Training Log Archive: Mounty

Paddy Pallin rogaine at Arthursleigh in the Southern Highlands with Ondrej.

Pretty happy to pick up the ol' log trophy again which makes 5 from 5, but more importantly really enjoyed the day out and was very happy with how I ran - the form has come along way this year with the get-back-into-running project, and the approach of quality over quantity certainly seems to be effective.

Course planning began with the usual bravado of "A3 map and flat area? pfft - no way that can take 6 hours", which of course proved to be wrong as usual before settling in to a pretty efficient planning session. We each scribbled up something separately for 15 minutes and then brought it together with discussion on the key design points. It worked well, and I think we had the optimal route for the day.

The course for us broke up in to 4 sections
- The forest bit
- The fast paddocks
- The slow paddocks
- The 'fuck, are we there yet?"

The forest bit
Nailed it. Fresh legs, beautiful forest and a feeling the course was shortish meant that we ran the first section as if we were orienteering more than rogaining. I probably paid for that at the end, but geeze it was fun. One mistake of about 2min's but otherwise clean and running good lines.

The fast paddocks
There was one scratchy, slow section along the Wollondilly before we emerged in to crazy smooth paddocks, and we ran this bit with the feel of a trail race. Travelled light and made good time across the bottom of the map. At this stage it felt like we were on track for low 5hrs...assuming the paddocks stayed like this...which they didn't.

Plenty of fence work thru' here, which I was OK with. Our triumph of the day was the 2 pairs of sailing gloves that I'd brought....leather, light, with long fingers but cut off thumb and forefinger. Perfect for taking the edge off barbed-wire.

The tussocky paddocks & some forest
The fast stuff gradually tussocked up at about the same time I started to get a bit tired (about 4hrs). The nav got more interesting at about the same time which got Ondrej excited and he pushed the pace along. Probably a little quick for me, but I decided to go with it and see what happened.


The 'fuck, are we there yet?
As we back down to the Wollondilly, I entered the 'Im fucked' zone for a bit. With about 7k to go had a real dig deep period which kinda sucked. I plodded along trying to get some Gel onboard, which eventually worked and I improved towards the end. Our nav got a bit sloppy thru the last few controls but nothing too serious.

Finished in 5:50 with a clear course (2740) ahead of Keelan/Glenn (2480) and Gill/Joel (22xx). Ondrej was really strong and could have comfortably dropped me at the end and navigated well.

Great day out.

C • awesome work 5

C • Sailing gloves 1

Lunchie with Ondrej and Bull over to Brooner's place in Glebe to borrow a compass for the weekend, and then around the Anzac bridge loop to Quarryman's for the Friday Balter XPA.

Cruisy run, feeling much better than yesterday. An interesting reminder that the first run back after a period of doing nothing feels a lot worse than coming off light exercise.

First run since Saturday with Bart around Pyrmont and then over to Barangaroo. Slow and half-heated jog for the most part, with faint signs of running towards the end.