Monday 2nd December: Strength exercises + 90min cycling
Easy spinning
I was feeling a little bit heavy today after my first solid weekend of running in a while.
Tuesday 3rd December: W/U exercises + 50 min
Beach Run – 28min speedwork
I was up at the Sunshine Coast for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineering Quantum Systems (EQuS) annual workshop, so ran along the beach for the first time since SSC. It was high tide at the time, so the soft sand was painfully reminiscent of that encountered in the last 10km of SSC!
Wednesday 4th December: W/U exercises + 1hr 55min
Beach Run
It was really cool to be able to watch the sunrise over the ocean this morning!
Thursday 5th December: Strength exercises + 90min cycling
Easy spinning
Friday 6th December: W/U exercises + 90min
35min of uphill reps also with hard downhills on Lookout track + 20min barefoot
It was so much fun to get back into doing fast downhills. Overall it was a great session and I’m starting to feel really good on the climbs. Though more importantly, my graduation ceremony was today!

Saturday 7th December W/U exercises + 4 hours
Mt Barney loop – Up Southeast ridge and down South ridge + extra scambles
Met up with Dave, Delina and Jordan and had a great time mostly hiking and scrambling up the Southeast ridge. I hadn’t been up there since the bushfires earlier in the year and you now have a much clearer view where you are headed. This also made the scramble across to the saddle to link up with the South ridge much easier to navigate. I still had plenty left for the descent as it had been difficult to move very quickly up until that point due to the nature of the bush. Finished feeling great and wanting more!
Sunday 8th December: W/U exercises + 3 hours 15min
25min of reps up and down Lookout track –down Reservoir track – along Under Construction trail –up Kokoda track – 25min of reps up and down Powerful Owl trail – turn around and return along same route + 20min barefoot
I was feeling great today and in both sets of hill reps, got quicker in progressive reps. This could have been due to yesterday involving more hiking and scrambling than running and I was actually a bit sore in my upper body from it!
To say the least, this was amazing week. Firstly, having the privilege of attending my first academic conference (technically a workshop) was an eye opening experience and I thoroughly enjoy learning some new physics and getting to meet various people from different universities around Australia. Secondly, I now officially have my Bachelor of Science (majoring in Physics), although this really only feel like a pseudo-graduation since Honours next year is technically still part of my undergraduate degree. And thirdly, I’m starting to feel really good on the hills, so fingers crossed that this feeling continues!
As always, my training program was created by Andy Dubois at Mile27 Personal Training.