Training Log Archive: capt'n smythie

Finally got around to doing my first mtb race. The old giant had been sitting in the garage since Feb incased in the mud from the Summer Survival, so I spent a few hours on Saturday trying to spruce it up for the race. Came up alright, but wasn't too good on some of the shifting, and the chain was jumping rings a lot...

Was in a team with Lou dog, who started for us. Unfortuantely he got stuck near the back of the pack at the start and had a pretty slow first lap which put us about 6 mins back on Timmy and Kenif. The field still hadn't spread out that much on my first lap, and had the painful task of overtaking about a dozen people on a 97% single track loop. That added with learning the course and getting a few sticks stuck made for a fairly slow first lap, but in the end we didn't lose any more time to Timmy and Kenif.

However after Kenif and Louis' 2nd lap the race was pretty much sorted... think Kenif put another 6 mins or so into us which pretty much ended any chance we had. When I went out for my second lap the track was much clearer and started to get into it. Third lap was much the same, and I was starting to get a bit of technique back after not being on the bike for months.

Thought we'd get onto our 9th lap before the 4 hour limit was up, but Louis hit the wall big time on his 4th lap so I went out on our 8th lap hoping we wouldn't get lapped by Kenif on their 9th lap. Wasn't even close in the end tho... felt the best on the last lap, although by this stage my bike wasn't sounding and going too good at all! Was an awesome track and day tho, worth the 3 hour drive up to Devonport. Definately will have to make time for them more often. Bring on the Kellevie 24hour race next year!

Laps (approx 9km each)
29:22 (167/197)
28:06 (165/178)
28:00 (166/180)
27:40 (-)

HR wasn't accurate I dont think... and the GPS froze a few minutes from the end so didn't get the last lap data. The old garmin came back to life after a bit of love tho.

Ride with Emma in the arvo. Went down to Tranmere and back. Nothing of real interest other than Emma's nice stack.

Engi v Law footy game. Spent most of the first half up forward (when we were winning)... then spend half the second half down back. Was even at half time, and ended up losing by 60 points. Although law did have 22 players on the field during the last quarter. First half was good fun anyway.

No time

Was up early taking Emma to work and was woken up with an awesome latte from Kafe Kara, so decided to make the most of it and train in the morning. Wish I could motivate myself to do this more often, as it is much nicer than at 5:30 when it's getting cold and dark.

Headed from Uni up Mt Nelson bends (another PP themed run) trying to keep a reasonable pace without pushing too hard and then a little loop round Hobart College, and back down the tracks, Mt Nelson stairs and through Lambert Park to finish.

C • qld 2

Signal Station. 1.5km + 115m

6:54 (163/173)
6:56 (167/176)
7:06 (167/174)

Solid hills reps from the fire trial to the Signal Station. Didn't push 100% since it was the first real hills session for a while and wanted to familiarise myself with this session, as I think it will be a pretty good one to do in preparation for Point to Pinacle (if I ever get in good enough shape for it).
Didn't feel too bad doing them, but certainly haven't got that good feeling back in my running yet, most likely cause I haven't done many sessions like this.
Active recoveries back down between reps (~9 mins) and short warm up and cool down before and after.

Easy run from home around Acton, the usual loop. Legs were dead and heavy from yesterday (no cool down), and hadn't eaten much all day so was in a bit of a daze for most of it. Picked up during the last 10 minutes tho and felt pretty good.

Road bike leg of the Winter Challenge.

1:05:50, -5 mins from last years time.

Didnt warm up for the race which was mistake number 1 (too hard to get my bike out of transition and get out on the road etc). However started fairly well... tried to keep the pace fairly conservative on the way out, which meant not quite keeping the pace up over the rolling lumps in the road along the river. Hit the climb hard and tried to push myself as I knew I could recover on the descent after. Climbed well, but in the end actually think I lost a considerable amount of time on the descent. Then gave it my all on the way back. Legs always felt worse than they actually were, probably from the lack of riding, especially this sort.

