Training Archive: MTBjenIn the 7 days ending 2008-04-13:
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Sunday Apr 13 | ||
| Note | |
| slept:7.5 (rest day) | ||
| Oh yes definitely a rest day. Woke up really early and very restless, went for a long walk around lakes entrance. Found a bakery but it was too early and it was open but had no food yet. Managed to find some juice and a newspaper but otherwise the only shop open in town sold bait and i wasn't that desperate. Eventually and with a lot of effort managed to accidentally wake john up. Found some bacon and eggs, minigolf and all the good things. Spent all day packing then drove to Melbourne for extremely uncomfortable flight home.
Felt really awful, far worse than after the race. Churning nausea and kind of dizzy and disoriented. Really dry, but feet and hands all swollen. Developing real cankles by the time we got to Perth! Slept so solidly that i didnt' notice john getting up and down all night - i think he is a day behind me and has hit the restless nausea phase. | ||
Saturday Apr 12 | ||
| Adventure Racing (Keen Race- Stage 4) 8:25:03 [3] | |
| slept:5.0 | ||
| This stage was good fun, especially since the end was finally in sight! Another early morning, leaving Nowa Nowa at 5am to get to the 6am start at the Buchan Caves. We got all the maps at the start, which knocked a few people about. The first leg was a short orienteer around the caves area- there were two maps. One had the contours and the other the tracks. Amazing how people would try to just use one or the other, which made for some really silly routes. John drew the relevant tracks onto the contour map while i planned the bike and paddle courses. Then left most of the maps to our talented map-laminating support crew while we did the run course. We did pretty well thanks to John and his usual nav-wizardry (for example, if the control is at the bottom of a waterfall, we would run towards the waterfall, while half the teams stood scratching their heads and at least another 1/3 ran the other way into the bushes.) It was a hilly course but we were both able to run pretty solidly (proving wrong the hotel bar guy who watched john hobble into the dining room the night before and said quietly to his dad afterwards "i don't want to say anythin' to him, but he's goin' nowhere tomorrow...")
The MTB started with an uphill bitumen ride to a nearby cave. We passed Christie Sym and partner at the start (not for long, they blew us away very strongly soon afterwards, but i've always wanted to be able to say that!) Then the Stingers came past, can't imagine how they came to be behind to start with. The caving section was interesting - times ranged from 8min (nice one tRicky) to 46min. John and i spent 8min just finding the entrance -we got confused by a hole in the ground which we couldn't climb down but eventualy found the entrance down the hill. Ricky said "oh, i just went down the hole...got confused cos the control should have been 40m into the cave but we landed right on it...." Nutter. The second control was craftily behind a small rock, so there were at least 15ppl milling around confusedly, and a lot of tricky misleadery going on. We got there eventually (hey, reading the map helps) then ran out, only to be told that we had to exit the other end. So back through the cave and out another hole at the end. John got pushed out and i got pulled. The rest of the MTB was quite fun -all on gravel roads and apart from the first massive climb it just undulated to the river. The ups and downs probably weren't as big as they felt - we were both pretty leg-tired but enjoyed being able to ride solidly. Yo-yo'd a lot with Danielle's team and the two orange guys which kept me pushing :) The final paddle was down the river, across the sand bar and up the ocean to lakes entrance. We though there wouldn't be much to separate people but amazingly some teams didn't take their maps with them! So paddled into every dead end inlet. Completely mad. The portage was harder work than i really felt like (sorry john) and our sea kayak entrance technique needs some work (the first effort was a bit interesting and there are some good photos of it! The second after we beached halfway down the coast for the checkpoint, was a bit smoother. I did my spray skirt up that time, and also put the rudder in the water...) Beached the thing (finally!) without too much trouble and ran over the bridge to the finish line. finished 15th that day but 10th overall. 4th mixed team (and only 20h behind the winners and 10h behind 3rd mixed!) We are so, so happy with that, having hoped for nothing more than a clean finish. Felt ok at the end then rapidly fell in a heap. Presentation dinner was good fun. Thanks so much to our support crew Dad and Dad, who put up with all our fickle demands and stressed out whinging, and excelled themselves with their fantastic map-contacting, pasta-cooking, sock-drying, boat-repair and bike-servicing talent. They must be thick-skinned because they have bizarrely offered their services for the GSAR and will be a well-oiled team by then! Many thanks also to Paddy Pallin Perth for all the cold weather gear that we would have used if the race were a week earlier, and to Shotz sports nutrition, who would have kept us fuelled up good had i not left all the carboshotz in Perth in a last minute packing panic. | ||
