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!