My goal was to at least get under 65 mins, and get as close to the hour as possible. Bit disappointed I didn't quite get there, but I geuss considering the lack of preparation and riding in general I can't be too unhappy. The fastest guys did around 56 mins again this year, so slowly edging closer.

Emma, Timmy and Rosie all put in bloody good legs too to get us 10th in the 4 person mixed category overall which wasn't too bad an effort. Much better than we were expecting anyway. Go Apple Power!

C • 5 mins up 6

Slept in and too busy doing other things. Took over 2 hours to get the bloody bike ready for tomorrow. Hope I never get a flat out riding... it's an absolute bitch to change.

Went down the Huon to spin round the roadie course for the Winter Challenge. Bryony and Louis came down as well, so the pace was pretty cruisy for most of it. Once we reached the turnoff, Timmy and I made an effort up the climb and down into Geeveston, then doubled back till we picked them up again. Lifted the pace a bit over the last few kms as well. Pretty nice place to ride, just undulating road down the river. Pretty nice weather today for it as well, until the sun disappeared behind the hills. Should be ready for Sunday.
Got the bike out at home to discover a front flat (to go with Louis' flat he got in the car park at the end). Little weasely piece of glass had got in. Might be a few flats on the weekend then since that's the area they are using for transition.

C • Call me 4

Airport loop without the Lauderdale loop at the start. First half was awesome... nice weather, no wind, felt good.. then after turning onto the Tasman Highway the winds picked up, until the point where it was a massive headwind. The ride along Acton Rd really wasn't enjoyable... big winds, bit of rain and bloody cold. At least I got home before the downpour.

Mixed. Preliminary final. 4-9 against Dronks. Already had two of our girls out before the game with injuries... and had Damo and Emma on the field with sprained ankles that couldn't really do much, and Katie feeling the effects of a cold. THEN Louis went down in the first half with an ankle as well! So we were a pretty sore sight for most of the game.
Considering all that, I think we played a pretty awesome game. I thought going into it that even with a full team we prob would have lost, but considering how we played with only 3 fit people, I reckon we coulda given them a real run for their money. Just didn't have enough fresh or fit people to keep up in defence, and they got nearly all their tries from rucking fast and going straight through us. Still pretty good end to the season. Interesting what'll happen in summer.

Cruisy run from home... mostly in the dark. At least I was able to start running after 5:30 and still have some reasonable light for the first half. Was a nice temperature for running once I got going too.
Usual paddocks - lower single - acton rd - ditch - creek loop. Felt alright.

Mens Prelim Final. Lost 6-2. We knew that third at the end of the season was probably our spot, but with an understrength team (only 6 showed up) we put a pretty decent effort in. Bit strange but we didn't really have the legs in the first half, and let a few breakaway tries in... but started to toughen up in the second and played a 2-2 second half. Would have been an interesting game if we had a sub.

C • Hmmmm interesting. I was th... 3

State League 3 and Northern Classic at Five Logs (1:32:00, 15.72km)

Starting feelin a bit better this weekend, so wasn't gotta get totally wrecked by running today. In the end the cold didn't have much of an effect while running.

Thought it would be a worthwhile drive up to Launie to run on a map I hadn't been on before, especially since it was remapped. Found it a very hard map to try and read... with a load of fine point features picked out and mapped, while 50% of the other point features weren't mapped... The mapping of things like thickets and log piles/root mounds was also baffling.. Seemed like things were just mapped when there was a need for another feature to put a control on. Must suck to be an orienteer in Launceston. But anyway, whinge over.

The race was pretty pathetic on my part... possibly slightly better than the last race for most of it... but had a couple of 4-5 min errors, the type which I haven't done for a long time. Also several other 1-2 min mistakes. I would like to blame them all on the strange mapping... but a few of them I think even if the route was taped I would still have stuffed up. Really haven't got the technique or legs for it at the moment... Also lose motivation really quickly when it starts going wrong. Oh well... Least it was a decent training session.

Also had a couple of hr spikes, which was very unexpected considering my training load at the moment. Although I was sick last time when it happened.. It occured during each of my 4-5 min errors... while I was either standing/walking around in the bush like a gumby. So both times it had time to settle down after 20-30 seconds before I had found the control.

