Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

NSW Long Championships at Snow Hills. This was definitely a course of the old gully-spur school - 11 controls in 12.1k (course 5 had five in 5k). It works here because you have to stay in contact most of the way - there are few opportunities just to let go.

The big plus here was handling the distance better than I thought likely before the start - in fact I felt considerably less tired after finishing here than in most of the shorter races I've done in the last fortnight. The relatively flat course would have helped but the battle to get up two-contour hills definitely wasn't as acute here. I'll need to last another two hours in three weeks' time but this is at least an encouraging start. Possibly the cooler conditions were a help here.

Technically it was a decent run. 2 and 7, both rather scary legs in lower-visibility parts of the map, were both ones I was a little hesitant on but got without too much time loss. (It seemed to take a long time to get to 7 - seeing Tomas, who'd just passed me, going off in a 90-degree direction was slightly disconcerting - but I'd gone within 100 metres or so of it on the way out of 2 so knew that as long as I was still in the casuarina I hadn't gone far enough). First half of my route (somewhat left) on 10 was a bit of a slog but the line into the control off the ridge (as long as executed well) was very fast and the overall leg time was OK.

Thought I might have placed a little better than 10th, but it's the first time for a while that I've been within 25% of the winner in a field of this standard.

The course did nothing to dispel the reputation (much promoted by myself) of Snow Hills as the most challenging gully-spur terrain in Australia, particularly the western half, with lots of subtle contour features and often limited visibility. The middle third of Sunset Mountain (a few kilometres northwest) is similar but the good terrain is much more extensive here.

Road trip home was smoother than I thought it might have been (being able to start early helped). Three sightings of the journey:

(a) the Jugiong billboard may have been put in the wrong place - to cover the distance from the billboard to the exit in the advertised 2 minutes would have required an average speed of 330 km/h. Don't think even Lewis Hamilton would be able to manage that.

(b) a roadside farm near Gundagai has a range of goods for sale, including "rustic farm machinery", just in case rustic farm machinery is something you've always wanted.

(c) there is a machine at the roadhouse at the Dog on the Tuckerbox (unusually for such things, out in the open and not in the Gents) which claims to be able to measure your sex drive if you put $2 in the slot and your hand on the device. (I thought 42% of an overpriced coffee was a more useful way of spending that amount).

Hard 1 - Splits

NSW Middle at Snow's Hill - one of the most challenging gully-spur areas in Australia, with lots of branching vague spurs and little gullies and relatively low visibility. The course was fitting for the occasion, a technical one which spent much of its time in green and near-green - starting off in a flattish area (comparing with the old map, some of it an overgrown clearing) with vegetation the main detail, then into the main gully-spur area.

Had a decent run technically, with only two glitches - a bit high crossing to 10 (maybe 45 seconds or so), then started down the wrong spur at one point on the way to 11 (a classic error here) but picked myself up in time and got out of it with 30 seconds or so lost. Running continued to feel not quite right, and today didn't give me a lot of confidence about the 12k tomorrow, but we'll worry about that when we come to it.

As with the ACT Middle in a technical area, I claimed a few unexpected scalps today - this time Eric and Greg, both of whom beat me comfortably at Easter (although Theo put our times into perspective, much as Leon did at Honeysuckle). 4th in 21A when I left although I'd expect to drop a couple more from the late starters.

Hard 1 - Splits

Early session around a traditional haunt when I'm in town, initially around the lower section of the Aranda bushland, onto the northern part of Black Mountain Reserve, and then back around the northern side of Aranda. Achilles, which has been pretty good in the last week, rather sore when I started but quickly settled down; OK by the end. A certain amount of autumnal mist in evidence.

First excursion into the National Arboretum (since it's been that) on a classic Canberra early autumn morning. Took me a while to get going with a fairly ordinary first 20 minutes, but got into it more on the climb into the Arboretum, and ended up with a decent last 3km climbing back into Aranda. Pretty slow early on and on the singletracks. The Arboretum itself is going to be nice in about 30 years' time, but I suspect I won't be doing runs like this by then. In the meantime, the view from the higher parts is nice.

The competition is tough, but I think this will take some beating for the most bizarre Australian political news story of 2016.

Didn't sleep that well but reasonable (if slow) once I started running, getting out into some old haunts - through the upper part of Cook and up to the Pinnacle, back through Weetangera. Encountered David Hogg (walking the dog) en route, which provided the opportunity to do some OA business (relating to Easter results) in mid-run (although not while actually running). With that break and a work deadline, ended up a slightly shorter run than I was planning but this week that doesn't really matter.

Saw a few holes in the suburbs where victims of Mr. Fluffy are disappearing (I wish the person trying to rent out a house in between two Mr. Fluffy sites the best of luck). Also noticed that Constable Kenny Koala is still alive and well and now has his own car, although after (at least) 40 years in the force you'd expect that he would have been promoted to Senior Constable by now.

C • Care to enlighten your readers 8

Recovery session at CISAC, not my favourite pool - would much rather be doing this in the open air as it is at Fitzroy (although an outdoor pool in mid-winter in Canberra would be interesting). Major distraction was working out which bits of the old-style digital timer on the wall were stuck on/off and therefore which patterns on the display corresponded to which numbers.

Quite a bit of peeling skin on the soles of my feet after the weekend. Not sure if this was a consequence or a cause of the soreness there whilst competing, which I'd attributed to newish shoes which don't seem to have enough cushioning for rocky ground.

Easter brought quite a few people out of the woodwork for the first time in anything between 10 and 30-plus years (some of whom, like Mounty, did very well indeed) - on Sunday I was in a scrap for a while with Finn Marsland, whom I think I last encountered in about 16s. Four of the top five in M45 ran M16 at Easter in Wagga in 1985 (Steve 1st, Scott 6th, Eric 9th and me 10th, consisting of two wins and a massive day-2 blowout).

Easter terrain was somewhat slower on the other side of the Tasman - M21E in the NZ Long Championships was won in 95 for 8.2k. The map makes me tired just looking at it.

Day 3 of Easter at Foxlow Flats. My chances of a good run disappeared at 2, a cliff in a green gully, where a good initial line tempted me to cross the main gully - not a great idea - and then I dropped back in at the wrong place and wasn't quite sure where I was. Dropped 2-2.5 minutes there; Ruhi went through me there, and for the rest of the course I was playing catch-up. We often diverged in route choice but converged at controls, and it wasn't until the second-last before I was finally able to break away - far too late to make meaningful progress towards getting back the two minutes. I suspected that the initial time loss would be enough to cost me fourth against Scott if he had a decent run, and so it proved; he finished just over a minute ahead overall. Once again very underpowered on hills, although at least I didn't walk any of them today (except in medium green). Very impressed with Steve's three days; he would clearly still be competitive, not with the very best Australian elites probably, but definitely with the next tier.

Pretty disappointed with my performance this Easter - never got my running together (except on Friday), and I shouldn't be making mistakes like today's either. I'm obviously not going to be competitive at elite level again, but have some work to do to at least be competitive in my (new) age group (or to have a decent crack at WMOC next year). Very good event on the whole though, and an excellent turnout, reflecting our continued growth in participation (we found out a few days ago that we cracked 100,000 for the first time in 2015).

One benefit of not running elites at Easter: I didn't get a massive cramp in the middle of the presentation ceremony this year.