Training Log Archive: jennycas

Mentally dead today as it was nearly 1am last night before I had finished working out actual running distance on sprint courses (surely there's got to be an easier way than piece of string and doing the maths with north lines 120m apart; does any course planning software have a freehand drawing tool?).

Anyway, nice run with Fern & Zara/Callum although coming down the dilapidated/overgrown steps from the trainline to Long Gully was a tactical error. Afterwards I was grateful that Fern had saved me some dinner because it was 10pm by the time Tyson and I had finalised start draw and event information and uploaded them.

C • OCAD 18

3-Hills loop in Sheps once I'd finished at work. The hills happened a bit on autopilot because my brain is so full of everything else - when sprint champs are over I'll be able to get my life back, I mean do all the OA stuff which is overdue...

Legs felt much better than yesterday but this was all I had time for, in between real work and OSA Council meeting via Zoom - which caused a serious conflict of interest with viewing the Port Lincoln leg of the Amazing Race :(

Pears, pears everywhere. Our tree is fruiting the best it ever has, because I pruned and watered it perfectly at the right times, but I can't give a single one away because we are in the red zone of the Black Forest fruit fly outbreak and so both of our fridges are full of quarantined pears and every time I open the door another damn pear leaps out and makes a break for freedom...

Tanahmerah-Gum flat loop, anticlockwise this time, on a perfect cool morning, with Zara/Roo, Steve/Lexi, Ethan, Toby, Ben, Simon, Liv. The others didn't have to wait for the straggler tooo much; actually this was 2 min faster for me than the reverse version last May, even though that way around has less steep hills (I mean not-so-steep, rather than less of them in total). Afterwards though, I had to wait half an hour for my parents to return from their walk and was getting worried because I know they can't walk for 2 hours, but of course my phone was locked in my car for which they had my keys, and so I couldn't check on how they were going - turned out they'd found a blackberry patch, so I didn't have to share mine.

Woke up far too early, which pleased the dog but not myself, and then I remembered that the others had said they were going to parkrun at Lochiel Park, so I decided to go along. 2.5km outbound then back again along the River Torrens Linear Park path, and for some reason I thought the net uphill would be greater in the first half since it was upstream and therefore a negative split should be easy on the return leg...hahaha.
Actual splits:
5:11 - this included actually getting across the start line which took a few sec
5:16
5:32
5:17
5:00
Turnaround was at 13:13 and even though I had secretly hoped to get under 26 min, I knew I'd not be able to go 30 sec faster on the way back, because that nice hill we'd just coasted down was in my immediate future - but I did manage 10 sec faster, so that's not nothing, and at least I paced myself ok even though I am very slow these days. Nice to see a whole bunch of Arrows there including Emily & Sarah :)

C • Are they getting better? 6

Dunno where the afternoon went - on orienteering emails mostly - but I had intended to go blackberrying in Belair and finally got up there after dinner. Rode directly to the far end of the valley then worked my way back past a few disappointing patches, although I did eventually fill a lunchbox before it got dark.

Didn't have time to wash my hair afterwards and therefore suffered through a fairly average chlorine headache all day.

Went out after helping on the start as usual, so there were not many other people around, but I did twice see Zara on the crossovers and I know she runs faster than me, so I put a real effort into looking ahead for route choices that would save even a couple of seconds, and it paid off, because I somehow ended up 1 sec faster than her across the course and therefore Bridget gave us both chocolate, for having tied in women's vets over the Snap Sprint series, having won 2 races each or so she thought. It turns out that Keren was nearly a minute faster than either of us though, but she hadn't run all 4 races.