Training Log Archive: Lizzie

also figured why my time around the old course on villa cafferella was so quick. It's because what I had was the B map of the fool's relay from a couple of years ago! so there's another A map out the somewhere :)

damn. I just thought i was fast...

caught the metro across town to check out Villa Ada.
Had to run through Villa Borghese to get there, which is the popular park close to the city. Then past the zoo and across a few busy roads and eventually found my way to the park :)
Definitely the best park for running in Rome, beautiful forest and some hills, but dont really want to go off the tracks, a bit thick for that! Reminded me of mt Vic back home, but about 1/5th of the height. Had a map of the park from 2006 but all the tracks had changed.
Almost scored myself a dog half way around. It was adament that it wanted to come home with me and its owner was nowhere to be seen for a fair while. Could have made life a bit awkward lol, beautiful dog though.

Legs felt really tired, not surprising given the past week i guess. Got a bit lost through Borghese on the way back to the metro which added about 10mins the run. ITB was pretty sore by the end.

What i later discovered was called the 'fools relay' in Villa Pamphili. Got a lift there with Agostino, however i was about 10mins late to meet him due to the complete lack of bus timetables here!

Luckily it turns out Sarah Rollin's sister in law lives in Rome, so she could explain the format to me! Pretty much we were split into two groups, half of us got the A map, half got the B map. Each had 10controls on it of which we had to get a minimum of 3 and a max of 7 in any order. But number 5 was compulsary.
Then you came back to the start/finish and swapped with whoever was next in line waiting with the other map. Then went out and got the controls which they hadn't got, while they went and finished off the controls you left out. Clear?
So I got 5/10 on one side, came back about the same time as the Italian girl who's off to WOC too. Then went and got the 6/10 she left out on the other map.
And we beat all the other girls by a fair way! (and all but one guys team i think). Bit unfair really lol.

pretty token

The podium placing teams then had a race off on a 1:650 map. we all had to race in our pretty pink tshirts that we won in teh fools relay :)

This map was of a patch of trees in the park. All identical trees. Each individually mapped. And there were about 20 controls, of which we had 4 loops of 5 controls each. 2 loops per team member. So Hard to start with and there were controls everywhere! messed up the first control and had to go back to it. Turned out i mispunched the 2nd control (my first mp since jwoc 05!) After that i got the hang of it a bit more. was a case of counting off the trees and making sure your direction was spot on!
we won the girls but the guys beat us (pretty sure they were just punching anything though!)

Was half way through when the washing machine decided it felt like trying to flood the kitchen. Good news is I have clean clothes. Bad news is that the dirt off the clothes is mainly on the kitchen floor...

tempted to go for a run, but decided id be doing enough over the weekend

from the bus stop, and around some tracks in cafarelli. Past the gym part where all the guys do their evening work outs :D
Was running for a full 15s before a fly kamakazied into my left eye. Only managed to get it out just before bed too. Who knows how many flies are still hiding in there?!

7x2min, 1min easy. Based myself on the hill in Caferelli Park on some nice single track stuff. Had a loop that lasted about 3 ints. First was a long up hill with flat at the end. 2nd again was half up hill, half flat. and third was mainly flat but was looping around the craters (sounds dramatic aye! maybe just depressions...) at the top of the hill...in the long grass.
4th int was flat and larger tracks. Then did the loop again.
Felt good, but again pace is a bit low. :s Last week i felt crap, so I dont know what it was today. The terrain? I need to learn to push myself more?

Totally didnt learn my lesson from last night and wore shorts that were all of 1inch longer than yesterday. Result being fire legs on the way home. Not quite as bad as yesterday though.

distances:
485, 449, 440, 500, 468, 433, 468

back past the outdoor gym and to the bus stop. Always get weird looks on the bus for being in running kit. So i'm not sure what the normal runners here do, as I never see them on the streets running home from the parks. and they're not on the buses. So they must drive i guess. Screw that. Far too much traffic (and i dont have a car)

No appreciative noises when i vaulted the fence today. Prob as noone was around...

I know a lot of people wouldn't put their stretching and exercises on AP. but i find it motivates me to do them more. Someone out there might just judge me if I stop doing them... :)

C • Judgey eyes 4

Met with Agostino, from one of the local clubs, this afternoon and he gave me a load of maps from around here. So stoked! Plus have an event on saturday arvo in one of the parks (it sounds a bit like a michael wood special with some twist in it, hopefully someone can explain it to me as im sure the briefing wont be inenglish!). Will meet lots of people on saturday then, and hopefully one of them will give me a lift out to a proper event in the mountains on sunday!

