Training Log Archive: MTBjen

Event: 12 hour MTB
 

Luckily at the last minute Steph entered the race- it was no fun being the only girl last year and I'd rather come 2nd than be racing on my own. Great night for it this year- not too hot or cold, no rain but just enough dripping mist to cool you off and keep the trail firm.
I had a big bunch of smug hecklers (sorry, i meant supporters) who set themselves up in a tent taj mahal on the edge of the track with bean bags and silly amounts of food (and two types of cake, courtesy of mum who decided to stay in bed and do her support crew job remotely).
Stew raced solo (mostly on his single speed 29er, the nutter) and john/dangerman/dalto of Team Gotta Smash Jen raced as a mens' three.
Actually once the race started they were quite nice, and if i rode past during a boring bit of Top Gear they would cheer.

I was a bit more organised this year so i didn't need to stop so much, which went well.
Started out riding 4 laps straight (3 in the daylight and 1 dark)

43 43 44 49min

Happy with those ones which were quite consistent and i wasn't too far off steph then. Stu stopped after lap 2 or 3 and i caught him briefly but he rode away again. For 2 laps i rode with another solo racer who was wearing tinsel- we were evenly matched and it was good to pace each other, taking turns at the front until he fell off his bike and i discarded him :)
Stopped after lap 4 for about 4min, changed camelback, quick trigger point from john, grabbed food and rode off for another 3 laps.

49 49 50min

Still feeling good and pretty consistent - actually wished I could have done a 4th but had run out of food so i stopped for another 5min. I think i messed around too much when stopped. Lesson for next time is to have food prepackaged to stick in a pocket rather than stuff that you have to stop to eat. A few min did end up making a difference and losing me a last lap (although to be honest, towards the end i was using intentional delay tactics to avoid having to do another lap!)
Went out for another three laps.

50 51 54

Still felt ok but started doing stupid stuff. Initially riding into things on lap 8. Had a big over-the-handlebars stack, which happened so fast that i didn't even put out my hands, just landed flat on my chest. Had a few smaller stacks later on where i swerved and slid out landing on my side but nothing impressive. On lap 9 i started riding into imaginary things. Lap 10 i started having weird blackouts and forgetting where i was. Sometimes forgetting which lap i was on too. Looking forward to a stop now!
Team GSJ finally lapped me at the start of lap 8 (took their time, the slackers- not a smashing yet)
Stopped for 7min this time- this was my stupidest moment when i decided to take spare batteries with me in case i needed them- had been 6hours of dark now. Should have got john to change them there because the first set ran out about 20min later and the nerve compression in my right hand had properly set in, so when i stopped on the course it took me ages of fiddling to change them. Although, when i was stopped i gave some passer-by a drink and later i won a 6 pack of beer for my good samaritan effort! Better than winning the best gumby prize like John did ;)
Anyway. Rode on planning 2 or maybe 3 laps. Really tired now despite 2 nodoz. Not sore due to plenty of nurofen but started feeling a bit ill in lap 12 probably because of the nurofen! I did a lot of counting and realised i might have time for a 14th lap, which I was NOT keen for.

56 54

Sort of wanted to continue on a 3rd but i needed a new battery again and john asked me to stop and look at his arm. Fairly impressive wound which definitely needed stitching but he wanted to keep riding and so did i (and it was 4.15 already) so we wrapped it up and kept going.

3min break to look at john's arm and change battery again.

56

Last lap was just survival. Didn't mind it though, the end was in sight.

