Training Log Archive: Lizzie

through the saddle along bruce and oconnor ridges til i hit the road. couldnt be bothered finding a way across so turned around and headed back on other side of the ridge. zigzagged around on tracks on bruce and eventually ended up back down by the campsite. back home round little black.
no energy in the legs! not surprising as id only had pancakes for breakfast (so really just a cup of flour, milk and an egg!) felt ridiculously slow and pathetic

C • yeh, I reckon! I wouldnt re... 3

a/w with students. that's it. im buying new boots.

C • NO 4

pretty unmotivated run up the back of gardens, round circumcision and back through the saddle. Sneaky feeling i'm coming down with something, that ontop of a crappy sleep last night meant not much work got done today either. perhaps i'll make up for it with learning italian tonight.

ankle was a bit niggly as you'd expect after the weekend

I am so amazingly tired! And yet It's from yesterdays ridiculous travel timetable, and walking home from the bus stop with a full pack, rather than from the weekend!

Nationals anlaysis coming when I'm awake enough. Procrastinated this morning looking at route gadget and splits etc. however decided to stop when I saw other people's nice clean routes to 14 in the middle. Apparently I'm still storing quite a bit of rage about that control inside me...

easy run on little black with the headlamp. had that nice fast feeling in the darkness going on after a while.
played spotlight with rabbits on the way back, but my light was too dim to really stun them. need to recharge batteries i think. hopefully i remember before they die on me half way through a run. (reminded of sarah last year who would turn up at our weekly runs only to realise that she meant to charge her batteries since last week. this went on for atleast 2months worth of potlucks before she actually remembered to recharge)

running first leg for the wgtn 2nd team. kicked out of the first team by my own mother! :P
thanks to the silly single file taped route to the start line I arrived at the back of the pack with 10s to start, sure people missed the start. don't know why they didnt put it back just a minute? started off at a frantic pace with the boys zooming out infront. caught some of them back up again when they all overshot 3 though. Just kept at my own pace and found a decent group around me. glad i had them through the butterfly loops as I was struggling with the change from hilly tough slog 1:15000 for the long to open fast 1:10000 for the relay! kept pretty clean through the spectator and only real time loss was on the 2nd to last when Tim F had the short split. others all followed him but i knew i had something different. didnt help me find it though and i was a minute behind him in the end!
only 7mins off the frontrunners though which i'll take (might have been 9 off karl actually). Team eventually came in 11th. and penny made me feel slightly better bout sats mistake with her comical error :)

big ups for wgtn first team and in particular nick, carrying us to 4th. not a bad follow up to last year! considering we had mum racing against the likes of Angela and Tim on the 2nd leg!

http://www.routechoice.co.nz/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti...

tried my best to put yesterday's race out of my head, which was a bit hard when everyone seemed to be asking me about it!
Just seemed to be one of those days where everything went my way; people popped out of controls just as i got to the circle, and i found gaps in the jungle when i could just have easily got stuck.

1. lost a bit of time getting confused by all the large fallen trees in what should have been open forest. then realised i was being silly as i knew exactly where i was.
2. was a bit surprised at just how steep the hillside with the control on it was! caught tessa up in the circle and she led me into the control.
3. got a bit caught with vines and ongaonga on the way in but fine once id found my way around them. must have looked gammy running across the farm land as i kept going over on the rough stuff!
4. decided to push my luck and go straight whereas a lot of others went around the native bush i think. was v.careful to keep my direction through the bush (had MAP + DIRN written on my hand, just knowing it was there helped!). still hit the wrong hill on exiting the bush, losing atleast 20s. but the correct hill was obvious from there (it was covered in rock).
5. v. hard to read the centre of the circle, so i checked out all the reentrants on the side of the hill before checking the map and realising it was in a tiny one on top of the hill (of course)
6. was this in the right place?! just took my exit dirn off the hill, and just as i was about to slow down and read into the technical circle (which was virtually illegible) i looked up and saw the control! seemed to be on a track rather than a small rocky hill?
7. slow and careful back through the native bush. tried to pick up sarah on the way but she decided she'd rather spend more time looking than follow me into it. weird :P
8. long leg. took it careful down the hill with my ankle. spotted penny towards end of the leg entering the trees. very careful (possibly too) with entry point into valley. easy control in the end.
9,10,11. up the valley. so slow. tried to go over a cliff by accident. made use of the fences on the map to 11.
12. out of the valley and into beautiful clean native bush.
13. spectator. got caught on the barbed wire fence. nice new deep cut on my knee.
14. contoured round. spotted penny again. caught up georgia who led me into the control which was good as i wasnt 100% on our entry point to the trees. Passed Penny as she disappeared lower down in the trees.
15. didn't see the freaking steep bank on my map til i hit it. prob just as well as it was bit demotivating. caught P and katie in the circle as they hit it too high. took a good break at top of the bank to make sure my dirn was right so got the control fine.
16. fine, hit a bit high but knew i was doing it.
17. confused in the circle with diff reentrants. was so sure i had the right one but there seemed to be an extra one?
18. followed Piret :)
19. slogged up the hill, then got stuck trying to go down what was an earthbank on the map but 3x the size in real life! Piret managed to get down it. i decided i didnt feel like breaking aleg, so climber back up and around, losing a good 20s atleast. caught her again and we both missed the control. did a nice faceplant too :)
20. boosted it up through the trees, struggled to read the contours around the control, but figured it would be up the hill (as usual)
21. too tired, went down the stream rather than original plan of the track. which meant hitting it far too low. stupid. Piret caught me up again. can't get away from her!
22. up and over seemingly endless spurs! and then overshot the tiny little spur the control was on. even mum noticed i spent a while finding the last control. thanks mum.

