despite being stored under cover - so I took her out for an airing since there was to be a 3hr MTBO score event around Belair NP and adjoining suburbs. Figured I wouldn't need the planning time in advance, since I'd just be going to whatever controls didn't look too fearsomely steep to access, but as it turned out every control had just been allocated 10 points - weird. There was the option of grabbing another control card and going around again if anyone ran out of controls to get within the 3 hours, though!

Gerry the organiser kindly activated Juliet's suspension and lubricated her shamefully rusty chain, then Zara kindly accompanied me for the first half hour or so to provide some coaching tips on changing gears and going up & down hills. Not that I don't have a basic understanding of how to do these things but I am accustomed to and fearful of my little hybrid where the front wheel twitches sideways if it so much as runs over a stick, so I took a while to be confident that Juliet wouldn't threaten to throw me also, but actually she's more like riding an armchair, while still being light enough to push up or down any hills which I considered too rough to ride.

Route was basically: full length of Long Gully, back to Karka, up to control on cherry plantation, back to Long Gully Kiosk, up Saddle Hill (does it count as intervals to ride until lactic, walk until recovered, repeat x 5? Apparently Zara ran with her bike on the steepest part of the ascent!), walked bike into control on singletrack above trainline but was able to ride out okay - so maybe I could eventually learn how to do singletracks - up to top of park and all the way down the gradual descent of Jubilee Drive, including a control near Upper Waterfall but not so close that it was possible to go over the edge. Saw a family here where the husband was towing a trailer with their 2 little boys and the wife had the control card!

Poor route choice to the control on Government Farm Oval (didn't read the map properly as it was in my back pocket and I was doing each leg on map memory) then around to Pines Oval, up the hill to the tank, around the northern edge by the railway line and finished off with a couple of controls in the suburbs, involving some steep hills but the last bit along the creek was easy (and the foundations are finally being laid for the residence being built on top of the duck pond). Covered a lot less distance than on foot in equivalent 3 hours of the twilight rogaine, but it was a different sort of fun even if not really properly gnarly MTB riding (which I am far too chicken to do anyway).

*so now I've basically doubled the amount of time I've actually spent riding this bike since buying it over 2 years ago, and reduced the price-per-hour-of-utilisation to under $200.

C • Big adventure! 10

A steaming-pool morning but it's going to be a glorious May day (I'm always in a better mood once no longer on call). Hope the weather's this nice for the rogaine next weekend!

Redwoods return. Really foggy along Long Gully and I couldn't see more than a couple of metres in front of me. Trying to adjust my Ay-Ups, I knocked the lights loose from their fitting and then had to scrabble around on the ground in pitch darkness until I found them. Driving down from the hills wasn't great either in terms of visibility and I was a wee bit late for online OA board meeting (although in all honesty, that's not a new occurrence).

Actually think I'm going to be disappointed when the pool closes for winter, at the end of the month.

To/from Mitcham because of car service. Not sure what my knees thought about this.

There was no good reason for me not to run this as a time trial since everyone else was doing so, and I figured the most important thing was to pace myself - helps when you're not actually capable of going out fast :)
4:31
4:51 (admittedly this is the dark back section with the slight uphill)
4:34
Yeah, so it's at a slower km rate than many 10K races I've done in my younger days, but still this left me with a sense of satisfaction.

Lap of the uni loop with the gang before/after.

From Perry Ave up through Eden Hills to Blackwood, across to Belair, along Sheoak Rd, down Pony Ridge, back along Brownhill Creek and through the suburbs. Drizzle started about Eden Hills station and got steadily soggier as I gained altitude but the on-call phone stayed dry and the Pony Ridge singletracks weren't too slippery. Legs felt ok until about the 2-hour mark, whereupon I was glad of the muesli bar I'd brought, and after ingesting it, able to try hard enough to get back in under 2:20.