Training Log Archive: MTBjen

Single leg intervals
3 x 4min on each leg with 6min recoveries.
Left leg first. I could average 140W on the left and about 125 on the right, but part of that is fatigue from doing the left first - it is a weird feeling having burning quads but not being out of breath. Max HR 135!

Oh yuck. I didn't want to run and probably shouldn't have. John tried to put me off by bringing the TEVA Hydrons (!) for me to run in. Ew.
Anyway I did the 5k TT in 23.55 which was nowhere near as bad as I expected, so I should stop complaining. It makes the hot shower and couch feel so much better.

C • 5k TTT 2

Tooms' Golf Course 5k TT - Splits

To parents' place.

Kings Park/UWA/river with Vera. It took me 35 min to warm up but I felt ok after that.

Home again. We had planned a longer way home but were both a bit weary - especially me, super lazy too as per normal these days. I couldn't even keep up with supreme athlete John and I was drafting. Legs are a bit tired, can't understand why, after only 3 days of a gentle reintroduction to training...

Rode from Pickering Brook with a bunch of 8 - bit of a stop-start ride especially once Saz got tired. Usual ride to Gunjin, the Dell, then rode the Scorpion trail backwards (bah), blue tag, white tag, back up Gunjin. Neil had a big stack on a flat bit of gravel and got a bit sore. Paul and I rode back the single track way instead of the triathletes' way along all the fire trail and bitumen. I rode at the absolute limit of my cornering skills for 10min keeping up with him, then had a bit of a stack and slowed down a bit. The WNM trail is heaps more fun downhill! Spent some time finding food afterwards but it all ended well.
Fun, and a great sunny day which reminds me summer is coming :-)

Ran from home to the squash courts. A bit sluggish for the first 20min but I warmed up after that and feel infinitely better than yesterday.

I won a lot of points today, for a change, but I choked a lot too so didn't win too many games.

Fun ride on a great sunny morning with John, Jacko, Dolf and Danger. I am sooo unfit, it is embarrassing. John is not himself at all, and did not smash us all like he normally would. I feel vaguely responsible for giving him the flu. Weary now. Big thanks to Cass for leaving all that food out for us in organised tupperware!

Dragged my very heavy legs to the pool and then around the terrain loop. As soon as the gradient turned even slightly uphill i couldn't even move. Great evening though and I really enjoyed the view of the ocean from the top of the hill.

For the first time in a month I a) felt like riding, b) pretended to be Lance Armstrong and c) got tired legs before my chest got tight. Perhaps I am on the way back! Looking forward to tomorrow morning :-)

C • Looking forward.... 3

I got lost on the way from work to running so I missed the warmup.
Did 3.5 short run-throughs, then ran a 2k PB, presumably because I was not all tuckered out from the warmup like usual.

2km 8.05 (4.10/3.55)

I think the second lap is my all-time runner-up PB. I ran a 3.44 once but had to have a long rest afterwards.

Then John made us do a 1km as well. I had given everything I had in the 2k so I was tired, heavy and ran like a brick with a brick tied to it.

1km 3.55

This makes no sense, it was the same speed as the previous bouncy energetic lap.

Solid ride from home to Kings Park, with a figure-8 and enough more to make up the hour.

3x laps of the grass farm

10.44 10.42 11.30

I was late and grumpy and getting tired so the third one i tried to run the ups solidly and the downs easily. Good to see Team Paddy Pallin Shotz at peak physical impressiveness tonight!

Event: WA Long Distance Champs - State Series
 

Actual distance 10.1

Ride out to the orienteering event. I did this before the orienteering race, really.

C • True 1

Event: WA Middle Distance Champs - State Series
 

I beat Fletch :-)

Warmup, drills, etc. I am tapering for my big weekend of racing, haha.

Quick run to the beach to meet John and Haggles. Another lovely morning, and still no energy to do anything more.

General pootling and commuting. What a gorgeous sunny day! And so many pretty flowers. I rode all the way down the coast with a silly smile on. I like riding my bicycle.

