Training Log Archive: Mounty

Sunday morning big hill session. Hoping to beat the heat with an early start, but over 25 and humid anyway.

Parked at top of Heath track, warm up jog down the hill, then
10 * quarry track - creek to gate. Splits (up/down)
4:51, 4:19
4:50, 3:59
4:46,4:33
4:46,4:46
4:48,7:39
4:58,4:15
4:41,4:19
4:36,4:16
4:31,4:29
3:54,3:21
Interestingly, the 3-5 reps felt the hardest. Maybe because a light breeze came up to cool things down? Did the ups at a steady pace rather than hammering but finished with an interval effort.

Then ran back up heath track to car. Total climb: 1100m.

Evening pipeline cruise while Katrin rode with the kids up the firetrail next to the river. Luverly.

Spent a couple of hours mucking around with the kids on the Bic at Narrabeen lake. Im counting a decent 30min of paddling in there, including a few resistance efforts dragging both kids along in the water. How many tennis balls equals one kid?

C • Don't know 4

Bobbin Head return. Late start (6:15pm) so had to hustle to beat sundown.
9:23 up Turramurra on way back. Dunno what prev PB was but wouldnt be close to that. Can push a much bigger gear than i used to.

Early morning river loop. Over Killarney, under Roseville Bridge, up the river to forestville, home from crown of the hill. 2 tempo sections. 3k along the river @ ~4m/k (HR low 150s), then 2k @ 3.30-3:40 (HR low 160s). Glorious morning.

Dropped the kids at Castle Cove and ran to work (late start). With a couple of hours break between runs Felt flat and tired for the start of the second.

Saw what the centrepiece is for the fireworks on the bridge this year.

Cold and wet ride in to town. Strange old summer.

Rode easily partly due to tired legs and partly due to chain suck (on the road!).

Planned to do a recovery type ride but felt rather good once on the bike, so rode home a quite decent tempo. Starting to suspect that sleeping properly,which have been able to do this week, is a big help.
Not fun putting on wet riding gear though.

Long run followed by paddle. Natural bridge track to Tracy & Stix rock, Bantry Bay track, up hill to seaforth oval, lap of Manly Dam then back the same way. Bit tired after all the xmas fun but cruised thru OK. Nice day, not to hot and lots of walkers out.

Jumped in to car and drove down to river for a paddle. 12 minute transition including drive - not too bad.
Pipeline paddle from Roseville Bridge. Cruisy paddle UNTIL I COLLIDED WITH A LITTLE SHARK about 2km upstream. Looked down in response to a little nudge on the bow, and was most suprised to see a dorsal fin pop up on the port side right where I was about to plant my paddle. Took an airswing to avoid hitting it. Only a little fella - a couple of feet long at a guess.
Then towards the end of paddle came across a cruiser that had broken down and spent 20 minutes paddling around looking for a boat that could tow them back to shore.
Dim sims when i got home went down a treat.

A couple of dozen sandhill intervals, some with kids on shoulders, as part of a post-xmas lunch sandhill boogie boarding session at Norah Head.

Ripper of a sandhill - about 100m long and steep. Thomas learned the importance of closing your mouth before impact when a face-plant is imminent.

Rode to work. Having watched 24Solo the night before, difficult to resist the temptation to put it in the dog up the hills.

C • in the DOG!! 1

Rode home. Couldnt resist using the dog on the climb from the water up to Military Rd.

With Rob from Berowra down to Apple Tree Bay, over nasty pinch to Bobbin head, Warrimoo Track, Darri track, sneaky firetrail thru to Kitchener Rd, over Mona Vale with a bladder refill, Cambourne track to Cascades, crossed at the stones, along the 'ive seen so many snakes down here Ill let Rob go first' track, 2 creeks back to lindfield. Goanna Count: 6.
Have done this run oce each summer for 3 years now with HRM, so a useful benchmark. Was a lot easier than last time.

Morning social ride with PD, Guenty & Andrew a coffee in the middle. Notable for the drag Guenty & I got behind a semi-trailer with a bulldozer on the back along Mona Vale Rd. From Forestway corner to the hill in St Ives were clocking 65km/h on the flat, with Guenty registering 80 on the downhill section. Too much fun.

Lunch park run. 1 * Mac chair interval (2:29) and 3 * Gov house (39,49,39s) to get the legs moving. Spring in step much better than tuesday's plodathon. 20min in the gym to finish.

Ran in to Rob in town, so grabbed a beer before riding home in to a rather strong headwind.

Ocean paddle with Rob. Pleasantly suprised the Nor easter had blown through the night leaving 10kts and an enjoyable windswell to play on. Caught some nice little drops - good way to start the day.

Rode to work. Took the North Sydney Im running late shortcut.

Busy

5 * Macquarie Chair intervals: ??,2:40,2:34,2:40,2:37

Disappointingly slow compared to perceived effort. Felt flat-footed and glued to the ground. So did a few sprints on the way back
1min & 3 * 30sec on the road then 3min @ 17,5km/h increasing to 1min @ 19km/h on the treadmill.

Need to do more interval sessions.

Rode home. Had to ride hard to make it in time to collect Annika.

Monday morning ride in means wheelie bin dodging down to Roseville Bridge.