all in all pretty pleased. almost makes up for the middle. almost.

Course 2 - Splits

grrr
http://www.routechoice.co.nz/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti...

eerily similar to last years middle: early mistakes, catchup through the middle stages then throw it all away on the 3rd to last control (but much more spectacularly this year)

rushed at the start as i thought the clock was call up time not race time. no excuse though.
- headed down wrong reentrant to #1. one of those times where i knew i was wrong as i was doing it but then convinced myself (little rock on right, large cliff left, distinctive tree behind) lost close to a minute. v. annoyed with myself as right from the start triangle i knew what i needed to do, but still got sucked in.
-#2 very hesitant. should have used the fences being on the map to realise it was right down the bottom. split is fast though.
- #3 another 30-40s gone. didnt read circle closely enough and searched around every single rock in the circle (and out) before glancing at map and realising my mistake.
- #4 atlast a clean control.
-#5 happy enough with my route choice, but staying high and going along the spur would have been faster. noone in W21E did it though!
- #6 lots of tracking helped
- #7 running with dennis de monchy then went other side of final spur from him, 50/50 though
- #8 good, #9 good, didnt get pulled down by the mens elites going to their diff control (1 of only 2 different in entire first 11 controls-pretty poor for nats if you ask me). almost put my foot down a marijuana plot. lucky it wasnt booby trapped!
-#10 contoured around and hit wrong cliffs. looking now its obvious i hadnt dropped enough. 15s gone
- #11 good, #12 fine but one hell of a hill to get up! overtook sarah here and caught yvette. #13 good too again, bitch of a climb into it! Looking at splits, by this point i'd made up for my earlier mistakes and was 8s behind Penny. Win there for the taking.
- ...but the wheels fell off. Up the hill out of 13, through the gate, past the rock. Then the plan was to continue up through the 2nd saddle and contour into the control. not the best route but would have done me fine. instead i got pulled through the lower saddle by some W16s (i think). down to the stream. figured what id done, headed up the spur. got caught in some god awful fight. got incredibly stuck. knew id blewn it at that point but pushed on up through the green. saw a smidgen of light, put my head down and went for it...finally burst out, only to find myself in farmland. WTF?!
immediate reasoning was i'd come out above no. 14. but then why was there another forest infront of me?! took me a moment to figure out just how far off i was, had no freaking clue how id got there! looked to my left and saw the finish in the distance. so so so tempting to just walk in and dnf! but instead completely demoralized i headed back into the bush, down and all the way up, walked into the control :( sad face doesnt quite express how pissed off and disappointed i was (am).
Still dont know quite how i ended up there. I know i got pulled down,and obvioiusly misinterpreted the streams. but what i remember doesnt fit with what's on the map. a couple of others have mentioned that area seemed bit dodge, but that doesnt excuse my mistake.
- #15 race gone, plodded along the tracking, ended up at the wrong cliff, dropped another 45s but didnt care by that point.
- #16 down, up. who cares.

