i knew there was a reason i go caving...

i'm back! well, i was back on monday. but i was busy recovering from the holiday. then i had missed homework to catch up on, personal tutoring prep, an essay to plan and some more recovering to do. but with all that out of the way i feel i can now reflect on what was, without a doubt, an awesome holiday.

i'll focus on the caving for now, as i'm only allowed 5 pics per post and, handily, i managed to fit in 5 caving trips while in mallorca.

the first, on my first full day out there (taking us out of one of the two days of glorious sunshine), was forat 502, on the cap de formentor peninsula:

check us out in our sunnies!

this cave had loads of pretty stuff, and, despite advice to the contrary, was a nice easy walk and easy to find. it also gave me a chance to try out my sexy new backback for the first time. it's amazing, btw. the pretties (cave formations made of calcite such as stalagmites etc... for the non cavers out there) however were grossly overshadowed two days later by those in penya rotja:

i know. it's barely a pic of the entrance. i'm waiting on better pics

another nice, though slightly longer walk, and no dangling on ropes make this a very accesible cave. and the formations in there are just out of this world. and everywhere. literally everywhere.

this was a big case of unfinished business for me as i'd spent 3 days trying to get to see the pretties in this sodding cave 2 years ago. all is forgiven now.

i thought i'd be hard to top. the next day i was proved wrong...

mitjana, aka heaven

the above cave, mitjana, almost evaded us. half an hour scrambling round on karst cliff later though, and i finally spoted the entrance.

accompanied by mike, and only one helmet between us, we descended a fixed 5m ladder into the most spectacular cave i've ever seen. i'm sure there's better, just not that i've laid eyes on. the cave had the sea coming in forming a pool throughout most of it, and edging that was a beach! a beach, in a cave!

the rest of the group joined us (10 of us in total) and we stripped down to undies to frolic in the sea, natch. the pretties, formed underwater, resembled brains, or cauliflowers. though those words don't seem to do them justice. i'm gonna stop rambling. i litterally don't have the words for this place.

the next day was almost a fail, having caved and managed 2 runs (that's right people, 2 runs in one day!) the day before. but eventually we dragged ourelves out to sa campana, another cave which had eluded me on previous trips.

one of the many mahoosive formations, who says size doesn't matter?

this cave boasts the largest chambers on the island. and my god did it deliver. the place was huge. really huge. so huge it was a bit overwhelming.

it was well decorated, but i think i preferred the intimacy of the caves we'd been in so far. still, it's a cave 'that has to be seen', and seen it was.

the next day we headed to fra rafel. the easiest walk so far: 20 or so minutes on level ground. so i opted to pack the rope bag in the top of my pack, as well as the 4 or so litres of water i was carrying as standard, and my srt kit. couldn't have things getting too easy now! (shut up men, i know you carry this much all the time, but i'm a girl, ok? good).

a bit of faffing with the rigging (rope too short, d'oh! it's ok, we'll just use the handline that is suggested for later in the cave. and hope it's ok) and we were in. at first we were all a bit underwhelmed, having seen some pretty spectacular stuff thus far. but a dodgy climb down a slope next to a fairly deep looking pot (ah, so that'll be what the handline is for then) led us to the promised pretties:

just one of the many 'popcorn' encrusted surfaces, as we'd termed them

the lower level had swathes of pretties like those above coating it's walls where it had obviously been filled with water at some previous time. then a bit of a scramble up to the left, on the way out, led to a spectaular gallery filled with straws, stalagmites, columns, helictites, gour pools, curtains... you name it, it was there. all in all, another trip very worth doing.

the thing that struck me about all of the caves was not just the volume of calcite in the caves, or the ease of access (ok, you have to fly to mallorca...), but the widely differing nature of the pretties in each of the caves i visited.

i get asked very often what the attraction is of caving. i've often struggled to answer. in future i'll direct them to these photos.

more coming up about canyoning, running and flower arranging in mallorca when i'm recovering from my half marathon. tomorrow. eek.

jin x

77 days to go...

leaving, on a jet plane...

don't know when i'll be back again. that is a blatant lie, i'll be back in just over a week. in the mean time i'm gonna be living it up in northern mallorca. the bit with the mountains and the crags and the caves and the canyons!

i'm aiming to run, even just a little bit, every day that i'm out there, since this week's been a little lack lustre on the training front. however if i fail, it'll be because i'm knackered from caving/canyoning/climbing and therefore it will be totally justified.

when i get back the half marathon will only be a week off. the fear is already approaching fast.

if you fancy donating a few pennies to oxfam in the name of spurring me on, my fundraising page is ready and raring to go.

why oxfam?

as i mention on my fundraising page, oxfam is working on two of the biggest issues facing our planet today: poverty in the developing world, and climate change. these are two issues i feel passionately about, i couldn't have imagined picking any other charity.

a big thanks must go out also, two my first two donors! you've honestly no idea how much it means to me!

jin x

91 days to go...

tuesday training log

this week's training was, ummm, non existent. when i stumbled across this whilst internetting i certainly identified with the sentiment:

winning fail print from etsy

mostly, i failed because i was ill:

suspected mumps on tuesday turned out to be plain old man flu. on confirming this on wednesday, i decided to man up and go climbing at sheep's tor (on the edge of dartmoor). it was good to be active after missing a days training. it was also bad... i woke up feeling even worse the next day.

so i took thursday off. and friday. ish.

prior commitments meant that on friday i proved alcohol to be the best medicine. several gins/4 hours of dancing like a loon/a crappy nights sleep on a sofa later i was feeling mostly fine again. so naturally i repeated the sequence on saturday.