Friday Apr 11 | ||
| Adventure Racing (Keen Race-Stage 3 cont) 16:17:00 [2] | |
| slept:0.0 | ||
Thursday Apr 10 | ||
| Adventure Racing (Keen Race- Stage 3) 18:30:00 [2] | |
| slept:5.0 | ||
| The long stage was so exhausting (even in retrospect) that it has taken me 3 days to get up the energy to write about it. Started in the freezing dark with a paddle-run leg on the lake at falls creek. We cunningly let most of the teams go ahead, so that we could watch their little lights zigzagging the hillside, until they looked like they'd found a control. Then we paddled straight to it. I did some paddling then held the boat on the water (important job because they fly away otherwise) and had a good chat to some other teams while john did all the running. We beat heaps of people, including our support crew. But they arrived eventually and we set off up the hill on the first 3h run leg. Gorgeous walking track, over the alpine plains then down around the hill. We went the slightly slower way which was not well travelled but turned out to be the best idea, since the out-of-bounds part of the other track was enforced with a 2h penalty. We didn't see anyone for the whole leg. Trotted most of it and walked a bit. Got on the bikes only to head straight back up the mountain, via a steep, neverending and only partially rideable firetrail which ended right at the top again. And then back down, along a nice gentle rounded hill called 'razorback spur' and a precipitous knife-edged ridge called 'wombat spur'. Whatever. I hated it. I hated gatorade, and mountain bikes, and muesli bars, and stupid adventure racing and especially tall skinny people who claim not to be bikers but ride whooping down hills which i'm too scared to even walk down. And my legs hurt. You get the idea. At the bottom was a river which i drank, and rock which i sat on, and 5 min later the world stopped ending and we quite enjoyed the undulating rest of the ride. Even got a push from Mr Jacoby himself at one stage which helped, and every time i was about to stop and walk a photographer would appear. We stopped for the first time at Tom's fireside CP then rode the last bit to the TA on the river. Took 6h.
Managed to start the 4h paddle in daylight, which made a fantastic difference but still gave us 3h of freezing shallow rapids in the dark. John was in the front and insisted on doing all of the pushing and pulling, presumably so that he could have a go at me on his AP log later ;). I did get out at least once, to climb up to Tom's fireside CP. The sleepmonsters people said "so, whats the river like in the dark?" "wet" i said. I give good interviews, especially when tired. Leaving the fire to get back into the freezing boat was the hardest part of the race. Eventually got to the end, where we had dry clothes and hot soup. Mmm... and another campfire. Started the 15h rogaine in good spirits, which didn't last much past the 1st control (which was 2h later). John fell in a heap on a(nother) long and mindnumbing firetrail hill. We fixed him with some medical miracles (well, caffeine, and nurofen and carboshotz) but in the meantime he was forced to let me navigate. Half an hour later i still knew where we were which was pretty encouraging for me! The rogaine was horrendous, 15 hours of up and down real mountains, through thick prickly regrowth forest, and even blackberries, another freezing river crossing, a nightmarish lady who talked too much, a large falling tree, a long stretch up a waist-deep river full of boulders. Another cheering stop at Tom's fireside CP which was even harder to leave the third time, given the gradient of the hill on the other side. On and on. Not enough water and i felt queasy so couldn't eat for hours. The knolls were the size of a western australian mountain and the mountains were endless, and i was really really sick of the whole thing. Ups were steep and difficult but the downs were steeper and no easier to negotiate. Longing for my bike! But at least nothing hurt. I never got a blister in the entire race, and never really got sore, just very tired. The sun came up at the top of the first mountain after the river crossing, and after that it