Training Log Archive: jennycas

Fruitful pootle in the park on a blackberrying expedition.

This course neatly encompassed just the eco village and wetlands, and it was really nice (when control collecting I stopped to look at the mosaics around the stormwater retention basins), and I tried to run hard although my legs were tired and the ankle which I tweaked when I put my foot in a hole on Wed not quite happy. Can see at least 3 legs where I should have gone left not right and maybe saved 40 sec all up, which is a lot in a sprint.

Nearly crosseyed with tiredness today but thought a jog might make me feel better. Hit the wall well before the half hour minimum was up though.

From the mass start, we were off on a quick lap of Adelaide High school, which is basically just one building but with lots of 'fingers', then west along the edge of the ovals to the patchy bushland strip alongside the railway line, where we all got different versions of the map, depending on how various people had drawn it during Manu's mapping workshop the other week. Then we crossed over Sir Don into an area I'd never been before, and which we never used to go into when training from Western Districts because it was basically where homeless people camped. But now it's been turned into (regenerated) native forest with a wetland running through, and an interpretive trail where the rocks have either engravings or bronze sculptures - many by Silvio Apponyi; the trapdoor spider being one of my favourites - and this was just lovely to navigate through, and lots of fun. Ended up as a fair distance to be running hard, so Zara and I went for a bit of a warmdown to find even more sculpture rocks, the smallest of which hadn't made it on to the map but still had creatures upon them.

Hurried to get to West Tce because I was running late, and managed it in about 20 min, but took the return trip at more leisurely pace and in the company of Cazzolatos for the first half, incorporating Toby's 'long cut' through the cemetery. Some impressive mausoleums in the Italian section!

Up to Deep View and around to the top of First Falls, back down in time to go to OSA meeting. Right near the end a vicious killer ant fell from a tree into the neck of my shirt and chomped me painfully on the boob. While I was trying to find & evict it (hope nobody saw me beating my bosom and yelling "you bastard") it got me on the arm as well. Bites were excruciating for about half an hour and are now completely unremarkable which means they'll be huge itchy welts by tomorrow and for the next couple of days.

C • Ouch! 6

'twas a lovely evening for a run up through Sheps to Bellevue Heights and back down through the uni but I didn't realise until I started, just how tired my legs were from the weekend.

Fun little course around Stephenson Park, primary school & cinema complex. Tried to run hard and felt good but did a couple of dumb things like not having a proper bearing on the one leg through 'forest', and thinking 2 paths joined when in fact there was a retaining wall, marked impassable, between them - and so Ben got past me here. Plus I read the pipe across the creek as being a bridge, on the way to the last control (but it was possible to scramble through the reeds below as the creek isn't bounded by a solid black line). Don't think my eyesight is really adequate to 1:5 000 sprints any more?

I didn't run @Heathfield High when there was training here in December, so this was totally new to me and I really enjoyed it, even the bushland legs, although not the fences I struggled to climb over. There were some good route choices and it was fun to cross paths with so many other people. Did something very dumb by following CC and DG right inside a tennis court to the far corner when in fact it turned out that the control was on the outside of the fence (which I had originally anticipated but then I became a sheep). Definitely running faster than a month ago but this pace is currently at the limits of my functional brain capacity!