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.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
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)
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)
Monday, September 19, 2011
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)
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)
Saturday, September 10, 2011
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).
Saturday, September 3, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
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; 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.
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.
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; 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 |
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.
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