Training Log Archive: BorisGr

What a day! Got up in the morning and caught the train to Katoomba, in the middle of the Blue Mountains. Stashed my bag in a hostel and set off on foot to explore the national park. The scenery here is spectacular! I've never seen such cliffs that just plunge down into the clouds and seem to go on forever. The run itself was very wet, as it was raining or drizzling the entire time, but that probably added to the feeling of being in a rainforest. As soon as I got away from the most famous sights, the trail was virtually deserted, and the tourist throngs were left far behind. I ran along the cliff walk, down Furber steps (of which I counted 1054 on the way back up), and along Federal Pass track up to the Runied Castle stone formation. I wanted to stop and take a break at Ruined Castle, but was harassed by two birds, who started following me around and making evil noises at me. At this time I also noticed a few leeches attached to me (gross little things - really, there is no reason for these) and decided to get going. The few hikers I met on the way back all commented on the leeches in one way or another. When I was finally back at the hostel (I was out for 4 hours total, but a lot of that was stopping to take pictures or walking the un-runnable parts), I took off my shoes to discover a leech firmly attached to my foot and two more crawling around my socks. Gross. Also, impossible to flush down the toilet, so I hope they don't get to whoever uses that bathroom next...
Anyway, besides the leeches this was just an awesome place to go and explore. For the first hour or so, virtually around every corner I was stopping to marvel at the towering mountains rising up out of the clouds, the sheer cliffs dropping off into nothingness, and the waterfalls that got noticeably fuller by the time I was running back.

C • Blue mtns 1

C • Four hours? 3

Long run from Shep's mom's place with Shep, Andy, and Prong through Royal National Park. Thought I was going to die for the first hour, then felt better. Stopping for a swim halfway through was great, felt much better after that. Awesome run, saw a wallaby, a water dragon, and a whole lot of cockatoos.

Lunsen on WorldOfO's 101 Maps to Run on Before You Die: http://orienteeringmaps.net/blog/2010/02/12/lunsen...
Absolutely worthy of inclusion on this list, one of my favorite places to orienteer.

C • Lunsen 1

An early evening run from Surry Hills. Ran down and around Centennial Park, exploring as much as I could and stopping to take pictures of the black swans and the pelicans. Gorgeous park, nice to have it just a few minutes away.

Warm-up and cool-down with Andy and Amy. Hamstring felt ok on the warm-up, as long as I didn't try to run hard.

Sydney Summer Series #19 - Vineyard Creek
After the warm-up, I decided I would try running but never pushing the pace. This actually worked out better than last week since I started at a reasonable pace that I could keep up for the entire 50 minutes without feeling totally dead like I did after 15 minutes last Wednesday. Hamstring hurt occasionally, but never so much that I contemplated stopping. Ended up getting 29/30 controls and coming in 5 minutes overtime for 540/600 points. Andy got 560. Made mistakes on 13 (going up the creek into the control instead of taking the trail around. This meant running through green and a lot of lizards and spiderwebs.) and 23, about 30 seconds each. Much smoother navigating in general, though.
Map with course: http://www.dxdeluxe.se/linnekartparmen/show_map.ph...
Map with my routes: http://www.dxdeluxe.se/linnekartparmen/show_map.ph...
Funny write-up of the event: http://www.sydneysummerseries.com.au/pg2.htm#news
Results: http://www.sydneysummerseries.com.au/200910/SSS091...

Limping around today. Will take the day off and hope to be able to jog around the Summer Series event tomorrow.

C • SSS Travel 2

Warm-up and cool-down with Andy and Peter.

Sydney Sprint Series #6
Gladesville Hospital - a nice area with a lot of tricky places and uncrossable walls, but a less-than-perfect map not to sprint standards. I started this race very badly, making poor choices to 1 and 2 and then a horrible choice to 3, getting stuck and having to run around a long stretch of green and a cliff. This cost me 1:30! Gradually got better after that, and the end of the race was pretty good technically, but the hamstring that I pulled last Wednesday was clearly re-injured by running hard and caused me lots of pain the whole way. It is really frustrating to keep getting injured like this on top of my existing and never-going-away injury. Ugh.
Even a perfect run wouldn't have put me close to Andy's awesome 14:33.
Map: http://www.dxdeluxe.se/linnekartparmen/show_map.ph...
Results: http://www.nsw.orienteering.asn.au/sprintseries/sp...