Training Log Archive: TheInvisibleLog

This was to be the start of the long Sunday morning run season. OK, there was a three hour at Creswick Diggings. Why not do that instead. Well, th eplan had been to miss all orienteering this weekend and go for an overnight hike in the Grampians. Mt William Plateau actually. What happened....
1. Weather forecast was for rain saturday. The grass (noone has lawns these days in bendigo) was real high, and you know the neighbours are looking and thinking.. bush fire risk if they don't do anything. So, we decided to mow before the rain and delay the Grampians trip for a day (Monday was booked as leave). Finished that so decided to go to Mt Alexander after all. The rain didn't come, but wind speeds measured at 110kph on Mt William indicated delaying the walk was a good idea.
2. The family dog (I didn't buy it) took down with idiopathic geriatric vestibular syndrome. We didn't find that out till the vet gave us a name. But when a dog is walking crooked, falling over and looking like death slightly warmed, the friendly thing to do is a trip to the vet. Well, vet says maybe put him down, or maybe tranquilize and leave him here to see if symptoms abate. Ring at 10 tomorrow morning. So no Saturday night drive to the Grampians. Ring 10 next morning (as the maxi is starting I assume) to be told 10 on Monday morning. There goes the weekend hike.
So, long run instead. There was only one place Jools could think of where I hadn't run and she had, so it was off to the Coliban Race. Really pleasant run once we found the channel. Took the wrong track initially and ended up in some lovely open granite country. Rock everywhere. Tuck that one away for another map idea. After 10 metres climb we saw where we were meant to be. Followed the channel track until Jools tripped on a root, and did a spectacular face plan and gravel slide, prefaced by one of those moments of unplanned ballet when the legs can't quite keep up with the torso, but the brain says to keep trying because the alternative doesn't look that pleasant. The alternative turned out to be two well grazed knees, one grazed elbow, gravel rash on the chest and a bruised rib cage. Plus gravel in the mouth and a good winding.
It was clear she wasn't up to the planned 20 k run, being only 2.5 k into the route. Being her always helpful self, Jool's suggestion was I keep going and she would wait at the car. I wasn't going to fall for that one, so it was a slow jog and walk back to the car together, with stops at various water engineering structures that we would not have examined on a normal run. So some good comes from the accident. The plan is to head back and do the channel next week.

C • Poor Bailey :-( 2

A truncated Marne run with all the climb and much less of the gradual downhill run along the channel. The aim was to get the ks up to near 20 for the day after Jools had been deposited at home. There she could finish a samarai soduko (no brain damage from the fall obviously) and watch her first creation in the newly purchased slow cooker. My run was not nearly as successful. I bailed after reaching the top of the range. I think its a bad idea to have a break in the middle of a long run. Legs never seem to leave the jelly stage.

Mt Alexander. An exceptional day in a number of ways. 90 competitors at a local Bendigo event! 30 degrees in early September!
I did feel aggrieved that only 40 people appeared at my Kopoyoora event, 70 at Jools event last week and now 90! But there is an explanation if you dig into the figures. I only offered 125 metres climb. Jools offered 270 and today we had 320. There is a clear correlation! Obviously I will do my best to meet market signals next year. Expect a control right on top of Mt Kooyoora as part of the planned 500 metres climb.
The event went with few traumas other than the climb. Three navigational errors, of 20, 15 and 5 metres respectively. I chose to go out to the road on the long leg. This was obviously a route-choice blunder, which explains perhaps 5 minutes of time loss. The rest is down to lack of fitness. I'll get round to uploading to routegadget soon.

C • Route choice 5

Cave Laborem!

C • Cave 2

Procrastina rem nunc!

C • Procrastina rem nunc 5

I felt fast last week. The peak has now passed. Stopped because I couldn't be bothered any more today.
Thought for the day.. if direct marketers stamped their advertising material with th a symbol that identified the person repsonsible for distribution to mailboxes, then i could identify who it might be that keeps dumping piles of pamphlets in various places out in the forest.

C • Catalogue dumpers 12

Trip to Melbourne, with five meetings scheduled end on end. Promises to be a doozy of a day.

Postscript. First meeting delayed. Second meeting delayed, and in the end the person booked for the fifth meeting had gone home long before I arrived!

Went back to the scene of the Vic Relays a month or so ago. Ignoring the sign about not disturbing relics, I wandered through the gate with metal detector in hand. Purpose was to detect a one month old relic being the SI-6 card I lost in the said event. Not having a copy of the O-map, we spent a little extra time wandering trying to find the scene of the crime. After a few intermittent expressions of frustration, site was located. Used an old SI-5 stick to set the sensitivity on the detector. Ended up being very high. This was unfortunate as I ended up with many many false positives, but alas, alack, not one true positive. As of last night, the stick is written off. Can't see how I could lose it in an area only 5 metres by 5 metres and with just grass. But I did lose it.

C • next time get a bright blue... 7