Summer Series @ West Denistone & recovery

Wednesday rolls around and the Summer Series caravan moves to Denistone West in an area wedged between the main north railway, Marsden Road, Victoria Rd and Eastwood shopping centre. Quite a decent climb/descent at the northern end of the map. I had to pass on my recovery run this morning with some urgent business meetings taking priority.

At least the afternoon was a little cooler than last time we ran here, and a new start spot which makes things a little more interesting. The goal in plotting a course here is to minimise the climbs, ie only one major climb, so you have to look at the contours.

Off and around the edge of the park to get 17 then some fairly flat running for 23 & 8. A little climb up to 14 then down again to collect 3 on the way to 27. A little in and out for 10 and then the big climb (counted 10 contours = 40m climb) to 12. Up a little further to locate the bush track that leds down to 7 and then back out for the three controls (16,28,1) around the sports fields. First little oops on the way from 1 to 22, three options low track, high track or even higher road. Of course I chose the worst option the high track which was more overgrown than I know the low track was and certainly not as fast as the parallel road. Anyway after 22 some nice fast trail running downhill to 11 & 21 and then the second climbing portion up to 25 (30 vertical metres). Very tempting to cut across to 20 but from previous experience that green band was thick lantana so up to 9 and then in and out for 20 with fairly flat (and fast) running. A drop down for 30 and then decision time, keep going east for more points or drop back down and risk being early...

Of course I went east and picked up 29 with a real quick downhill to 15, tempted to run along the park for 24 & 2 but time was ticking so ran as direct a path as possible back getting as many controls as possible with 13, 26, 6 & 19 all in quick succession. As I was leaving 19 the 45 minutes ticked over and so now it was a sprint back to the finish as quickly as possible. I really turned the legs over and got just on 48 minutes so lose 30 points (another second and it would have been 40!).

Overall score ended up @ 490 with 9.3km in 48 minutes (5:09 pace) and am pretty happy with that over a pretty hilly course.

Here's my route

http://www.users.bigpond.com/dmbray/Brush%20Farm.jpg

During my recovery run this morning (10.4km in 50:25 4:51min/km avg HR 160) I was thinking (as you do!) more about the Wednesday night runs. I record them in my diary as a Tempo run but they are usually an average pace slower than my recovery or longer runs so what benefit then?

The thing is I have never taken into account the time spent at each control as I run the course. In looking at it you slow down a little if you can clearly see the object/control more if you can't. Pretty much stop to identify the actual control code, write it down on your card and then accelerate away again. Now I plan my exit point before I get to the control so get away fairly fast but would say that this whole process takes between 5-10 seconds out of running at normal pace (and that is I don't have problems finding the control). Now if you look at last night I visited 25 controls, if you work that time out it comes out to between 2 - 4 minutes extra time not really running. So if you deduct that sort of time all of a sudden I'm running at around 4:30 pace and on quite a hilly course, so I guess it is really a tempo run after all!

Enough analysis paralysis, for tomorrow I have a sharpener session scheduled of 500m reps to get the legs kicking over before resting on Saturday for the 25km @ SMC.