Training Log Archive: TheInvisibleLog

Its isn't ITB because the pain is on the medial side of the knee. I'm trying to find things to be grateful for.

Sigh....

C • Coming back from injury 9

Observant readers of this log will deduce the meaning in the sudden appearance of the black bar. This year running seems to be what i can do in the rare and short periods between injuries. A week ago I was seeing improvement in the achilles tendonopathy. Now it is the knee refusing to run. It looks fine, but feels swollen, and hates taking any impact or pressure. I think todays spinning of the pedals is just the beginning. But even riding is limited. I won't be doing that gnarly single track around Maiden Gully. It will be the flat open road for me.

Was meant to be the long run. But a very sore knee forced a shorter outing. Not much fun running downhill. And it was really good yesterday.

Omens propitious for a good day out at Lyell Forest. Back not sore for the first morning in quite a few weeks. Likewise achilles. Blue skies and still conditions.

Straight line 7.4k. Route choice mistakes maybe cost 100 metres.

Sure sign of climate change. Lots of runners in shorts in August.

C • Shorts 2

Extended Dodder Track circuit. Unsettling feeling of summer in the air again. Blue skies, warm temperatures and hard ground.

Around the basic Welsford circuit from years ago. No endorphines released today.

Longer Welsford circuit. Learned it is still too early to remove the injury tick from my log. Achilles hurt somewhat. Generally a lethargic run.

There are now a few logs of the ironman up on routegadget. After my lethargic run, this really cheered me up. What were you doing Dave? Wrong control time after time. And Don... I think you disqualified yourself by forgetting to go back to the second hub control after the second-second loop! I must really do this event format again. Don was right. It does appeal to my darker side.

C • Second second hub 1

Much on today, good and bad. Funeral lunch. Music evening. No running. Probably wise.

Thinking about next years ironman. One idea to ease the start logistics.

All courses orientshow style.
1 easy course with perhaps 3 variations.
1 medium course with 3 variations.
3 hard courses, each with 12 variations, about 2.5 k.
Common easy-moderate loop that circles spectator area, 500-700m.

Four classes.
Easy- 1 easy course + final common loop.
Moderate- easy + moderate + final common loop
Gentle hard- 1 hard course + 1 final common loop
Average hard - 2 hard courses + 1 final common loop
Hard hard (ironman) - 3 hard courses + 1 final common loop

Run the courses themselves as variations and have one mass start. That means for the hard hard perhaps 36 variations for a meta race of about 7.5k. Lower level classes similar, but obviously fewer variations.

Mass start for everyone in each class. Early finishing classes can watch others.

Ironman handicap award deduced later from handicaps. Perhaps preadvertise the handicap times.

Would require a clothes line arrangement like the old winter classic and blodslitet arrangements. SI timing. Sunday. Definitely pre-entry.

Thoughts anyone?

C • Sounds Superb 1

C • Cheering up 8

Not a good day for those hoping for rain in the upper catchments. But great day for a run. Its been a while since the last still, cloudless day for a long run on Sunday. It has also been a long while since I have been willing to chance the achilles tendon on a long run. Recent indications were this was the day to try it out. Pain only arrived at the 90 minute mark. That's a great advance on 45 minutes of a few weeks ago. The exercise regime must be paying off. Or the endorphine rush was better than usual.

