Training Log Archive: BB

We joined the throng going to Perisher ski slopes (on a Saturday during school holidays!) to go cross country skiing with Angie and John. First time on skis since our Canadian adventure in March. Plenty of snow but the tracks had not been groomed recently which when combined with windy conditions and limited tree protection resulted in snow drifts on parts of the track. We did the 10 km loop as there was a race on the easier and shorter trails - took quite a while (time is a guess) including making running repairs to John's skis which suffered quite a bit and were fairly broken by the end. I used classic skis which were better than the skate skis used by the others. Took at least 45 minutes to an hour to drive the last 10 kms to the car park - lot of traffic and two wheel drives and to put on chains which slowed others like us. Enjoyable even tho it was challenging weather conditions (quite windy, snowing and limited sunlight). Weather conditions in Canberra apparently were not much better in any case.

Nice walk with the pooch and Liz to top of Mt Stromlo and back. Cool but sunny conditions. Also walked on parts of the new heritage trail on top of Stromlo which has very good signage explaining the history and current operations of the observatory, including some quotes from orienteers Herman and Claire Wehner about when they lived up there in the early days (Herman just had his 92nd birthday and I recently heard his radio interview where he talked about continuing to enjoy orienteering).

Recovery after a late night/early morning following the Long WOC race - great run by Hanny on many legs when you look at the split times. Stayed up to see the end of TDF as well - and up early to see most of the World Cup game - glad I did not have to go to work today!

C • Sleep 2

Motivated by Germany's thrashing of Brazil I rode to Aldi Supermarket ..... not really. On a cold day with rain forecast we did the usual LBG basins ride and coffee stop. Managed to beat the rain...just. Also saw two very large male kangaroos boxing near the bike path - lots of smaller females nearby so maybe they had too much testosterone.

Motivated by the very good performance by the Aussies last night at the WOC Sprint Relay, I ran from home to Stromlo to do 4 (sprint) runs around the terrain loop. Cool conditions here - about 10C and a cool breeze. Decided not to do an urban sprint after Saturday night when I was jogging to a restaurant in Manuka (as we were late following the Sprint Qualifying races) and ran into a tree branch and my forehead looked a bit like Harry Potter's afterwards.
We both got up at 1.30am last night to follow the Sprint Relay at WOC - my 13 euros investment in the gps tracking has been average given the difficulty of it working accurately in the narrow lane ways at both events so far. But at least the map was shown for each leg. Was also able to use the iPad at the same time to follow both the live updates and the commentary on the WOC website. Did anyone get TV coverage? if so how??

Motivated by TDF did a 30 minute fast workout on the Mt Stromlo criterium track. Estimate I did 12 laps at speed. Garmin trace shows I did not vary much off the racing line! Altho a few times I had to move one way or the other to avoid young kids on the track during school holidays. While there was some people there (looking after their kids) the crowds were certainly not as large as those in Yorkshire watching the TDF!! Conditions were sunny but cool - glad I rode with my long tights and my shoe covers - despite having 3 layers on top, I kept thinking I needed a newspaper to put down the front of my top - then realised that we do not get the hardcopy version of the Canberra Times anymore and instead rely on iPad version - which would not be that comfortable to put down the front of my top.

Nice to see some of the names of the MTB tracks at Stromlo on the satellite photo showing were I rode - see map.

Rode the bike to orienteering today - a new map located only about 1.5 km from our place - the far end of Cooleman Ridge has now been mapped and a middle distance type of course was set. Advertised as 4 km. It is basically a granite covered ridge with limited vegetation and reasonably steep. Pretty cool conditions and windy on top of the ridge. Time was just a bit faster than Liz - but she had to wake up a number of SI units. Felt reasonable despite staying up late last night watching the gps tracking at the WOC sprint final.

C • Dinner 3