Training Log Archive: Mounty

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Not sure whether it was due to the earthquake or something else, but today was a bit of a waste. First there was an embarrasing beach event (see report) before a final discovery event in the main town and cruisy paddle through the mangroves. Most people frustrated by lack of activity today, with extra training sessions being contemplated.

Spectacular post race banquet, with each team receiving 9l of rum as prize.

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Walked up a big hill, did an abseil after a lot of waiting, then walked down again. No canyon to be seen. Had a bit of an impromptu international race food tasting session to kill time at the top. Very relaxing.

Then another discovery event in a town before a bit of an earthquake.

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Event schedule began to fall apart here which started to annoy people, but dinner was superb.

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Volcano run. This was one of the most fun trail runs Ive done. About 9km with 1000m ascent over 3 pitches and through 2 saddles then down again. Mix of rough tracks through jungle, then up to the tropical equivalent of alpine country above the tree line and a lap of the crater in the mist with sulphur stinging the eyes.

Then the best bit - a 600m vertical descent down winding/flowing rocky singletrack. Popped out of the cloud halfway down to catch a vista of tropical greenery and ocean expanses. Finish was at a sulphur hot pool.

Katrin proved cycling strength is useful for hill climbing by reaching the top in 4th, and then suprised me by showing she had learned to run down rocky tracks and held the place to the bottom. Too much fun.

Discovery event around a town, before a very pleasant dinner and drinkies. The tempo of the race started to drop off here, becoming more of a social event at times.

Running of the bulls....

Night orienteering/coasteering section. Ironically made to walk through town for saftey reasons, before being let loose on an O course which involved running through a section of thick cane fields mixed with paddocks full of bulls.

The bulls were on chains staked to the ground, so worked out how long the chains were and slalomed through. (This was a massed start so people everywhere).

Was pushing through some cane with Katrin and an English/Italian pair when we came out in a little clearing with a bull that turned out to have a chain longer than the rest. Bull charged and managed to brush englishmans leg before coming to a halt on his chain.

Quote of the week after this incident - Englishman to Italian very composed "Marco, we need to have a talk about what stop means".

Made a 10 minute mistake near the end in the cane maze and lost a lot of points. Pity as had been running really well until then.

Awful lot of running today for a cyclist - Katrin held up well.

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Took the boat to Marie Galante for an activities day. Given rental cars and drove around between events.

Activities were
- 3 x discovery runs around towns
- Token kayak
- Ropes section
- Swimming race (they ran out of time for the snorkel).

This island, particularly the beaches, is absolutely stunning. Guadeloupe is wonderfully unaffected by tourism in general, but this island was something special.

Camped on the beach amongst coconut trees.

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- Ran down the coast to an orienteering section
- Did all the controls on the O section- no one told us to only stay out 30 minutes
- Ran back up the coast to a ropes section
- Absolute cracker of a ropes course. Flying foxes over the ocean around cliffs etc.
- Continued running up the coast for another couple of hours, then driven back to town for a paddleboqrd race.

Lots of sitting around waiting between legs, which meant that the runs were rather quick.

Had worked out by now that the control circles often indicated a good place to start looking for checkpoints rather than the actual flag.

This section of coastline was truly spectacular.

First day of the event described here.

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Activities included...
Discovery event
Golf
Windsurfing
Snorkelling x 2
Surfing
Running around on a golf course looking for things followed by a night orienteering run.

Katrin & I ended up in the international yellow leaders jersey at the end of the day after not sucking too badly at most events.

Most painful moment of the day was holing out from 30m on the golf chipping challenge with my warm up shot & not being able to count it.

Suprised to discover I can stand on a surfboard.

First of the O events was a decent night orienteering section to the nights camping location. Having played around all day, folk were keen to stretch their legs and the pace was quick.

Most of the controls were roughly in the right spot for this one; Tracks on the ground vaguely resembled what was on the map.

Oh yeah, this was preceeded by 45 minutes running around on a golf course without lights looking for things - fun.

Prologue for the Guadeloupe adventure race. This involved a flying fox off the top of a 3 story building across the harbour in the middle of town at night.