Event: Bendigo Ironman
 

Ironman day meant no time for running. It has been a bit frantic getting ready for this event. Last minute work committments ate up a substantial part of what I thought would be free evening time.
I had been concentrating on finishing the map and this meant the actual event logistics received less attention than it merited. As a result:
1 Stuffed up the handicaps something shocking.
2 Had two runners head out with the wrong maps. Sorry Bryan and Don.
Could only pull it off because of help from Creaky and Matthew Brownes dad. Thanks. Also thanks to Jymbo, Clara, Dave and Jools who collected the 48 control stands. Large numbers of controls are a feature of this format. They got them in much quicker than the 2.5 hours it took me to get them out.
The other minor disappointment was the small numbers. It clashed with WOC, so we were missing a couple of last years runners. The location in Maldon meant many Bendigo members stayed in town. Sad as we had four people from Ballarat, one from Werribee and three from Melbourne. With twenty minutes ot start time it wasn't looking all that good, with myself, Jools, Creaky, John and Schwepps. And two of them were injured.
But the high points outweighed the numbers. In no particular order my highlights were:
1 Matthew Browne completing the hard course solo (and I mean HARD).
2 General happiness with the orientshow format
3 Map being generally up to useable standard
4 Complements to the terrain, in particular from Oxoman who correctly perceived that the potential of the area was bound to appeal to my worst instincts (or something along that line). See his log. Liked the description of clay sand dune terrain.
5 Penalising Liggo's handicap a couple of times for poor acting. In retrospect, this was probably the no. 1 highlight.

There is a collection of photos on the club website. Link from there to Picasaweb. The routes are up on the club route gadget site at the request of Bruce.

Thoughts for next year.
1. On a Sunday.
2. Same map, with some upgrading.
3. Orientshow style courses again.
4. Sportident.
5. That means some form of pre-entry unfortunately (course variations)
6. Vastly simplified handicaps. Sending runners of in blocks of 6-12

Crucial is getting a sensible date. This event attracts a niche market, and you know hwo you are. So what would be a suitable date. I have indicated August-September again.

Afterthought. Todays terrain looks more fun than the WOC sprint terrain. And given Troy's result, he might have had more fun being at the ironman this year.

An am run. Late morning start which meant I could listen to AM. Aimed to be late to work as a late work day was looming. The last item was about the persistent poverty of the Mississippi delta. Seems the town of Clarkville is playing on an old legend to build tourism. I think the legend is that one Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at their main crossroads to become a better blues man. Ever since blues singers have sung crossroads and other similar songs to hop on the bandwagon. Can't for the life of me see why someone would sell their soul for the blues. Boring. What price a soul anyway?
Perhaps I have been selling my fitness for the fiddle though. This winter the evening lake runs have been less common because of fiddle and bouzouki playing. Mind you, this week the Ironman has played its part.
Speaking of deals with the devil, I had my first experience of that audience classic clanger. Someone asked me to play 'Devil went down to Georgia'. I think he was trying to pretend he knew something about fiddle music, but that was the only thing he could remember. Its not even a fiddle tune. Its a show-off piece of cuntry smaltz. That 'o' is missing on purpose. I suppose I should get used to it, just like I had to get used to requests for 'Duelling Banjos' or 'Zorba's Dance'.

C • Malta, OH ??? 2

Left a work seminar at Lancemore Hill early with a fellow conspirator. Had just heard a presentation by Sue Brumby about healthy lifestyles for farm communities. So we decided to run the talk. Out the back, through a bush block, noting quite a few small orienteering kites hanging around. Then up Split Staff Gully Road, on the basis that he name was interesting. Turned out to be a pretty decent climb. Went for a run with the same conspirator at another work seminar last week. I remembered that he tried to push me on the hills that time, so I pushed up the long hill pretty hard. He lasted till the last 100 metres or so. Age triumphs over youth.

C • orienteering kites hanging around 3

C • Were you driving up Ilka's str... 2

Fiddle. 1 hour with an accordionist and guitar player mainly doing waltzes. Much more fun on fiddle than on banjo, but I think thats pretty obvious.

Fiddle: 1.5 hours with banjo player and guitarist,mainly playing modal Appalachian tunes and some Scots standards. It was this or a run.

Test run of three of next weeks Ironman courses. Each two kilometre hard courses took me between 21 and 22 minutes... and I knew where the controls were. I even made two errors. One was choosing to visit the wrong control (Lesson 1: read the control order carefully). The other was just getting confused in a detailed low visibility area. Exited via a prickly area. Lesson 2: Full body cover.
When I started mapping the area, the ground was bare and the scattered areas of fallen timber were no problem. With a wetter season, the ground is covered with oxalis. It is deep in places and hides the smaller fallen timber. This makes it harder to run with confidence. Lesson 3. Wear studs. Tracking might become important for later runners.
All in all, I think this might be the most challenging navigation for the season.

