Training Log Archive: Craney

Event: Eureka Challenge, SILVA NOLs
 

University of Ballarat - 2nd place, 9secs behind Oscar McNulty (17 years-old, more on him later). A reasonably straightforward sprint, but enough going on to require constant map contact and 3 or 4 decent long route choice legs. I had a pretty good run - lost touch a couple of times, but felt good in the legs and flowed well. Couldn't really figure where I'd lost the 9secs at the finish, but looking at the splits I was 11secs down to Oscar at #1, so my wide left route was probably wrong. It also looks like I may have lost tiny handfuls of seconds on some of my other routes. So, happy enough with that - haven't done much speed stuff yet and I felt good. Would be nice to have Oscar's speed, I wouldn't want to be up against him in a sprint finish...

Surface Hill - 3rd place, 11secs behind Simon, 6secs behind Shep (at the time I thought that this was tight racing). Quality goldmining terrain - a bit like the deciduous, mine-workingy bits of the Forest of Dean or Leith Hill, so certainly not alien to me.

Did a decent warm-up to shake off the morning race and rocked up at the start to find out that they'd cocked the startlist up and I wasn't off for another 40mins. Went and sat down for a bit, and then had to do another warm-up! Slightly narked, but not quite in boo status. Anyway, set off quite hard on the long leg to #1 but got a bit unsure in the cicle - lots of broken ground and no obvious dot knoll. So slightly unconfident going through the next 3 really short legs, and didn't get much to match up losing a total of 30-40secs on these, so almost a minute down at this stage. Then it got really fast and open for a couple of km and I dug in and got some decent splits. Coped ok with the next technical section, dug in on the next short fast section, smooth enough through the final technical section and finally hit the lead at #18 when Shep made a mistake. It only lasted to the penultimate control where I binned 20secs and let both Simon and Shep through - didn't have a clear attackpoint and hit the lake behind it.

Anyway, a good race - didn't lose much over 1min, but pretty gutted to throw it away at the death. It's all well and good winning easy splits by a couple of seconds in a race like this, but it all comes down to smoothness and consistency on the tricky legs. A great, fast middle race.

2 warm-ups and 1 warm-down.

M Open Elite - Splits

Middle DistanceM Open Elite - Splits

Work, then flying to Melbourne and driving to Ballarat for the first NOLs of the season.

Cruise on the tarmac the lake to Yarralumla and back through Deakin and Forrest. Found a public loo in Deakin so need for a wildy :o)

Ran the twilight o-race on Ainslie that I missed in December - it was fun. I wasn't picking great lines through the terrain but felt ok physically. Bumped into Lizzie near the end and stopped for a quick chinwag.

Pretty standard run through Griffith onto Red Hill and back. A few aches but felt alright in general. Got fairly soaked for the 2nd half of the run.

C • space 3

7x3mins (1min recovery) on undulating fire trails around Red Hill. Quite enjoyed splashing through the puddles - reminded me of Rivelin a bit. Pushed hard and felt like I knocked some of the staleness out of my legs - disappointed to fall 20m short of 1km on the last couple, which were net downhill.

Long run from Frost Hollow west along the edges of the nature reserves, then back over the Pinnacle, Mt Painter, Aranda and Black Mountain. Quite a hilly run and, despite the greyness and low-20s temperature, got reasonably warm and even went topless for a short section (very humid). Felt a bit stale still, but kept a decent tempo going ok. Saw a big echidna at the underpass into Blackie and stopped to watch him for a while. Also found a couple of lost lads with a black and white map looking for a checkpoint of some kind on the circumcision path - pointed them in the right direction, then as I ran off had a think about how they will never know how lucky they were to ask me for directions.

C • good to see.. 2