Waterfall again

Waterfall again

Endomondo Running Workout: was out running

We got the word on Wednesday night that Glenbrook was on; just enough time to start getting properly nervous. Have I trained properly, should I drop down to the shorter distance? I've "tapered" pretty hard in the last three weeks through a combination of flu - ok, a filthy cold - and bad weather. Normally I'm happy to run in the rain, but not, I think, when breathing is difficult. I doubt, so bad was this cold, if I could have kept up with my nose.

So, anyway, it's been a bit light on, dropping from 100+ km a week to 40-ish. I'll have to file it under "experimental". At least my knees aren't too bad, and in fact on Tuesday I did notice that I was springing up the stairs quite lightly.

Ha! Just as I was starting to feel confident, on Friday the NSW Parks and Wildlife people notified the organisers that a 2cm rise in the river would mean the evacuation of all runners WITHOUT their cars. Leaving aside the fact that it would have been (surely) extremely muddy/wet/dangerous, I doubt anyone was particularly prepared to desert their car in a national park for an unspecified amount of time. There's clearly some irony in this - and I detected a degree on angst and conflict amongst the organising committee in the emails, but anyway, once again, Glenbrook has been postponed.

The CRRC decided to go down to the Royal National Park again, this time for the Waterfall-Loftus run. This is pretty much 20km (the GPS was off for about 20 minutes), with a very technical (read steep & rocky) descent, which we took very slowly, not being completely mad for the first 3-4 km, then a 3-4 km run through rainforest on what we call "single track", not rough, but challenging. It's easy to trip on the fronds, so you have to pay a lot of attention to where your feet are going. High stepping is good - shuffling means an almost certain fall. (My mind wandered for about 30 seconds trying to remember if it was Foster or Loftus we were running to, and that's all it took to fall over - nothing serious though). It's hard to concentrate on such a small topic; it's an interesting mental discipline. We disturbed a grey kangaroo having his morning drink at the creek - he hopped off about 50 meters and peered down at us with beady eyes before setting off up the hill. It's nice to see wildlife in the wild - most of the kangaroos you see around Sydney are on golf courses, which is not really quite right, although they are still quite good to see. I've now seen a lyrebird & a kangaroo while running. I will have to start a checklist.

After the first 8-odd km there's a fire trail, Lady Carrington Drive, for about 11 km, which is (relatively) easy running. It's not easy, because the surface is pretty uneven and you still need to pay a lot of attention to your footfall and stride, but it's possible to maintain a pretty good pace. We managed to keep a 5:30 pace going, which was good. It's hard to push yourself outside of an official race, but we were psyched up for a hard run so we did the best we could. In fact, we did pretty well, because my legs today (Monday) are definitely post-race legs. The final stretch, 3-odd km is pretty much purely uphill to the Loftus station. At the top of the staircase - try climbing a staircase after running 20 km - was an information board about the "honeymoon steps". Originally the steps led from the railway station to Audley House, a popular spot for honeymooners. Cue speech about the toughness of the average 19th century person; I guess if you could afford Audley House you could afford a servant to carry the bags. It wouldn't have been much fun toting the bags up and down those steps.

It's hard to say how another 14 km would have gone. It's always my view that the last 7km takes care of itself - what else is there to do except finish? - so I think I would have probably managed it, but I would have been a lot stiffer today! The Glenbrook organisers haven't finalised whether the event has been cancelled or postponed, so I may yet find out.

Sri Chinmoy - Cooks River

Endomondo Running Workout: was out running 15.77 km in 1h:18m:25s

Well, Glenbrook (the 34km run) was cancelled due to the rain, so we (the Cooks River Running Club) were able to attend our "own" race. We actually managed to recruit 3 members at the post race pancake prandium, so well worthwhile. Another bonus is that I was able to watch Liz in her first 8km race; she and a friend are aiming for the city-to-surf next year and it looks like they are well on target.

I managed a very narrow PB, which is sort of reassuring, as I'e been feeling very slow recently, but arguably the PB is only down to the "missing" 230 meters. Still, it's a PB on the course, about 5 minutes faster than this (my first serious) run last year. And I've been training for distance, not speed, recently, so it's OK. In fact, I probably had a bit more in the tank, given that my last km was about 25 seconds faster than my 2nd last kilometre. I had to shave another 2 minutes off to get into 3rd place though, and I'm not sure that was ever happening.

It was a fantastic morning for it; the breeze blew up a bit for the last 4 km, but it had a cooling effect as well, and of course, it's only in the wrong direction half the time. The sun was shining, and the river was full, and the trees provided a nice mixture of shade and sun. After the last week's rain, the grass was certainly green.

Keith Bateman (world champion in my age group) turned up and ran the 8km in 27 minutes. It's ridiculous, but very impressive.

Glenbrook now rescheduled for December the 18th. Lots of worries about the heat, but fingers crossed. A bit of extra training won't go amiss, either.

Glenbrook - 1

Endomondo Running Workout: was out running 22.73 km

Well, if slow is the go, I seem to have that under control. I'm just getting slower and slower.

Hunters Hill - 2nd try

Endomondo Running Workout: was out running 19.63 km

We tried this once before, and were thwarted by the Water Board. Sadly, they are running more than 6 weeks late on their bridge-closing project, so we were similarly thwarted today. Still, we didn't ge tlost on the fallback this time & so it was a nice 20km run in (mainly) the lane Cove National Park.

The back garden

We finally got around to replacing the predecessor of this thing - name temporarily absent from brain (well, I hope it's temporary) - which was the Australian version, and never recovered from the 45 degree New Year's Day of about 5 years ago. This is the South African, or South American, equivalent. It has curly leaves. We haven't used the black irrigation pipe since the water restrictions a couple of years ago; I imagine it's been colonised by ants, and is now completely non-functional as water transport. I probably should remove it. Easier to replace it than fix it, I expect.

The tree fern here planted itself and is now, some years on, at a height which makes this courtyard naturally shaded. Behind it is the water feature, and the other big tree fern. The 3rd, which is a Dixonia to these two's Cooperii (if I have that around the right way) is not so spectacular. Very understated, but it gets hardly any light or water.

The camellia is increasingly out-of-place, in terms of origins, but it's leaves really glory in the strong light. Aesthetically speaking, it's quite pleasing. Well, shiny, anyway. It collaborates nicely with the dappling initiated by the tree fern above.

Looking back towards the previous 2 pictures - my original water feature, the vertical pipe, still holding its own as a feature, although it doesn't have much to do with water any more. The ivy is a curse and this will have to be its last summer. We now have plenty of space filling local greenery - to wit, the swordfish fern you can see here, so the ivy is not required. We originally had a trellis roof over this area, but it collapsed due to engineering deficiencies, and it's only in the last year or so that the 2 tree ferns have replicated it's shade giving effectiveness. Consequently, we're starting to rebuild the bromeliad garden.

This is the site of the major works; the golden melaleuca has been hacked back to pretty much a stump - it's just started to sprout again. It had got to be a monster, plus it was pretty leggy, so I pruned it. Likewise the grevillea, on which I left one flowering branch, has been savagely cut back. Not that that seems to have disturbed it much; within days new growth was sprouting all over the stump. As a bit of a downside, the view through to the junk area has been opened up, but it's really an old problems, since we decided not to put in a garage.

What we want to do with this bed now is plant a lot of small flowering plants, because the upper storey on the other side of the garden is so well established now.

We've started off with these two yellow flowering things - one is an everlasting - and we're going to try and keep the sun vine under control. It had pretty much colonised the melaleuca, but it makes a feral ground cover as well if there are no trees. Plus, in the bottom right, you can see another plant, which is in fact a Marrickville indigene, threatening to fill up the bed. This will be the second completely different self seeding ground cover to turn up in this section of the garden, and it hasn't wasted much time in replacing the dampieria.



As you can see, losing the melaleuca and grevillea hasn't made a huge impact on the overall effect of the view from the upstairs window. On the right you can see the tree fern(s) and our eucalypt, but all the
trees on the left are borrowed.

There's a lot of work to do to make all this work, but I think it will be quite good. The biggest problem is that the last couple of years we've been slack with weekly maintenance, so there's a lot of weeding, pruning and miscellaneous small jobs to do. At the moment I'm putting out a green bin every two weeks which is completely full, and still losing ground.


