Training Log Archive: Brooner

Event: Summer Series - West Pymble
 

Summer Series finale at west Pymble, sad not to be hitting the GNW but good use of the park made it interesting enough. As usual very little time for a warm up, and this time I paid the price. Hamstring tight, pretty much from the start, and after 5km it decided it'd had enough, so I walked the rest of the route back from there.

Bloody frustrating, but completely of my own making, really need to prioritise S&C activities, particularly after a couple of big weeks. Now I just have to wait and see how bad it is, and whether I'll make next week's start line.

Easy roads into work.

Easy trails home.

6hr rogaine around Springwood with Nicole, our first together for a couple of years as I'm not a particularly good partner in the sensible pacing, staying together and letting her do some nav front given the disparity in our paces & leg lengths. So this was a test to see if we (I) could manage that "teamwork" stuff better ahead of doing the rogaining world champs and Alps OMM... hence why I got a bit of a session in the day beforehand to take some spring out of my steps.

As such I left most of the planning to her, but we nutted out what looked like a good AC route looping round to Blaxland with a train ride back to base towards the end, with plenty of options at the far end to drop stuff if necessary.



As it was, the northern stuff at the start took a little longer than expected so we switched up plans while heading down towards Martin's Lookout, thinking we wouldn't make the train, so recalibrated the return loop north instead after the killer out and back climb to Bunyan lookout.

Pretty comfortable day out for me, tougher for Nicole with her longest run since getting injured this time last year, but she pushed on well to the end (and I pushed her hard at the end) and we finished up a very surprising 4th, not too far off the leaders, and first mixed team. Also looks like we had a pretty efficient route, despite the changes, as everyone ahead of us (and quite a few behind us) covered much more ground.

Had originally intended to hit the Grose Valley but figured my legs, or at least my training, would benefit more from downhill firetrail pounding over vert chasing and stairs. Actually learning from last year's Mt Difficulty mistakes. Plus I had a terrible night's sleep so couldn't face the early start required.

Out to Hornsby instead to run some new trails around the top of the valley, then an out and back between the gates on the quarry track, and then a decent effort up the diversion to finish.

Left hr monitor strap at work, and old one has crazy high readings (max 207 after a long downhill) so no idea of effort, was fairly steady and comfortable but it was hot out.