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.

Sunday 2.1

Endomondo Running Workout: "19.01 km in 2h:08m:16s"

Four of us turned up! It's a new record! Anyway, it was a very social run. The best weather in about a month; the river is still very muddy dealing with stormwater runoff. If you follow the run on the map the big left turn (south) at about 6.7 km is past what I call the "Earlwood waterfall" - it is a waterfall, albeit down a concreted drainage channel. Turns out it does have a proper name, Cup and Saucer Creek. Presumably it wasn't concreted when it got that name. It's amazing how many watercourses there are around when you start looking; of course, it's less amazing in the historical/geographical context, bearing in mind that the whole Cooks River area was swamp. Perhaps what is more amazing is how easily oblivious one can be to one's surroundings. Especially from a car.