Wanda Sandhills

Date: Sat, Oct 1
Conditions: mild, dry and clear with a fresh southerly breeze
Location: Wanda sand hills, north of Wanda Beach
Session: Sand hills
Sleep: 7 hours, slept okay
Feeling: Okay, a little tired and could have done with a bit more sleep. Carrying a little bit of condition after going for dinner with friends the previous evening and probably had one too many glasses of red.

First of five weeks of sand hills this morning. Met the group at the reserve next to the northern most carpark of Wanda Beach. Warm up was a lap of the park, and then the gravel path up to the dunes.

The basic layout of the sand hills is that there is a lagoon at the southern end, a medium, fairly steep hill just north of the lagoon leading into a bit of a saddle, and then a second much taller and steeper north of the first dune. The saddle tends up hill heading north west up to a grassy outcrop. It's a very popular place for training - there were at least two other squads there, and apparently the rugby league teams use it for training.

The session involved 10 repeats of the northern most slope of the southern hill, then to the lagoon for four repeats of the longer, southern slope of the southern hill, three repeats of the very steep southern slope of the northern hill, and then 3 x 2 laps of a loop from the bottom of the saddle up to and around the grassy outcrop (2 laps for me was around 4:20 - 4:30). There was a 90-120 second rest between each set of repeats. Total session time was around 90 minutes. I did the whole sand session barefooted.

Very hard session, with the quads going lactic fairly early and forcing you to just cope with it. Aerobically it wasn't as intense as I thought it might have been, not that it was easy! Seemed to be more of a strength session - it was interesting to observe that I was a lot closer to the front of the group than I normally am, suggesting that it was a session that strength runners (which it would appear I am) had an advantage with.

Pleasing hit out. Much as I would have loved to do the Striders 10k at Homebush this morning, I'm glad I did this, and will ensure I get to all five of the sessions.

Jogged back to the carpark for cool down. It felt distinctly odd to be back in shoes on a firm surface.