Great feeling to finish and even better to find out how well everyone did - team Gotta Smash Jen well, did, although i did 13 laps in 11:11 and they did 16 in about 11:45, and i don't know how much 3 boys need to beat 1 girl by to constitue a 'smashing'. I think they just beat me. Stu had a great 1st effort but looked a bit weary after! Steph was amazing and rode a lap more than me in the same time (she didn't slow down like i did).
We had a nice breaky on the waterfront then a fun adventure at rockingham hospital: managed to sneak john in to get seen to quickly but after the nurse stitched him she ran off to an emergency, john fell asleep, and i fell asleep in the car! Took me a while to wonder where he was, then i wandered in, finished the dressing etc myself (some strange looks from neighbouring patients!) and we finally made it home to bed at about 12.30.
Surprisingly not too sore except a bit stiff in the lower back and (on mon morning) my right hand is still functionless. Hope it comes back soon.

I want to put it in writing that next year i am NOT doing this and want to enter a fun team.

C • Well done on a great effort... 14

To work. Getting bored now.

Home

Easy ride to work. Got rained on. Stupid rain. But can't complain because at least my bike didn't get stolen like the one that parks next to me at work- maybe it's a good thing i never clean mine.

Pootle back home via the bike shop

To work, the absolute, definitely shortest way. I couldn't have made it any shorter unless i'd parked my bike on the other side of the building.

Cruised home. In a world first, i yelled at a driver who tried to kill me at a roundabout. He kind of shrivelled and said sorry, so then i felt bad. Must be Dangerman's road rage rubbing off on me...

Definitely into my rest week now! Made the dog's run longer by throwing the ball a lot.

Shortish UWA/river run with Vera. Reluctant to get up but it was another lovely morning and worth it.

Pretty uninspired commute to meet Vera then to work one. On the way to work two my slowly deflating back tyre reached crisis point so i had to go really slowly around corners. Stopped at the bike shop in the city for a new tyre (after 4 flats in 4 weeks i think it must be the tyre). Was sitting on the footpath outside changing it when my boss walked out of the shop. He is shopping for a $3000 timetrial bike to display in his shed. "Don't you start work in 5min Jen?" "Well so do you, and i'll change this tyre and ride there before you can walk across town". Luckily i did beat him, but i was still covered in grease so a bit late starting anyway. Stupid work, just gets in the way.

Home the long and not particularly scenic way, checking out a new sprint map. Good one too, I am very excited and even getting spat on halfway up Hale road by someone in a car did not disgruntle me. Nice tailwind for 30min then straight into the sea breeze all the way home.

Warmup/cooldown to Floreat and back.
10x1km on the service road:

1.45 1.25 1.44 1.24 1.42 1.26 1.49 1.23 1.51 1.22

A bit windy. And around rep 7 the front came through and in rep 9 it CHUCKED it down, almost felt like hail.

After it rained i crawled home and joined in the windtrainer session instead!
Just in time for 4 of 5min hard, 1min recovery.
Then:
2x(60hard 60spin 60easy)
3x(60hard 60spin)
3x1min each leg
Cooldown.
Dinner
Dinner was good.

Oh it was sooo good to sleep in. Logging this as a roadie because i would've ridden the roadie if i could've been bothered changing the tyre! Nice late morning posie into Kings Park for Dad's birthday, then even slower home again after 2 glasses of champagne and a sleep in the sun.

I didn't want to paddle today but John was super-keen and i don't like to disappoint him. Bit of an interval session for me, keeping up for as long as i could be bothered, then cruising until i could be bothered again! Good fun - lots of swans and hoons out though, don't know which is more scary.

C • Swans v hoons v waves 1

Great fun ride from Pickering Brook to Gunjin and back with John, Dalto, Martin and Andrew. Everyone rode well today - Martin on the technical stuff, John on the ups and downs, Dalto complained about being tired but out-enduranced everyone, and Andrew was really good at being upside down :)
Found a few tracks we hadn't ridden before which made almost the whole ride single track. Yeah....
Great idea of tooms's ending up at the shop instead of having to ride on afterwards!

