Training Log Archive: Mounty

Woah. Bad case of the cbf's. Had got the gear ready for a paddle, but went back to bed when I woke to a 20kt southerly. CBF's flowed in to the ride to work where I set a new slow commute record. urgh.

Sharper ride home, largely motivated by the bottle of Barossa red next to the couch that had my name on it.

Lovely autumn morning...Dropped Tom at band, offloaded Annika for her Sydney Dance Company camp, crossed paths with Katrin who was back from an ocean paddle with Deano and off to the school athletics carnival...while I headed off to work. Talk about getting the rough end of the pineapple.

Aim was for a solid ride which went OK, but pushing a gear up the hills felt like turning on the lactic acid tap. Rather nice rolling past the poor b*stards in traffic who drive to work.

Planned to cruise home, but on the way out of North Sydney spotted a developing roadie commuter war up ahead. Rode a bit harder purely for the entertainment value of watching 2 chaps trying to race each other, while trying to look like they aren't trying. Kept the pace up home, and added a 5minute standig climb up from Roseville Bridge.

Evening spin on the ergo. Slow to start then gradually picked up. Tightened up the pull bar on the feet to see if using it helps with rotation.

Back on the commute for the first time in a while. Starting to get that Autumn feeling in the air, and the jacket conundrum - freeze at the beginning then nice, or nice at the beginning then overheat.

In their infinite wisdom, the RTA have installed a street sign in the middle of the foot/bike path where you get on to Roseville Bridge for east bound traffic - which is not very visible from the opposite direction. Wish we could have voted out the RTA too.

Luckiest member of the household for the week is Annika, who has scored 3 days off school to go on a dance camp at the Sydney Dance Company. Don't think Ive ever seen her out of bed and ready to leave by 7 before.

Up-tempo ride home. Bit tight in the left adductor from yestie's run. A gentle reminder to start stretching the hammies more.

Lamenting the impending end to riding home in the light.

Evening run out to Manly Dam. After a decent night's sleep, actually had a bit of energy on board. Ran the first 10K in ~45, then some tempo runs. Planned to do set of 3mins @ 4m/k, but lost concentration on the first (road next to the water) and ran for 5min. Felt OK , so went with it. Another 5min effort on the dam singletrack, 4min up the firetrail hill, then 2 * 1k on the other side of Wakehurst parkeway. Must have found some legs as the last couple were quicker. Then home for a pancake. Mmm.

Weather not really conducive to throwing the boat on the car, so went for another North Head run after dropping Tom at the Skiffies (he didn't get on to the water either).

Planned to run solid, but became clear not long in that I didn't have enough gas in the tank for that and decided to go with the flow instead. Cruised out to the end of North Head, and stopped there for a while to watch the wrath of the Southerly do its thing on to the cliffs below. Quite spectacular. Cruised back to Manly via Shelley Beach, and finished with a spot of coasteering around the rocks.

Tim Minchin with the SSO was impressive.

Stopped at Belanglo on the way home for a run. Felt a bit odd getting out the car in Daleys clearing in a suit.

Nice run, carving thru' the Pine. The singletrack created by the motorbikes has got signs on it saying closed. Amazingly they seem to be abiding based on lack of fresh trails.

Amusing side notes
- Katrin managed to rustle up last minute Tim Minchin tickets for tonight at the Opera House. Schweet!
- Grabbed a beer after work next door. 'Carbo' from packed to the Rafters came over and asked if the 2 chairs at our table were free. He then proceeeded to spade a (very) hot chick for the duration of my 2 beers.

C • Carbo 1

Trip to Canberra for work. Just happened to throw the MTB in the back of the car, and nicked out to Stromlo for a ride. Good times up the hill until my pedal broke at the Observatory. Gutted. At least I got a nice run down Skyline and Luge to get home without walking,

Then ran in to Chris Thompson (AR teammate) and had a good ol' chat.

Had a laptop, so walked to the car at Crowie, then did a Tunks loop. Hunched over ploddy, crap so I mixed in some Mach drills and 6*3 chins on the outdoor gym to mix things up.

Run round the school cross-country course with Annika. Lots of rabbits about.

Pre bed-time spin on the ergo.

Lunchtime paddle with Katrin to Northbridge. Blimey - she's come a long way since we last paddled together.

Did half a dozen standing start sprints. Swapping paddles halfway. As her feather angle was set about 20deg different to mine, paddling it at first felt like that drinking game when you spin round in circles and try to jump over a stick. Interesting to note that the jantex paddle felt harder to get a grip on the water for the first couple of strokes than the other one.

Water full of mud and crap from the rain.

3hr rogaine with Andy at Marsfield. Really quite enjoyable. Hopefully Andy writes up a report - but pretty happy to get thru' a long run in reasonably good shape on the back of doing not much in the last few weeks.

Will be hard for Tom to top his weekend - on the field with the Waratah's on saturday, then ride in a 16' race on sunday.....
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=376534&id=78...

C • Results 1

Change of routine - went for a run at North Head while Tom was sailing rather than the usual paddle, due to suspect weather. Decided to go on an exploratory mission to see if I could invent some form of loop. Started well thru' the old gasworks to Collins Beach, but then hit a dead-end with a section of bush before the Q station.
Decided to have a crack at the bush, optimistically hoping to find a slightly more open section on the ridge. Hahahaha. Super-thick to start, and just got thicker. Then met the old North Head wall running thru' the bush, which left me a bit stumped until I found a drain hole to squeeze thru. Just as I was starting to think that I may have to drink my own urine and shoot the camels, Q station rode appeared. Trotted around thru the old buildings, and down to the beach (note to stingers: spectacular set of stairs down there up the old furnicular track).
Turned for home when the weather hit, with a tropical strength downpour accompanied by solid sou' easter. Back to Manly in ankle deep water, then looped out to Fairlight pool and back.
All in all - too much fun.

