Training Log Archive: fletch

Event: Frazzle Rock Easter 2011
 

Started pretty conservatively. Left 7 in the wrong direction and had to stop mid-leg to work out what on earth I was doing. Apparently running slowly and vaguely and not in straight lines costs you time. Lost about 35 sec to about the whole field here and Steve Todkill got on my tail. Caught Graham and Will through 9-10 and picked up the intensity. A little bobble leaving 17 in the wrong direction, but pretty smooth and quick to the end.

Group of 5 Nomads propping up the tail of the field within 7 seconds of each other. I am number 4 :(

Day 1 (Prologue) Long - Splits

Things starting to look up - jogging may have been possible today. I can vacuum the house with only minor discomfort! Will see what the physio says this arvo...

Well, my final week taper plan has gone out the window. I woke up on Monday with a slightly uncomfortable back and thought I must have slept funny. It got progressively worse during the day, and I thought about what may have casued it and all I can come up with was face planting in the finish chute on Sunday. Had a little massage and nurofen which helped a little. Then I slept rather uncomfortably, but htought things were heading in the right direction - till I reached in the morning to turn off my alarm and felt like I had been stabbed in the back.
Have now been to the physio who reckonds there's some inflammation in joints in my back and where a rib sits in there too. Ibuprofen and codeine are doing stuff all. Hurts to move a lot of the time, to breathe deeply, and seizes up worse if I sit still of lie still for too long.
Bugger.
May be investigating emergency pain relief measures after Thursday physio. Any suggestions for non-drowsy total numbing?

C • Non-drowsy numbing 7

Event: Hill Park Dale
 

Good preparation for the week to come. Nowhere near perfect, but technically the best I've run for a long time. Felt the lack of run-thrus in the warm-up on the first leg, which was quite physical. Clean but very cautious through the next 2. Cautious again down the slope to 4. Correctly identified the cliff lined gully that I thought the control was in, but no flag. Dropped out the bottom of it, then back up the next one across before finding it. Turns out I was right and the flag was in the wrong spot. Cautious again on the short leg to 5, but came down just wide of it and ran straight past the correct rock without identifying it. Thought I'd cut my losses and bombed out to the fence to relocate and found it on the way back, frustratingly close to where I'd just come from.
Stayed in control well through to the 2nd last control. Really annoying to have a brain fade on such a short leg. Careful with direction out of the control, then thought I had seen the feature so just went straight at it, but was wrong. Not very methodical in the relocation till I had already been fluffing around for a minute or 2. Bugger.
Was a really physically tough course compared to what I was expecting. If the Easter courses were all set before the storm came through and the trees all fell over, we could be in for some pretty long days out there. 14.5 seemed pretty short for how I remembered this stuff, but it was really hard to get moving anywhere there was tree cover today.
No thoughts of retirement today :)

Enough of a warm-up to get the achilles lose. Didn't feel any ill effects drom last night until I tried to run uphill to the start triangle :(. Ran a lap of the paddock, then picked up an old Umuna map from the car to get my eye into map reading before I started, but Craig joined me and gave me a lap full of good advice, so I only looked at about 4 legs. Still think I'm pretty likely to warm up with a map next weekend. Just helps get the right routines to the forefront of my easily-distracted brain.

Switched up shoes for this little sprint course. I reckon I'll do all but the long day in the x-talons - for some reason I seem to get better grip without the metal dobs.
Never really switched back on for this loop and made a complete hash of a couple of early legs, then rolled my ankle very slightly near 10 and decided to walk it straight home rather than risk doing anything serious.

H3 - Splits

After a week of lethargy I finally got out to loosen the legs this evening. Not quite the session I had planned for Thursday morning, but thought I'd be better off not toasting myself before tomorrow's solid hit out.
2 x 2km @ 10km pace around Carine OPen Space. 2 min jog recovery. First one felt comfortable, second one felt disturbingly hard and significantly slower.
6:58, 6:56. Hmmm. Seeing as I was aiming at 7:12's and running in the dark, which usually seems marginally slower, maybe there was a reason the scond wasn't comfortable.
Recovered pretty quickly, so can't have been too extreme.