Ran home. Legs felt sluggish.

Long ride with wifey while kids were at a Xmas party with the grandparents. 28 degrees, overcast and as humid as Thailand. Good conditions for feeling sleepy.

Bobbin Head, Berowra Waters, Galston Gorge, Bobbin again. Hairpin climb up from Galston the best climb.

Didnt quite beat the afternoon storm, with solid rain for the last half hour.

Legs held up quite OK. Roadie much nicer than the commuter bike.

Totally unprepared for a 25k ocean paddle race after the holiday and pretty worn out from jet-lagged kids and xmas do's, but 20 Beaches is too much fun to pass up. Even better, the start time had been moved to 1pm this year, perfect timing to catch the nice big nor' easter that came through.

Great conditions - wind close to 20kts with plenty of north in it for a downhill run. Had a good first hour and a half - got through the slop off the Whale Beach clifflines cleanly and was doing alright hooking the runs up. Quite technical paddling - not big runners, but lots of windswell in various directions to chase after. Very pleased with the boofiness of the blokes around me approaching long reef.

But then started to get tired and speed dropped off. In those conditions once you start to miss runs the boat wallows and you lose time. Dropped from 5:00-5:30 min/k to over 6. Gettting knackered by Curl Curl (a bit undert 2hrs) and took a swim in the cliff slop. Turns out the Fenn is harder to remount than the Mark 2 (Rob & I fell off that heaps last summer) and had a few failed remount attempts until i worked out the required remount balance point - wasting almost 5 minutes.

Escort in to Shelley beach by the kids on boogie boards.

Highlight of the day was standing on the beach when Dane Sloss from Queendland came in. He'd been leading the race, but missed Shelley beach and only suspected something was wrong when he hit Sydney Harbour. His mates fell on the sand laughing as he explained what happened.

C • Molokai 6

Still not quite back on australian time yet, so took advantage of the early wakeup for a morning trot. Tight for the first 20 minutes then loosened up and felt OK until I got bitten by some strange bug halfway round.

Quite a few trees have come down over the track since i was last there.

Rode to work. Need to get out for a long ride to find the cycling legs again.

Thomas has taken to wearing his new school uniform for next year to pre-school. Very cute.

Rode home after a 6 hour lunch. Veeery sluggish.

Northbridge loop.

Most pleasant to get back on the water again, although the water appeared rather green, dull and cold after guadeloupe.

Must have been a heap of rain while I was away as the downstream current was much stronger than usual. Together with a light tail-wind could pretend I was a paddling machine cruising along under 5min/k on the way out. Reality returned for the return trip.

Finished with 5 * 20DS efforts. 10k split 54min.

Ran to work. Thomas slept through the night, so felt much better than yesterday, but pack felt rather heavy.

Learned the importance of not putting a banana in a running backpack without putting it in a plastic bag first.

The homeless guys under roseville bridge are steadily becoming better equipped. They have a bike now, which is suspiciously high end.

First ride for a month. Had taken turns with Katrin sitting up since midnight to keep jet-lagged Thomas busy. Needless to say, not feeling particularly fresh.

Rode home in the middle of a jet-lag down-swing. Sleepy. The path across cammeray golf course has been re-routed so it doesnt cross 2 fairways anymore. The new one has some nice little wiggles in it.

More kids on the shoulder training wandering around Tokyo.

Having come pretty much straight from Paris, the politeness/friendliness of the locals in Tokyo was almost unnerving.

For anyone that reads the final sleepmonsters report about the Guadeloupe race, please add the words "one of" to the following quote:

"Australias Richard Mountstephens rated this trail run as the best that he has ever done anywhere in the world! "

Bloody nice run either way.

Flat straight roads a good opportunity to callibrate perceived effort against speed. 3km @ 4 min/km then 3km @ 3:45 min/km.

Run in Antwerp. 6 degrees, dark, windy and raining. Nice.

20 min warmup then 4 x 600m hard (GPS measured)
1:54, 1:56, 1:49, 1:46

Duvel time

Run with the sister-in-law from her place. Katrin didnt mention that her sister has started running a fair bit, so tempo a lot more solid than i was expecting.

Im a big fan of the town´s name: Erps-Kwerps.

C • when r u back? 2

More Eurodisney

Disneyland is very cool. Open challenge to anyone that can beat 174000 on the Buzz Lightyear laser shooting ride.

Eurodisney

Walking around all day with kids on the shoulders must count for some kind of training.

Touristing in Paris with the kids

Headed in to the local markets to trade the rum barrels for something more portable, then swam until flight time.

Very enjoyable, albeit slightly odd week in the end. Shortcomings on the organising front could be laughed at due to the sheer quality of the destination and pleasant like-minded people to hang out with.

Need to do some exercise now.

Some photos in the sleepmonsters gallery

http://www.sleepmonsters.com/racereport.php?page_a...

http://www.sleepmonsters.com/racereport.php?page_a...

http://www.sleepmonsters.com/racereport.php?page_a...

http://www.sleepmonsters.com/racereport.php?page_a...

http://www.sleepmonsters.com/racereport.php?page_a...

http://www.sleepmonsters.com/racereport.php?page_a...