Around the bus stops to see if there was a conveniant bus to the park. But nothing on the screens so decided to run there. Then passed two buses on my way to appia antica...but couldnt hop on them cos i wasnt at a stop...lame. Anyhow was alright running.
Something I've been meaning to note on here is the number of little midges flying around rome while im running. not surprising as the place is built on a swamp really. But they seem to be attracted to my eyes, and my right eye in particular! I think my right eye is winning (or losing) about 10-3 to the left! And they're hard to get out too.

Around Cafferelli on a map I got of Agostino today. Just a short score event thing I think, not sure quite what they did in the actual event though, as their times were about double what I did?! Anyway was nice to have a map in hand again and found a wicked little network of tracks around a series of depressions.
Long grass killed my legs though. They felt like they were on fire all the way home!

To the bus stop. Got the right side of the park today and only had to wait 5mins. Surprised an old man by vaulting a fence. I think he was impressed, made appreciative noises anyway and said something in italian.

Man I wish I could just transplant italian into my head and just understand these crazy italians!

On Saturday I got hit on by a 75 year old in the supermarket. I think he wanted to arrange times to meet so I could teach him English. Think I managed to get out of that one.
Sunday I got into a 'conversation' with a bloke at the bus stop, who must have been interested in my garmin. I think he was asking if it was touch screen, cos he showed me that his watch was. It was an analog watch, and when he touched the face the hands spun around to an entirely new time? Not sure what was going on there! Especially as the original time that his watch showed was 1.10 out from the actual time!
And last night I met a crazy farmer who was herding his sheep (kinda, more like just wandering with them) down appia antica. And he was, well, it wasnt talking, or singing, kind of a mix of shouting and yodelling at his sheep. I guess the sheep might have liked it, they didnt say.

5.30 to the bus stop.
6mins waiting for bus.
overshot the stop i originally meant to get off at. So had to try and pick the stop at the other end of the park, and not get off at the wrong one which would leave me stranded on a busy road! Managed to fluke it though so all good :)
14.30 to bottom of hill.
hill sprints.
21mins warm down around the park. But managed to end up on the side with only 1 bus route going past. Compared to the other with 4 or 5. Rookie error. Had to wait on the side of a darkening, narrow road, next to a rubbish skip for 20mins all by myself. Considered hitchhiking but dont know if thats the done thing in Italy? Luckily the bus came just as I was about to give up and run home in the dark.
4 mins from bus stop home

Up a nice narrow rough track in the park.
11x 26-28s hill sprints on a 1.20 rotation, which was a pretty short rest! Left me about 10-15s by the time i reached the bottom of the hill.
Felt pretty damn good though :)

Finally got home from my run about 9.15. then shower. then dinner. then stretching. then bed.

Just an easy run to shake the legs out after yesterday. Waited til later for it to get cooler but it was SO muggy!
Took a french map out and just ran south along the side of appia antica. Some kind person has cut all the branches off the pine trees that line it, so I had to keep running on the road rather than the nice track :(

The good thing is I made it to no.7 without getting lost. Bad news is my map was blown up larger than 1:10000 and I still couldnt really read it. Also I wasnt actually in the terrain so perhaps its not surprising I didn't get lost! Was weird reading the map, and then looking up and not seeing what I'd been reading. Think I'll be running with french maps a bit more often...

Finally got out of the city to some hills :)

took a bus/train/bus out to Frascati, just SE of Rome, in the volcanic domes. Asked the guy in the visitor centre how to get to some trails to run, just for him to tell me the roads were far to busy to run on. So I just headed in the direction that I remembered the green space being from google earth, and it worked :)

Felt so good to be back in the hills! And my legs felt pretty sweet too. Headed up Tuscolo, through the bush and out onto open fields. Just took the main tracks to start with as i didnt really fancy getting lost. Had some awesome views over towards Rocca di Papa (near where the pope spends his summer holidays), and a view back down towards the city. (too much cloud for that though). headed along the ridge to Rocca Priora and then headed down into a forest I'm not sure I was supposed to be in. Back up and homeward bound, via the top of every hill in the way. Walked around Frascati for a bit to loosen the legs and to find a drink. Got very disoriented despite my tourist map, the town would make an amazing sprint map!

Next time I'll try and head across to Castelli Romani. Or maybe I'll catch a bus to Rocca di Papa and head up from there.

Some pretty happy photos of my run to be put on facebook soon.