Sea to Summit Training
I'm currently trying to prepare myself for the upcoming Sea 2 Summit event in Adelaide. This is a 32km event which is predominantly off-road and runs from Seacliff to Mt Lofty Summit. As you can see from the profile below, it's a pretty long climb!
I haven't done any hill training recently so decided not to get too ambitious with my plans. I packed my CamelBak, some energy gels and sandwhiches and prepared to run the first 13km or so of the route. I found that the Sea 2 Summit route is also a published day trip for hikers, so came across some maps online and printed them off.
No easing into this run
The first steep hill
They kept coming
In hindsight, I should have printed both satellite and street views of the maps as I struggled to find the trails I should have been on on a couple of occasions. This and the fact that I have no sense of direction, led to many double-backs as I ended up in dead-end roads or private property. That was OK though - it added to the adventure and by the time I got to the 13km marker on my map, I had done 18km!
View leaving O'Halloran Hill Recreation Park
The part of the route that I ran was pretty cool. It skirted around the edges of suburbs (which was comforting incase I got totally lost!) and also had decent stretches where I felt immersed in the reserves. The profile was pretty kind compared to what I expect the last half of the route will bring! (I'm saving the harder half for next time). I walked a lot of the steeper uphills, and stopped regularly to squint at my map and check I was still travelling in the right direction. This, and taking lots of photos, broke up the running a bit so time seemed to disappear quite quickly.
As the wind blew I was surrounded by blossom snow
Valley crossing & ocean in the background
I had only planned to travel in one direction as I knew my legs wouldn't be used to hills, however I stopped for some lunch and was feeling pretty good so decided to start running back the way I came. I travelled about 4km before my knee started giving me grief and at that point I knew I had probably over-done it for my first hill session. I travelled a bit further towards home and called in my pick-up (thanks Quent!). At that point I had done 26km over about 4 hours (or 3 hours moving time).
I had a fantastic day, and am already looking forward to doing it again in the coming weeks.