So yeah, a fair few people were relieved to see that i can make that sort of mistake it seems! Worst mistake i've made since JWOC 08 middle final i think. seems to be a once every 2 years or so scale mistake. v.v.annoyed with myself. 4th nationals middle dist that i've screwed up, yet to place in W21E :)

Course 2 - Splits

http://www.routechoice.co.nz/gadget/cgi-bin/reitti...

knew my sprint form wasnt in bad nick going into this race so was looking forward to racing against the nz girls again.
- got thrown straight into the detail from the 1st control, luckily our 1st was pretty simple and gave a chance to read ahead a little bit. (unlike mum's 1st control which looked pretty insane!).
- #2 a lot of people lost a fair bit of time on, but i picked the right gap and although i stopped dead for a second to read the intricacies of the map, got it cleanly. extra confusing due to the description of paved area corner, rather than a building corner.
- 3 i'd already decided to head back out to the front of the school, didnt really see the other route to the back, prob cos it was more complicated. so good choice.
- 4 was my main time loss. just didnt read ahead enough and before i knew it i was off my route choice and double taked up the steps. then decided the control was half way up the hill (it isnt), so road was a bad choice (it wasnt). went across the carpark and down the hill, then had to go around an uncrossable wall. silly and unnecessary loss of time.
- was going to go through the courts to 6 but was blocked by a hockey goal so went around.
- 7 i should have cut through the white to the top more, too hesitant.
- 8 didnt read the description, so only found it was at the bottom of the wall when i got there, should have gone other way around the last building.
- happy with route to 9, stayed clear of detail and blasted round the road. again others lost a fair bit of time going through.
- cant even remember 10, just was there suddenly!
- lost time coming out of 11 in the maze of tracks. otherwise happy though amber took a chunk of time out of us going over the hill. so should have considered that route more.
- rest was pretty straight forward, though i heard the loudspeaker going through the spectator saying i was way infront==subconcious easing off in last loop. stink. wish they wouldnt say it when you can hear!
- lost time on 20 as i glanced at the map to see if the bank/cliff was passable or not and instead read the impassable fence next to it. so hesitated, stopped, ran along it a bit. decided id misread as everyone had gone over it, and then went. lost 5s there. dumb.

happy all up, nice to be back in it :)

Course 2 - Splits

run around palmy airport with brother. was at a decent clip as he has long legs and is getting pretty fit! stomach felt real gluggy thanks to iced mocha an hour prior to run. legs good though

3 days to go... getting pretty excited! :D

while watching morning tv, i'm embarrassed to admit...

up to the saddle

monas. felt good yeah. didnt quite make it back to start point, 28s off. but more up hill on way back

home time

Run with one of the french guys from work who's been saying for weeks that i should take him for a run. He started out way too fast for me, but being the stubborn pig i am i just stuck with it, and took him up the steepest, roughest track i could think of to slow him down! Seemed to work and we did 1 and a bit laps of circumsicion at a nice pace. beaut evening for it, was just awesome. Bit dark coming down though, but not quite dark enough for the full moon to light our way though!

whilst watching the last quarter of the pulse-tactix game on tv. who knows why they show it here, but the pulse managed to win. which has only happened 3 times this year i think, and possibly on 5 times in their history?!

over to st johns in deakon for 1st aid course

and home, thankfully before it got too dark and cold :)

up to the saddle, down and over bruce ridge. couldnt help doing a few single tracks on the way, but then it occurred that maybe that wasnt the best idea with nats in a week! managed to stay on anyway but yeah :)
eventually i got myself over to UC

running warmups before the 2 exercises

sprint race round uni of canberra. not ideal shoes for it, but was biking over and didnt want to leave a bag with my bike.
pretty sweet area, with plenty of hidden little passages. unfortunately no.5 was in construction area, so had to do quite a detour to get 4 - 4.5 - 6.
felt incredibly dodgy sprinting around the accommodation buildings! to the point that i didnt go right to some controls (the ones at the inside bottom of the walls running around the buildings). Messed up in the 2nd bit in the accomm as all the buildings look the same! tricky.
pretty ave all up really but good to get a hit out before next week

stopped at bruce ridge on the way back home and reran controls 3-13 from the NOL race in march. I think i had the complete opposite run from then, spiking ones i missed before, and messing up the ones i'd done well! guess that shows i was concentrating more on improving my mistakes from last time and not enough on clean navigating the entire way!
still felt like a headless chicken. splits make for interesting reading, but overall time is pretty similar; 13.44 this time, 13.38 last time!