I think I'll probably need a skip before I'm finished.

Royal National Park

Endomondo Running Workout:  27.49 km in 3h:24m:26s

Phew, this was tough. One thing about trail running is that when you get tired, the whole business becomes exponentially difficult; I lost count of the number of times I fell over in the last 7 km. It's incredibly difficult to just keep lifting the feet high enough to stay out of trouble, and this was a rocky trail. So rocky, in fact, that there were plenty of sections where walking was the only option. Tremendous concentration is required; there is nothing automatic, no sections where you can rest in the rhythm of regular movement. I dredged up a mental trick from my Wilke days on a production line; lower your expectations of time (Wilke's) or distance (trail) past and the finish line (lunch break) arrives unexpectedly sooner. It's a simple trick but it still seems to work. Not that it makes much logical sense.

Anyway, all I got from the falls was a couple of grazes on the legs and arms. I haven't quite overcome the nervousness associated with breaking a shoulder on a fall, but it is receding. In point of fact, I'm a lot stronger now than 18 months ago so I think that I have more resources to minimise the impact of a trip. These falls are more heavy stumbles than full on falls.

The upside of trail running is of course the fact that the bush is a nicer place to be than the side of a highway. I haven't been in the Royal National Park many times (maybe once?); it's another reminder, in the South rather than the North, of the way that Sydney wraps itself in bush. Another, more subtle difference from Melbourne. The ocean vs the bay smacks one in the face, but the bush vs the agricultural hinterland  is not so immediately obvious if you are living in Marrickville. I think I've said it before - I've thought it before - and I'll say it again: I might have taken geography a lot more seriously if I'd grown up in Sydney. Sydney's geographical complexity is more visible than Melbourne's.

The out-and-back loop we ran has as its spine Lady Carrington Dve - it's a fire trail, despite the name - which runs alongside the Hacking River. We actually ran in three completely different environments; eucalyptus forest (by which I mean tall trees), rain forest (much wetter, darker and cooler) and then, on the way back along the top of some unnamed ridge, the kind of stunted, scrubby, wind-beaten brush that I associate with exposed landscapes. (If you click on the link above, you can select the satellite option, rather than the map option, and the colours will paint the picture for you). Likewise the rocks seemed to be in three distinctive categories, broad horizontal strata, tightly packed wavy folded strata, and amorphous boulders ranging from the bloody enormous to the not-small-enough-to-avoid-tripping-over. I'm afraid I can't offer any more technically precise description of the landscape. Apart from Lady Carrington Drive, though, it was substantially empty and judging from the extent to which the trails were overgrown, empty is its normal state.

Hawkesbury Canoe Classic

Canoe Race: paddling 102.55 km in 18h:00m:44s

This is the final of the marathon canoeing trifecta; interestingly enough, we were sharing trailers with a team who are doing the 2011 Hawkesbury Classic as the start of theirs. They will do the Murray in December & finish with the Yukon next year. For obscure reasons, we're doing the shortest race last. In fact, there are only four of the Yukon team left, Liz, Angie, Tracey & Sue. The rest have retired from marathon paddling. Dilettantes :-)

This time the boat was an outrigger, the training boat for the Yukon. It's not so easy to transport; it has to be broken down into pieces, transported and then re-assembled. The aku (the 2 arms holding the actual outrigger) and the anu (the outrigger itself) are tied on with nylon rope, re-purposed inner tubes and/or gaffer tape. It seems weird, in a way, to be so low tech on a modern (fibreglass) boat, but the tying provides the right balance of strength and flexibility. A mechanical solution that worked as well would be hugely more expensive. (And these boats are already ridiculously expensive).

We stripped the boat down on Friday night & loaded it on to the trailer fro transport Saturday AM. Liz and I drove up to Windsor Friday night to spread the stress a little thinner, so at least on Saturday we woke up near the race start. One thing noticeably different about this event is that, because it's squeezed in over a weekend, there's no real chance to dedicate preparation time for it. Packing, sorting, checking, everything is squeezed in around work & whatever else. With, say, the Yukon, we had 4 days doing nothing except getting organised for the boat. Here, we had to be at the marshalling yards at 11:00 to re-rig the boat for the scrutineers. They didn't end up turning up until after 15:00; as is normal for these events, the big boats get - well, overlooked, so we spent 4 hours just hanging around a very hot (29 degrees) not particularly shady park.

Liz got bitten on her thigh by a bull-ant, not at all the right preparation for 18 hours of paddling. Sigh; nature, not entirely wonderful.


To the non-paddler, we might look like we're pretty serious, but in the marathon paddling community we are rank novices. People who do this regularly know where to park for maximum shade and minimum walking; they have fans, chairs, canopies. If we'd been scrutineered early, we'd probably have headed off to sit in an air-conditioned pub until the race start; regulars know that that is all an idle dream, so they bring their own waiting spaces. If you want to understand serious; one guy was paddling in his 35th instance of this race, at 70. Probably the oldest competitor was the 78 year old woman paddling with her 74 year old brother. It didn't look like it was their first race, either. Anyway, finally, paperwork and hanging around finished, the boat took off at 1630, in the "social" Brooklyn-or-bust version of the event. Cue final land crew meeting. Andrew off to buy water - I remember the Murray -, Brooke off to pick up Scott and swap cars, Antonia (Tony) to pick up some groceries, and Martin to head off to Cattai, the 1st checkpoint. It doesn't matter how much planning you do, there's a few last minute things that have to be done. My last last minute thing was to pick up driving instructions for the checkpoints, lucky since Tony was using the supplied GPS coordinates, and at Cattai they ended her up on the wrong side of the river.

This is just a glimpse of the entries lined up waiting for the start; most of the boats aren't very big ... More than 530 paddlers were entered, so that must be around 300+ boats, because there were certainly plenty of singles to offset the larger boats. More than 40 withdrew - even though it's significantly the shortest of the events we've paddled in in the last year, the night aspect, combined with the tides, makes it a long way from easy.

I don't have photos from the checkpoints. Cattai was not particularly significant; no-one stops there unless there is some mini-crisis, something overlooked, an

equipment failure. It was still light when the team passed through, looking good, and ahead of schedule. We had a lot of problems working out a timetable, primarily because of the tides which are significantly less predictable in their details, especially up a river, than I expected. Plus, there's the problem of the relationship between the tide and the current; plus the question of how many & how longs the breaks are going to be. We did have a pretty good idea of pace from the training runs, and I knocked up a spreadsheet to model a few possibilities. It was sort of OK - the tide was stronger than I modelled, the team took all their breaks at the checkpoints, we actually missed them arriving at Wiseman's Ferry (somewhat embarrassing) by 10 minutes, although at least we had the food hot once we tracked them down - but I was right to about 10 minutes with their arrival at Mooney-Mooney.                                                                                                                            

We proceeded in a leisurely fashion, pausing for a picnic dinner at Cattai, before heading to Sackville. At Sackville we had to park on a football oval that was, oddly to my mind, at the top of a hill. From there it was onto a minibus shutttle to the edge of the river in the middle of a caravan park. The beach for pulling up boats was about 20 meters long. 300+ boats; 20 meters. Something of a challenge. There's a standing instruction for the HCC land crews to not use lights so as to not to disturb the night vision of the paddlers. Did I mention the nearly vertical sand bank leading down to the aforementioned beach? Sackville was a pretty fair impersonation of total chaos, and we  hadn't managed to bring all the right bags for all the paddlers, so it was a bit tense. No-one could find the toilet, a couple of people nearly broke their ankles getting up the bank in the hopes of finding a toilet and we had a lot of trouble getting the boat off the mud - a big cheer here for Brooke who had to hurl herself into the water both to get the boat in and out. Then we had to grab everything out of the mud and queue for a minibus back, re-pack the cars in the dark and head off to Wiseman's Ferry. It sounds pretty bad, and it was pretty hectic, but the fact is that the Hawkesbury is NOT a very accessible river, and all the access is on private land. Really - and especially at Wiseman's - it's pretty damn generous of the caravan park inhabitants to put up with a nighttime invasion of 300-odd boats, 500+ paddlers, and probably 400-ish landcrew.

