Training Log Archive: fletch

Spent a fair chunk of today stretching and icing my knee in an attempt to get it runnable by this afternoon. Finally got to the chemist too, so nurofen gel needs to work its wonders now.

Knee was awful during the warm-up, but decided to start the first effort and see what happened. As expected, the faster I went, the less it bothered me.

20 min tempo x 2 with 20 minutes easy between. Session was really good other than the knee. Tempo efforts felt pretty comfortable today. Bit more spring in these shoes than the Mizunos, but want to keep them fairly new for the marathon.

As for the training week - it was pretty crap. Partly due to an overnight trip to Perth and partly due to just feeling flat, tired and lazy. That said, I have knocked out 50km for the weekend and 70km for the week, so I guess my definition of crap has change in the last few months.

5 weeks to go. Must not throw it all down the toilet now!

Had a 12 hour sleep last night, which helped get over a crazy week of long work hours (overnighter to Perth for cross country) and ran in the afternoon.
Took a mental break from pounding the marathon route by heading north and into the sand dunes north of Sunset Beach, and even got out to some dunes north of Drummonds. Tried to get out the the highway directly, but wasn't sure about jumping the fence into private property, so came back out the way I went in.

Took the run super easy, but legs still got sore in the last hour, got dehydrated and suffering from cramps this evening. Knee also pretty stuffed. Didn't get past being a slight nuisance till nearly 10km in, but then got really bad pretty fast. Still haven't got hold of any nurofen gel.

Watch memory filled up at around 23km, so time and distance for the rest a bit of a guess.

Legs felt good. Knee didn't.

Morning jog along the river. Pretty borderline for the first few km on dirt in the dark. Really need to take a headlamp if I'm going to repeat this one.
Right knee sore almost to the point of making me stop and probably bad enough that I'll develop another niggle from compensating for it. Must get some ice / nurofen happening as well as some more stretching to try to get it settled.

Half proper warm up. No time for cooldown

Attempt to salvage the week a bit. Missed my midweek quality session altogether, so thought I'd get more out of trying an approx 9km race on tired legs than I would be doing 4 x 3km around an oval.
About 6km on gravel roads. Undulating course. Never completely flat, but no devastating hills either. As opposed to last week, thought I'd start pretty hard and see how the legs responded. After yesterday's SOMS, I wasn't expecting much, but it went much better than I thought and with the aid of a slightly downhill second half, I even managed a negative split.
Shows I really did have something left in reserve last week, as I took the win by about 4 minutes over last week's runner up.

Still surprised that I can pull this out the day after a 30km session. Makes me think I could actually put an Easter carnival together at this fitness level. Shame I never got there when I was actually orienteering.

A frustrating addition to a week of little training. Have been feeling pretty tired and flat all week and just haven't been able to pull myself out of bed in the morning. Then yesterday I forgot to set my alarm when I was actually keen to run.
Today I felt Ok at the start, but before I had hit 1hr, my quads started to get sore. What the? Wish I knew what triggered this. Never got to the point of slowing me down, but just made the run really unpleasant, which was shame, because it was a beautiful, cool and clear morning with just a really light breeze for a change - perfect for the session I was doing.

WU
24km (nominally) at marathon pace (4:10-4:15)
CD

First few km in the dark, so couldn't tell what pace I was doing. Tried to settle to the right pace after that, but generally struggled to slow down to 4:15, even though I wasn't feeling great. Which would be OK, if it didn't totally destroy the point of the session, as I can't imagine another 18km of what I was doing today if it had been race day.

Oh well. Extended the MP bit to 25km, finishing at the top of the hill that is usually part of my cooldown, so obviously still had a bit in the tank.

Probably not helped by only having one gel, about 18km into the effort part of the session, and not drinking anything, despite arrying a drink bottle the whole time.

Roughly 88:20 through half marathon, aiming for 90.

Normally wouldn't log this, but yo-yo'ed between cruising at the back, then trying to play catch-up with the group that was riding the more technical trail. Pretty knackered by the end.

Easy roll around in the early hours. Not as early as it should have been. Took more than 30 minutes to get out the door this morning. Motivation is on holiday.

I've bought a GoPro for work - it actually may have educational benefits, as well as promotional ones in Outdoor Education in particular. Had to take it for a test spin to see what sort of shots you could get from different mounts.

First video includes facing backwards from the seatpost and forwards from the handlebars. Also includes a relatively close encounter with a large bird (owl?) and a trip over the handlebars.

Tough job I have. Extra tough that this track is next to my workplace (as in it is on the school orienteering map)

https://www.facebook.com/steve.fletcher.5680/video...

Helping a work offsider set up a 'survival camp' out at Minnenooka. He'd completely misjudged how hard it would be to get tarps, poles, ropes, sleeping bags and food out to a series of rogaine checkpoints. Glad I took my headlamp, coz I needed it to get from the last checkpoint out to the road.
Not much running. Hard to find the motivation as I seemed to end up with a pack filled with all the heavy stuff to put out :)

4km warm-up including a lap of the track. Glad I did, because some of the flagging was a bit tough to see in the shade.
2km Cooldown.