between exercises, a couple of last single tracks and back home. minus a minute or so for when my chain decided it didn't like running round in circles anymore

ps. foot felt sweet today. yays

another lunchtime run on black mtn. This time thought I'd hunt out some new tracks, so headed onto a promising track from jn of parkes way and clunie ross. alas that track died after 3-4 mins. decided i didnt feel like turning around and figured there'd be a track on top of the ridge, so just headed on up through the bush, keeping an eye out for snakes and the like. logic win, hit a nice little track and continued following it up. then it turned and contoured to the south, becoming more and more minor. At more than one point i thought id have to turn back around, but eventually came out on my favourite death defyingly steep 4wd track.
Up that and across the road, bumbled round on little tracks til i found circumcision. around to the track coming up from botanics, then followed that to top of mtn. Down summit track and continued around circumcision for a bit, trying to find my diagonal track down from a while ago. Decided id overshot so turned around and eventually found it (I'd way overshot!) Down trhough the saddle and decided to head home through the botanics rather than csiro for a change.
good decision, think i may just love the botanics. not so much for the plants (they're nice but meh), but cos of all the tiny little tracks! So much fun and good practice at tight turning for sprints. is there an o map of it? anyone? eventually popped out through the csiro gate and zig zagged my way home.

block of chocolate for anyone who can actually map where i went from that description...

C • Grant said... 5

from work, zig zagged my way through to the top of botanics, then around the fence until i found a gate! Up track from back of gardens to circumcision then turned right for a change, was going to do a lap of little black, but could feel right foot tightening up on the downhill so cut short.
Felt good enough to let the brakes off on the 4wd track going down, havent done that in aaages!

feet feeling a bit better after couple of days rest. achiles stretch in particular works wonders. spent all day today on my feet moving desks, computers and equipment around and feet ached a bit but pretty good all up.
was gonna try an easy run but will leave til tomorrow cos it a) it was dark by time i finished, and missed group run. b) i was tired and hungry c) another day off won't do any harm

Up to the lab, glad i remembered gloves today. last two days have been freaking cold!
and down the mtn home. where my front light found a fun game in rotating round into my eyes every time i went over a significant bump (of which there were more than a few)

to the library at lunchtime to get teach yourself italian in 3 months cds... i'm gonna learn in a month! for sure...

pretty sure my foots got worse throughout the day. have a feeling my left foot might start up with same sort of pain in next couple of days too. we'll see.

C • Did you notice... 4

ok on the uphill, slight twinge on the down

act long champs

beautiful fast running stuff, felt so good to stretch out! unfortunately i made a hobby of going down wrong reentrants and thinking i was on wrong spurs. once again need to check my compass more often and have a bit more confidence. Plus stop losing concentration mid leg!
time loss on 2,3,4,7,9,12. that's almost half the controls :s

2 was minor, just crossed the road too soon, was reading ahead of myself.
3 got the direction wrong and had to run an extra hundred metres +
4 i decided to go more up and around, not sure if that was best. yet to get into the more australian straight route choice mind set. then lost direction on the last spur, somewhat zigzagged my way into the control!
7 thought i had it perfect, but somehow got in the wrong reentrant and spiked the wrong termite mound. 1.5mins lost
9 again lost concentration half way through the leg. which is a prob for me, as (a) i meander for a bit and (b) i lose accuracy into the circle. so was doubting i was on the right spur when really i was. Didnt so much as make a mistake, but hesitated a lot.
12. direction again. hit my attackpoint sweet, then direction into control was wrong. stupid!

all in all a fun race though. Jo got me again, 19s this time. Happy enough for this stage of the year and training though.
foot ached again, couple of days complete rest now and lots of stretching, antiflam etc. will see how it is weds.

lazy warmup to start, testing out foot. felt alright so decided to give the middle a try and see how it went

act middle champs (5.5km 270m climb according to watch)

never really got into orienteering mode as id spent the last couple of days assuming my foot wouldnt let me run. however it felt alright this morning and warming up so thought id give it a try, will take same approach tomorrow and only head out if i think its up to it.

pretty ave race then, happy with hitting no.2 straight off. was standing right ontop of 3 without seeing it for a moment, luckily i looked down, unlike middle at nats last year! must be learning :) 4 and 5 was a bit off with dirn. 6 lost track of how far round the hill i'd gone. 7 ok but 8 will be interesting to see how much time i lost. had my direction completely off and got distracted finding ways through all the fallen logs! ended up to the left of no2, so a good 250m along the ridge from where i should have been. oops! 10 and 11 direction a bit off too, seeing a trend here? 12 ok and 13 hit too high. rest all g.

min and half behind jo, which all considered im happy with

oh and foot started aching on the way to 6 and was at its worst down the hill to 14. ice and antiflam tonight, reassess tomorrow

pyramids. right foot was alright to start but uneven and rocks on the last couple of ints just did it in. freaking sore on way home but ok again by afternoon? weird.

good ints session though. the track i was on just stopped dead on my 3rd int so turned into a mission bush bashing interval :)

right foot still isn't a happy chappy.

to and from WNT. front light was pretty good given how old it is. Had to keep eyes peeled for bikers without lights though, freaking annoying!