Warmup, cooldown. Runthroughs had to be done in waves, due to the huge number of people who came along to see John running in girly shorts.
I am vaguely upset that someone 2 feet taller than me fits so well into my shorts.
2 x laps of the grass farm

11.01
11.24

The first lap i did try a bit, but everything hurt and my lungs seem to have shrunk. So the second lap I chatted with Brian until the last hill. Had a little walk with Liza and mini-Wil, which cleverly meant I had no time for a third lap. Looking forward to getting some energy back one day.

It's all just too hard on Mondays. I don't know how people with real full-time jobs do any training at all

I had a really good trot around today, I only made one significant-ish mistake and a few little ones. Felt pretty pleased with myself until I got to the finish to find that everyone had beaten me, including the weird man in the yellow tights. John says that if I want to do better, I need to try to go faster, but then it wouldn't be so enjoyable wandering in the bush.

C • Not tights. 1

Lap of the Eagle trail with Ruth on the way home. By this time it was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for checking out the wildflowers in John Forrest despite my weary legs.

I got to Danger's place in excellent time to become an important part of the house-moving team. It was hard, tough work, and the gourmet bbq afterwards was well-earned.

Reverse river loop with Boltboi, who was super strong and motivated after Caffeinated. I was embarrassingly crap, and it was really windy. I survived to UWA, then went to visit Grandma, then my parents, and called John for a lift home up the hill!

Ran another squash court marathon. This time I really, really tried, and managed to run far enough in frantic little circles that I even beat John's Dad in one game, while he stood smiling in the middle of the court, not even raising a sweat.

Warmup/cooldown/run throughs/drills
3 sets of 6x40/20s at McGillivray

Finally a day off! I am feeling nearly human. I didn't have anything more than a flat short run in me so I did a lap of Herdsman then had a very long stretch. It felt great at the time but soon afterwards I got quite sore.

Gentle spin to Hillarys and back with CreakyJohn. We didn't get rained on but on the way back all the roads were wet so we had pretty lucky timing.

C • Creaky John 3

Grass farm loops. warm up, cooldown.
Ran two 2.2km loops chatting with Meg.
11.40 12.10
Felt surprisingly good but I wasn't going to push it with a third loop.

One of John's newbie girls heard Meg talking about the Nanga race and said, amazed: "wow! You're going to race for FOUR HOURS?? Without stopping?? Wow!!"
Then she asked what I had done on the weekend. Don't think she believed me.

C • I don't bother anymore 2

Overall, I think we did very well considering our less-than-ideal race prep.
I think we need to be more organised before the race - we had too much food and no real idea what was where. We should have all that stuff ready and packed before the briefing (ie it should have been packed before we arrived on Friday night). We could have coordinated filling camelbaks etc rather than one person refilling at each transition.
We could improve our coordination in the stupid boats, but no reason to since GSAR is in singles.
We could definitely make better use of the bike towing system, which will be more relevant in GSAR where we will a) actually be riding and b) be trying to ride hard. We need to fix the towing system so it doesn't hit the wheel.
I need to do more running. John needs to fix his foot.
I should never be allowed near a map again during a race.
Oh, and once we have been confused by a poorly mapped network of tracks, and managed to find the control completely by chance, we should not plan the next leg going back through the same track network.
Before the race, I think everyone should look over the course, because it is always hurried and it is easy for the first person to miss route choices on a first look.
We need to stay away from animals during the race.
I need to eat more while moving rather than having to make up for it in transition. And I really need to drink more.

C • Wild Party Girl 1

Event: Espresso 24hr Adventure Race
 

I feel a bit redundant writing a race report, there are already so many! I really enjoyed the race this year. It was a lot of fun and somehow felt really short- I think because there were only 6 legs, and by the time I had warmed up from the paddle (ie, at the end of the first run) we were 1/3 of the way through.

