Training Log Archive: Shep

yep sick.

i was going through some of my old stuff in a box my old man brought up here and found 1996 The Event Preview Guide. Awesome. In the days before the interweb!

C • Nice! 6

At the "Gardens of Stone", but a more accurate name would be Gardens of Yawn or Gardens of Termite Mounds. Boring as. Well, the first 50 mins or so were boring as, then we basically had a middle distance to finish in some nice forest with some fun, but easy, rock detail. I think number 8 was in the wrong spot, it definitely wasn't on the lowest boulder - it was further around the hill on the northern side of the small group of rocks. Didn't lose to omuch time there but. I went around to number 13 - hoping to have learned my lesson after losing time going straight on both of the deciding route choices at easter. i probably chose wrong again today too!

all good other than that, but stood around at the termite mound hidden under the circle at 5, trying to work out why there wasn't a control on it/why it wasn't on the map. I can't believe the course planner didn't break any lines or circles. what a quick easy job. how do they think they'd affect the courses if they randomly deleted features off the map? cause that's what they achieve when they don't spend a couple of minutes breaking the purple lines... how does this happen at a NOL race? what does the controller think his job is?

funny that control 217 (our number 14) was marked in a different spot on the courses using a 1:10000 map... apparently the horganisers realised and put out another 217. so if you made a mistake and went in the gully to the north of number 14, then you got a free shortcut!

PTE 5.0 (51 hours recovery!)

NSW Long Champs Hard 1 - Splits

Event: NSW Sprint Championships / NOL Sprint Relay / NSW Long Championships
 

Debacle. Got shafted by a fence not on the map about a minute in and got in a craney boo for the rest of the race, and i mistook a course number breaking an uncrossable fence as a gap i the fence. there was two controls swapped (64 where 62 should have been, and vice versa) although i had warning of that so didn't lose any time there. read Lizzy's glog for a good description of what was wrong with this race... i feel sorry for the nsw team that was iven an M10 map (with their team/leg number wirtten on the back!). debacle. maybe some organisers need to be told to keep things simple - todays race may have been ok with just a single sprint course. ie no splitting etc, boys and girls running the same course. it wouldn't have been a "proper" relay but it would have been fair.

good to see the Cockies first team take the win. even though they were turning on the controls. i heard a rumour that Nick Dent asked the organisers to leave the units off to slow down the Cockatoos.

Just checked the world ranking scores for the first day of easter... that system is ridiculous. lazydave got 836 points for finishing 10mins down on simon87 at kangaroo crossing a few weeks ago (Simon Uppill 76:25 1039 points, David Meyer 86:21 836 points) which is exactly the same as i got for beating simon87 on day 1 of easter (Lachlan Dow 32:08 840 points, David Shepherd 32:17 836 points, Simon Uppill 32:40 826 points).

obviously the ranking system doesn't revolve around simon87 but it clearly matters a whole lot more what happens further down the field than it does at the top.

C • World rankings 4

easy run around the farm we're staying on near running stream. did about 15 mins with JLA then went up Mount Ida and back to the house. awesome views and terrain. legs heavy but not too bad.

No warm down, didn't have time - needed to write some limericks.

Reverse order chasing start at the Cherry Farm. Started 2 min behind Kez and needed to defend a 45 second lead over him, and 2 min before Craney and trying to catch a 1.5 min gap to him. Ran reasonably well, I got done by the route choice again - I went straight to 2 which probably cost me 1.5 mins. Maybe if my legs had a bit more in them straight would have been a better option. I caught Kez after the first butterfly, we ran together for most of the rest, but we had different splits in the second butterfly. I lost a bit of time on the first control of the northern loop on the second butterfly, I was going over through the gap but went through the wrong gap and got stuck on the other side coming down. Came into the pivot just before Kez and was glad to have him with me to keep me honest up the tough hills in the last part of the course.

I took a minute out of Craney which was 48 second too little to get onto the podium. Very happy with the result but, if you'd offered me 4th at Easter a month ago I'd have taken it. Got Stingered today though, in fact all us Cockies did (Robbie got 2nd behind Simon, Larry 3rd, me 4th, Craney 5th), we have to forfeit our appearance fees now.

PTE 5.0 (106 hours recovery!? Good one suunto)

Day 3 1 Hard (3) - Splits