Training Log Archive: inuksuk

Movie town. The little grass tracks through the cypress blocks are in the best condition I've seen. A really nice ride.

A short run around the tea gardens and nursery with La. Did a single lap of the nursery loop in 2:13 -- but felt flat, and left it at that...

Cruisy climb up the hill with La.

6C and hosing down - not particularly inspired to go outside. Pretty much the same loop as Sunday. Started at the weir, climbed up through the grave tracks, across the ugly gully and up to the wet clearing. Sidled across the woody track and down to four corners and south to the creek, around and up to the blue hut, and back up through the tea gardens to the road, dropped down and climbed up the pipe track to the weir.

The first climb went well, but I felt slow to recover on the contour; recovered well on the downhill and felt strong through the tea plantation, though the final slog up the pipe track was a struggle. Footing was marginal on the long downhill on account of the runoff and slick clay -- I consider it a good effort that I managed to fall twice on my already munted left hand.

Lower terraces with La. Down through the quarry, mucked around the mosque for a bit, before crossing the road into the lower terraces. Looped around before climbing back up to uni.

Living in a foreign country, comparisons are an inevitable daily occurrence. Today, during our run, we reflected on two positive things 1) how nice it is to be, in general, free to go anywhere in agricultural and forested land, and no one seems to be too bothered (as opposed to coming within a half a km of a lamb and getting your head chewed off by an irate cocky), conceding that this phenomena quickly breaks down when any sort of paid bureaucrat is involved; 2) the total lack of foil safety seals on bottled juice.

Spur south of uni with La. Crossed qī lóng nǚ xī at the weir and climbed up through the grave tracks, across the ugly gully and up to the wet clearing. Sidled across the woody track and down to four corners. South to the creek, around and up to the blue hut, and back up through the tea gardens, graves and finished with a lovely descent of the pipe track (which has been vastly impoved by the 'sweeping' effect from the bamboo harvesters dragging huge bundles of bamboo off the mountain). A really nice ride. Thinking of doing this loop as a tempo...

Cāng shān with La. Straight up through to Yùdài lù, crossed and continued up to the bamboo/camellia scrub line at about 3200m. Weather wasn't great with thunderclouds rolling over the tops and a hefty westerly blowing over, so we decided to leave the tops for another day. Seemed like a vey quick descent. We had a funny interaction with two little old Bai ladies and their grandchildren, who were out visiting family graves in the forest. In the course of which, we both somehow ended up with these huge pieces of coarse rice-flour cake with boiled broad beans on top. hmmm yummy. No seriously, they were good. And then when we asked what it was, she replied, "Cake," and when we asked about the big beans she said "yes, big beans." Clever lǎowài.