WNT with cockies. run from shannon's over and around bruce ridge at a pretty sociable pace.
made the rookie error of forgetting my headlamp but luckily everyone else's headlamps were serious enough that it was easy enough to see where i was going.
followed by some wicked pizzas and icecream

C • But no 1

warm up incl dynamic stretching and warm down

13 hill sprints fitted in nicely between work and it getting dark :)

met ted lilley walking home over black mtn, and sanders out for a walk. felt bad not stopping to talk to either really but couldnt stop mid session!

heart rate makes for interesting reading and split times too with the efforts ranging from 23.55s (when sanders was watching, maybe i should have an audience all the time?!) to 27.06s
last 8 were all consistent around 26.5 though

picked up my nice new garmin today. However my r foot feels so stuffed after the weekend I don't know if i'll get out to try it tonight. might try a bike ride we'll see

C • New toy 2

and 34 split seconds too :)

turns out the pain in my right foot is exactly on the pressure point for pedalling! Thinking at the moment is that i stepped on something, prob in the night event and have a bit of bruising on the underfoot atm. give it a couple of days.
first session with my new toy, will spend a couple of hours figuring out quickroute etc with it later :)

wattle ridge event.
again, amazing terrain, really enjoyed it even if i was absolutely stuffed and the undergrowth was a mission to push through!
lost time on 1 being safe. missed the track to 2 and ended up 3 streams too far east. 3, 4 ok. 5 i followed my plan really well to within 50m of the circle, then went too low and spent 2+mins extra in the circle. 6 ws just really slow going but spiked it. then 7 ok. wrong exit direction to 8 will have lost me time but turned out alright navigationally. then felt tlike i clicked into the map, 9 was easy enough and the long leg to 10i was pretty pleased with how i went. along the track and straight through 2 and 1 as stepping stones. 11 fine. 12 got the wrong set of rocks. 13 I ended way further up the hill than meant. again made it easy to navigate into the control but lost me a couple of mins.

all up felt slow but was good training. kinda felt like norway but with fewer marshes

went back out to do some more training but after a couple of controls i was stuffed and right foot (yep, right not left!) was hurting like hell. must have stepped awkwardly ona rock or something.

10x sprint first legs. Really good training for quick route choice, enjoyed it.

havent included rest times between the sprints, pretty much complete recoveries though

sprint training #2 at mcquarie. mass start sprint. took a while to see no1 on the map with the printing but then was all good. was reading ahead well but took wrong route choice on 9 which let mace get ahead. Got her on the route choice to 15 though. Sweet area for sprinting but legs were feeling it after just oone morning!

short warmup as we were late, and collecting tapes at the end

Gladesville hospital sprint training. Another cool area, technical buildings. lots of large stone walls everywhere, designed to keep people in!
exercise where the aim was to keep moving at all times. Find that's what i do anyway so was all good. Just eased into it at normal training run pace, only time i had to think about keeping moving was at 7 when the tape had blown away.

Handicap sprint race on Gladesville. Last starter of the girls at 2.20, 10s behind mace. After a couple of controls got used to having to grab the sport ident box with one hand and punch with the other. had caught mace and george by about 6 and was working my way through the larger group by 10-11. but then they all messed up 12 and suddenly i was ahead and having to turn all the controls on! kept pace going through the parkland to finish ahead.

warm down collecting tapes

the less said about this the better. some of the least enjoyable orienteering i have ever done.

after work soccer. arrived late after spending the whole day clearing out the paleomag lab on black mtn. Had a shed load (or 4) of old equipment and general crap to get out. it's amazing what theyve been hording up there for the last 40yrs!
think we ended up tossing 26 computer moniters (and still a good 10 once we change the system). got to take apart the magnetometer that blew up last year. canabalised what we could and threw the rest.
some of the moreinteresting things we found in the depths of the lab was a distillary, a 1986 nude calender, a solid mahogany semi globe (v.v.heavy!) and much more that i don't have time to remember right now as i should be packing for tomorrow's early start!