Training Log Archive: jennycas

A bit worried about lack of rogaine-fitness, not having done any proper training, but at least I'm feeling more lively than the day before last year's WRC.

C • Rogaine fitness 2

Trundled over to Mitcham & back, trying not to aggravate hamstring, which didn't like pushing off at lights (or standing on one leg to put my stockings on before work). Thumbs & ears felt that this morning was good rogaine-acclimatisation.

Up Hillrise admiring the sunset, Tunnel X-over before it got dark, back through the suburbs. Legs still very tight and heavy despite AOTKM on Mon. WMOC-issue cold has mostly abated but the overwhelming fatigue is hanging around longer than I'd like.
What does it mean if a black rabbit crosses your path?

C • Black rabbit 3

To the weir with the group, then I only managed 2 stair reps because of how bad my hip/hamstring is since tweaking it when I tripped & fell towards the end of Saturday's race, then I finished off via the footbridge behind the zoo, thinking about rogaining in the frosty moonlight. Trying to remember when I last did a rogaine with negative overnight temperatures - maybe SA Champs @Nackara in 2009?

Have realised that another reason why I was disappointed with the Long Final is that it wasn't technically as difficult as I had expected. Don't get me wrong; there were plenty of opportunities to come unstuck (which is why I red-lined everything, not daring to take a faster track because I might get misplaced when I left it) but I had been hoping for more of the low-visibility stuff like we'd had on the Oceania Long, which I really enjoyed. Other maps/races which I've really enjoyed include last year's Aust Long Champs at Amiens, Kooyoora at any time except when it's hot, and the Gothenburg terrain from WMOC 2015; basically, terrain where nobody else can run fast and they are all brought back to my level!

C • technical difficulty 2

Swimming over the hotspots upwelling in my lane made me think how this was a cheaper 'thermal pool' to be in than most of the commercial ones in NZ. Hip flexor not happy today, partly due to 5 hrs on a plane yesterday. But I am grateful that AirNZ does have some direct flights to Adelaide. Also I am completely exhausted and wondering why I signed up for a 24-hour rogaine this weekend.

C • Wondering why? 4

Good things about Oceania/WMOC:
- terrain
- courses
- arenas
- results displays
- carnival atmosphere
- catering
- getting to catch up with old friends from countries such as Denmark & New Caledonia
- getting to make new friends (Valerie, Tori)
I am in awe of the incredible organisational effort by so many volunteers.

Not-so good things about Oceania/WMOC:
- 10-hour days
- Auckland traffic
- driving 2 hours to events
- parking
- long walks to arenas
- bedbugs & fleas in our cheap motel
- getting sick
- sheer exhaustion
I overheard more than one person saying that this really wasn't a holiday at all!

C • Staying close 2

I kind of knew, after my results from the qualifiers, that the only way in which I might be able to somehow sneak into the top 10 today would be to have a perfectly clean run (and hope that others didn't) but still I was bitterly (childishly? unreasonably?) disappointed to come 13th. I think it's because I'd made training for this race into my major project of the past 6 months, and all I had to do was to not make any mistakes on the day, and yet I failed at that. Waiting around 4 hours in the rain for my start time gave me plenty of opportunity to get distracted by thoughts of which new patients are coming for chemo at work this week, and what I need to pack for the Aust Champs rogaine next weekend, so I really had to convince myself to focus properly at the start.

And then I went & blew nearly 3 minutes on the first control :( Just couldn't seem to find it anywhere and couldn't understand what either the vegetation or the contours were doing. Put that behind me, and concentrated well thereafter apart from circumnavigating an extra knoll in the green stuff on 6, and what I thought was a minor wobble on 12 also in the dunes, although actually I had 3rd fastest split on that and this may be where I got away from the woman who had started 4 minutes after me - although she still beat me overall. As did 11 other people. I'm so ashamed to have ended up with a lower place than in qualifying, although I can see, from the splits, that on legs where I navigated well and was running as hard as I possibly could (although I've since seen some track routes which I should have taken), I was still between 11th & 15th, which basically means I'm just not fast enough to be competitive in the terrain any more.

C • Well done anyway 3

Long - Final - Women 40 Final A - Splits