We did a much better job of setting up at Wisemans Ferry, although we had to park a long way from the beach an lug a lot of stuff a long way. Most of us managed to get an hour's sleep; somehow though, while cooking, we managed to miss the boat number being called as it passed through the checkpoint. (Due to the tide they arrived 15 minutes before the earliest point I thought was possible, so we didn't have anyone down at the landing) Fortunately the magic of mobile technology reunited us with the team, and apart from Liz missing some gloves, it was a very successful turnaround. Probably took a bit long, but everyone left in a very optimistic mood. They decided not to stop at the final pre-finish checkpoint (Spencer), which was a BIG relief to me, because the Spence checkpoint looked worse on paper than Sackville. Also, some rather smart navigation by Scott & Brooke meant that we could drive to Mooney Mooney without crossing Wiseman's Ferry, which, you can imagine, was somewhat busy. Mind you, it was a scary, scary road. Some of the hairpins had a recommended speed of 5 kph, and they were not joking. Any faster and you were on the wrong side of the road. OK, not a big problem at 4AM, but I'd hate to go along there at peak hour. It's not that easy to do 5 kph in a diesel in 2nd, and it's not that easy to change down into 1st.

We got into Mooney Mooney just in time to miss the last 2 spaces in the car park ( I can say that because Martin & Tony got them). I probably should have slept at this stage, but I find it hard to sleep at the end of a race. We had a great setup, we commandeered a picnic table next to the coffee tent, so I wandered around keeping an eye on things.

There was a dramatic moment when their number went up on the "30 minutes a way" board, but it turned out to be a transcription error. I didn't think they could be in before 9:00 AM, and 9:30 was my official estimate, but I wan't quite sure about the tide. They figured to catch some of the late low tide; it was a question of how much of it, and how strong it would be. They'd got in to Wiseman's very early, absolutely at their best possible time, so I didn't want to miss them twice in one race.

Fianlly at 9:00 we got the word they were 30 minutes out, and they really were quick in that last stretch. Sunrise, and the sight of the finish must have woken them up. In the end, their time was 17 hours, 4 minutes; 2 hours better than our pre-race estimates. A big success.

Good to finish. Smart move to sleep before driving.

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End to end TVT

Endomondo Running Workout:  18.57 km in 2h:05m:00s

Sharon and I went on a good run at a steady pace (both still post-marathon) up past the waterfall and along cup-and-saucer creek and eventually by a bit of black magic that I didn't quite understand and couldn't really guarantee to replicate onto Bexley Rd and down to the M7 (or maybe the M5) where the TVT (two valley track for new viewers) actually begins. Or ends. Anyway, this was good because I've only been able to find half of the TVT whenever I've gone out on my own, and running both valleys is obviously better. I'm looking to increase the amount of trail running, and even though it's not the most difficult, sorry, technical, trail in Sydney, it's not a road. It has rocks, hills, trees and water crossings. And some rather poor signposting, meaning it's almost impossible not to get lost. Not so badly lost that you can't get un-lost fairly easily though. Of course, in addition to being off road, in summer it being under-tree is a huge bonus as well, typically 5 or so degrees cooler along the track compared to the road.

We met a few people on the track; there's a definite moral hierarchy involved with being a track user; clearly, judging by the disapproving looks and lack of cheer, bird-watchers believe themselves to be higher up the hierarchy than runners. Walkers don't appear to be particularly morally sensitive, but dog walkers all clearly have guilty consciences. Cyclists, thankfully, aren't seen.

Tracks are interesting things. Since I was eleven, I've been thinking about them; how they form, how they evolve, how they disappear. People follow each other, but in the beginning there aren't many clues about where to go. So "follow" isn't quite the right word. A track comes into being as an average of new attempts to go somewhere. Changes happen through a mixture of accident and enhancement. I'm thinking about this because at the point where we got lost, the one track has developed two offshoots. One of those I've seen before, but it is much deeper now. More people have pushed along it, each one perhaps a little further before deciding that it is the wrong track and turning around. One day perhaps it will no longer be the wrong track, because its end point will be somewhere useful. The other false path we followed is new to me (I've been lost at this point before). As you'd expect from a new path, it's quite short. But it will also probably continue to grow.

Both of these false tracks came into being, presumably, because the bush mimicked the first metre of the continuation of the real track, leading people astray. Impressive mimicry, when you consider that the real track is there, it's by no means invisible or overgrown; when you find it after trying the two dead ends you wonder why you didn't immediately see it.

Further along, though, someone;s decided to take a hand and run a bulldozer through the bushland. Yes, well, that's a track too.

This reminds me, suddenly, of a conversation I overheard, and some thoughts I had thunk after Jabulani. One guy was complaining, moderately heatedly, that he would have been competitive in the 46 km event if it hadn't been for the incredibly bad signage. He'd had to wait, on several occasions apparently, for someone to catch up with him and show him the way. Like me, it was his first run in the National Park. The organiser was a bit surprised; the track was well signposted, he said. I was ambivalent; my own view was that the directions the organisers had provided were pretty sub-par; they were directions written by someone who knew the route too well and didn't have the imagination to look at it with a stranger's anxious eyes. But having said that, even though I had a lot of doubts, I was able to follow these sub-par directions to the finish. Perhaps this complaining runner just wasn't accustomed to reading the signs of the bush; perhaps he read them in a different language, coming from a country or a region where the bush is not the same. Perhaps, short of providing every runner with one end of Ariadne's thread, it is impossible to map an unequivocal path through the bush.

Endomondo Running Workout

Endomondo Running Workout: 12.57 km

A gentle run, provoked by the act that it was raining somewhat more heavily than I was prepared for. Plus it was extraordinarily cold.

Nothing much to report, except perhaps another fine example of Sydney's civil (so-called) engineering. The bridge that carries Canterbury Rd. over the Cook's River has what seems a lot like an afterthought path under it, in that it's very low and narrow; there's also a head high storm water drain outlet, which in heavy rain does quite a good impression of a fire hose.

It reminds me of a joke - sadly not a repeatable one.

(This brief entry brought to you by the Dvorak keyboard)

Sydney Marathon

Endomondo Running Workout

This might be the last Endomondo report because finally I am convinced that it has been overstating my distances significantly. This map of the race ends in Pyrmont, at about the 37km mark, where the battery ran out. Note that Endomondo shows the distance as 41+ km; that's really inexcusable, even though I know that the GPS signal around Sydney is not so reliable. RunKeeper, which I have been trialling, has it at 38km, which is much closer. Anyway, I'll see. One nice feature in the Endomondo package is the heart rate in the statistics graph; however, that is why the battery on the phone went flat. Possibly the final straw for the phone was lending it to a distressed co-runner so he could call his wife to give a revised ETA - but I think it would be a pity not to be able to do that.

Anyway, on to the race. I can't really decide how disappointed I am; after all, there are no sheep stations at stake and the finish time is respectable (<6 min/km pace). But I did really want to push down below 3:45, and I didn't really think there was much risk of not beating 4:00. Now I know better.

A number of factors went into the result. Clearly I went out too hard; I can see looking at the statistics that for most of the first 10 km I was running well below 5 min pace. That is something I would never have predicted, and in fact, I was running with an event pacer in an attempt to control my early-event enthusiasm. What I wanted to do was run at exactly 5 minute pace for the whole event, accepting that I might slow down over the last 10 km. I suspect that those early 4:30 kilometers came back to haunt me. Lesson one: only trust your own pacing. (Actually, that was a bit of a technology failure as well, I had a wireless phone earpiece to tell me the pace - the phone contains the GPS unit- but I could never get it to stick in the ear, so I left it out on race day. Anyway, I guess it would have murdered the battery even sooner) I don't have much "feel" for how fast I'm running; 5 minute kilometers are my normal training pace & some days they feel slow & easy and other days they feel like hard work. I used to run with a wristwatch heart rate monitor, but its sensor has given out & while the phone has picked up the slack with the HRM, I don't like running with the phone in my hand. Apart from anything else, all that sweat wouldn't be good for it. The good thing about the HRM on the wrist was I could just set a heart rate target and hold that regardless of speed; heart rate correlates pretty closely with comfort, so it's quite effective. Whatever, I need to work on pace management and I guess ideally a reliable equipment free judgement is the best - although, when exhausted, I'm not sure that there is such a thing as reliable judgement.

