Manly Dam

Left-leaning, as always

The photographer has done a great job to get a feel for the light at 6:45 this AM. You can tell summer is past! In fact, it was so dark when I was coming up Pittwater Rd (I think - it changes its name about 10 times) that I missed the turnoff twice, heading North and then again going South when I realised my error. Apparently Many Dam isn't a sufficiently interesting place to warrant a decent - that is, large, reflective, well-lit - sign. Well, I guess that makes it all the better for the locals, because it's a fantastic spot. I'm a bit surprised I've never been here before; I did, however, recognise a couple of spots in the Garigal National Park loop from previous runs on this side of the harbour.

I should find some stock footage - I had planned to take the phone for picture taking purposes, but I left it out of the bag (hence also the navigational problems) - but I'm sure Google can do the honours. I don't have enough of a naturalist's eye to describe the vegetation; predominantly the typical Sydney sclerophyll, with a

Best knee forward

mixture of both the wet and the dry varieties. There was one section in Garigal where we ran through the wind-stunted ridge-top brush that I'm particularly fond of. I think it's the sudden light, and sensation of space after the passageway of a lot of the trails. Plus, the sound is very different in those open spaces, the city's sounds are more accessible so you have the awareness of being in the bush in the city.

I also got that bush in the city feeling crawling under a bloody great pipe, twice, just rampaging its way through the bush from suburban outpost to suburban outpost. I guess it's water.

Speaking of water, people say the nursery rhyme Jack & Jill isn't plausible, because who would go up a hill to find water? Well, all the worst puddles and wettest section of the track today were high up, so you can put that in the Funk & Wagnalls! I've observed this phenomenon elsewhere, also.

One good thing about trails is that they enforce a relatively slow pace on you. Of course they extract a massive toll on the uphill and downhill muscles, but there's always enough flatland muscle left for an eye-catching sprint to the line. I could hear these two guys behind me, and I was NOT planning to let them pass me at the finish. Two people had already out-descended me on the last big hill after I'd run past them on the ascent, so I was not in a charitable mood!

Woodstock is my new running club - this was the maiden run in club colours.

 I've linked the Garmin report (it's better than the one from Wentworth Falls, but still not perfect. The watch shuts down on hills because the horizontal movement isn't significant - particularly on uphill legs.

Course map and run details

It certainly didn't feel as brutally up-and-down as Wentworth Falls, but while there were no massive ascent/descent sections, there wasn't that much flat stuff either. Just a constant variety. I'm getting better at descending, without a doubt, for all the times I got passed today. I remember the first trail run I did northside (NOSH) I walked down the declines. Now, if possible, I bound, thinking - sometimes - of the Swallows and Amazons "galumphing" down the fells. In a bid for literary credibility I will mention that I also occasionally think about Japhy Ryder in Dharma Bums insisting that you can only run down mountains. It's true that your body does an extraordinary job of processing all the information, much faster than you can consciously think about it - up to a point at least you can really let yourself go, so long as you concentrate. I struggle a bit with my eyes - when it's cold, as in the early AM, they water uncontrollably which doesn't help the focus; and when I heat up, I sweat (profusely, as you will notice above) and again, that doesn't help the focus. But still, I was pleased with the technical side of the running today - very satisfactory.

After the storm...

With Grevillea...

...without Grevillea

Someone better than I am with post-processing software could probably have balanced the lighting in these two pictures (and someone better with cameras wouldn't be relying on the auto settings). It's actually quite difficult to see the Grevillea in the top picture; it's sort of left-centre-top, behind the Melaleuca. The Melaleuca had just undergone a vicious prune.

In the second picture the Melaleuca is growing back, and you can see the gap behind it which used to be completely filled by the Grevillea. Sunday's storm (last day of February) removed it partially, and Saturday I chopped it down completely. We can see a lot more of the fence - which is reminding me I have to get on to the neighbour about it.

Wentworth Falls

Wentworth Falls

It won't take an expert to realise that I didn't run in a dead straight line across this gorge in the Blue Mountains - something of a watch failure, or maybe GPS doesn't penetrate deep valleys. There's about 1.3 km missing from the advertised distance - that would be about the 9 missing minutes to make it all balance up. The 6 other minutes were spent lost - you can just about work out where that was, around where the dead straight bearing ends. I tried to run off down the Vera Falls track - fortunately I met a couple of people coming back from the same error before I'd wasted too much time. Well, it wouldn't be a trail run for me if I didn't get lost.