The amount of media at the event was crazy - 3 film crews and a gaggle of journalists following along.

And thus began a rather odd week of what could best be called an adventure racers holiday camp. Ill leave it to the sleepmonsters report to describe what was going on.

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TGV to Paris, then flight to Guadeloupe.

Crossing Paris on the metro with 75kg of AR stuff during a train strike must count for some sort of training.

Arrived in Belgium. Spent the day eating.

Short session in the gym to avoid seizing up. Farkin busy juggling work and getting organised to fly out to Belgium & Guadeloupe tomorrow. Will be offline for a while.

C • OS 1

First ride on the roadie for a while. Mt Kuringgai return. Didnt ride hard, but after yet another 5hr sleep night and the thermometer reading 35 degrees. Im not going to call it an easy ride.

Roadworks at Pentecost have finished, leaving a few km of sweet sweet hotmix. mmm.

Can tell the HSC has just finished. After beer bottles falling from Roseville Bridge yesterday, a car full of youngsters threw coins at me today.

Almost took out a goanna on the road at Bobbin Head.

Jog with Tom on his bike at narrabeen while annika was doing little aths.

Guadeloupe training. Family trip to the driving range. Connecting them pleasingly well having not played golf for yonks. Let the kids have a whack, which was as amusing to watch as you'd imagine.

Katrin's ability to pick up sports she hasn't done before is frightening.

Paddle run session. Started with a pipeline spin. A bit put out by the beer bottle dropped from 20m up off Roseville Bridge which landed a bit too close for comfort.

Then ran a Casuarina loop, with 10 reps on the stairs at the start (157 steps). Saw a fox.

Update: Hammies rather sore and stiff next day. Stairs must be hard on hammies.

Either the clock on my trip computer is playing up or i set a spectacular record in to the city without trying.

You (well at least I) can't make the Miller St lights from the amherst st roundabout.

C • Katrin could probably make ... 2

Cracker spring evening for a ride home. Or maybe it just seemed that way because I walked down Martin Place behind someone smoking a joint.

Got a big hunger flat in Castle Cove. Munchies?

Tube of Pringles (Spicy Thai flavour - not bad) and wine for dinner.

Watched some Spongebob Squarepants then ran to work (how can a children's cartoon be so camp?).

Very strange run. Felt absolutely shyte for the first 20 minutes, most likely due to the week of short nights catching up. Plodded along at a pace slightly above pathetic and stopped for a stretch on the middle cove bushtrack as an excuse for a breather.
But then started to perk up after that, and by the time I reached Kirribilli i was feeling so sprightly I did an effort across the bridge. Guess its a case study in the value of warming up.

Step to step effort on the bridge (with backpack). Distance a guess from gmaps

Too many late nights the past week. Tired.

Left work early and rode to Little Athletics (Summer Series at Beecroft too far away). Had a stretch in the playground while there - discovered you can do a ripper hammie & hip flexor stretch with a swing.

Steve Hogg was right about the importance of good posture on the bike for someone with pronaty feet - noticed i was slouching while riding up hill to military rd due to laziness. Straightened up, stopped hanging off the collarbones and sped up noticeably. Something to keep an eye on for longer races.

Early morning interval session from Roseville. 18min warm-up (havent paddled for a week) then 10 * 30 ds with 20 ds recovery, 2 * 4min, 2 * 3 min, 2 * 2min, 2 * 1min with 1 min rests. Felt that I havent done boat intervals for a little while.
Warm morning with lots of school rowing crews about. Schoolies head of the river races must be coming up.

A lot slower than it felt. Ran in to Mr Meyer in the back streets of Castle Cove.

Ran to get the car from the bus stop. Normally wouldnt log a run like this, but it was early monday morning and had done a 100k MTB ride the day before so it counts.

The annual Tour de Penrose. Good event. It seems to be getting bigger (and better organised) every year. Course is getting steadily longer to as they add more single track.

Fun day for MTB'ing. Had been raining all week to leave lots of water and mud about, but fined up just in time for a warm sunny day. The waist high creek crossing at 10km would have been interesting if it was a cold morning.