What you can see from the chart is that up to about 32 km I was sort of going OK; slowing down through 5:30 towards 6:00, and struggling a bit with the hills. Then at about 34 km I had to stop running simply out of leg fatigue & start walking, so I did that for about 3km and managed - not easy - to start running again. I'm a bit annoyed with the failure of the GPS, because I would really like to know how fast I managed to cover the last 5 km.

The heat didn't help. I drank lots of water, so I wasn't dehydrated (I usually start babbling to myself in Chinese when I get dehydrated, so that's quite an easy empirical test) but I was certainly hot. I don't know how being hot slows you down from a metabolic point of view, but I might conduct some research into that. Particularly the Pyrmont section - the last third of the race - is pretty much pure cement & asphalt and collects a lot of heat from the surrounding buildings. My feeling is that 25 degrees in the shade would easily be over 30 running up the Western Distributor. It looks on the map as though there'd be a relieving view of water in Cockle Bay, but in fact you're running along inside the concrete walls that edge the freeway and the water doesn't really impinge on the consciousness. For a city which prides itself on the picturesque, this marathon route is distinctly ordinary from a visual perspective. A couple of 18th century style "views", but for the rest, street, and pretty drab street to boot. Curiously, in Canberra I had sore feet from, I suspect, the rain, a problem I had never encountered in training, while here I had hot feet, a problem I've never had in training before either. I've run in hotter conditions than Sunday, although not often and not as far. (That's how I know what I do when I'm dehydrated) Apart from the overheating though, the shoes (same model as Canberra) and the socks (new and wholly synthetic) were very satisfactory. No blisters, no chafing, no bruised toes. In fact, other than the kind of stiffness you'd expect after a solid run, the body is in pretty good shape. In particular the knees are completely free of pain; last Thursday I was worrying that I couldn't rest them enough before the race.

I think the nutrition plan was OK; the stopping wasn't, so far as I am any judge, related to energy available. I didn't actually stop, rather slowed to a walk until my legs felt up to running again. Not that I have anything other than apocryphal information about what a nutrition failure would feel like.

On the principle that you learn from your mistakes, there's a fair bit to take out of this. One tricky thing about running is that you can't really modify one parameter at a time and see how much impact it has. Prior to the next big run - as yet undecided - I'll be making a number of changes. Hopefully one or more of the them will get be back down under 4 hours.

I've thought of a way to compare marathon results. I think it works quite well for the "average" runner - it wouldn't, perhaps, work so well for extremes. It works like this; Canberra, 55, 50, 57; Sydney, 54, 49, 54. They are the percentiles for field, men, age group respectively, and in fact the age group in Sydney was 50-54 compared with Canberra's 50-59, so it's not quite a four-square comparison. But it's not bad, I think, and  it equalises out the course & the environment. Clearly Sydney was not as good, but equally the difference isn't enormous.

Pictures can be seen here:  Link to pictures...

It's probably obvious - certainly in retrospect - but cumulative marathon training doesn't make much difference. I was expecting an additional 5 months training to automatically improve my performance, but now I think that maintaining training at the same level, which is pretty much what I did, wasn't/isn't likely to make much difference over a long run. I probably need to find a coach, and possibly need to find more training time - not likely - if I'm going to get down to 3:30. (The winner in my division in Sydney ran 3:04, for comparison. Just in case anyone thinks 3:30 is unrealistic)

Endomondo Running Workout

Endomondo Running Workout

This is the beginning of the taper down to next week's marathon, so a nice gentle run, very comfortable. Hoping the knees will be 99% unbruised by the time the starting gun goes off at 7:30 on the 18th. They were pretty good today, so it looks promising.

I've been reviewing the marathon course; it starts with a couple of "hills", like over the harbour bridge, then around Mrs Macquarie's Chair, then back up to Moore Park. Fortunately that's all pretty much over and done with in the first 10 km, so they won't be too stressful. The trick in Moore Park appears to be to avoid getting lost, as we switchback around in there for about 15 km building up the distance, then it's back down to the city and up across York St, down to Sussex & around the waterfront to the Opera House forecourt. It's a bit of a shame in some ways to have all the downhill at the end - contrary to expectation, perhaps - because it's not so easy to stretch out and run like a mad thing downhill when you're absolutely buggered. Staying upright seems so much more important. Overall though, I think the hills won't be too much of an issue, but I also doubt that it will be a particularly fast course.

Anyway, I've decided my tactics; no guts, no glory. I've had a couple of good training runs this week, so I'm pretty confident I can get to 25 km at 5 minute pace. From there it doesn't really matter how fast I come home, I should be in good shape for a PB.

Spring is here with a vengeance; last week was good but today was even better. A bit surprising, because yesterday was freezing, but today was clear and warm. Lots of grasses flowering in the Bexley wetlands and last week's spring rains greening up whatever isn't flowering. Lots of fisherfolk out this morning too, including a couple in kayaks. It was certainly the kind of morning that wouldn't seem wasted even if you caught nothing; not that you ever meet a fisherman who caught nothing.

The Rockdale market gardens were looking fantastic as well; it's really a stroke of good fortune that the council has had the moral fibre to keep the developers out. We buy some of our vegetables from a local-ish market gardener (a bit further south than Rockdale) and the in season vegies we get from her are fantastic. They look as good as supermarket produce *without* water sprays and trick lighting. Plus, they're cheaper. And we can walk to the shop. (Admittedly, by the time I've finished saucing them, it's not clear that they taste much better, but they certainly don't taste any worse).

Sydney -2

Strathfield and back

Well, this was a nice run except maybe for the hills coming up Canterbury Road. But absolutely a first class a-grade spring morning, perfect weather. I'm starting to taper now, so this was run at a fairly gentle pace; plus, I think I'll go easy on the exercises for the next couple of weeks. I've almost made up my mind to start at the pace I want to finish. I watched the IAAF marathon this AM when I got home - just amazing really, 3 minutes/kilometer, 42 times. Sadly, I don't think I can run the second half of mine faster than the first half, no matter how tactically sound that might be. Slowing down gently is the right tactic for me.

Here's something trivial. 1% of 100 meters is 1 meter; of a marathon it's 422 meters. That takes near enough to .1 second for the sprinters, and about 76 seconds for the marathoners. The margin in Daegu today was more than 2 minutes, so that's about 2 meters in sprinting terms. A real thumping. When you see 2 marathoners come in only a few seconds apart, as, say, in the Commonwealth Games women's in Melbourne, that's a sprinter's .01 of a second.

If it's Spring it must be flowers and it was. The casuarinas are out, and there are masses of them along the Cooks; casuarina flowers are as subtle-coloured as their leaves and make a fine muted backdrop for the wattles. I saw at least three (species of) wattles, hardenbergia, and lots of short-plumed grasses, bright green leaves and soft white florets; my guess is wallaby or plume grass. Plenty of exotics, too, including orange trumpet vine - one massive display at the back of the racecourse - and a couple of azaleas.

Lots of birds; ducks and ibis mainly.The ibis are a menace out of the water but they look quite picturesque sitting in it.

Not much else to tell really.

Sydney - 3

Endomondo Running Workout: was out running 30.74 km

That'll be my last "long" run before the Sydney marathon on the 18th September. I'm feeling pretty good about it now, because unlike the last 30km run I did, there have been very few lingering after-effects. I'm not stiff, I only needed to collapse in a chair for about 30 minutes to recover & I've managed a fairly active Sunday - cutting down trees & grocery shopping. I can't say I felt quite so good on the run itself, which wasn't particularly fast & wasn't particularly comfortable, even as early as 20 km, surprising a little in that a 20 km run is the usual Sunday routine & pretty much a minimum distance. It's all a mystery. Liz thinks I need to change my training routine & perhaps she's right. More sprints. More hills. More time in the gym. It's probably necessary to strike a balance. In a sense, I'm not so fussed about the result of the marathon, but I'd like it to be moderately predictable. Right now I can't decide whether to attack it and hope to hold on for 3hr:30min, or whether to set out at a 3hr:50min pace and accelerate at the halfway point, which would probably get me about a 3hr:40min assuming no unforeseen incidents.