The ultimate balancing act. Trying to win the first Harriers Championship race of the season on an easy training day. Wasn't expecting anyone too speedy to be there, so thought I might be able to get away with it.

Two lap course of a 3km loop winding around a golf course with lots of gentle undulations, followed by an out and back at the end to make it a 7km race.
Started a little faster than intended, but had a bloke I didn't know sitting about 5m behind me with an Evo-like stride for the first two kilometres.

Then suddenly he wasn't there any more and I ran steadily through to the end. Working relatively hard, but far easier than the tempo sessions that I have been doing. Knee was irritating. Need to keep stretching and icing, but legs felt way fresher than I expected. Felt like I could have sustained a significantly faster pace had I needed to.

Weather was much nicer today too. Breeze had dropped and the sun was out for most of the morning.

Expecting wet and windy and feeling pretty flat yesterday, so not really looking forward to this one.
WU
2 x (10min tempo:2 min recovery)
16km Easy
20 min tempo
CD

Planned the loop to try to get all of the tempo downbreeze, and nearly managed it after some aimless wandering near the end of the 16km (not helped by having added an extra step in the workout on the Garmin, so it wasn't ever going to beep at me after 16km, it was waiting for me to hit the lap button...

Legs felt bad in the first pair of tempo efforts, wasn't too bad for most of the easy bit in the middle, but started to struggle a bit by the end. Handled the last tempo much better than I expected.

One gel and one bottle of electrolyte might not have been enough. It was windy and trying to rain for a while, but air temp had been 21 degrees when I woke up (5am, so may have been swearing a bit more than expected.

Need to come up with a plan for an easy way to carry / access gels and drinks during the actual marathon.
Had to stop for a stretch/massage for knee after about an hour and did it again at a toilet stop, but hadn't been getting worse after the first attempt to loosen things up a bit.

C • swearing 1

'Easy' run. Which felt OK for the first half, then felt awful.

Leg weary. Knee got sore after 8km. Blergh.

Made i out of bed this morning. Wasn't feeling enthusiastic, and it was pretty windy, but I made it out the door and started my warm up a bit quicker than normal so I didn't freeze in the (not very cold) gale.

Session was 8 x 5 min tempo with 30 second recoveries. Didn't think I'd really be up for this, especially after yesterday afternoon, but thought I'd just run the first couple to feel and see what happened.

First couple felt surprisingly good and were on target pace, so pressed on. Still felt good until half way when I turned around and realised how strong the tailwind had been.

Rep 5 had headwind and a climb and that was it. Struggle street for the rest, and walked for a few minutes at the end before dribbling home.

Right knee got sore at top of patella during the walk and was annoying through the cooldown. Continuing post-rogaine niggles to be careful of.

Pathetic week of training continues after failing to get out of bed once more.
Ran the session with cross country team this afternoon, including 9 x 400 ranging from 77-83 seconds, depending on how much I thought I might run some extra afterwards.
Got stuck doing more work after, so no more running. Poo.

Intervals woth the fastest of my cross country kids. One of not very many that will do alright in a couple of weeks.
200h:200e, 200h:200e, 1200 race pace, 2 min rest - 3 times thru. Cut the last rep to 800.
290s about 43 sec average, 1200's 4:47-4:50

Real intervals tomorrow.

Felt absolutely dreadful yesterday evening so wasn't sure I would even make it out the door this morning. Must have been hayfever rather than getting sick though, as I felt fine once I dragged myself out of bed. Early start to get a long run and breakfast in before my girls' first ever proper netball match.
Supposedly warmer than yesterday, but it didn't feel it, and I was glad I wussed out and wore arm warmers.
Legs felt surprisingly good. A few little twinges from tight spots, but nothing that lasted. Legs started to feel it a bit approaching the two hour mark, but I think I was actually speeding up towards the end, as I got a little bit excited about it all being over.
Good times.

C • Impressive long run 3

Made steady progress in the morning routine this week.
One night setting my alarm, then turning it off before I went to bed
One night of turning my alarm off before it went off in the morning
One morning of my alarm going off and me turning it off and going back to sleep...
and then this morning I actually managed to get out of bed when the alarm went off. A bit chilly, but got going OK. Yet to be convinced about getting up early tomoorw and heading out for 2.5 hours.

Leisurely pootle with x country team.

10 x 400 with 60 second recoveries with x country team. First one my legs felt absolutely dead, but that seems to just have been the effect of no warm up.
Taking it easy, just finding out how the legs are. Felt comfortable lapping in 86-87 by the end, so will try to grt back into routine tomorrow. Balls of feet still a bit tingly, but everything else feels good.

