Training Log Archive: jennycas

I drove all the way across town to go running, and no one else turned up, so I ran by myself on a perfect autumn evening. Despite being pretty stuffed, think I was a bit better up Deep View than earlier in the summer. Didn't go all the way into 3rd Falls though because of a plan to introduce our Spanish house guest to $12 steak night at the local pub.

Was hungrumpy by the time we made it down to Blairgowrie last night but amazing fettucine marinara (seriously, half a crab perched on top and the utensils with which to dismantle it) for dinner meant that I felt like going exploring this morning and I crossed the Mornington Peninsula twice, much more efficiently than one does when running Two Bays :) (on a windy almost wintry morning, so the ocean beach was just lovely in its wildness).

So, I had pulled together a veterans' Arrows team for the mixed sprint relay, originally consisting of Zara, Ben, Ruhi and myself, although due to Ben's sprained ankle David George had to be subbed in. I had kind of figured that as 4th & last runner, I'd probably be running by myself, but since juniors were on the same course, I kept seeing Remi through the middle part of the course although it turned out that he'd already done a loop which I still had to do. This race was enjoyable - fun to be part of a team and good to be able to watch the top placings unfold before I went out myself!

After visiting Hania & family for lunch, I wasn't desperate to do another race, and my hip hurt in the warmup but I reminded myself how I always enjoy it when I get out there - and I did, although think I was running a bit too reactively rather than proactively so although it seems like my time was ok (generally about 3 min behind Bridget for most races, although no NOL points because there are too many junior girls) it hides quite a lot of inefficiencies. Definitely a great weekend of races which I really enjoyed although can see I have a lot of work to do before WMOC, especially because the final around Christianshavn will be quite macro, I think, so the speed I don't have becomes more important.

Event: Melbourne Sprint Weekend
 

Race with which I was reasonably happy even though I didn't identify all the blocked routes on the way to the first control and so went right when left would have been better. Incidentally, Monash is completely unrecognisable from when I last ran here over 10 years ago. Think I took the longer way around 8-9 too. But otherwise this felt pretty smooth and I enjoyed it a lot because I like uni campuses (campii?) and it was still a coolish morning despite the forecast 35 degrees. Also I was well fueled because my avocado toast for breakfast had been accompanied by bonus jalapeno chillies.

...which it reached, @5pm, and even though I figured I'd had plenty of acclimatisation in an Adelaide summer, my brain was maybe still a bit cooked (and also my hip hadn't liked spending the intervening time in an OA Board meeting) and this was a very intricate school campus where somehow I failed to see that the outside route 4-5 had no way back in to the kindergarten so then had to run all the way around the fence/wall to get in, losing about a minute. By the time we crossed into the other school, legs were cooked too, so this was a fairly awful time for a WRE of which I'd had some slight optimism about doing okay. Ended up getting some extra weight training in when collecting controls - it turns out that I can not carry 4 sawhorses at once!

Took anti-inflammatories last night in order to make this morning's foam roller torture bearable.

Desultory jog with Zara, & Callum of course, so that I could properly stretch my legs afterwards - hip flexor & adductor seized up after going from training to sitting in a meeting last night, and I could hardly walk this morning - but somehow the stretching aggravated my groin even more and I could hardly walk around the house when I got home either :( Sunset shining goldenly through the eucalypts and xanthorrhoeas was beautiful though. (Also, after what I've been finding out firsthand over the past few weeks about the internal politics within SARA, I think maybe being part of 5 different orienteering committees at once isn't actually so bad...)

C • 5 committees 1

Surprisingly warm morning for March.

OMG, it took me an hour to get from work to the SE corner of the city (lately the traffic bottlenecks engendered by Flinders Uni students and FMC staff all leaving simultaneously mean that it takes 20 min just from getting in the car to reaching Sturt Rd 1km away - there are even queues within the multistorey carpark - but also it turns out that Adelaide comes to a standstill when 65 000 people go to an Ed Sheeran concert). So I really needed to pee, and just plodded around, having a lot of trouble getting in and out of the dry creek channels and ending up stuck in a thicket on the other side each time.

Have been fairly stressed lately by all the rogaine-organising, and my usual trick of being able to switch that off and focus on the map didn't work very well tonight, so for this course around the streets and laneways I did (at least) 2 dumb things:
- misunderstood a couple of Manu's control descriptions and convinced myself that he had set an exercise for us where the descriptions were deliberately wrong, so then I ignored them all!
- went down the wrong street, but I made everything fit, so did a massive parallel error and then had to go around the entire block again; extra distance my tired legs didn't need.