Training Log Archive: jennycas

It's never a good sign to come out of the house, dog on leash, and find that the concreters on the building site next door are hosing down one's car in one's own carport!!! I know they're pouring the foundations right on our boundary line, but don't you think they could have asked me to move my nice new* car before they splashed it with cement?

Perhaps they didn't want to admit that they'd started well before the legally permissible time of 7am...

*but no longer pristine, because someone gently rear-ended me at the lights a few weeks ago and their numberplate scratched my bumper :(

C • Scowl and frown and worse! 5

Couldn't muster the energy or flexibility for an actual tempo run to/from the weir so just stuck with the back markers of the group. Foot better, knees worse, when compared to yesterday. Possibly it depends on the shoes?

Recovery jog home from the supermarket. Not sure that this was good for my foot but it didn't make knees worse.

Event: SA Long Distance Championships - Crooked Straight, Renmark
 

Crooked Straight, last year's AMDC map. The main take-home message I recalled from last year was: sand is sandy. I remembered this too late to do anything about it in training though. Wasn't quite sure how a long race could be achieved out of this area but Peter Mayer managed it well. Apparently there was significant difference between his climb estimations and those of Bob Smith as controller, depending on what each of them considered the optimal route...

Gosh, this is a fun area! From the very start you had to concentrate, and I was pleased with myself for nailing the first (danger downhill) control, then choosing the wide route around the clifftops to the second, where I was so excited to see Steve Cooper emerging from the creek end below me that I ran straight to his control instead of my own on a creek 100m further west - oops, 2 min lost already. Glad of a drink on 4 because the sun had come out, then ballsed up the approach to 5 because I aimed for a prominent tree on the ridgeline without ever bothering to check where that actually was on the map, and triangulated off a small knoll 100m south of where I meant to be, then spent about 3 min doing some circle work before fixing on the correct basin. As the course setter said, I should just have aimed for the fence corner to start with - but where's the fun in that?

Really enjoyed the navigating, but knees were baaaad. At first it was just that I had to walk all of the uphills, but by halfway around the course even going down was painful, and where Winsplits thinks I made mistakes it's mostly that I had to stop & stretch. Was tempted to call it, when the course passed back so close to the finish, but I'm not a quitter and I really wanted to complete the challenge I'd set myself. And it was worth it, just for the lovely river flats section in the NW (so close to where I'd been trying to convince cars to park among the gaps between the saltbush last year...).

Expected the drive home to be equally uncomfortable but after very good coffee from the old fire station café I agreed to take parents on back roads to look for where mum's mother had lived among the mallee when a girl (sooo dry out that way) then we crossed on the ferry at Swan Reach and took Pine Hut Rd up the range from Sedan, something I've always wanted to do. It's bounded on both sides by dry-stone walls and the views back east to the river plains are magnificent, and it comes out between the Keyes Gap & Marne Rocks maps, so it made perfect sense to stop for dinner at the pub at Mt Pleasant. I don't want to go to work tomorrow!

Fun little map (apart from the broken glass everywhere underfoot) on the river flats between Renmark and Paringa with a network of tracks & billabongs, course set by Lanita. Started out casually then ran a bit harder since legs felt ok, then agonizing pain in the left knee but I tried not to slack off, and mostly I got the route choices right so my time was actually ok. Lots of stretching & massage afterwards; hoping it was just the 3-hour drive that aggravated knee.

Over to Hawthorn Oval, 7x runthroughs on the grass, back again. Shins/knees a bit better than on Wed, when I massaged the carp out of my munted calf/shin (the massage therapist did comment last week that it was getting a bit compartment syndrome-y again) and then yesterday could hardly walk on it because it was so tight & painful, but icing did seem to help.

Work is a black hole that can suck you in and never spit you out again, but I escaped because I had a date with the hairdresser, and was rewarded by hearing how she is (apparently) going to be on My Kitchen Rules - she's done the audition, and states that she intends to win the financial prize. I enquired as to how she comes to be involved with MKR, and she said they asked her - which confirms my theory that each TV station maintains a pool of wannabe reality-TV contestants and slots them in anywhere they might be suitably photogenic/abrasive.

No mention was made of her being a Greek goddess in a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I didn't like to ask...6 months is probably a long time in showbusiness. Perhaps I should get my hair cut more often?

C • reminder please? 12