I think I'm temperamentally inclined to the former; but the general marathon "wisdom" seems to be that the latter is more likely to result in good times.

We'll see.

BTW, if you are curious, you can sign up to Endomondo and connect to me as a "friend", then you'll be able to monitor my progress. If you don't have any paint drying to watch, it might be interesting.

It was a fantastic morning for a run, but apart from the fact that the wattles are out in full flower, there's not a lot to say. The Botany Bay route is one of my favourites, but I didn't really see anything that stood out today. Well, I did notice the angle that planes take off from the airport, even heading out to sea, is extraordinarily steep. Running north along the bay cycle path watching the planes take off, apparently silently, is pretty amazing. It reminds me that physics is a bit of a mystery still, because the standard explanation for why planes can fly (curved upper surface on wing) doesn't actually explain why planes can fly upside down. Not that any were trying this morning.

Spring is definitely well on the way, because the numbers are out - sadly, predominantly cyclists, who are a menace at corners - in force. Cyclists are to pedestrians as cars are to cyclists: a parallelism that hasn't imposed itself on many cyclists' minds.

Jabulani

Endomondo Running Workout: "26.99 km in 2h:38m:00s"

A typically generous assessment of the performance from Endomondo; in point of fact, 2h:50m. Very slow; this was a *hard* run.

Running Activity 23.23 km | RunKeeper

Runkeeper's elevation profile is a much better view of the race; look particularly at the drop down to river level and the climb back up. I was hammering along nicely until that ascent; by the end of it I could hardly manage to move forward. Well, maybe it wasn't quite that bad - the really slow bits are checkpoints - but those last two hills coming up to the finish line were soul crushers. (There's a pun there somewhere) A lot of people passed me there.

In retrospect I guess I started out too fast, although I was running around 5:40 per km (I do 5:00 for road races this distance) so it didn't feel too fast. Initially I was quite pleased to be holding my own on the climbs &amp;amp; descents, because I'm not much of a descender, and I settled in with a pair at "chat speed", which is not that quick, in absolute terms. It transpired that one of this pair was the women's winner of the 2010 event, so perhaps that was a warning; sadly, one unread.



Trail running really is a different can of worms. I've only really done one before, which was the NOSH. That was certainly a much tougher 15 km than my usual training runs around Canterbury-Marrickville, and in fact, NOSH finishes higher than it starts by virtue of not being an out-and-back course, but NOSH didn't compare with this. Of course the extra 9 km makes a difference. The big difference though is the steepness of the hills, which does two things. Firstly, you have to lift your legs much higher, so it's like running up a staircase compared to running up a road. That gets into the quadriceps, which by-and-large isn't a runner's muscle. After a while, it starts to hurt.


 Secondly, the hills push the heart rate up really, really high. I wasn't wearing a monitor for this run (it's broken) but on the big hill at NOSH - which was long, but not as steep as the climb up from the river here - where I was wearing the monitor, I got up to 181 bpm. Compare that with Canberra, where I averaged under 160 and peaked at about 170. I don't particularly like to push too hard in this regard; mind you, I can't claim that I felt I had much choice in the matter. My legs didn't want to push either.


I usually start too fast (amateur/beginner error) but I don;t think I've been punished for it quite like this before. I also have a feeling I might have mismanaged my food intake, because I got a very unexpected kick from a couple of jellybeans I picked up at a late stage feeding table. Again, that's a useful lesson, because my Sunday runs are focused around teaching the body to burn fat, so I only take water, not sugar. But maybe in a race a bit of sugar wouldn't go astray. *update: I've seen the times for the race now, and I feel a bit better about it. There were a lot of people at 2:40, including the two here.

Halfway - Bobbin Head Park

It reads like a bit of whingeing, but it's meant to be reportage. I mean, I enjoyed it - more after it stopped, and the last 3 km maybe not so much - but it was certainly good to run in the bush. I swear you can feel that the air is oxygen rich and low in monoxide (note the chiasmus). I'll need to learn some bird calls - there were plenty around; some calls I didn't know at all and I don't think there are any (except perhaps a kookaburra) that I can actually name (that's a bit poor, really). *update: I can in fact recognize the call of the Eastern Whipbird, as I imagine, can any child over the age of 4.

There weren't a lot of flowers out - one bush with hardenbergia-purple flowers that wasn't a hardenbergia - which I think I saw in a couple of places (or maybe twice, once out, once back).*update: almost certainly a Hovea.

 One other challenge is to work out a way to stop the glasses fogging up: this is a serious problem because it's actually more dangerous running with fogged up glasses than with none: but I'd guess my eyesight is about 2/4 (from 20/20) so none is not exactly entirely satisfactory either.

At one stage I stepped on what I though was a flat-topped rock - it was actually a 45-degree down-sloping rock and I totally lost my footing. Luckily it was a slide/slip rather than a fall, so I was back up quickly (you can see it on the pace profile above; it's the little spike on the left hand side of the canyon). All the pictures you see here are of the smoothest surfaces that the race covers; there's a fair bit, perhaps about 20%, that is nothing much more than wallaby tracks.

I say bush, but quite a lot of the run is along the back edge of the residential intersection with the bush, which is a bit worrying. How much longer is the bush going to survive, because there's plenty of signs of continuing development? Another curious feature is the number of aged care facilities that are situated next to incoming bushfires; immediately adjacent. First line of defence? Or a headache for emergency services? Still, for the time being I'm a little jealous of the running opportunities. It leaves the Bardwell Valley TVT somewhat for dead, and I'm not finding running 28 laps of Henson Park particularly inspirational at the moment.


The run is organised by ex-pat South Africans; they're nearly more Australian than Australians, it's the first time I've seen beer supplied free as replenishment fluid at the end of a run. It's a pretty hit-and-miss exercise as far as directions/signposting, but I think this was only the 6th time they've run it, so they're are still ironing out the kinks. Their directions suffer from having been written by someone who knows the track too well (a typical race director), and not checked by an idiot who doesn't know it at all (the average competitor).

Anyway, next year I'll get in some serious practice on hills and go back.

Last Sunday in July

Endomondo Running Workout: "was out running 26.55 km "

The first thing to mention is that, despite a number of technological issues being solved - see last week's blog - there are still problems with the technology. I don't think there's any way that we ran 26km. And in fact, when I run the same set of data through RunKeeper (one of Endomondo's competitors) it comes up with a much more plausible 22.5 km, which is what I would have guessed. So, it's a software problem. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. No point complaining too loudly; all the software is free.

Anyway, another boringly perfect running morning, cool but clear. Almost warm in the sun, in fact. Still quite muddy, but at least there was no free-flowing water on the TVT (Two Valley Track) this week, so we ran one whole valley before taking a bit of a shortcut across Homer St, thus cutting out the second valley. All the hill running must be having some positive effects, because I almost didn't grumble about the shortcut. It takes about 3 km out of the run back to Steel Park, but the trade off is a very steep ascent & descent. And now that I think about it, I was actually in sufficient breath to admire the view to the north west coming down the steps. It's quite startling how much green there is in the fore-to-middle ground before the suburbs take hold. Right now, of course, after the rain, the green is really green, almost an English green. (True, I haven't seen an English green since I was 8, but definitely a lush green. No noticeable greys, browns or blues.)

The pelicans are back from their winter break. There was an incredible amount of rubbish in the river; I would have expected that immediately after the heavy rains, but a week on it seems even worse. A pity, although I think it's possible to see past/through the rubbish (I've been cultivating this since living in Clifton Hill). The water was clear, especially for high tide, and the air was clean. You can't really ask for more from an urban landscape.

Next week Jabulani, in Kuring-Gai National Park. 23 km of trails, should be interesting. I've just finished a book called "Born to Run"; it's rather messianic, but intriguing. More on the virtues of trail running, like my main Sunday colleague. He's trying to get me to run "ultras" - that's not happening! (well not yet, anyway)

Second last July run

Endomondo Running Workout: 28.05 km in 2h:35m:09s

Well, extraordinarily the rain vanished this morning so it was pretty easy to get out. I needed to do a long run this week because the last couple of weeks have been a bit short (quick & hard, but short), which means I was going rain, hail or shine, but there's no doubt that shine is much the easiest.

