Training Log Archive: jennycas

Got up at 6am, did last night's dishes, a load of washing, walked dog (10 min is all he needs these days) went for swim, quick hair wash afterwards, and still had time to pick up coffee on the way to work. Of course, I was entirely ready to go home again by 9:15!

Should have done lots of other things after dinner, but this was the activity which appealed to me most: riding into the sunset (and back again).

Started out a bit stiffly after being on the start, but didn't want to slack off because I'm still trying to get a feel for sprint km rates and race paces, although obviously Roseworthy will be a lot flatter than this. I avoided stairs as much as possible tonight because my knees don't like them, but also often the longer wider route choices were smoother - admittedly I've set courses here more than once so know a few of the traps. Evalin measured actual running distance as 3.5km, and I was about 80 sec behind both her & Liv (which is a similar time behind, to what I was for the 1km knockout sprint final, so either they were jogging pretty casually tonight or I've become a sprinter over the past week). We had over 90 competitors and it was just so nice to be organising Snap Sprint Series again as part of the Arro-Gang!

Feeling a bit wrecked today after a 1am call from work - although at least I didn't have to go in - but figured sprint training at Hawthorndene Reserve would be short & sweet. We did a tiny mass start race which was more than enough for my un-aerobic lungs, then a 35-control pick. My biggest problem was getting stuck climbing over the fences around the playground/creek, which were easily cleared by a JWOC gold medallist in a single bound.

Last Thurs when Fern & I arrived at Belair for a normal run, there were others doing MapRun, and Adrian gave me a map of the Birdie loop course so I thought I'd go around it tonight since my ankles were still taped from earlier. First control was an utter scale fail; adjusting from 1:1800 to 1:5000, I had two goes at finding the right clearing and still didn't work out where I was - oops. The grazing kangaroos were giving me funny looks! Also my bearings consistently seemed to be all over the place, which is a problem I often have on this map, where the clearings are all on a diagonal. But I'm partly blaming carrying the work phone, which definitely affects my compass. How do people who are actually using their phone for MapRun get around this?

C • Phone 4

Spent far too much time last night and this morning on tweaking my sprint champs courses in advance of meeting the mapper out there this afternoon to make some small corrections/updates together. When that was done I ran around the draft W21 course, which is quite enjoyable but probably a touch too long - or else I'm a couple min slower than last year over the same course length (actually I presume it's because the courses are measured on straight line distance at this stage; a bit hard to work out exact running distance without a Garmin!).

C • Too much time 3

Driving Roseworthy to Morialta took nearly an hour and so I saw the group running off as I arrived, which gave me incentive to try a bit harder up the hill to Deep View, although of course I didn't catch them - they were already running back out of Third Falls (now trickling after yesterday's inch of rain) as I headed into there. Definitely I need to get a bit faster both up hills and down them. Today I feel as though this may be achievable - although I didn't think it yesterday, and probably won't tomorrow either.

Felt warm in the sun because of humidity but cool breeze in the shade was nice, and I saw firetailed finches, and back at the playground there were twin sunshiny babies and their placid parents :)

My car already said 34 degrees at one point when driving out to Para Hills at 7am, so it was good that these were only going to be short races. The Paddocks is a flat bit of bushland with some trails and creek channels and mostly it made sense to go fairly directly but there was still a bit of route choice. I probably didn't need to go around the culvert on the way to the last control, but I think I would have ended up in the bottom heat either way.

C • 34 degrees 6

Whoever got first to the control had the joy of waking up the unit, and Jacque was smart with the direct route to 1 but then of course we caught up to her as she punched, and then I woke up the next couple with Brigitta on my heels, then we both got confused by nonexistent tracks on the next leg and Adrian beat us to the control. I managed to get ahead of him again but Brigitta was pulling away as I ran out of lungs - it was terribly hot & dry and a few of us had coughing fits afterwards. Anyway, top 2 from this heat got to move up one for the next race.

We moved to Mawson Lakes for the next couple of heats - totally flat uni campus, but it was also about 38 degrees, and I don't really know why I went for a sprint finish against Brigitta when neither of us would be moving up a heat anyway as Gemma was ahead of us, but I was pleased with a couple of my route choices towards the end. People appreciated the esky full of frozen juice ice blocks which I had brought along!

A bit more route choice on this one would have been nice as it was fairly much a running race (the best bit being: going past the opening doors of the library and getting a blast of cool air) even in the second-lowest group, but I was able to keep going pretty well - maybe still had some endorphins from the previous race - although Nigel clearly pulled away from the rest of us towards the end.

Evalin handed out some great SA Sprint Camp prizes based on the points from the weekend's races, and then everything was packed up not long after 11am. It's good that there were still some ice blocks left, because on the way home my car claimed that it was 45 degrees (in reality, probably about 43).

I enjoyed today more than I'd thought I would, given my lack of fitness. The races were short enought to be fun but also it was just so nice to get together and socialise with orienteers, which I really haven't done much of since we all went to the Flinders Ranges in October. So now I think I could get motivated for events this year, although planning for interstate travel is still a potentially-fraught proposition.