Training Log Archive: MTBjen

Gorgeous morning. Running late again because I felt like driving to Cottesloe and back, just to look at the pretty pink clouds over the ocean. Found a sorry-looking roadie on the side of the road and took him home.

C • stray dogs 2

3 x 2km with 5min recoveries.

8.36 8.33 8.34

Felt ok tonight - was happily surprised they were so consistent.

Serious pootle to work. Rode the longer way hoping to meet John, who had felt a bit flat and taken the track pump to swim training with him. No sign of him, so I pottered on with flat tyres and STILL found a roadie drafting off me (although most of them zoomed past like i was standing still!)

Home again. Had a long conversation with a roadie who I repassed - he caught up again and said "what is the deal with that bike??" so he obviously recognised me as a Yeti rider in disguise.

John doesn't like me going out on the town when he's not home so he parked his car across the driveway and took the keys to work with him. I snuck out anyway, and rolled to Subi on my bike. When he got home he was so angry at my escape that he came and picked me up, with his guard dog in tow in case I tried anything silly.

Great fun O training from Simmo. Thanks :)
It was a bit like a treasure hunt, I would do one leg then stop and read my instructions for the next leg. Something came together today and I (relatively) spiked every control except number 18 when i ran off the map. I kept seeing Boltboi out there but it must have been a hallucination because he was moving so fast.
Then we had a long relaxing chat, and a picnic, and went shoe shopping, and chatted to a bull in a paddock, and eventually tRicky and John came back.

*stopped time 21min according to O track, so my pace wasn't completely awful!

We parked on Juffy/Cricket's lawn and i nearly went and napped on their couch while the boys rode, but luckily didn't because the eagle trail is fun fun fun.

Brilliant fun downwind dash to Joondalup

Found out why people don't do MTBO on road bikes carrying large bags and holding a map in their teeth.

Walked and jogged around the course, shouting at people and taking photos. Good fun, and great to have the event finally running smoothly enough to be able to do it!

Today I learned which way up to put the printer paper. Thank goodness, otherwise it would have been a rest day.

Last one, and overall the best one apparently. Kept over 280W for almost all of all 3 reps.

To Wil's and back. It took 40min there and 30 back, crazy sea breeze.

Checked the control sites at Minim Cove then just for fun added another 40min of those lovely Mosman Park hills.

Same again. 3x4min hard with 6min recoveries. Felt stronger today, must be all those hills on Saturday.

C • Confused White Coat Guy 2

From the car service place into work. Did another 4min effort in there somewhere - I feel like we should be increasing the workload.

Course record for the way home! I never commuted on this bike before, so i had to see what i could do (and I was kick-started when I got passed at Barrack St by a MTB!)

C • MTB dude... 1

Felt pretty tired and hungry, complained a lot on the warmup and got a stitch, so JT said I could just do 2 x 3km reps instead of 3. Yay. Only fast people turned up tonight so I was well off the back, but tried to run with good technique if a bit sluggishly.

13.10 13.01

Then Coach said, do some 500's while everyone else runs their 3rd. Jess will too. So Jess gave me 10sec head start for one rep and 5sec for the second and i just stayed ahead of her both times. Just!

1.57 (into the wind) 1.46 (with the wind)

I can call the second one a 500m PB since I have never run 500's before :)

checked the Joondalup course. 3.4km. Took me about 28min but it was dark, I had to peer at my hand-drawn circles under the occasional lights and then tiptoe through the pitch black campus, which i think slowed me down. Good practice for map memory and I hardly tripped over at all.

Happy, happy morning :-)
I had a sleep-in, read the papers, surrounded myself with shirtless footy players and even scantilier clad ironmen, nobody mentioned the Nav Dash for HOURS and I rode my bike faster than John.

C • Fire Safety 14

Great evening for a paddle. I am very, very slow. Also annoyed because i made a special extra loop to bring myself up to 80min, then remembered just now that I counted John's hammie stretching break, which doesn't really count. Now I'll have to go back after work and paddle for 4min.

Gorgeous, still day for a hills ride. Started out from Tooms' Terrible Administrative Conundrum, first with the 3 of us but then John felt like he would rather be at work on such a nice sunny day and left us at the top of ToomsYay Rd. Dalto and I are super fast when there is noone there to compare to! Felt better this time - no wind helped, we had fewer stops than before and rode a bit slower, so we were still able to hammer the last 15km back.

C • No wind? 3

3x4min efforts
Did better this time -less tired. Averaged just over 290W in the middle effort which was a massive PB and confused the guy.

C • Was that you? 7

3x4min hard with 6min warmup/cooldown/recoveries.
Kept about 53x16/17 and 170ish W. Felt harder today.

10.01 9.54 9.55

Good fun, thanks Rachel and Craig :)

Control putting-out at Guildford. Then a bit more. Then a nice extra lap when one of the controls offended someone. Then I drew 100 little red circles on maps.

C • Thanks 2

Same again.
6min easy
3 sets of 4min hard 6min easy.
This time i went harder, stayed in 53x16 and tried to keep it over 280W. Whatever that means. Felt harder than before.