On a technical side note, I upgraded my mobile phone OS to Froyo (it's a silly name, but it reflects the adolescent humour of the guys who write OSes) which has in fact been out for a while, so ought to have had the bugs ironed out, but in fact on a test run yesterday was playing up badly in the GPS department. It took 2 kilometers to find the satellites yesterday (about 10 minutes) where previously it was about 30-odd seconds, i.e. the time it takes to get down the front path. Today was worse - It took nearly 4 km to get a fix on the satellites & then 24 km later just stopped. Meantime whatever it was doing caused Endomondo to add 3 fictitious kilometers (Endomondo tries to work out when you've stopped for traffic lights so it's a bit sensitive to interruptions in signal). That sort of balances out; I think it might have been more like a 30 km run, but 28 will do.

Nothing really new today but we tried a three stage approach because we had two new members, so we did 5 km around the golf course, then 9 km around the back of Arnecliffe, then I did an extra 14 around the airport. It was all pretty wet. It's amazing to me that 10 meters from the river, and about 5 meters higher than the low tide level, Marrickville's engineers & builders have managed to build paths that don't drain. In places the paths are 10-12 cm under water; but they're only puddles, 10 meters away from a perfectly dry path. Seems wrong to me. Anyway, it's not really a big problem, I can run with wet feet.

The Arncliffe spur - which is pretty much 100% bush on the Wolli Creek side - was a small waterfall, even though it hadn't rained for 24 hours. Well, 12 hours. Still, it's amazing for how long water is retained on top of a hill. All this hill running practice must be worth something; I nearly managed to spring up the rocks like an aging gazelle.

Did I mention that the first wattles are out? Spring is coming!

Lane Cove National Park

Endomondo Running Workout: 18.41 km in 1h:46m:28s

Just two of us in the end, and we drove through a light drizzle up to Hunter's Hill to get to the edge of the Lane Cove National Park. This is a resource which is slowly being eaten away by developers; I don't know how long it has to go. It's huge, so I guess a while. Plus the locals are both well heeled and articulate so there may be limits to how far claims that new corporate premises will be integrated "lightly" into bushland. And despite everything, this run (which you can see is squeezed into a pretty thin strip of bushland on the river bank) is not appreciably different to running through, say, the "real" bush; and it's only 20 minutes from Marrickville with Sunday AM traffic.

You can see we had to take a detour through a bit of suburb; the track & bridge were being refurbished due to the summer fires; there are boardwalks laid down at strategic points across the mangrove swamps, and presumably these were damaged by fire.

Liz has been paddling up the Lane Cove River recently on Saturdays. It's a much more significant entity than the Cooks River, for sure, where I think a canoe would get grounded at low tide. Even though you are very close to suburbia you still feel the quiet of nature. OK, quiet plus birds. But birds aren't all bad if you're not trying to sleep.

It's startling the variety of ground; primarily three kinds, the swamp, the sandstone and the soil, but these have their own internal variations and there are also sections of domesticated land, cleared and grassed with little beaches on the river banks. Surprising to see no sign of any boats though; in the bits of Middle Harbour (further north) that I've seen, where the landscape is vaguely similar, anything resembling water access has boats, even if they're old rowing boats chained to a tree. Perhaps the council here is less sympathetic.

All the variety of ground makes the running even harder. Nothing's flat, so you're either going up or downhill, both of which are hard work. There's rocks, logs, rocks and mud to avoid on the path, and trees to get under - not too many - plus branches to dodge. It takes a degree of concentration, which is fine on the first 10k or so, but not so easy as you get near to home on the way back. When I'm tired I mainly like to concentrate on breathing (it makes a surprising difference - given that you could do it without thinking - to pay attention to the mechanics) but with trail running concentration has to be on the path. Even more given that I was running without glasses, due to the previously mentioned fog issue. Anyway, no falls this time, unlike the NOSH where I went head-over-heels in the last kilometer.

I was pleased to stop though. Only 18 km this week, but I swear it was harder than the 21 last weekend. Still, I had a look at the Sydney Marathon course yesterday, and it has a lot of hills. I se more of these trail runs in my future.

Dolls Point Half

Endomondo: "21.81 km in 1h:41m:25s"

Time for a race: I've run down to Doll's Point from my place when I wanted a long run (it's about 30-ish km there and back) and it's a very pretty spot, with the bay in one direction and the George's River in the other. Of course, it's perilously close to "The Shire" for a big person but at 8:00 AM on a winter's morning it didn't figure to be all that dangerous. This was a Sri Chinmoy event, cheap and cheerful & with excellent pancakes and after a couple of long-ish training runs a brisk 21 km hit out seemed just the go. The run itself, like all SC events, is based around loops (it makes providing fluids much, much easier) and Dolls Point-Ramsgate-Taren Point bridge is a very scenic 10 km.

I wanted to do this in 100 minutes, which would basically be extending my 16k PB pace for another 5 km.  It seemed like a reasonable challenge, and in fact, the 101 minutes will do me as a success, given that I seem to have run a bit over the 21.1 km anyway. So that was good & the run actually includes a PB for the 10k (43 mins) and 16k (73 mins) as well. On a competitive note, I didn't make the top 3 in my age group (by 7 minutes) and the #7 women's competitor passed me in the final km and comfortably held me off to the finish line. (That's actually about par for me)

Another fantastically sunny day, pretty much identical to the last couple of Sundays, with one big difference: the wind. The one thing my phone doesn't do is measure wind speed (I'm sure that's only because I haven't looked hard enough) but I think I can give you an idea. The first lap wasn't so bad; there was a noticeable breeze, but the most noticeable thing about it was that it seemed to be coming from two directions. The first run east from the bottom of the bridge past the sailing club to Dolls Point was into a mild headwind which irritatingly persisted after we turned north at the point to head up to Ramsgate. "Irritating" turned out to be a mild problem because by some mystery of weather by the time we got back to the point to turn west back towards the bridge for the second crossing, the wind had turned and there was now a howling gale in our faces, the kind of howling gale that makes you think that you're not moving at all despite the effort, and has you wondering if there isn't some way to run sideways so as to present a smaller target (there isn't, BTW). The one good thing about this was that the leaders were by now going past us on their final couple of km, and they looked pretty happy and relaxed with the gale at their back.

Because I run so many laps (unlike most distance runners, who hate laps) I have spent a fair bit of time thinking about winds. You might think that it all evens out, but in fact out of the 360 degrees that the wind might come from, only about 60 - at most - are beneficial. All of the other 300 are problematic, either because they slow you down, or interfere with your balance, or both. I was wondering what the winds would be like on top of the Taren Point Bridge, which I wasn't particularly looking forward to anyway because as bridges go, it does a very good impersonation of two non-trivial hills, and despite all Andrew H.'s exhortations, I still don't really like hills. But when I got onto the bridge, I forgot about the hill problem. It was time to worry about the standing up problem. The pedestrian pathway is protected by concrete barriers from traffic (hard to imagine they would actually be any use in an accident, but it IS nice to see them there) and the first problem was to avoid being blown into & over them. Every time one foot left the ground the wind would try to push you into the barrier, and please note that the definition of running is that there are periods where both feet aren't on the ground. Plus I had to hold onto my race number with one hand because I wasn't sure the safety pins were up to the task. The path is a shared pedestrian/cycle way, and cyclists were holding onto the railings to stop themselves being blown in front of the runners.

That sounds bad, but curiously downhill was even worse. Normally downhill I open out the stride and try to concentrate on not falling over while I run as fast as I can; not today. If you left your foot off the ground for the length of a full stride the wind would catch it and blow it across in front of the other one (yes, only for one side, for the other foot the wind tries to make you take a frog step) leading to disaster. I had to invent a new gait, which involved leaning into the wind and running slightly crabwise. Normally you hope to get back on the downhills the time you lost on the uphills. Today time was not the issue. Uprightness was. I didn't meet anyone who actually fell, but everyone I spoke to felt the same way about it.

