Training Log Archive: Anvil

Legs pretty rooted after a lot of days running in a row so dusted off the bike and went for a bit of a slow spin up Old Farm Rd, along the main fire trail on Mt. Wellington and back down Pottery Rd.
Awesome day for it, so happy to not be working any more and being able to do this every day for the next 3 weeks!
Very, very slow on the hills - that's why I'm not putting the distance on. I've lost what meagre cycling form I ever had.

C • good week of training patty...... 9

Down in Kingston set by Jess. Nice course with a mix of short and long legs. Got shafted leading the pack up the hill on the 2nd leg only to have Jess turn off a super secret alleyway and leave me running up some driveway to someones house. At least almost everyone came with me.
Good to have Nicko back, and he's back to his old tricks running off up some hill missing turnoffs left, right and centre.
Bloody cold. Involuntary weeping and running nose cold.

Solid refuelment of depeleted carbs in Louis car after the tour.
As no tour points were awarded, I'll award them to the chip consumption:
Patrick: 491 - First class perfect chip locator
Louis: 489 - Scores points for extensive knowledge of chip terminology, testing techniques and subspecies. Pre and Post Flopular expert.
Nicko: 486 - Premier Mykonos expert, seems to have sampled much from the dodgy bay maree for such a young lad.
Emma: 485 - Solid performer, quietly putting away her fair share of the portion.
Ryan: 12 - Likes the extra crispy/no flavour chips. Has much to learn, but seems to be willing.
Jess, Lukey: -50 - DNS

Peg race for Camp Champs. They put me, Paul, Seb and Anthony as senior senior boys with 2 pegs per control. Realised when I started that I’d have to get the 1st peg cause the 2nd detour sucked. Seb and I got it and almost caught P & A on the 2nd. Managed to drop S on the way to 3 and was pretty confident I’d got ahead of Paul and Anthony at 4. Which I would have if the control had been there, I think I probably had enough lead at that point to stay in front for a while, but we were all back together at 5. Nailed 6 & 7 in complex rock. Must have tore my ankle tape somewhere cause I did both ankles in quick succession on the steep downhill detour from 7 and Paul and Anthony got away from me – Seb was a distant memory at that point. Just beat Anthony to the last peg at 10 and 11 (fell spectacularly both times though!) and some loose ground swallowed my leg on the way to 12 and I went down like a sack of shit on a branch. It felt bad when I went down and I hobbled back to the finish – sporting a nice sized bruise on my leg now!
Pretty happy with how I went, pretty good navigation at speed even on the hills and through the complex stuff. I’m pretty sure I would have pulled away from the other guys if not for number 4.
Good string of days in general – I’m looking forward to Dubbo!

Shadowed juniors on a windows course. Not that exciting, but an awesome day to be in the forest and running round some big rocks.

Shadowed 2 juniors on a line course through complex granite. Bit slow for my liking but it was good to really read the all the detail. One thing I noticed was how depending on when we stood above a big batch of rock it was really easy to pick up everything, but once we were in it, it all looked the same.

Bit more physical race, good though - quite a lot of gullies to cut through or run around. Forest was a lot clearer than Littlechild except around the green creeks which were pretty tough to penetrate. Really clean run to begin with, caught Seb at #4 and Topfer at #5. We stayed together through the next 4 short legs and made a 3 min mistake on 7 – I blame Seb, who was leading at the time. Bit sloppy coming out of 9 and had to cross one too many green creeks.
Got back thinking I would be well down, but it was sloppy runs all round again. Although I picked up three 2nd places over the weekend (and lots of compliments, oh you’ve really improved), it wasn’t a calibre field - even by Tas standards, no offence to the competition!

Was put as a ‘mentor’ for a group of juniors who had to put out 6 controls for another group to collect. None of them wanted me to shadow them, just to put one out a long way away to make it harder for another team! Ran out along an unmarked track for 10 min and put it on a nearby rock. Exercise turned out to be a bit of a debacle as most of the kids tried to make their controls as hard as possible and about half of them were put on the wrong feature so we ended up waiting until it was almost dark as they went back out in pairs to collect the ones they placed.

Pretty damn good course on Littlechild Creek. Aim of the day was to run steadily instead of going out hard and dying in the arse like I have been lately. However, it was such technical course there were very few sections where you could just run roughly on and I didn't feel I'd really run at the end! Stoked to have the fasted split on the long first leg, especially cause not many others picked it, opting for the easier track option instead – shame I wasted in losing 2 minutes on the 2nd leg! Accidently ran to 2 from 10 cause the line went through in on the way to 11. Made my way to 11 easily, but it was a much worse route to take so probably lost some time.
Everyone had pretty uneven runs so its hard to gauge how well I did – it would have been good to have Ryan or even Lee there to really have an idea of how well I went.