So, after a week and a half of outrageous work commitments, a weekend wedding out of town and a bout of man-flu, I was ready for a bit of a break. Mrs MLCM and I had intended to spend a few days up north in a warmer climate with a nice beach somewhere, but flight chaos caused by Chilean volcanic ash clouds and road chaos caused by flooding up north put paid to that idea, and so instead we opted for three days in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. This of course presented an ideal opportunity for some serious mountain training which could just not be missed.
The Blue Mountains consist principally of a large sandstone plateau cut through with gorges up to 760 metres deep. Most of the townships are high up on ridges, with incredible views from numerous lookouts on the escarpments overlooking dense eucalypt rainforest. The area is renowned for its beauty and the bushwalking is as arduous as it is spectacular. It also, of course, presents plenty of challenges for the runner. Challenges which I just couldn't let pass. Of course. :-)
Day 1: Awoke early in the family holiday home at Blackheath (a local aboriginal word meaning "We'll have none of those pretentious nostalgic pommie place names around here thank you very much") and immediately changed into running gear and trotted out to be confronted with a frigid 3 degree dawn. At an altitude of 1,065 metres, Blackheath is often far colder in winter than this, so I figured I could hardly back out now, lest the weather only worsen later on (complete white-outs and thick snow are not uncommon). None the less, after a relatively mild Sydney winter, even +3 degrees was a bit of a shock to the system.
I opted for this first day a reasonably simple run down to the local lookout and back, a total of just over 7km. The run out was cold but surprisingly comfortable. Upon turning around at the far end however I quickly discovered the run out had been slightly downhill, so now I was running uphill and into a stiffish breeze, which of course had an associated wind chill factor to make it all the more miserable. Despite (or because of) this I returned home in good time and resolved to find something longer and tougher for the next day. With this in mind Mrs MLCM and I went out scouting suitable off-road trails, interspersed with sporadic retreats to coffee shops for revitalising mugs of coffee. One promising looking trail showed itself and a plan was hatched. However that night I went to bed with a gale howling mournfully through the power lines, a plummeting thermometer and so I fell asleep thinking the chance of an early run looked decidely less likely as the bad weather closed in.
Day 2: Awoke at dawn again to find that the wind though still strong had abated from its savagery of the previous evening. To my great surprise I was out of bed and in my running gear in a flash, resolving to get the run under way. The thermometer registered a solitary one degree, with the wind chill well below that. On top of the big chill, my ancient steam-driven Garmin 201 was having difficulty finding the satellites and I had to give it a full reset, requiring several minutes of hypothermia-inducing standing around waiting for the technology to do its thing. When finally set, I was so cold I almost opted to run in a beanie and a long-sleeve top, however I plodded away in just the regular t-shirt and shorts and within a few hundred metres was glad I had done so. I heat up very quickly and despite hating the cold have always found in the past a run in anything more than a T-shirt always results in me turning back within a few hundred metres to divest myself of needless layers. But the waiting around at the start ... man I hate that!
The plan was a good one - or so I thought - run down the road to the same lookout I ran to yesterday, but then turn northward along the cliff top track for 2.5km until reaching another track branching westwards up a gully before reaching a fire trail that runs uphill towards a ridge and back along the road toward home. The run out was all good; I felt fine and despite the severe wind chill it felt great to be out there. Pockets of thick frost had developed in the areas sheltered from the wind, and the local golf course had whites rather than greens, but in all the first part of the run felt great. The few enswaddled people about at that hour looked at my T-shirted self in shock - even the two other runners I passed were wearing compression tights, long sleeve tops and beanies, but I felt fine and after the first kilometre was toasty warm and enjoying it immensely. Upon reaching the end of the road and turning onto the cliff top track however I discovered my first error. I had assumed (and I generally try to avoid assumptions, as a rule) that the cliff top track would be relatively flat. I don't know why I thought that, but I did. Of course the truth was otherwise - the cliff I was running along was gouged by deep ravines, with the track descending and ascending steeply and constantly. Great training of course, but unexpected and therefore cruelly demotivating.
My second mistake became obvious as soon as I hit the dirt/mud track - I'd come out in my brand new Brooks Adrenaline road-running shoes instead of my off-roaders. Oh well, no point turning around now, so on I plunged. Just about literally, as it turned out.
When I eventually reached the junction I was looking for and turned up the gully track as planned, I found it steep, muddy and essentially un-runable. It took me 15 minutes to cover the 1.4 kilometres to the fire trail, which was then too steep to run up after my struggles in the mud. Eventually of course I reached the road and managed to jog home again, but the 11 kilometres covered that morning were probably the hardest I've covered in this campaign.
Day 3: After the exertions of day two (which included a further 12km of mountain bushwalking in the afternoon) I decided to forego any more off-road running and do a long slow run on the sealed roads around Blackheath. It would still be undulating but at least I would escape the worst of the mud. I settled on a 17km course and awoke before dawn to find the temperature a balmy 2 degrees and relatively calm. I nearly swapped the T-shirt for a singlet, but headed out in short sleeves and found conditions quite pleasant. Being less windy there was more frost about, and as I headed through the township I found cars caked in ice. From home to Govett's Leap lookout was a 10km ropund trip, to which I planned to add the 7km return trip to the nearer Evans Lookout. I was in good form, belting up the hills and finding the ones I had expected to struggle with remarkably trouble-free. I struggled to keep my pace down, and was a little disturbed to complete the first 10km in a shade over 60 minutes. For a long slowie I knew this was too fast, especially over such undulating terrain, and from the 5km mark I was aware of a golf ball-sized knot that had developed in my left calf. I slowed down the pace for the second leg, but I think I had already pushed my luck just a tad too much. Just 200m short of home and on a not-particularly difficult final incline my left calf gave way - I've pulled that muscle many times before (in the years before prescription orthotics finally fixed my injury woes) and knew the feeling all too well. It felt like it just split vertically apart along a seam and all strength washed away and left a seering, pulsating pain that said "you idiot". I hobbled the last 200 metres home though, and then forced myself to walk a few hundred metres more. I knew if I just stopped that the leg would seize up completely and I'd be hobbling for days. I'm sure I did the right thing - the leg was sore and forced me to limp about for the rest of the day, but now, a day and a half later the pain has almost gone and I'm sure I'll be running again, if not tomorrow, certainly the day after. So, serious injury avoided, and I was well pleased with my time of 1h 44m for 17 tough, undulating and very cold kilometres.
So three days in the mountains, 35 kilometres run and nearly as many again walked in three trying days. Do I feel great? You bet, even with a still-sore left calf! Even so, on every hill I trudged up, I kept wondering if I could keep that up for 21.4 straight kilometres, as will be needed come November 20th. And the answer was always "No, not yet." But, I'm getting there, and it's a great journey and I'm looking forward immensely to the next part of the adventure.
June June there is no spoon.