Of course it was the same, reversed, going back the other way Really, quite an extraordinary feeling. I meant to take in a bit more of the scenery the second time round, but I was so busy concentrating I completely forgot.

Once off the bridge it was almost an easy run home. The wind did stay consistent, so it was at our backs for most of the last 4 km - if you look at the times I think I managed a 4:15 km around about the 18/19 km point. That is certainly tailwind, much as I might like to claim otherwise. I couldn't find any sprint in the legs over the last couple of km, which I suppose means no unused energy, but is a bit annoying when you get passed. It also suggests to me that the finishing burst of my youthful running was based around a lazy first 90% of the race. Strangely, that is what my PE teacher(s) used to say as well.

Hard work, but a lot of fun. Running with that wind makes for a totally different experience.

Another stunning winter Sunday

Endomondo Running Workout

Well, I said when I set out that it was already visibly clear that we were past the solstice because it was noticeably lighter than last week. It certainly makes it easier to get out of bed. The Marrickville sky was a little cloudy but the weather's been incredibly consistent recently, 4 days clear to 3 days rain, and the rain only finished on Thursday, so I was pretty sure it'd be a good day.

I was stiff as a board in the thighs - some new exercises started on Friday - but eventually I got up some speed. It's comically similar to the setting sail of the Queen Mary. It's curious, I don't feel that I'm running at all well at the moment, although the times are as good - possibly better - than 3 months ago. It's hard to get into the rhythm of it, and easy to fall out of the rhythm when eventually found. Anyway, how it feels is not that important. I have technology to tell me how it's going. (Grins) Marketers' dream, nearly; if I didn't have Yorkshire blood I'd buy every new device as it comes available. "Fortunately" they are too expensive and not actually all that useful; plus my phone has most of them built in anyway.

Barrelling along Illawarra Rd I noticed what looked like a layer of brown smog hanging over Homer St ridge (that's the farthest point on the Illawarra Rd horizon, about 3 km away). It looked pretty unpleasant but the curious thing was that there was no sign of it on Marrickville Rd. However by the time I got down to the river there was mist everywhere, pretty close to fog. I don't remember anything quite like it before; it really reinforces the geography.

The 3rd & 4th most diligent of our group were, respectively, orienteering and running the Gold Coast marathon this AM. It was pretty easy to guess that if you lived anywhere near the water getting up would be an unappetising prospect & it was too cold to wait around. Andrew (T.O.A) and I set off immediately.

We went over the steps from the Cooks River valley into the Wolli Creek valley, which was even foggier than the Cook's. It was so foggy that I came within inches of breaking my neck by tripping over a chain strung across the entrance to a park. The glasses had to come off; I have a patent "de-fogging" spray but it's completely useless in these conditions. But within an hour the mist had burned off, the run was riz, the sky was blue and we were being deafened by the morning chorus of birds (invisible) along the Bardwell Creek.

We managed about 12 km along trails near water before being compelled into the streets of Kogarah. We managed to wend our way - it's not that difficult to navigate by the sun when it's just risen - down to Botany Bay a little south of Brighton & then we ran back along the bay watching planes float mysteriously up and down to the airport.

That's it really. A long run, but a beautiful morning for it.

Back in training

This week's effort - Brighton & wetlands

Since the Sydney marathon is only weeks away, serious training has started. Although, to be honest, the distances seem to be escalating somewhat faster than planned. Last week was meant to be 20k, and turned out to be 22. This week the plan was 24k and turned out to be 29. I'm scared to go out next week; the plan is 28k!

Not that I expect there's much sympathy floating around.

The problem was that it was such a beautiful morning on the Botany Bay path that we found ourselves at Ramsgate without really thinking. That was already 16k, so we actually did quite well to find shortcuts on the way back. We did particularly well because we came back through uncharted terrority, which always means a few false starts. There's a wetlands reserve between the beach road and West Botany street, and we eventually able to find a track, if not through it, at least alongside it for a good distance. Also, the other Andrew knew a path through the mud pits (there's a concreted cycle path to the north and east of them that I usually use) - a boardwalk,  really quite scenic. There were a lot of water birds - nothing very glamorous, just lots of them; ducks, ibis, gulls, a couple of, maybe, bush turkeys. I got a closer look at one of the "mystery" grey birds during the week; it has a white face, and longer legs than I had noticed before. I couldn't quite get close enough to see if it had the green plumage around the nose/beak that I am lead to believe is the characteristic of the grey heron. I have looked at a few pictures of the grey heron online and it must be a good candidate. It seems to have a wide variety of sub-species[note: see below].

We also ran through a caravan park that I didn't know existed; quite a few tents, which suggests holiday makers rather than long term accommodation. I felt a bit guilty pounding - and panting - through a caravan park at 8:30 am on a Sunday. Imagine if you tried it at the Hilton?

We were planning to finish through Arnecliff - Andrew likes the extra hills - but we couldn't find a path across Marsh Drive, so we tried a new road through Tempe but got cut off by West Botany street and ended up settling for the usual river bank, and for me, Illawarra Rd.

The last three hills on Illawarra Rd. are a real challenge. But it makes the coffee and shower well-appreciated.

Note - bird identified as White-faced Heron. Also the bird mentioned a few blogs back (particularly for swimming underwater) is a darter. Thanks to local bird watchers video cameras, and YouTube.

A big day out...

The run...

The pedal...

So, a miraculous confluence of events saw what looks like me training for a triathlon, but which is just the result of Liz' dragon boat club having a social day out on bikes (one of the club members is chief bike propagandist for the local council) around Olympic Park and me wanting to try a run to Olympic Park. This is something I've wanted to try for a while, because I've been somewhat sceptical about the integrity of the bike path signs labelled "Homebush"  which can be seen along the Cooks River. It turns out you can get a fair way, but the last 5-7 km, as you can probably see, is on the road. Neither Richmond St nor Parramatta Rd are much of an advertisement for their local councils; the pavement on the one side of Parramatta Rd that has one is in a parlous state.

It was a fantastic day for a run, and indeed the pedal, of which more later, cold, clear and sunny. The water in the Cooks River was so clear that the reflection of the background houses (I want one of those houses!) looked more real than the houses themselves. Naturally, since I was armed with a camera,  there was no sign of any grey waterbirds. There were an amazing number of cyclists out but I didn't feel the need to photograph them. Although the Cook's is my regular stamping ground, I don't usually run on the north bank, so this was a relatively novel run. At some point I must have reached a point where I had never been before, but I couldn't say exactly where that was. There are lots of what the architect member of the club calls "remnant parks", an Australian Rules football club, swampy/wetlands bits, the back of a racecourse, plenty of overhanging trees and in general it was very pleasant, if ornithologically uneventful. One curious thing about my running at the moment is that it is, by the clock & odometer, much faster than it feels. I could've sworn I was plodding along at 6 minute pace this AM, but inspection reveals that I maintained a pretty steady 5:30-ish pace. It's very puzzling. Anyway, so long as the pace is OK, I suppose. Today was the "official" start of my preparation for the Sydney marathon, so all in all that wasn't a bad hit out. I'll be running a 4-week cycle of 20/24/28/32 km on Sundays for the forseeable future; although it might end up being 22/26/30 if the preparation for Canberra was any guide. I'm adding in an exercise component; well, hopefully. I find it quite difficult to do even 15 minutes exercise daily, despite cheerfully running of an hour and a quarter. Curious, n'est-pas?

The bike is really not much in the way of exercise after a run; admittedly this was an unabashed beginners hit-out, with frequent stops. But you can see we didn't go much faster on the bike than I can run - well, I read somewhere that a bike is 6 times as efficient as walking at converting energy into forward motion, so today's ride was roughly equivalent to running at 2 km/hour. Obviously I'm not complaining!

Olympic Park is a very good venue for riding; it certainly got us into parts of the Park we'd never seen. The armory wharf has been converted into a coffee shop/restaurant; very pleasant. They had an outdoor chess set (pieces about 2 ft high) and I watched some of the worst chess I have ever seen. The armory (I don't know when it was decommissioned) seems to have been mainly run by toy train; there are tracks everywhere. I guess that makes sense - no point in carry the bombs around by hand. Apparently the train still runs once a fortnight. One of the club members is trying to organise an outing for those of us interested; I'll keep you posted.

