Training Log Archive: shanel

Event: MetrO 11-12: Star Swamp
 

Headed out the back of the caravan park onto Longbottom Lane again. Kept heading south, made a lucky choice to go left at Pink Lake Rd to pick up a sandy mostly firm track, with lots of rollers, through to the bore service road.

Wind was blasting westerly as opposed to Thursdays blasting easterly. Continued a short way before turning and doubling back from whence I came, except I missed the turn from the road to the sand track, so was momentarily lost when I hit Pink Lake Rd in a strange spot.

Heading the the shower afterwards I thought I should have done this mornings Roadie ride out to Lucky Bay, as it would have been blasted all the way there, be interested to see just how fast they went.

Made it to Toom's place on time, brief faffing then we headed it off for the "it's to windy to ride so lets run" 20k'er.

Out along the bore service track, pretty hot and sweaty conditions considering it seemed quite cool, track is nice and generally gently undulating limestone. Bit of contrail spotting along the way before turning into the wind for some refreshing cooling effect.

Doubled back to a bike/walk track which cuts out to the coast, slightly more undulating perhaps and smoother rough bitumen track.

Hit the coast and down onto the beach running on the firm sand mostly with a bit of soft sand avoiding rocky stuff and a bit of rocky stuff. Eventually up a big granite slope and onto the concrete bike path back to town.

Much hillier on the bike path, managed to get up one steep pinch nicely, but was starting to suffer by then with the evil quads starting to get grumpy. Tooms tried to chase down the dad and daughter cyclists but I had to let him go.

Then Tooms dropped us down a very narrow track and down a very steep sand slope and back onto the beach, along the beach briefly and then up the stairs ... I walked, luckily Tooms's running up the stairs wasn't too much quicker.

Quads sore for most of the day. Trip out to Cape Le Grand National Park turned out to be an exercise in trying to find somewhere out of the wind and eventually the rain settled in. Eventually went to Cape Le Grand (?) beach on the way back and the beach was nice and flat, calm and sheltered but still raining. So we had ice creams in the car before heading back to camp for for persisting rain, wind, thunder and lightning.

Easyish loosener with Axcel (nephew) along on my MTB.

Took a while to find the back road out of the caravan park, out along Longbottom lane across Pink Lake Rd onto another road which soon became a sand track, but popped out onto another road, turned around after about 3k's and was making nice speed without too much effort. Did a few short hit max speed efforts near the end and had to overshoot the caravan park to pad out to 6km.

C • Axcel? 5

Got out to the piggery to meet Tooms a couple of minutes late, perhaps it takes more than a couple of minutes to get anywhere in Esperance.

Ended up doing 3 laps with Tooms going slow with me for the 1st and 3rd and knocking out a quick one for the 2nd after disappearing after the first couple of corners.

Times about 31 mins, 29:51, 32:00

Felt a lot more comfortable on the 2nd and 3rd laps. Some nice little jumps and berms along the way and some nice fast straight flattish sections.

Quickly checked out the convenience of having beers in the fridge in the back of the ute before heading back for cold tacos.

Inconveniently left my GPS back at camp and didn't have time to start my stopwatch before the first lap.

C • How long does it take to press a button? 2

Turns out we're staying a reasonable way out of town, so a reasonable warm up to get to the start with a couple of minutes to spare.

Round and round the streets and back roads of Esperance. I got very confused when the two guys in front of the double lines moved to the right side of the road, I eventually realised they were peeling off, so went to the front with Tooms for a while.

The group eventually started rolling through which was hard work at times, reasonably short recoveries with the gaps which seemed to pop up randomly (not that I know how to roll through properly). Main problem was picking the time to go from the slow side to the fast side without leaving a gap due to someone else not coming through. Then getting in front and over to the the slow line without having to speed up too much as the person in front(?) didn't ease off or ending up with a gap when you move to the slow side and the next person doesn't ease off as much.

Hill to the lookout was a killer. Probably shouldn't have drop from SCR to granny (yes I've got 3 rings on my cheapo(ish) bike) as it was just to low a gear. Nice run down to John St after that.

Gentle ride back to the caravan park, finish off the dodgy shotz protein bar which I won at KillBrook and carried around for the last 12hr rogaine and the 6inch.

Soon after being amused by the ironically named Place of Aboriginal Learning and Excellence (which I abbreviated to P.A.L.E.), I was in need of a drink, but knew it would be dicey whilst still holding onto the remains of my protein bar, had a drink anyway and in due course dropped by water bottle, luckily it rolled to the side of the road I a doubled back before a car crunched it.

Short mostly easy run. Planned to do the few km loop northish towards the airport, but when I got to the area where it heads north over the road the track seemed to be bitumen and there was was a more fun looking dirt single track, so I took that.

The track hit the rock surface and disappeared so I skirted around the east and south of the rock through a mega colony of tRicky's favourite christmas spiders, through the golf course up to the top of some big rock, back down to the western edge.

Finally hit a firm wide sandy track and decided to up the pace to 4min/k, eased up for a short recovery then cranked up to hit full speed 3min/k before jogging the rest.

Hit lap instead of stop when I finished, so GPS trace has superfluous data.

C • Wave Rock 12

Quick short run, lacking warm up and cool down time. Just tried to go a bit faster than I have been lately, which I think I accomplished.

Home to finish packing and head off on holiday leg one, out to Hyden. I think we passed Juffy's parents along the way, based on a brief glimpse of OAWA plates and Burgundy car heading the other way.

C • Yep 2