If you assume 6 steps to a metre (about 6.5" per step, I think, sounds fair), then this run involved 3500-odd steps up, and another 3500-odd down. Down is scarier, but up is much, much harder. I'm a little puzzled by this, but since I changed my running to focus on being really, really front-of-foot oriented, I've become much, much better at descending. It still takes an enormous amount of concentration (and regular wiping of the glasses on any dry-ish fabric around) but at the very least I feel much faster downhill these days, leaping from rock to rock like an elderly *gazoat.

* Not actually a word

Usually I try to run up hills, because no matter how slowly you do it, you pass a bunch of people walking and once you get to the top and get a head start on the downhill, how are they ever going to catch you? But hills are not stairs, and I did not run up many of these! I don't think many people did, in fact, except perhaps the first half dozen over the line.

A lot of this suffering was alleviated by the ambiance.

Random view near Wentworth Falls

Really, there was one spot where I emerged from running doubled over through a passage cut out of the cliff and could have run straight out onto that cloud; it was at foot level at the point where the path doubled back around the bluff. I don't have any photographs of the waterfalls - but I'm sure Google can provide some.

At the gun...

Coming in to the aid station @ 12k

Verge garden near birthday

Two angles, you can see it's booming along. The soil's looking a little dry on top, but we've had so much rain I don't think it really can be. You can see the Randwick geranium on the left is doing pretty well, and the knotweed is booming. I'm a little worried about the heath in there somewhere, but maybe when it flowers we'll spot it again. Still not very happy about the tree - and council has warned us not to prune it. They really are idiots - surely it's cheaper for them if we do.

Last January Saturday

Saturday morning means parkrun... It's entirely a volunteer based organisation, and the photographers can be pretty random, but not in this case. What you can see here is the hill at the halfway point, with one of those curious blocks of flats that somehow appears to have escaped planning permission. Oddly, though, it's the  aesthetic making of this picture.

None of those people is me. I ran a PB today (still not under 20 minutes) and there are no pictures of it. I only run for the photographs.

While I was off doing that, Liz was engaged in the bridge-to-bridge, a 14 km "race" from the Spit Bridge at Mosman to Roseville Bridge (right). I didn't get up there in time to catch her at the halfway point, but the bridge wasn't going anywhere so I caught it instead. Actually I've run over this bridge a couple of times as part of the NOSH race - this is an amazing place for running, but not so convenient for me on a regular basis. Sydney has managed to hang on to an extraordinary amount of bush, given that real estate speculation is the true meaning of life here.

Spit Bridge marina - probably there is more than one - is another stunning Sydney vista. These are, believe it or not, the cheap boats. Well, perhaps "cheaper" would be more accurate. They're all very nice. The super expensive ones tend to be powerboats.

This is the new boat in action - you can get an idea of its unique features, to some extent. Note the very wide out-curved sides; this is the tumblehome, which provides additional secondary stability. The bottom of the canoe is a little narrower - for speed - as is the top, to assist with management in the wind.

It's 17'6" long - American made, quaint that they are probably the last users of the imperial measurements in the world. You can see the stabilising ribs through the kevlar stiffened fibreglass, and possibly a hint of the rudder.

It's a very nice looking boat.

Paddler's eye view - feet on steering pedals. This is Deadman's Creek, off the Georges River, at a king tide. It was extraordinarily high this AM.

Federal Highway and a new boat!

 We went down to Canberra, combining a trip for me to catch up with an old friend and bridge partner, a trip for Liz to see her nieces and a trip to Robertson to pick up the new boat.

I took the opportunity to explore the manual operations of the camera as we drove down the Federal Highway. It's a pretty hit and miss business taking pictures from a moving car with shaky hands, but this tree turned out pretty well.

The left hand side of the road.

 The right hand side of the road.

Focus failure. I thought there'd be more cyclists, but we only saw five or six on the entire trip.

Windmills on Lake George

This is the new boat. The key difference is the rudder at the back, but it is also 2 feet longer than the last one. Longer boats are faster. The physics of steering are that sitting in the middle of a boat is probably the worst place to try and steer from - we got the hint from a Canadian guy a couple of years ago; he'd had a rudder added to his canoe prior to setting a record on the Yukon. This is Liz's boat for the Hawkesbury.

2015 so far

Finally I saw the photographer in time to pose for the picture! This is one of the best volunteer photographers parkrun gets - it's an excellent shot of Sydney Park, looking south. Under my left elbow you can see the Cooks River and to my right is a reasonable sample of the building that's going on around what used to be the purely industrial suburb of Alexandria. I'm pleased to announce that the guy behind me stayed there all the way to the finish line. Sadly, the park is under threat from roadworks.