Quarry Rd TT

Quarry Rd, popular training route for anyone attempting a hilly trail race like six foot track. It's basically a fire-trail with steep downhill then steep uphill then flattish to the end then return, about 12.5km all up. This has become a regular testing track for me to see how I'm going, the start is less than 2km from my house so it's nice and easy to go for a hit-out once in a while.

With Jungfrau marathon 3 weeks away I figured it was time to try it again, my C2S race wasn't as good as I'd hoped so I was looking for a confidence boost. Quarry Rd is a tough run to get right, having run it so many times I know you have to go hard the whole way to get a fast time. That means going hard on the descents and also on the steep climbs while managing to keep the pace up on the flat section on the Dural side. The hardest thing is probably mental, every time I go for a fast time I know it's going to be a painful run so it's difficult to be in the mood to go hard.

I started fast down the hill and pushed hard to the bridge, on the climb i felt like I was slowing a bit so made sure I ran hard on the flat section to the other gate. Turned and started on the return leg but I felt like I'd lost too much time, tried to pick it up on the descent to the bridge but was struggling a bit on the last climb then pushed it to the end. I reached the gate in 50:43, scraping a few seconds off my previous best of 50:50 so really happy with that and a little bit surprised because I thought I'd lost too much time. Some of the time improvement can be attributed to the recent work they've down re-grading the surface, it's definitely a bit smoother and probably a bit faster, but to get even close to my best time means I'm going reasonably well.

Garmin connect

Start of the pain

 

Bridge at the bottom

City 2 Surf

Officially finished 41st in 47:15. Was really hoping to get about 46:30 or better so not entirely happy with the time, also got chicked by Lara Tamsett but it's fair to say that I'm getting used to that. Pretty windy conditions out there especially over the last 4 kms. Went through 10k in 34:00, 6 secs ahead of last year's time but finished 15 secs slower overall.

It was a good hit-out, not great conditions at Bondi so ran back to the city with Richard, and the Truscotts before continuing on to St Leonards for the train home. 28km all up for the day then had an afternoon nap...nice. It was interesting to see the last group still lined up on the starting line when we got back to Hyde Park, makes you realise just how many people do this race.

The Training Camp



Apparently Kenyans have training camps and they seem to go pretty well so I thought I would copy that approach. The chosen campsite was the cox's river campsite on the six foot track, the first challenge was to see if the Subaru could handle the drive in via Coxs river road, I was a bit concerned about the difficulty of the road but it was pretty straightforward. We arrived at the site and the only other guests were a bunch of middle-aged ute driving VB drinking campers who we were to find out had a passion for the musical talents of Jimmy Barnes. I was there to run some big long hills while my mates were going to head downstream to catch some trout in the freezing waters of the Coxs river.

  

Training camp



I was in two minds as to how I approached the run, I wanted to do 2 reps of pluvi but I knew that would be tough mentally, I was thinking of heading down Moorara Boss fire trail but wasn't sure about that and didn't want to carry extra water so in the end I did 1 lap of pluvi  then back to camp for some refreshments then back to the cattle yards and up the road we drove in on, here it is Pluviometer run

I was surprised to see the track had been graded (the day before apparently) from just after Alum Creek all the way to pluviometer, pretty good surface now and will definitely make for some faster times come six foot track race next year.

The clear waters of the river enticed me in for a post-run ice-bath, this was a big mistake. I walked into the river up to my knees and I was in pain after a few seconds, the water was freezing. My feet and legs began to ache so I scrambled out and put on lots of layers to warm up and prepare for the cold night ahead. That night around the campfire was freezing and even a few sausages and beers couldn't warm me up so I went to bed early just to keep warm and dozed off to the sounds of some early 80's Cold Chisel...could be worse.

In the morning we went downstream looking for trout, didn't find any so we packed up then I ran back to the explorer's tree while the guys drove the long way around to pick me up. I felt pretty good running up Nellie's Glen, I'm usually in a terrible state when I run this section Explorer's tree

Familiar sight



Should be trout in there somewhere



All up it was a good training weekend, I feel like these long hill runs are getting me ready for Jungfrau. My speed is improving too and I can see that with the recent HuRTS sessions, here are a few of them

4 by 2km

1 min on 30 sec off

Looking forward to the city 2 surf now, it should give a good idea of how I'm going then it will be a few more weeks until Switzerland.



Seeded entry, trying to hang onto one these