Training Log Archive: jennycas

Pretty sure Blair's the only person of my acquaintance who thinks it's actually a good idea to go swimming at 7am on a Monday, but I'd booked, and so I did it.

C • Not today he didn't 9

Woke up very stiff and unenthused but had promised to take my parents for an airing, so to Kuitpo it was, even though I knew that far too much of today would involve hunting amongst gorse thickets for root mounds...the course actually started off quite promisingly even with some route choice on legs, and in the native forest section I admired lots of wildflowers, especially the orchids. But after crossing the road into pines the course confusingly turned into a control pick, which eventually degenerated into "hunt the gorse bush between the gorse thickets". Quite a few of us were searching back & forth for a root mound which was marked as being in white but was in fact in dark green. I get it, that the map needs updating, but I don't understand why a course planner when checking sites wouldn't just decide to delete that control altogether!

After twice losing about 6 min on controls like this, I was more than a little grumpy, so didn't properly check where I crossed a track in the flat stuff and lost about another 8 minutes on the next control, which was totally my fault this time. By this time my knee was getting quite bad from jumping over all the brashings and I fairly much had to walk the remainder of the course, which included a completely redundant last control; one that we'd already been to on our course and which involved unnecessarily going up the hill again, just to run down into the finish. At this stage I was in enough pain to seriously think f*** it but didn't like the idea of having DNF against my name, not when I'd been too stubborn to give up on the bingo controls earlier.

Oh, and if 35 people have ordered water but some of them are running courses where they go to a drink control twice, then you have to put out enough water for them to be able to drink twice, even if it is at the same control both times...I was particularly annoyed to find no water left on my second time through that control, especially when I knew exactly how much water the organisers had available to them, because I'd on-sold all my leftover mini-bottles from Narrinyeri, having erred on the side of generosity last weekend!

C • Today's event 6

Pool's opened again for the summer and the council is honouring people's leftover passes from last season because it closed 2 months early - you have to book a time though, in the CV era. So I did, but should have chosen 7am, because I was starving (figuratively, not literally) this morning.

Spent all day weeding the garden waiting for the rain which never came (a sprinkle at 4pm, hardly enough to wet the washing, but I certainly don't begrudge Marree their 93 mm overnight when they only got 12.6 mm in the whole of 2019) and when I ran stiffly along Yurrebilla trail up behind Carrick Hill there was the tantalising smell of dampness in the air, but that was all. Lovely sunset views out over the city, then I had to be careful of my footing coming down the many rough steps of Waite Glen, which seemed a particularly long descent in the gathering gloom. Mind you, it seemed even further going up there with the sun on our backs at the start of the twilight rogaine 18 months ago.

Up the hill fairly directly, meandered back down with lots of stretching stops for my bad leg. (I've often thought lately that if I were limited to an hour's total for being outdoors I would squander a significant portion of it just on achieving mobility.)

C • Mobility 2

Made it to the redwoods & back with Fern & Zara/Callum, didn't actually sit down & nap along the way.

Glued my legs back on and went for a short suburban stagger before OA Board (or bored, as my spouse calls it) meeting.

Still absolutely exhausted today but my back wasn't as bad as yesterday so I went along to running anyway - did 3 x 200 on/200 off/400 on/200 off lagging behind the group then stopped for a drink & stretch after which I decided to do one more set, just so that a lesser portion of the uni loop would need to be warmdown, after which my legs fell off.

C • Bad back 2