Brighton in the rain

Endomondo Running Workout: was out running 26.83 km

pffff...I think English needs a formalised list of exclamations; right now I need one that suggests exhaustion and stiffness. It was a tough run. Honestly, that fact that I managed two marathons last year seems completely implausible based on today. Funny business.

To put things in perspective though, I'm two weeks into a new coach and therefore a new coaching routine. Plus,  I worked out last year that I needed to spend more time in the gym, and I've just started that as well. Since the new routine features significantly more speed work than I used to set myself (one of my goals is to break 40 minutes for 10k), and most of the gym work is on the legs, they - in particular the right one - were protesting. On the return leg I thought they might cramp, but to their credit they didn't.

I wonder if another factor might be the change in shoes; I've been training in cross country shoes, which are thinner, lighter and have a more flexible sole than my road shoes. Last year I trained in the road shoes all the time, but I had a lot of sore knees (that doesn't look quite right now it's written down) but the mixed shoe type seems to be avoiding the knee issue so far. I'm starting to get some idea of why runners go mad about shoes, and in a way, how easy it is to rip them off. $200 is ridiculous for a pair of runners, but it's not so ridiculous for a pain-free couple of months of training. Mind you I can import a lot of the shoes for $100; there's a small risk on sizing but so far it hasn't been an issue. I'd try the Dunlop Volleys - but they aren't strong enough to last a month these days as street shoes, so I can't see them being much use on a run. They'd tear themselves to bits on a tennis court!

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.