Most of the ride is through wetland, but I didn't see a lot of birds. It's pleasant, but might repay a more expert eye on a second visit, so I'll do some research. We'll certainly go back, if just as an excursion for Jill's kids next time they're up.

One nice feature of the ride is an artificial hill with a terraced(?) path up so that as you make your first turn and look up you can see rows of cyclists on multiple levels above you. Very amusing. But the really nice attention to detail wasn't revealed until I look at the GPS track above, which shows that it's exactly 1km up (and down) the hill. (Look at kms 3-5) Very cute!

You can correctly imagine that not much else happened today. Market shopping & some work on linguistics that I hope will feed into a project I'm working on. "Some work on linguistics" just means reading, but it's all very interesting.

A winter Sunday

Endomondo Running Workout: "was out running ..."

A reprise of Canberra weather, except possibly colder. I did put on a waterproof jacket though; they're sweaty and uncomfortable and hot, but a lot better than freezing to death in the rain. The only deficiency was that the pocket with the mobile phone collected half-an-inch of water by the 9 km mark, at which time the phone gave up the ghost. It's drying out now (fingers crossed).

There's been some new birdlife around recently; that is, new to me, a sulky looking all grey bird about the size of a cormorant but with no visible neck. I saw a couple during the week up river and today another down near the Alexandria canal. I'll try and get a picture next time I'm out; I haven't had any success tracking it down online. Must get a bird book sometime; for a non-specific search books are still a winning technology.

Not much else to see today. Really, the weather was shocking. We didn't see anyone else at all around the water. One guy was out watching the planes land; there's a spot about 50 meters from the runway and when the weather is heavy the planes are meters lower. You'd be hard pressed to find a better spot to combine an idea of how BIG a 747 is with the idea that it can also fly. He was fighting with an inside-out umbrella.

Liz and I went to Port Macquarie yesterday, where she raced in a 17 km dragonboat race up the Hastings River and I ran around the headlands in rain exactly like today's; well maybe worse than today's. I had to run with my glasses off so I didn't see much, although what I did see of Port Macquarie itself didn't really make a strong case for a tourist's return. The hinterland though will, I think, get us back. There are a lot of boating opportunities, the whole place is a mass of watercourses. Ocean is always nice, of course, even in rain, but it was all a bit of a grey blur.

Anyway, I don;t usually run consecutive Saturdays and Sundays, but I've really been struggling with heavy legs all week - possibly a side effect of the NOSH run - so I wanted to run them back into shape. I'm pleased to report that that seems to have happened. The run today went very well, allowing for the weather, and the legs could have gone a fair bit further. The ears & face were keen for a hot shower though.

The Sydney Marathon is in 3 months - so I guess I will call today the first training run.

The NOSH

Running: "15.01 km in 1h:33m:37s"

First of all, I want to put in a protest: it was 15.3 kilometers according to the organisers and no part of my leg machinery wishes to argue with them. Secondly, also according to the organisers, my time was 91 minutes. And if I hadn't got stuck behind all the slow people at the beginning who couldn't then be passed for several kilometers due to the narrowness of the track, and, if I hadn't fallen over with a kilometer to go, it would have been less than 90 minutes (although probably not as emphatically less as that previous sentence might sound).

The NOSH has nothing to do with food. It is a 15 kilometer run organised by the Northside Orienteers and Sydney Harriers through one (or possible two) national parks and it defies the laws of physics in that it goes uphill significantly more than it goes downhill. Rather unfair really; it achieves this by having a finish line some 80 meters higher than the start, and the uphill nature of things is somewhat emphasised by the rocks and trees you have to climb to go up them, and the fact that you can't really relax on the rare occasions that you get to go downhill because downhill is wet slippery and likewise rocky and steep.

Still, all good fun. I saw a lyrebird sunning itself on a rock. It's my first trail run and I can see the attraction of them. Trees and water make better scenery than highways. But it really is much much harder work than road running. I can see that I'm due to spend more time in the gym. There's a race called the "Six Foot track" which I've been thinking about doing next year; it's 48km over the same kind of terrain (in the Blue Mountains) and since I don't want to take a day to finish it I'll need to be a tad fitter.

OK that's it. I've got work tomorrow, washing up to do, and an assignment due at the end of next week. Holy timetables, Batman, that means I'm busy!

Sunday 2.2

Endomondo Running Workout: "was out running 23.18 km in 2h:21m:11s using Endomondo."

I can't think of a solitary thing to say about this run. It was quite difficult, I'm still running off hockey injuries. Sadly, I think the stop/start/twist/dodge of hockey is beyond me. My legs are about twice as strong as they were two years ago when I started playing, and I'm about four times as fit, but the knees just can't see out a game or even a practice.

It's strange, running actually seems to get various things in the knee back in place after hockey has dislodged them but even so there's a fair bit of residual bruising. You'd think the pounding of the running on pavement would make it worse (and I'm sure that doing nothing would make it better faster), but over the course of a week's running my knees are significantly less sore than they were last Saturday after the game. Which is not to say that they aren't sore.

23 km is a good training distance and there were three of us this AM. The other two more active members were off running the Sydney half-marathon, so we may have five regulars pretty soon. Jo is planning to run the Gold Coast marathon in about 8 weeks (she ran the half in Canberra). I'm sticking to 16km & halves until the Sydney marathon in September. I'm going to run in the City-to-Surf as well; after all, it's quintessential Sydney.

Iron Cove

Endomondo Running Workout: "16.22 km in 1h:15m:43s."

This is actually a race, run by an organisation called Sri Chinmoy who organise a huge number of distance events for quite low prices. I assume it's their business but they seem to do it pretty well. They manage to provide hot food & fresh fruit at the finish line - more than anyone could whip up in Canberra for four times the entry fee. Mind you, they don't do the high tech approach to timing, chips & computers and because the numbers are pretty small the manual approach works fine for them.

I ran in this event last year and took 83 minutes, so the 75 minutes this time represents 30 seconds per kilometer improvement. I'm quite happy, although I was semi-secretly hoping to break 72 minutes. Maybe next time. Last time I also finished with shin splints in one leg and a strained adductor in the other, so my current uninjured state (sore glutes, but that's all) is also a significant improvement on last year as well. I'll add links to the pictures if they appear. They have - not their best photographer, but it gives an idea.

As far as the race went, I finished 3rd (up from 5th). The two guys who came in 1st and 2nd ran 61 and 64 minutes respectively, which is pretty dam' impressive. Frankly, my cardiologist would be very cross if I tried any harder (I got a check up before I started all this running business, wasn't super keen on being a total Fixx follower) so I'm not sure where the next improvements will come from. Technique, I guess; that's a long slow road (grins maniacally).

Iron Cove itself is quite nice, especially along the Leichhardt bank, but much less so on the Drummoyne side. We run on the public walking/bike tracks, and there's a lot of unofficial competition with the GP, who were out in force. To my mind, the Cooks River tracks are much more pleasant (amongst other things, no cars) but there are never anything like the same number of people using them. Perhaps it's the size of the body of water, and the associated larger amounts of reflected light that make the Iron Cove paths so popular. Perhaps it benefits from the cachet of Port Jackson. Perhaps it constitutes "ocean" - you can bet money it does in the real estate literature for the area.  Later in the day, and perhaps more so in summer, there are sailboats, which are definitely picturesque. This morning there were rowers, whom Liz dismissed with withering contempt - they go backwards! No more coaches on bikes with bullhorns either (which you can still see on the Yarra); here the club coach was out in a tinny, motoring backward and forward between crews. Leichhardt rowing club is pretty serious. Members have to enter something like 26 out of 30 seasonal regattas to keep their place in a boat, and they're expected to practise regularly as well.

Regular readers may recall that the Hawthorne Canal empties into Iron Cove. The regular Sunday running group was going to do the canal today, but I didn't see them; not that we make a big impact on our surroundings with the usual group of two or three. Mind you, we do seem to be growing a little at the moment. We might start getting five or six out fairly soon, judging by the increased email traffic.

I can't think of a lot else to say. Well, one thing: when I finish with the marathon bug, 16 km races really are a perfect distance.