Training Log Archive: Mounty

50th Paddy Pallin at Glenbrook with Andy.

Things didn't get off to a great start with an email on Friday morning from Andy that read "I'm sick". It soon became clear that the Glow Worm Tunnel marathon had swallowed up most of the last minute replacement options. To Andy's great credit, he switched in to 'get better' mode and worked towards getting himself healthy again by Sunday. Phone call on Saturday morning didn't fill me with confidence with a very clogged sounding voice at the other end, but a follow-up later in the day brought the sweet sound of clearing airways and we were on.

An early arrival at Glenbrook turned out to be a good call, as it quickly became clear that this was going to be a tricky course to plan well. A quick string linking the big pointers came out at over 50k, which meant we were going to have to choose to leave out a chunk of the course - tricky on a binary area that was either fast track of slow bush.

We decided to head to the north-east corner first rich in points and what we guessed (correctly) would be the fastest bushy bits, before heading west and then south along the ridges with the occassional dive in to crap to collect the points. Based on previous PP experience we sketched up a loop of low-mid 30's km.

Amusing start with an 'elder' competitor sprinting to the narrow single track out of the campground, who then promptly ground to a very slow walk as it got steep with a queue of about 100 people behind. We got thru and trotted out to the 100 pointer at the top corner of the map, and then looped back towards the start - stunned to see that quite a few of the faster teams must have headed south. God knows why - it looked nasty down there.

It soon became clear that we were going to be ahead of schedule, going thru 10k in about 55 minutes, and 'halfway' around our loop comfortably under 2 hours. Added an aout and back 30 pointer to our loop (which proved to be a race winning choice in the end, and continued on towards the Oaks firetrail.

Navigation was going well. With Andy's health a question mark it forced us to concentrate hard on not making mistakes - and is really something we should do more often. Missed 5 minutes at #42 when the control was 50m from where it should be (and in a side gully), and then met Glenn & Patrik heading in the opposite direction in the crap at #90. A bit annoyed with myself here as we were heading right for it, but got dragged below by them and wasted a couple of minutes.

We got to the big 'decision' point at about 3.5hrs and decided to add on a 4k out and back to kill some time and collect 90 points. No dramas, but Andy starting to get tired. We reached the water drop in the bottom left corner of the map and realised that a) we had plenty of time to get home b) there werent really any add-on options but c) there were a couple of tricky vague bush-bash CPs that could be time consuming. After we found the first of the tricky ones (5hrs) we backed off the engine and rolled home comfortably as there wasn't much left to do. Met Glenn and Patrik in the 20 pointers near the finish and realised we should hustle home in case we ended up on the same score. Close indeed it turned out in the end with us on 1320 and them on 1310.

Great effort by Andy to get around and a very smartly paced effort on his part. Always a pleasure to be out in the bush when the teamwork is going well. Home by 6pm and Katrin not overly thrilled to see the big ugly trophy back for another year. Nice.

C • nice work 3

Easy ride to work to loosen the legs. Still a bit tight in places from the stairs session.

Cruisy run on a tough track - lower Bantry Bay loop. Legs surprisingly heavy.

Lunch run at 4pm. One of those days.

Discovered that they lock some of the garden gates at 5pm, and got a bit stuck.

20 reps on the woolloomoollo stairs.

With the public holiday, I joined Katrin at Deano's squad - expecting the usual 80min intervals session. Not overly thrilled to hear on arrival they'd be doing a long paddle today instead, and regretted not having brekkie. Dragged my ass around, pepped up by the bewdiful morning. Tired arms by the end.

Did the Manly loop from a couple of weeks ago, this time in reverse and with Jono in tow. Out to the beach thru Manly Dam in 65, down the promenade for a Coke at the Corso, then home around the Manly-Spit walk.

Solid tempo for the second half, steadily building and dipping under 4's at times for the last 5k. Felt strong.