C • Post Modern Dinner 2

Must have picked the right route because i chose the same route as some hotshot local rogaining champion. Not running as well as last week (a bit tired) but found i could still run on the sand. Perhaps all john's horrid beach training is paying off- i passed Rob J on one of the dunes! Good fun and a great turn-out. John had to use all his trickery and cleverness to eke out the maps and everyone got to run in the end. They were 5 maps short so 3 people used the A3 ones and 2 people got hand-drawn ones. When we unpacked the car later there were 5 maps left in the bag from the printers. Strange place for them, no wonder we couldn't find them.

Tired tired ride to the metro event, then control collecting after. I nearly gave up and went home halfway up Durston but glad i got there and ran in the end.

Weary this morning. Lovely day for riding though, i would have happily kept going.

Potter, potter. Ran some errands on the way to the beach.

Usual circles.

Usual stuff. We did cardio for the first time in ages, and the dune felt so much bigger than before. Maybe because it was. Heaps of fun though, great evening and a big group.

To work and almost back. Stopped at a friend's place at the bottom of the hill, and then, based on one large raindrop, called john and demanded a lift home. Some might call that soft...

Two night laps of the 12 hour track at Jarrahdale with Stu, John and Fletch. I rode them at 12 hour pace - i would like to say that this was for important race practice but really i was just tired. Stu rode really well on his weirdo single-speed 29er bike. John rode well. In the second lap. After complaining bitterly for the whole first lap about how hard it was riding at night, and stupid mtb, why can't we go swimming instead, and its night time, i want my dinner, and... The second lap he took off like a startled gazelle with Stu in hot pursuit, and we didn't see them again until the end. Fletch rode well too - gutsy for someone who's never ridden a bike before to head out off road at night ;)

The track is quite good - nice and flowy with enough single track to be fun but enough fire trail that it won't be too awful at 3am, and no huge climbs.

To work, then to the bike shop and home.

Finally, a long run that actually was! Did a lap of the amphitheatre and the limestone ridge, around the golf course, dropped the dog at home. Then Nicky, Wil and I ran around all the grass strips to the dog beach. Nicki muttered something about "only softies turn around this soon" and kept heading north, while wil and i trudged back into the wind on the soft sand (not well planned, in retrospect) and back to the pool.
Good fun. Nicki, it turns out, does actually exist, and was around back In The Day, so she will fit right in with Father Flump and his cronies :)
Hageby's new high fibre diet made the first 10min a bit slow, while he pooed and pooed and pooed.
Left ITB a bit sore after (my bottom must need more attention), but otherwise I feel ok.

On the GPS trace the pace doesn't look too bad - i think the 10min of beach running where we did about 8min/km hurt my average speed. That is my best excuse and i'm standing by it!

Kings Park/UWA with Vera. Gorgeous early morning blob.

To meet Vera then to work

Missed running and went to the physio instead. He says i need a new bike :)
He also had some useful advice about my bike, my feet, and all sorts of things. The main bit that i remember is that i ought to have a live-in exercise physiologist manipulate my bottom, regularly. And buy a new road bike.

C • hmmn. 15

I don't think it counts as a rest day if there was no reason to have one except for laziness. Feeling a bit frazzled so i'm ocadding instead.

Rode to Hillarys to watch John race. It was pretty exciting and he was very fast - and very entertaining to hear the commentators heckling him in transition. I won big points in the triathlon girlfriend stakes, by being the first to leave all the vantage points while they were all still waiting for "gary, who's had, you know, groin problems, which is why he's so fat and can't run, but he got new carbon fibre aero bars which the expensive physio says will make ALL the difference"... Trouble with John being fast is that the cheering bit was over very soon but the wait until the end of presos took HOURS. "and the fourth fastest bike split for a female 14y'o on the short course on a red bike goes to...." stupid triathlon. After a sleep in the sun i didn't feel like 15km back into a head wind so i got a lift.

