Lions and running and gels. Oh my! (aka Week 14)
82 clicks this week. Biggest week out there on those unpaved (and paved) roads. The tough sessions were:
An Over Under Intervals Run. 3 mins in Zone 3, 4 mins in Zone Y (don't know what that is) and 2 mins recovery. Was meant to be three sets but I was running late so dropped one. Commitment.
Good old hill reps. 10 x 30 second efforts. Much prefer these shorter sprints! Found a nice little hill off the Bay Run for them. I've said it before and I'll say it again - the looks you get from the people as you run past them up and down a silly little hill are classic.
I'm now about a month out from the race and, just quietly, have been packing myself that I'm not prepared enough. Having 3 out of 4 weeks off running recently, right in the middle of the peak training load, has fuel this quiet panic. The focus this week has been how I'd go on the weekend long run, which was slated for 4 and a half hours. Figured that'd give me a sense of where I'm really at.
So on Saturday night I busted out the Strava route maker (have I mentioned how good that is?), and requested 40kms of hilly trails somewhere in the vicinity of Sydney. All that really came up was a few different versions of the trails at the bottom of Ka Ring Gai national park near Turramurra. I haven't done it yet, but they looked to all be iterations of the trails the Jabulani Challenge runs through. I was keen to maximise elevation, so rather than pick the full Jabulani course found a hilly little section that ran from North Turramurra through to North Wahroonga (near the Golden Jubilee Field and Jubes Mountain Bike Park, for you locals) and decided to do laps of that. Great. Course sorted out. I saved it down, pushed the map over to my Garmin and was good to go.
Life is busy and squeezing running around it is a necessity. This run was no exception. I needed to be back home by 11am, and it was about a 30 min drive out to the starting point. Allowing sufficient buffer (I'm a get to the airport 3 hours early kinda guy), I had to be in the car at 4.30am to head out there. Yuck. Packed everything ready to go the night before, so just had to roll out of bed, brush my teeth (can't run without clean teeth - is that a thing?), pull a coffee into the travel cup and I hit the road bleery eyed and ready to roll.
After an uneventful drive, I got to my starting point. Pitch black but thankfully not too chilly. I chucked on my gear, got the GPS sorted and gave the calves a nominal stretch before heading out. It's contextually important at this point to remind you that I'm not a local to Sydney, and I've never been anywhere near this suburb, let alone these trails. It didn't take long, running through these mysterious trails by myself in the dark, to realise this was a terrible idea, I wasn’t safe and freak out. Not helping this was the numerous roos and other wildlife in the surrounding bushes, making plenty of scary noises as I ran near them. Did a quick assessment and decided I'd keep going, but I'd pop my headphone out (always only have one in, but wanted all my senses). That helped a bit. But I still kept checking over my shoulder. The paranoia had taken hold. I've read too many stories of runners being stalked by mountain lions and the like - none of which we have here - and kept looking over my shoulder to face my untimely doom.
I had an epiphany, finally, as I was planning out how I'd defend myself from this mountain lion. I was going to need some kind of weapon! A stick? Plenty of those around. Some rocks? Heaps of those too. The 6ft long carbon running poles that were strapped to my back and that I should be using for these hills anyway? Perfect. I'm ashamed to say, it helped a lot. Or distracted me perhaps. However they worked, they did, and as the sun came up about an hour later I was able to relax a little more. It also helped that the sun showed me that these trails, despite seeming quite bushy, are not at all far from civilisation. Phew. Relief. There's definitely a message in here though - be smarter than me when you're planning your runs. Night running is fun, and important for training, but take a friend with you or do it in an area with a few people!
The rest of the run went great. Like really well. The section of trails I'd picked is fantastic, and a good choice for long hills near Sydney (ie, closer than Kedumba). The out and back circuit is about 14km, and gives you about 500m of climbing, roughly split over two climbs, with descents to match. I didn't use it in the end, but having the car parked at one end gives you a makeshift aid station too. The trails themselves are just fire trails and very well manicured so the only flag would be that if you're looking for technical trails then these aren't the ones for you. As mentioned, this was a good opportunity to trial using my poles (aka mountain lion repellant). I ran the entire session with them. Such a pleasure.
For nutrition on this one, I'd gone up to my good friends at Pace Athletic for my usual mix of Clif blocks, Clif bars and GU gels, only to find they were out of the latter two. The guy at the store suggested trying out the Maurten they had. I've always been keen to give them a whirl, so grabbed two bars and two gels to supplement my blocks (black cherry everytime. Yum). The Maurtens are bloody fantastic! The bars are tasty, sweet rice bars that were easy to get down and pack 225 cals of goodness, and the gels aren't too sweet (good for late in a race when you're sick of sweet food) but have a bit of an odd consistency. Only complaint is that they each run at $5 a pop. Bit rich for regular training with, but fine to splurge on for training and races. Worked my way through all of that for the run and didn't get hungry at any point, so think the balance was about right.
Beyond all that, I got my blood results back and everything is looking fine except some dodgy vitamin D levels. Cruel to be low in something that requires sunlight when I have a strong preference to not increase my risk of skin cancer (ie, increase above the heightened risk that comes with being a runner. Slip slop slap folks!). Anyway, supplements are the easy fix - so off to the chemist I go.
Only a few weeks left now, and one massive training run to fit in. Not sure when. Stay tuned!