Recovery morning after a few weeks of working like an idiot. Headed down for a pipeline to try out the new Jantex paddle on flatwater, after the kids had headed to school.

Almost fell out when I started 'cause the paddle grips the water differently than my old one, but settled soon enough and felt solid. Pleasantly suprised by what the GPS was saying after a quarter of an hour, so decided to go a bit harder for a pipeline split. Ended up with a 38:30 - I think that is close to a 1 minute obliteration of previous pb. Little bit stunned by that as conditions weren't good - windy and not very high tide - and I havent really paddled at all over summer. New paddle & I are going to get on well I think. (tech note: paddle @ 209cm).

Need to find some deep flat water for a 10k time trial in the K1. Wonder if I can break 50.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/73614331

Recovery day after working like an idiot for the past couple of weeks. Afternoon paddle at Clontarf to test out the geartrade bargain Jantex paddle.

Headed round the base of Tania park and back in a nice 12kt sou' easter. Suprising how different a paddle can feel. This one really moves the stroke forward with a solid catch and light exit - which works really well for stability in sloppy water, and for accelarating on to runs. Funny how such little blades have so much grab.

Couple of nice 10min downwind runs and 7*1min efforts upwind. Paddled past a guy who must have been in his 70's in a sea kayak with a big smile on his face - smugly looking towards all the people at work in the city.

Closest I got to exercise was buying a paddle off geartrade. I need to go for a paddle now.

Back down at Manly Skiff club. Tom has been recruited out of the learn to sail program to crew on an MJ in the Sunday races. Bit of a sink or swim exercise 'cause he isn't supposed to move up until next year, but figured it would be rather entertaining from a spectator perspective. Working out on both counts - he seems to be floating, and it is rather funny to watch 8 year olds and spinnakers mix.

Got sent out on the ski to give the littlies in the fleet some advice, so paddled around dodging a fleet of 30 MJ's in a bewdiful autumn 10kt nor' easter. Nice to be at a sport for the kids that I actually know sometihng about for once.

Evening Magazines loop, with the NOSH shortcut. Controlled burn on the northern side last week - logs were still smouldering. Sleep-deprived type of knackered, but legs OK.

Another cracker of a Saturday morning 'nick off while Tom is sailing' paddle. Headed out from Manly wharf to find perfect conditions for a North Head circumnavigation. When the swell & wind has the right combination, you can do a largely downhill paddle, and end up 800m from where you started. Walked back across paralllel to the Corso wishing a I had a carbon boat, then paddled over to Tom for a chat on the water.

Easy ride from Malga at about 10am, still giggling from Tom's trombone practice as the soundtrack to breakfast. He was impressive.

Slow roll back to Malga.

Strong enough to get to work, but not to ride there (or run an outback mining pub).

Sick. Hopefully have caught it early though.

C • Sick 1

Sore throat, so took it easy. Still felt like a bit of an effort.

Annika asked to come for a run, so plan was to do a short trot with her then continue on for a run myself. However she was still full of beans after a couple of k on the Killarney trail, so decided to tack on a bit more and ended up doing the full killarney trail loop and dropped plans for my own run. She was having a well good time on the rocky bits, and declared it much more fun than running on the road - attagirl.

Interesting discovery of the day was an old newspaper clipping my mum found while cleaning up about her grandfather. I knew that he had been a famous drover, but I did not know that he was a friend of Ned Kelly.

Impressive story - her grandmother was one of 10 kids. She was left in charge of all her siblings at age 15 when the mother died - which she managed while simultaneously running a pub in the WA gold fields. We're all soft these days.

Saturday morning sailing paddle. 15-20kt SSE coming up the harbour with a 1-1.5m ESE short period swell rolling in the heads. Scwheet. Up to Middle Head, then a downwind run back to manly. Quite technical with the short swell.

Then 10 * 30sec on/off back upwind - hard work! And a run back to the beach. Pumped arms by the end.

When I left a big dive boat had tied up at the skiff club, and 3 ambulances had pulled up out front. When I got back the ambos had been replaced by police on the boat. Bit worrying.

Morning paddle with Katrin from Clontarf after offloading the kids at school. Popped her 'out the heads' cherry, heading across to South Head and poking around towards the gap. Swell from a couple of directions, and plenty of bounce off the cliffs - fun.

Paddled thru a couple of sizeable bluebottle schools. Reminded first of Finding Nemo, and then a rather amusing paddle with NSW Stinger a couple of years ago.

Ran to CBD to collect the commuter, in for its first service after a valiant couple of years diligent duty. Collected the bike and rode back to Crowie, then off the watch the Tahs at the Longie with the OANSW secretary.

The frame was the same as the bike I'd dropped off, but not much else. Man, it felt nice riding back.

Worked at home for a while, then up-tempo run from Castle Cove to Nth Sydney via the middle cove bush trails. Starting to feel some bounce in the legs, which makes running much more fun.

A very large tree - (2ft diameter and 10+m high) has fallen along the length of a narrow section of the track down below Herbal High School. Wouldn't have wanted to be there when it came down.

Have a race on the calendar for the first time in a while. Look out for a dangerous team at the next AROC.

C • Herbal High 3

Solid run back to Castle Cove. Close on 4m/k's to Middle Cove, then slowed down on the bush track section 'cause it got dark. Dark enough that I would have struggled to keep running if I didn't know that section. Finished with a hill sprint on the CCove hill. Hill sprints with a backpack feels a bit weird.

Felt pretty good.

Kenyan commute from Flat Rock. Mainly because the hot water heater at home is out of action, and running to work meant avoiding a cold shower.