From Sophie's power station to ascot and back. Unsure of the time- we were out for 75min but i'm subtracting a minute for every time we had to wait for fletch to climb back onto his boat. After a while it stopped being funny, so john threw himself into the water too, to make fletch feel better. It made me feel better anyway :)

Left the flumpcycle in the shed today and went riding with boltboi. Good fun apart from the howling easterly (although i liked it on the way home!). Did a bonus lap from UWA to the narrows and back, because i didn't find dalto the first time. Turns out he was hidden cunningly in a tree. Silly me. Rode around the river to Mosman park then to freo, etc, mt henry and home. Dalto coped very well with my frustrated venting but not so well with my girly directions (where i indicate left, shout "straight!!" and then suddenly turn right in front of him).
Had a very, very near death experience at the lights on the boulevard, where some idiot female driver (typical, shouldn't let chicks drive cars...) waited to turn right until i was IN the intersection, then suddenly pulled out and turned in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and veered right, missing the back of her car by inches. Silly me. I had assumed that because she was sitting there stationary that she had seen me.
Just so i don't sound like tRicky, I really enjoyed riding today! Legs feeling a lot better. Only on the last hill i wished i'd taken food with me.

C • Car drivers are tricky bast... 3

A bit of mapping, and a bit of a play, perhaps

Ran quite well but made a ridiculous series of route choices! I blame the tricksy course setter and the tricksy course. Not my own nav, of course. Hopefully i've got my head around metro now. Beat simmo by half a sec, and wil by about 4sec :) (they both had semioptimal routes as well). Finished 2nd girl after vanessa.

C • metro series 40

I feel cheerful today, almost like one day i'll want to do something other than commute to work and back.
Commuted to work.

C • Cheerful 4

Plod plod, to feed the fat cat then to the beach

Beach session - warmup, lots of little laps

beach session: usual stuff. Felt crappy at the start and gradually got better. Hard not to feel good on such a gorgeous warm, still evening. Gotta love (the other end of) daylight saving :)
John was too snotty to join in, but fortunately also too snotty to really feel like tormenting us. Besides, he found a small child to torment instead. Made the kid cry at least three times, once by pushing him over. Then taught him to swallow large mouthfuls of sand! I'm sure this is an important lesson in life...

Running late but there were lots of roadies to motivate me :)

Home again

Feeling ok today, just a bit mucussy still perhaps.

More roadie games with Old Man Tooms. Sigh... :)

ITB/quads/glutes. I should start logging this stuff again so that i actually do it. After all it worked so well last time!

Another lovely sleep in. Feeling a lot better so i took the dog for a run around Hale.

Since i was feeling a bit better and had a random morning off i rode the long way to work. Not feeling better any more. AND it was the slowest ride in the whole world. Stupid cold.

C • Slowest 10

Home via Floreat where i am starving a friend's cat for a week. Feeding, I mean.

Jarrahdale. 1 lap of the new 12h track, which is ok but quite fire traily, then another loop of all the fun bits. With Vera's friend Merle, who is quite a newby but rides well (although is not yet very fit). Had a nice sleep in this morning, at last! Still coughing but feeling much much better this arvo. As we started riding Merle said "do you ever MTB alone?" and i felt a bit soft but told her "oh, sometimes, but its less fun because of the risk of breaking a leg or being bitten by a snake if noone is there to help you." 1km into the ride we rode straight past a 1.5m brown snake on the track. Hmm.

Margaret River. John and i went for an explore, which was quite fun and a nice gentle ride. But i was keen to know where the good trails were, so when we ran into some locals i asked if we could tag along. Then i remembered how crap i was feeling, but it was too late and as a girl i had to keep up with them so as not to get condescended to. It hurt, but was worth the effort: the trails were great, and John (who laughs at me) made such an effort to keep up with the guy at the front that i think his MTBing has probably improved. At the end i think i impressed everyone by falling over on a flat piece of gravel.

Horribly ill this morning and full of mucus. Perhaps this is why i have been feeling so crap all week. Probably a good thing since we spent the day driving and then at a wedding - at least i wasn't wishing i could be out riding.

Left even later still, so this time hammered the short route. Still arrived 3min early so I haven't finished pushing the envelope yet.