1. Paddle 14 (haha) km: they bussed us to the start in two groups. I worked pretty hard on forcing the boys onto bus one, probably really annoyingly, but it turned out to be lucky since half the boats had holes in them. tRicky and I had a rare whole boat, but we couldnt' steer it or make it go forwards very well. Our team was well matched once the right-hand side of JT+fletch's boat sank. Pretty uneventful paddle - a few logs and stuff. We managed to middle a few of them and had a bit of a swim. Wacko helped us over one log and Dolly had a really good try at helping us go backwards (I might have been a touch grumpy with him... sorry...)
I opened the box at transition only to find an odd number of shoes! Uh-oh. tRicky had a single shoe and I felt a bit responsible, since I had packed the boxes. Had a brief panic and then realised tRicky actually had three shoes! Phew. Freezing in transition, ate a lot to make up for nothing yet, got some dry stuff on and headed off back into the river, yuck.

2. Trek: yes, well. I don't have much memory of this because all I was doing was keeping up. Never saw a map. It took 40min before i could feel my feet but after that it was all ok. Fletch did a Shanley on the last hill when I was tied to him and John - ran up the hill, pulling john backwards through the carabiner until we were both strung on the end of the string like fish. After that we attached both ends to Fletch for the rest of the race.
Transition was a bit disappointing- we arrived to see Woop Woop still there but found out they had a 13min time bonus because they had waited for hteir bikes. We were pretty smooth - didn't need to stock up much since I had forgotten to eat or drink for the first two legs. I had another quick panic when I opened the crate to find no map! But it turned out we didn't need one yet.

3. Hike-a-bike 1: Wheee. It was GREAT to be riding a bike. They let me nav the first bit, which went ok until the tracks became disconnected with the map and it all turned to crap. Then they all rode away and eventually I ccaught up and gave the map to John. There was a LOT of pushing bikes in this leg. Especially towards the end. We gained a bit on Woop Woop then lost the time again. Eventually made it to the rogaine transition, still only 15min behind.

4. Rogaine: we had a plan for the rogaine which worked reasonably - just to get enough points to be ahead of ourselves. The controls were spaced far enough apart that there was no margin of error at all. Lucky we found them all, except one which had been liberated by an enthusiastic farmer. At one point the boys tried to leave me alone in a field full of glowing-eyed vampire cows, but I was not fooled and followed them over the fence.

5. Maze: bah. How silly.

6. Hike-a-bike 2: more of the same. Walking within 5 min and it never changed. This bike leg was muddier, more overgrown, dodgier tracks and more frustrating since we lost 20min to at least two other teams by avoiding the dieback area. We saw a small family of emus, and got barked at by a horrid dog, and at one point even pedalled for a while. Fletch was an absolute machine and continued to push my bike up all the hills. I had one big stack and now have a large purple bottom (even more so than usual).
Transition was slower this time. I changed into dry sock and shirt, which was great but probably unnecessary.

7. Trek (15km of bib track): I just hooked onto the back of Fletch again, and woke up on the finish line, really. Trotted along, only throwing the occasional tantrum when he tried to make me run up steep hills ("what about this one?" he would say "it isn't THAT steep!") and towed me off the top of a big log. John was getting a bit sore anyway so we pootled into town. Kept up a pretty good pace considering, although in retrospect I think I could have done better.

Slept horribly, with alternating nightmares about killing people during an adventure race and getting lost at work. Or something. Maybe it was the other way around.
Haggles and I played a game where i tied him to a rope and he pretended to be tRicky for the first 5min, then I pretended to be tRicky for the other 15min, after his burst of energy ran out.
The dog was very naughty this morning, he has obviously been spending too much time with John and is learning bad habits.

I planned a run this morning, and then with barely minutes to spare remembered I had to be somewhere all day. Bugger. This is happening too often, I need to get Tooms to teach me how to be super-organised.

I didn't plan to have a rest day. Shame.

Warmup, cooldown
set of 2x long hills
2.12 2.09
set of 2x short hills
1.17 1.18
2x single short hills at 75%ish effort
1.20 1.23

I didn't push particularly hard or even do the whole sets but it was good to be running again.