In hindsight, the weekend's exertion were a bit more successful than I had been feeling at the time. I think that my perception was coloured by the fact that we stuffed up two of our first three controls and 2 near the end as well.

Stuffing up #54 was frustrating - our third error and only about 2.5hrs in, but we were actually clean from then until after dark, before a tiny miss on our second control in the dark, the best part of 6 hours and about 35km later.

Dumping 25 minutes in 2 errors at the end was frustrating, but overall, it actually seems a pretty fair effort. Given the setting of the event was far more challenging (thanks ShotRat) with a number of more subtle features rather than a simple collection of watercourses and knolls, it doesn't seem as bad to have gotten a few of them wrong, and 5-10 minutes dropped on a rogaine isn't quite the catastrophe that it is in an O race.

Event: WARA 12hr Autumn Rogaine
 

Teaming up with tRicky for the third rogaine, we were always likely to just run a string around the whole course and plan to clear it, whether it was feasible or not. Fortunately, our string came in at 61km, and it was around 62 when measured with the scale bar on a compass, so we figured it was pretty achievable. That was a bonus, as it saved us from trying to do anything really stupid like we normally do.
Tried not to start too stupidly hard, but really wasn't switched on at the start. Was offline on the first one, missing the small re-entrant off the side, losing track of distance and overshooting, binning 5 minutes straight up. Headed up the spur to the next, then was offline again at #74, before correcting the wrong way, then eventually getting it right and losing another ten minutes. Hooray for us.
The next stretch was pretty good, we got through the south west corner well, which I had pegged as a potential nasty area before we started. We had encountered patches of thick, scratchy bush, particularly around almost every rock surface, but the pattern seemed to be that you would hack through it for a while, and pop out into some really nice forest, rather than having to bash for endless kilometres at a time.
Got around to #54, where we hit the right rock surface then had a brain fade and another 10 minute wander, but we had been making pretty good progress in terms of how fast we were covering the ground, so we were still looking likely to clear the course.
From there (about 16km in) until a couple of controls after it got dark (about 49km into out 62km straight line), things were pretty smooth. tRicky was having issues with a Rogue Queensland grass seed embedded in his ankle, but soldiering on. By the time I switched my torch on just short of Watershed Rd, approaching #57, we were well up on schedule and looking like cruising it in. For much of this time, I had felt that we weren't pushing hard enough and should have been running more, but we were still holding about 6km/hr which was more than enough.
Lost about 5 minutes at #103. We might have been a little offline, but we hit a massive rock surface that matched the one on the map really well, walked to the end of it to find absolutely nothing. We had gone through a big clearing with other substantial chunks of rock in it just before that though, so doubled back to look and found it relatively quickly. Will be interesting to have a good look at the GPS on that one.
Once we crossed back over Watershed Rd with 8 controls to go, we had the steepest, thickest part of our course to deal with.
#94 we hit the horsheshoe rock slab on the edge of the circle, but chose to bash straight at the control rather than run the rock slab to the end and attack from a bit closer and we got it wrong, losing another 7 minutes in the process.

Got through the next 3 cleanly and had a nice early finish in the bag, with only two relatively simple controls to go. Except that I was well offline to #72, and we wandered aimlessly for quite a while, surrounded by 4 or 5 sets of torches doing very similar things until we backtracked to the top of the creek further north and had another go at attacking the control.

15 minutes down the toilet, but still plenty of time up our sleeve to finish the course. Got the last one and plodded in. My assumption with so many misses out on course was that Wil and Andre would have beaten us back, and I was contemplating how many people would have cleared the course on two consecutive (for them) rogaines and not had a win. turns out they weren't clean either and had to drop 1 control, so the time didn't end up mattering.

Mostly good fun. Lots of scratches, one tick found so far and a few blisters.

Things to remember for next time:
If I wear these shoes again, need to change the laces so they don't come lose 5 minutes into the rogaine (hence the blisters) and get some super soft insoles, as there's just not enough cushioning for hard, rocky ground for 12 hrs
Get a pair of long O pants so that your knees don't get destroyed in the thick stuff
Nutrition was good. 12 gels, 4 muesli bars, about 15 jelly snakes and one of 2 emergency chips consumed. Don't bother with the sandwiches (0 of 3).
When you put electrolyte tabs in your first bladder for the race, put the rest of them back in your race pack (thanks tRicky for the extras)
Put Fixamul across your lower back so that you don't rub holes in it
Strapping tape was far more comfortable than ankle braces.
Gaiters are good. Ones that stay up would be better. Ones that connect better to the shoe to keep even more stuff out would also be good.

Nice to get a win on the board with tRicky. Good job by him for pushing through what was obviously not the most comfortable day for him.

C • #103 7

Ran out of time to get my easy run yesterday, but wasn't really feeling it anyway. Still not this morning, so cut it from 10km to 6. Was only jogging for a little loosener before the weekend anyway. Probably any benefit will be counteracted by the 6+ hours of driving between now and then, but we shall see.