Uninspired river loop on the way to the Orientshow in Maylands. The first hour or more was REALLY slow, with a stonking headwind and some really ineffective offroad short cuts and footpaths trying to avoid said headwind, but strangely no matter which way I went, Freo was always South.
Rode up a big grass hill at the end, which was probably the best bit :-)

Good fun, thanks Simmo!
I think i mispunched no 11 on the first course, but otherwise I think it was ok. Shall look forward to finding out. I think i did ok in my lonely category...

C • First in your Category! 1

First training session for the research study. Basic windtrainer stuff.

6min warmup
4 on 6 off x3

Not as hard as some of the Toomey windtrainer sets! But it is quite motivating to see how many watts I am making, it stops me from cheating. Must... keep... over... 300W.... Apparently elite track cyclists can maintain 6-700!

Sooo sleepy now.

Bugger, too short. Expect a long boring dogleg across an oval to lengthen the course for Lukas.

C • Ball and Chain 12

I left home later than ever before, despite getting up at 5 to OCAD. Got all the way down the hill and then realised I had forgotton my helmet. John must have hidden it again. So i went back. The second time I left later than ever before. Didn't bother to hurry though, who cares whether I am 15 or 20min late. Late is late. And as it turned out my first appointment was at 9.30 and they were late. Must be daylight saving that is making everything late.
I am grumpy.

C • those who are late... 2

To TTAC.

More GGS pottering - I made JT map a couple of sections which had me overwhelmed. I could almost log this as armchair nav, I learned so much about how to map better.

Bush training at Malmalling. Dalto's stupid peg game. Thankyou Dalto, btw, for all your hard work and generous time given to the betterment of my orienteering.
But it was a nasty game. I didn't want a peg. Then I did ok for one or two legs and suddenly found myself with a peg! Then I got excited and all I wanted was more pegs. But once you have a peg the game raises the bar. Pegs become harder to come by and no matter how many rocks i looked behind and how many junior girls i pushed over and sprinted past, i couldn't find any more pegs. Then I got sick of looking for pegs where there were not pegs. I went back to the finish and what did Dalto do? He laughed at me, and took my peg. I went home and took some pegs off the washing line but it just wasn't the same. Lucky i never took up smoking, I think I have an addictive streak.

Nice social ride with an eclectic bunch of people. Good fun, and i had a swim after.

Another afternoon doing some frantic last minute mapping at Guildford. It was really hot. Some bits are really doing my head in so I'm sending Toomey instead. Stupid mapping.

Event: NavDash 1 - University of Western Australia
 

I thought, and thought, but I did NOTHING loggable that day, no matter how exhausting it was. Except perhaps 40min planting bombs around UWA, but I walked most of it.

On the plus side, we had 72 entries in the nav dash (lots of newbies), which I'm very happy with. Had a few first event mistakes and John and I had to leave early, but it ran relatively smoothly thanks to the brilliant helpers. Notably Boltboi (after I promised him he wouldn't be running the SI this season) and Dangerman (who gave a great presentation and really confused the older generation of orienteers), Mum (who DNF'd because she was SURE that I wouldn't have put a control near the greenhouses, I wouldn't want to upset the plants, so she must have been in the wrong spot) and Dad (who flew in from somewhere and came straight from the airport to help out).
Thanks everyone :-)

C • Newbies 14

Bought battery for bike computer but it only measured cadence so I am still making stuff up. In another 6 weeks I will adjust the sensors.

Oh and FINALLY they put up the randomly generated karri cup results. I did come 3rd, 49th overall. Only 5min ahead of Bronwyn! If I knew that I would have ridden harder.

C • Where 8

I'm just guessing distances now. I am going to put "buy a battery for bike computer" on my urgent list, right up near "sell my car" and "alphabetise my spice rack".
Really soft spin. Good fun though, i slept really well for the first time since the karri cup and am feeling much better.

C • Could you... 6

Vague commuter sort of spin to work with John, then to UWA and home. Feel good, I am keen to start training but I've done this before and i always crash badly once the post race adrenaline wears off, so I will bludge for a bit longer.

Test run of the UWA Nav Dash course - stopping at the controls which makes it seem falsely quick.

Parents' to UWA and back.

Pottered around ECU for a couple of hours (not much has changed, yay) then had a muscle biopsy. It is part of the trial, they have to do four of them. It hurt like hell. Next time I'm going to ask the Dr to take the biopsy from the same spot he put the anaesthetic.
They'd better make me fitter, after all this.

Nice... Albany has lovely beaches. Beat the dog in a sprint finish this time.

Really annoyed, I was looking forward to running but ended up riding around looking for the stupid dog who ran away.

Nice float in Circular Pool

Raced the dog up a sand hill and lost. Even though he stopped halfway up to sniff something horrid.

Waaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Stage 1 (29km, 1h33)

I got all in a flap about start times, especially when I saw 200 people head off at 8am and about 20 in my 8.30 group - with one other girl. I'm pretty sure that only Stef and Jo started later so I figured if i could stay ahead of her i would be in 3rd. The front bunch took off at an impressive pace and she went with them. Oh well - I rode solidly and decided to keep Wally in sight, just for something to aim for. This worked ok and after about 10min we passed the other girl struggling up a hill, having gone out too hard. Wally eventually rode off. Most of the first stage I was on my own, but I was riding strongly, felt good and it was a perfect day for riding. What a lovely day, i thought. Ha, they said it would rain! I thought.
At the 24km point of the 25km stage (haha) i hadn't yet hit the Boorara single track section, which boded badly, since it is a few km long. It is a fun section though, with the added motivation of catching a few 8am wave people in there. While I was in there it was pretty dark, which turned out to be due to the heavy grey clouds rather than the trees, and the massive thunder and fork lightening started just before I finished the stage.

Stopped for 15min between stage 1/2 - while I was there the rain started bucketing down. Had some food etc and tried to leave quickly so I didn't get cold - unfortunately they were pretty slow letting us head off because their high tech timing system had melted in the rain and they had to find a dry bit of paper. All of the timing in this race seemed to be scribbled on the backs of envelopes and 3 days later there are still no results.

Stage 2 (28km, 1h31)

The second stage was brilliant fun - lots of ups and downs and fast flowing (literally :) single track with thick mud everywhere. There were heaps more people around as i started to catch more of the 7.30 and 8am waves so there was always someone to chase. I had finished stage one only 5min ahead of the other girl, so I was pretty motivated to keep pushing. It was hard, constant work, with heaps of mud between the brake pads and in the gears causing a lot of friction. Rear brakes not really working at all but a lot of people were worse off! I thought perhaps this stage would be shorter (to make up for the last one being 4km too long) but no, looks like measuring the course was too hard. There is a long excuse on the PMBC site about JC's car breaking down on Friday but surely the course was planned earlier than that? I mistook a bunch of cows for the finish too - apparently I am not the only one who did. Maybe because I was looking for the Bannister Downs Dairy?

Lunch was far too long for various reasons. I had time to wash my bike, get my bike serviced (thanks Stew!), eat lunch, chat to everyone else there one at a time, get cold, stretch, get warm again, check out the start of the next stage, get cold again.

Stage 3 (24km, 1h11)

The mass start for stage 3 was a crazy idea - 300-odd riders in a single line across the field, ride hard up a short hill then down the other side where we had to funnel almost straight into a long twisted single track section. I had a(nother) morale-boosting talk from Neil O'Leary who was my fairy godmother for the weekend. I had been thinking about staying away from the inevitable carnage but he encouraged me to be really aggressive to keep clear of the pack. Which I did - started in the best spot and rode flat out until the single track, then settled in for the slow single file grind. I was about 40 riders back (well behind Danger who was racing the Bennetts by now!) and although we had to walk a bit when it backed up it wasn't the 30min trudge that some people had. Once back on the fire trail it was fast, undulating riding for the rest of the stage. I started to get tired but got motivated by a) Danger and his rude comments, b) Wally and HIS rude comments, c) some far nicer positive comments from others and d) a bit of a tussle with Wally before I managed to (just!) ride away from him to the break. Rude comments are a bit motivating because they make me a bit angry and determined when I'm struggling, but not nearly as motivating as positive comments (I actually started to miss John during this stage- he would have said something nice, I thought, but then I thought, no he would have been so far in front that he couldn't have!). Thanks tRicky for the positive comments in the break, which cheered me right up :)

Stopped for almost 25min at this stage- I needed a really good stretch and trigger-pointed my back which had been aching horribly on all the hills in stage 3. Also energy was lacking a bit by then, but it was only 25km to go! (Well, 31km)

Stage 4 (31km, 1h45)

This was just an exercise in survival! I started the stage with Wally just after tRicky and Danger. It wasn't so wet by now. We passed Danger fairly early, then tRicky who had a flat. Eventually Wally wasn't there any more and I spent the rest of the stage thinking he was ahead somewhere, but it turned out I had passed him! Silly. Stage 4 felt long and hilly, probably because it was, although i don't think it was as hilly as stage 3. As my GPS ticked over 99.5km a marshall said "15km to go!" to me which I hoped was a joke, but we hadn't even hit the Round Tuit yet. The single track is great fun, but i was in struggle town by then. Still passed a few people - I just tried to ride smoothly and minimise my effort, but stalled any time it went up hill. The granny gear got a real workout, and on one hill i passed stew having a rest - he did an amazing job on his single speed. Crazy. After I got out of the single track i had a bit of a rush of determination and rode solidly to the end on the undulating fire trail. Noone else I knew was back yet but it is impossible with all the rest stops and different start waves to know where anyone was. I stayed ahead of that girl so may have come third but who knows if there were any others.

Boltboi had the keys and had looked pretty tired at lunch so I figured there would be a reasonable wait. Did a cool down and a heap of stretching in the meantime. I was treated at one point to the entertaining sight of a Specialised S-Works being thrown at the ground which made me laugh :) but I'm sure it will be back in favour next week.

Everyone rode well -tRicky was super fast but had some unfortunate mechanical and navigational issues. Danger had a great ride - especially stage 3 where he got Determined. Wally rode well too and it was great having someone nearby to race a bit. All good fun. Well done to everyone!

C • Rude? 3