feeling mostly better you'd think i'd get back on it and get out for a run, but you'd be wrong there, because my essential laziness had by then reared it's ugly head. i did manage a fairly short walk on the moors on the sunday with my sisters. followed by takeaway pizza with wedges, chicken wings and followed by waffles. followed by laziness on monday.

looking back, at least i did manage a few bits, just nothing strenuous. when i went for a run this morning, it showed.

lesson learned? only time will tell...

jin x

monday training log - no wait it's now tuesday...

well that went well didn't it, the whole, 'monday i'll post about training' thing. tuesday training log has a better ring anyway, no? who doesn't love a bit of alliteration?

anyway. the training.

this week i managed to fit in: a gym workout, 64 lengths in the pool, 3 runs, 4 hours of crazy dancing (yes, this counts, even if only as a rest day), and an hour and a half walk.

the runs:

thursday: 3.55 miles in 34:28 minutes: 9:43/mile pace. avg hr 178, max hr 194

sunday: 6.16 miles in 61:00 minutes: 9.56/mile pace. avg hr 171, max hr 192

west hoe, barbican, n. hill, ford park rd, c. park

6.1 miles / 9.81 km

monday: 3.58 miles in 33:15 mins: 9:17/mile pace. avg hr 178, max hr 194

as you can see from these times, i may possibly have miss-timed last week's run, but my pace is definately picking up, and my heart rate is a lot more reassuring that when i was running last year (avg 192 for the MK half!)

judge away...

jin x

training for what i hear you cry!

the big walk this summer is my main challenge for 2011, but along the way i'll be completing a few others...

in just 4 weeks - oh god, only 4 weeks - i'll be running the neolithic half marathon in wiltshire with my running buddy emma. she flies back from a holiday in mallorca only the night before.

we're hoping the 'undulating', cross counrty route will prove to be good practice for the saunders mountain marathon which we're doing in july.

2010 slmm halfway camp: at this stage i literally could not walk...thankfully diclofenac came to my rescue!

we've both done the harter fell before, but since that was full we've moved down a class* to the wansfell, which, as i keep pointing out, means we should actually be aiming to run significantly more of it than last year.

hence all the training. best get back to it...

jin x

*down a class? down? why not up a class? man the f*@k up and all that?! well...at the time of our entry, the next class up with any spaces was the bowfell and, well, i think that would actually kill me.

105 days to go...

i am training, honest!

so...my sister said i should keep a bit of a training log on here (i think she gets that if i think the world is watching, i'll try harder). i was disinclined until today, when after a complete fail of a day-mainly sat in bed alternating between internetting* and eating, i dragged myself out for a run and did 4.3 miles in 38mins 40s on some hills. this works out at about 9mins/mile.

central park loop the loop

4.30 miles / 6.92 km

now to put that in perspective:

when i started running 4 years ago now (?!) i ran 11 minute miles. on a good day. since then i got to a comfortable place where i was running 10 minute miles as standard. that was fine by me. occasionally in a parkrun i would run sub 9 minute miles, but it was a rare thing, and when i was feeling particularly fit.

then nearly a year ago i did the saunders mountain marathon and buggered my itb, this came on top of buggering my ankle running the MK half on the back of roughly 3 training runs. i decided the only sensible thing to do was give up on running til i could trust myself to train properly. over the following months i swan occasionally, then before christmas i started in the gym. i got a program from one of the lovely instructors at kingsbridge leisure centre, who suggested i needed to work on my glutes, cos my other problems all probably stemmed from there. so i did. sporadically.

since the new year i've been putting a lot more work in, and several of you will probably know that i gave up rest days for lent (which for the most part has been a success so far, if you use similarly lenient definitions of what constitutes exercise as i do), and today's run would seem to be proof that it's paying off, given that i didn't even think i was running that hard!

so from now on monday will be training log day, that way i will have to suffer the fear of posting if i think about skiping a training session.

i'm relying on you guys to judge me.

jin x

*internetting: time spent randomly browsing for stuff-to-buy-that-will-never-be-bought, stuff-to-make-that-will-never-be-made and other general interweb procrastination such as facebooking and blog reading

110 days to go

my name is jinni and i'm a gearaholic

gearaholics: also commonly known as gear whores, and occasionally as total bores... nonetheless i'm loving the justification this trip gives me to splash out many pennies on wonderfully lightweight kit:

first things first: the boots! purchased from the very helpful pete bland sports and weighing in at less than 400g per boot are the roclite 400 GTX's - marketed as the world's lightest leather and goretex boot. they've been out for a few small jaunts now and so far are proving very comfy:

inov8 roclite 400 GTX

next up: the tent. springfield camping was the source for this beauty which was gifted to me by my wonderful father for christmas and birthday combined. weighing only 920g at a maximum, it's one of the lightest tents i came across and it isn't even a single skin. the best bit though...it's red! (admittedly this may not help with the wild camping situation, a nice unobtrusive green version may have made more sense, but then it wouldn't have fit my colour scheme):

 

terra nova laser competition

possibly the most crucial bit of kit: the bag. i was brave and went for a fairly small bag, justification being that my tent, sleeping bag and matt will all be tiny, and i don't want to end up filling a bigger bag with loads of food etc. that will just weigh me down. therefore i plugged for the 34 litre version of the osprey exos from the climbers shop: a light weight pack which still has a proper metal frame support in the back and a nice ventilation bit which will no doubt prove ineffective against overheating, but will be much better than nothing (hopefully): 

osprey exos 34

as soon as pay day comes i'll be completing the sleeping set up with a sleeping mat which gets awesome reviews:

thermarest neoair

and then i'll be ready to road test it all...dartmoor here i come!

jin x