Went the short way but it was no faster than the long way this morning!

Home

And back to work. I left late, thinking i'd go the short way. Then forgot to go the short way and decided i had to ride fast instead. Passed a heap of roadies and people in fluoro vests on hybrids. Had a great run of lights and made it to work 10min earlier than yesterday, when i went the short way.

Stupid head wind

Very slow one with Wil and the dog. Wil still tired from the Anaconda. I'm still tired from who knows what. Legs just not there. Haggles tried to run fast but after a while realised John wasn't there and resigned himself to trudging.

A bit unenthused this morning so i left late and rode the short way.

Home again. Another head wind

I did mean to do something today. Not at all physically tired from the weekend's efforts, just a bit grotty and unenergetic.
On the plus side, the yeti is once again 15% cleaner than when i bought it - not a trace of dieback.

Event: Anaconda Adventure Race
 

After all my stressing it was a perfect paddling day- no swell, lovely and sunny and only a very slight head wind. Jess swam well and i headed off in the first 1/3 of the field. Ran the boat over the huge wide sandbank and through the weeds, then around the buoy and it was easy after that. Got passed by a few fast fast people and passed a stack of people on plastics. Pretty average paddle, probably due to doing no training at all :)
I tried to pass as many girls as i could, since we were a girls' team.
But mostly just enjoyed the view.
It was pretty impressive at the paddle start, with a 500m stretch of beach covered in skis! A long way for some of the swimmers to run though.
It was warm, and i hadn't taken anything to drink with me (which would have been fine if i had drunk anything at all in the 4h before race start!). Felt all funny after i'd waved off Jess. But had a couple of hours to recharge.
I think about 24th girl (but they keep changing the results)

Awesome fun bike course, especially this year without having done the run first! I was in transition for ages - wanted to see John come through but Jess and I were a long way behind him. John looked amazingly fresh and cheerful, and only a few min behind ben and bish, which was good to see. He was well up in the field and looked like he would ride well. Tricky wasn't far behind, and now i can understand why he keeps racing - it is the pure unadulterated joy that he gets out of it. Haha. I was scared off by his grumpiness and hid in the bushes for a while, but then came out again when Jess arrived.
Pretty frustrating riding in parts - i definitely wasn't at my best, just crampy and a bit dehydrated. But was riding ok- the farmland bits are hard work but i was passing people most of the time. In the single track i wasn't able to push much because it takes 1-200m to pass each person, and even longer for the rude ones. Had a few good runs though where i could ride hard. Passed people through the whole course and had a strong finish but a slow transition trying confusedly to find Jess again (not her fault! I was looking wrong).
Finished 3rd girl, after Jo Bennett and Christie Sym (not too unhappy about that - they are both far stronger than me, and even without my hold-ups in the single track i wouldn't have gained 4min on Christie)

Jess and I were both hoping to cruise the team run but when we came out of transition the team 100m ahead were all girls! So we had to push to catch them, then stayed in front. It felt sooo much further than 1.8km! But there were heaps of people cheering and it was over pretty fast.

We finished in 5h17, 5th (maybe 4th? they keep changing) girl team out of 27 but the 1st four teams were all teams of 4. We are very satisfied especially given lack of swim/paddle training that we can do much better next time!

John did soooo well, after all his down-playing of his talents. Finished 7th in the open men (out of about 23,000) and beat all of his triathlete "no we're really adventure racers" friends, haha. I am very proud :)
Wil finished well too, although he looked a bit more vague and a bit less happy than John afterwards. Tricky ran and rode really well, and later even smiled a bit. All the work teams finished, with varying success. Big smiles all round.

Wandered around Dunsborough and did the last bit of the Anaconda course through Meelup. Good fun. Finally looking forward to the race a bit after a good sleep-in. Still tired and achy and grotty though. I think a few weeks of just biking and then a rest after the 12h will be nice.