Lofty Hike

For something a bit different today, I was out of the front door at 6am to meet up with Jess and Brodie prior to an early morning hike up Mount Lofty.  It's a 4 km walk to the summit, rising about 500 metres, and it is pretty well known amongst Adelaide's hiking community as a good workout.  It's been over a year since I last walked it.  I didn't have anything else on today (except for the possibility of some more shooting practice in the afternoon).  I've always enjoyed a hike in the bush, especially up Mt Lofty at dawn.  So it was an easy ask and a nice thing to be doing as we set off up from the carpark.

The path, though very clear and generally solid underfoot, is steep to very steep in places and can pose a challenge.  We didn't break any records on the way up, making it in about an hour.  Of note for me personally, besides using the hike as a 'benchmark' for future reference, was the fact that I factored in four episodes of high intensity anaerobic activity on the way up (sprint up the steepest parts of the trail, distances between 50m and 200m), and for quickness drills on the way down (moving at a slow jogging speed, but pumping the feet up and down in a high speed footwork drill).  We ran about half the distance for the downward journey and rarely paused.  So it was a good aerobic activity also.

I won't be able to be as regular with this as I'd perhaps like due the fact that I will be having Saturday inline games fairly shortly, but will make the effort to do it on the odd occasion for the pleasure of the hike itself, and to see how I am tracking against my 'benchmark' through the season.

The saddest thing to occur was right near the end, when Jess went running up ahead of Brodie and I who had agreed between ourselves that we'd done enough running for the day.  I had just finished saying how I also would so much hate it if I 'tore myself up' with a fall in the home stretch when we rounded a corner and saw Jess lying down alongside the trail up ahead.  Elbows, knees and hands were grazed and she was distressed, but the worst thing was that her ankle seemed to have rolled and was giving her great pain.  Once the shock had worn off she was able to get to the bottom, but the ankle had ballooned out within a couple hours and will give her a lot of pain I suspect for the next few days at least, and intermitently through for the next week or two.  Hopefully no worse than that.

After this high grade morning workout I didn't feel like I needed to do anything else of a physical nature today, and so I haven't.  Hopefully will get a hundred shots on goal tomorrow morning before my afternoon game.  Quite a crew seem to be coming to watch, I'd hate to disappoint.