He was wearing a hat!
Good chance if you can knock over three pedestrians, a couple of vehicles and a sign in one short drive.

Missed the local event today. Coincided with Ceira's 18th. Spent the morning doing catering shopping. Highlight of the morning was the following conversation in the Safeway deli section.

Me: I'd like to purchase some vege burgers.
Her: They're right in front of you dear.
Me: I'm sorry, I can't see them.
Her: The Leek and Bacon vege burgers on the top shelf.

C • Gorillas 6

Pleasant run around the Spring Creek Gorge at Beechworth. It was this or the organised brewery trip. Think I made the better choice.

Into a real lead leg phase. Last week I did this twice for an average of 19.30 a circuit.

Fiddle and bouzouki day.
Fieldworked till dark last night on Peg Leg Gully. One more trip and I think the map will be finished. The timing is becoming quite tight. Less than two weeks to go till the event.

7.5k straight line distance.
8.35 k 165m would have been error free.
What a difference a day makes. About 50 metres of error. Just a little to the downhill from one of the controls. It seemed much easier than Mosquito Creek. The course setter tried to keep us in the detailed contours, and of course that made life easier than if he had run us into the gullly detail across the vague stuff in the middle of the map.
Entered my age class course for a change, and then nominated as No Class category. The real sludger has no class!

C • Who is Niel Bour? 8

C • Nav difficulty 5

There was a millimeter of ice rather than rain in the gauge this morning. The gauge almost 2metres above the ground, so it was cold last night. Ice still around at 9.30am. Looks like one of those classic Bendigo winter orienteering days is looming. Blue skies, still air. Mosquito Creek will be fun indeed.

8.2k straight line measure.
10.6 and 210m run.
Should have been 9.35k and 185m

Well, the weather wasn't what I hoped for, being breezy, cloudy and at times a little cold. But in all other respects, a great day! The event was on the northern part of Mosquito Creek. There has been an unspoken unofficial embargo of sorts on this area, basically because no-one wanted to set a course where Ken Taylor tragically died. Derek Morris brought us back here, and he did it in style. His course used the famous Mosquito Creek 'Expressway' in reverse for the long leg. And it caught quite a few out. You can see the damage on RouteGadget.
http://www.bendigo-orienteers.com.au/gadget/cgi-bi...
tI crossed the broad ridge in the middle of the leg over a different saddle to the one I expected. Not realising this, I then ticked off features one out of phase to the next major ridge crossing. Ran up a side gully, it didn't look right and the control wasn't there anyway. I then assumed I had hit the ridge too far east and headed west to check the next two gullies. But I had in fact hit the ridge too far west. After two more failures I finally admitted stupidity and ran south and then along the main gully to relocate off the dam. I think that was a full kilometre of error! I haven't made such a blunder in years.

On finishing I discovered my experience was the norm rather than the exception. All sorts of errors on that leg. Schepisi, Colin, Bob Raeburn amongst others. Schepisi's logging of 12.5 ks for an 8.2k course was a notable achievement. But even that couldn't match Dion. Neon found the 4th control OK, but then failed to find control 6, ultimately dnfing after spending over half an hour looking. The only success story I heard was for Disco, who wondered what all the fuss was on control 4. Given his current training methods, it isn't quite proof that practice makes perfect. I didn't see Toph, but I suspect he may have had a clean run.

The correct route choice on leg 4 was to the left and up the gully. The right hand broad gully (the Expressway) was a classic trap, leaving one in a very featureless approach to a ridge top with limited visibility.Hopefully the routes will all appear on the Gadget very soon.

Observation. It wasn't just me, and it wasn't just this event. This is a really challenging map. I found today much more difficult than Sappa Bulga. It is a serious challenge. Australian Championships material?

Decided to act my age...

Still contemplating running again.

Still deflated from yesterday's experience.

C • Ego 1