Concious that my longest uninterrupted ride since XPD was not much over 2hrs, conservatism was the plan for the day. Cruised along feeling quite good for the first 60km until I got a flat on a rocky descent. This was strange as I dont get flats - Ive had one flat since starting to ride MTB's and that was in Darvo's driveway - so am probably a tad too blase about them and only carry a single CO2 cartridge and no pump. Found a small split that appeared to be sealing with the latex so I used the cartridge to blow the tyre up. Soon realised I hadnt thought this through very well - the seal didnt hold and I was now left without a cartridge to inflate the spare tube - der!

Fortunately Darvo turned up soon after and generously gave me a cartridge, but only had a small one which got the tyre to a bit under 20psi. Rode very carefully the next 20km to the transition where I could pump it again, and got going again for the last 30k stage.

C • and the results of the moun... 6

Testing the MTB still works

Working from home, so Magazines loop (waterfall extension) after dropping off the muchkins at school. Raining and tracks flooded but not cold - great fun.

Light leg spinning session on the windtrainer after the others had gone to bed.

45 minutes windtrainer spinning then 30 min weights, heavier than usual after the guns were publicly questioned on AP.

C • Every session 1

Drove over to Five Dock for summer series this afternoon, then road in on the 'marked' bike route. More challenging than manly dam singletrack at times and navigationally harder than summer series. No wonder people dont ride in from out that way. Having said that, on a duallie MTB it was quite fun.

Should log this as ride/run. Commuter bike finally rebelled at lack of TLC and broke its chain. And of course Ive been planning to replace the chainbreaker i borrowed from its toolkit for another bike 'tomorrow'
for the last few weeks. Ran with the bike for a while until a friendly cyclist afforded me the use of his tool.

All a bit rushed with delays getting there. Started right as they were closing up the start, but days getting longer so not too dark by the end.

Mind not really on the job for this one. Didnt pick the best route for collecting the middle controls, spent a few minutes looking for the dodgy control under dog attack & missed a turn on an easy road control while looking at route choice for later legs. Back 5 minutes late.

Good to stretch the legs out though, and a quite enjoyable little area.

15 minute warm-up, then 30 minutes of 30s - 1min surges at regular intervals. Strong urge for coffee and turkish bread now.

10 minute rowing machine warmup, 30min weights & 10 with swiss ball.

C • Rowing Machine ... 4

Ride home. Pissing down and windy. Nice.

Rode to work. Monday morning, so wheelie bin dodging down the hill to roseville bridge. Where did the gale and coldness come from?

The big tree in the middle of the footpath on the Roseville bridge descent has been removed - will knock a few seconds off the commute.

Aside: The verdict is in on the value of spinning classes. Katrin has been doing 2 spinning classes a week for a little while to develop some speed for the XC national series over summer - no room in the schedule for normal interval sessions. She did rather well in the first round.

Bit of a resistance session - pushed one gear bigger than usual. Starting to feel better slowly after a few days of feeling rather crap - think i had a little bug late last week (and not enough sleep).

Bike commuting gives an interesting insight into how much pedestrians rely on car noise to know what's coming.

Event: Australian MTBO Middle Distance
 

Spent the weekend up in the Hunter Valley helping with organising the MTBO nationals (well, helping as much as is possible with 2 kids in tow - Katrin in Adelaide for XC national round).

Collecting controls after the sprint race.

Went to the gym at 2pm to beat the lunch crowds.

Ran home for the first time in ages. Tried the GPS, but it didnt like the CBD or harbour bridge.

Reasonable pace without getting carried away.Had to put in a bit for the last couple of k to make it to after-school care in time for Annika pickup.

Up early, drove towards beach for a bit then turned back to collect my paddling gear. Still getting used to daylight savings obviously.

Cruisy paddle with Rob from Fisherman's to Warriewood and back. Small southerly swell but with some north-east leftovers form the day before, so assistance in both directions. Nice. Felt very flat for the first part, but steadily improved and not too bad by the end.

Rob doing very well managing the millenium.

Rode home the bike which had spent the night at work. The significant increase in car traffic out of the city since daylight avings started is something i dont really understand.