Good to start the training again tomorrow I think.

Mixed semi-final. Won 5-4. Didn't play as well as we did last week against them... but still managed to do enough to scrape through. Our attack certainly wasn't pretty at times, but put a few good passes through to get tries. Defence was also a bit off, but managed to cope most of the time. But we managed to do a pretty good job considering half the team was sick or injured and we were one girl sub down.

Not much to look forward to next week tho. I think we'll be getting a thrashing.

Typical.. always get sick at the worst times.

Mens. Semi-finals. Played Pirates (i.e. dickheads) again, this time with a sub. Played about 100 times better than last week and were much better during the first half (apart from the first 5 mins) and went into half time 2-1 up. Dominated the first 10 mins of the second and pushed out to a 3-1 lead and unfortunaltey wasted a few other chances... but with about 10 mins to go the ref told the teams that we were penalised 1 for having two identical numbers on... which seemed to pick up the dickheads' motivation and we started to struggle and finally let a try through to tie it up 3-3. Dickheads kept pushing hard and we were starting to tire pretty badly... but managed to intercept a pass to the length of the field for an american style touchdown! If I only I had a helmet on so I could bang heads with my teammates afterwards... hmm....
But anyway, turned out the umpire was blind and we didn't have duplicate numbers so won 4-2 in the end. Silly umpire. Good to give them a beating this week after one of the dickheads was the most unsporting cunt last week. Now get to look forward to getting thrashed next week :)

C • touch 5

Emma dragged me down to Seven Mile for a run... and wanted to run for far too long for my liking... but thought I better do it.

Plan was to run out for 6km and turnaround while Emma did 5km. Did the first km out with Emma warming up a bit then tried to pick the pace up. Felt like absolute crap going out... eggs and bacon for breakfast and the zeps toasted panini for lunch certainly weren't sitting well. The disguised patches of half soft sand were starting to annoy me too.. not to mention the quite significant slope of the beach that meant my left leg was taking a lot more load. After what felt like an eternity I finally hit 6km and turned around.
Immediately I felt like a champion.. legs felt fresh, stomach felt good, had heaps of energy and my legs started motoring like they haven't done for a long time. Managed to comfortably sit at 3:50 - 4 min/kms on the way back.
Was pretty pleased after to get a decent run in.

Bit of a cool down afterwards.

Up at Launnie for the weekend to watch the Lions get absolutely smashed in the last quarter by the bogan Hawks.

First box ticked. Many more to go.

Was more of a struggle than I would have liked.... but my pace and running was pretty good, it just felt crap. Higher heartrate shows that. Legs dont really have any running power at the moment, so will take a bit of work. Hardest part is done tho, starting the proper training again.

C • First one's always the hardest 3

Cruise with Emma from home down to Seven Mile, out to the Pittwater turnoff and back. Awesome day for a ride, so was quite enjoyable.
Not looking forward to the task of trying to remember the last 2 or so weeks or training to log on attackpoint :(

Mixed. Won 7-4. Last game before finals, was a bit of a dead rubber cause we will play phantoms again next week in first week of the finals anyway. We played our best touch yet tho, which is a good sign going into finals. Will just have to see if we can keep it up and repeat it again next week to knock Phantoms out.

Left training till too late, so just eneded up going for a run in the dark with Emma and Diesel. Diesel's a good runner.

C • Are you 2

Mens. Lots 2-1. Awful game... we only had 6 (and Tobyless) and they were just crap. Gonna be an interesting game next week... play them again in finals. Hopefully we can get it together then, cause it would be an easy win.

Last Park O at Risdon. Can't remember the exact details and forgot to wear my gps... so not much to go by. But was an awesome course... couple of small mistakes and struggled up the hills... but overall not too bad considering.

Cruisey ride with Emma, Timmy, Louis and Bryony from the Cenotaph out to Chiggaville and back again. Nearly had a nasty accident while trying to take a piss in the bushes that would mean having to ride on only one side of the handlebars for the remainer if I didn't want wet hands... Was nice day for it.

Hungover

Not much time