wasn't so bad, but had a few head spins and microsleeps when we were crashing around at the top of the hill. At the end, just after 3pm we trotted (apparently looking fresh, but i think that was just in the eyes of Dad and Dad who had been in transition for 9 hours with 10 other support crews and only red wine to entertain them) into the TA at Angler's Rest. 20min after the MTB cut-off so we got short-coursed to Omeo. Thank god! The penalty was only the slowest time (4.5h) plus the 1h45min it took us to ride down the road. And given our speed it would have taken us almost that long to do the real ride anyway! So at least we got to dinner and bed (after a nightmarish 2 hour drive) at a reasonable time, before the next 6am start. | ||
Wednesday Apr 9 | ||
| Adventure Racing (Keen Race Stage 2) 13:01:07 [2] | |
| slept:6.0 | ||
| This stage was described as 'all downhill' haha. On average, perhaps. Started from Falls Creek with an awesome MTB up onto the high plains and over the top. Huge long climb, and completely worth it for the amazing view from the top. Cold, sunny day. First we had to get a couple of CPs in town - insider knowledge gave us a bit of an edge and we did the downhill one first, while most teams went in a confused scramble for the wrongly mapped one up the hill, then barrelled down the steep grass slope in a big pack - someone broke their leg in 3 places and the top teams lost a bit of time. So we started out in a real roadie-style pace line up the hill. Amazingly we rode away from a lot of them, and didn't see most of that bunch again. Dropped the bikes at bogong saddle then started on the trek to the bogong summit and along the ridge. Another massive climb and awesome view. Starting to get to know some of the teams quite well by now! Bush-bashed down a steep spur for about 4km (dropping about 400m) through thick regrowth. Unfortunately veered right a bit and had to splish along the river for a km or so to the control, before heading straight up the other side of the valley on another big climb back to the bikes. Then a long and forearm-destroying descent down the firetrails. Met Tom S helping the SES move logs off the track halfway down - he had a great day and it was great to see a familiar face (he turned up everywhere, all week, after that. Renamed our team the Fussy F***ers after we complained unreasonably about stuff like, our time being 30min wrong. Or our boat being broken).
At the bottom of the hill we followed an old railway line around to bogong village. Pretty slow going, constantly having to cross and recross the lines, and intermittently scramble across ruined bridges. But at least railways are flat! At bogong we stopped for a short, simple orienteering course which included the high ropes course. Horrible, scary stuff. Would have rather climbed bogong again! John, with typical gentlemanliness, swam over for the control on the island, while i ate a sandwich and the support crews cheered a lot. Then back on the bikes for another 700m of climb over about 6km (first 1/3 was steep steep and involved some pushing, the rest just an interminable slog). It got dark at the top, just in time to ride down to mount beauty. A lot of the trail was the Mt Beauty downhill track, which is scary enough in daylight without exhausted legs. Urgh. Pretty slow going (for me anyway, john suddenly turned into a mtber) Lap of the BMX track in town then over the finish line. Slept really, really well that night! Finished 14th - really happy with that, we had been hoping to finish and perhaps top 2/3 of the 40 teams. | ||
Tuesday Apr 8 | ||
| Event: Keen Adventure Race | ||
| Adventure Racing race (Keen Race Stage 1) 4:00:25 [3] | |
| slept:8.0 | ||
| Stage 1 was supposed to be a short prologue but winning times were double what they predicted! Great stage, really hilly- started at the top of the summit ski lift with a short run to 2 controls. Back to town, then MTB stage through town and up Mt McKay, then back down to the lake for a paddle/run leg. Then gave us new set of coordinates for an orienteering course that took us straight back up to the top of the mountain and back over to the bottom of the ski lift. Finished 22nd, well behind the top teams who are amazingly fast over such rough terrain. Mostly alpine stuff with lots of hidden rocks, pretty treacherous but they must have amazing ankles. Great fun. Finished just on dark and had the rest of the evening to plan routes for the next couple of days. | ||
Monday Apr 7 | ||
| Walk 4:00:00 [0] | |
| slept:8.0 shoes: Brooks trail shoes | ||
| Nice walk over the high plains to mt something and a hut (really pretty, in the snowgums) with John and our support crew Dad and Dad (who at this stage were still quite cheerful, having no idea what they were in for) | ||