Training Log Archive: jennycas

From F&T's with them plus Eric, Lauren, Biddy, through the forest, up the creek and over the hill. I said I couldn't log a run if it was less than half an hour, so Bridget made sure it wasn't.

Astley's Tower

Wasn't sure how interesting a course with 19 controls would be over this distance but it turned out a decent long race, with a reasonable amount of route choice aided by the singletrack network - and it was rather fun running along the cool sandy trails and through the creek bottoms under ti-tree thickets.

Only real error was at 2, where the control description said rocky ground and I could find none whatsoever on the map so convinced myself very quickly (ye of little faith) that the description must be wrong, as the circle appeared to be centred on one of the myriad miniscule watercourses fringing the main creek, not that I could tell which end of the watercourse the control would be. On the map the watercourses appeared to be about 15m long, so I stayed that far above the creek, thereby bypassing all of them as they were in fact much shorter, and overshooting the control by a couple of min. When I came back to the correct vicinity, and saw the control, I still didn't notice any rocky ground. On subsequent inspection of Robin's 1:10 000 map I identified 3, maybe 4, dots of rockiness in a row right on the contour line, but I still can't read them on my 1:15 000!

Anyway, put that one behind me and settled into the course. Made no other navigational errors though possibly had a couple of suboptimal route choices; took a while to adopt the (when in Europe) mindset of 'tracks are my friend' and so went direct for the first half of the long leg hitting the big track between 12 and 13. Saw Anna and Rachel going into 7 above me (and Lisa Grant with whom I ran for a couple of controls), used the track into 9 which Anna hadn't, was passed by Aislinn on the long leg back to 13 and then saw her & Anna at each of the next 3 controls! Sus passed me like I was standing still on the way to 13; I gues I was getting tired but it was the last hill of the day and I enjoyed the downhill then tracks into the spectator control although bushbashing from the west probably wasn't as efficient as track from the east past the start - or track past the finish and through the assembly area as some people did! From 16 back past the finish, noting the location of the last control for future reference (which Kathryn didn't and so she subsequently spent 4 min on it) and into 17 from the minor track to the north with slight hesitations; the main track on the south side would have been faster.

Enjoyed this run; not sure what my expectations for it were but am getting used to coming 17th. Enjoyed the whole week, starting with the rogaine (and seem to have pulled up from it okay though still a bit tired and the tight knee is twinging). Train back to Sydney took 3 hours. Best bit: the Hawkesbury crossing at sunset. Worst bit: going barefoot to the toilet (urgh). Flight from Sydney got into Adelaide about 1030pm.

C • Why? 4

Long NOL 2 - Splits

Event: NOL Round 3 / WOC Selection Trial - 'Coalfields Classic'
 

University of Newcastle

I commented to Susanne about the smell of green dampness which we don't get at home and she said "oh, I was thinking how dry it is". Anyway, a nice morning for a race around an interesting campus. Started okay, took the wide left route to 3 rather than reading the garden paths, nearly thought I'd gone through an unmapped gap next to the mapped passage on the way to 4 but both are shown so that's all right. Caught Katelyn (1 min) through here and on the way to 7 we both took the wrong path radiating out from the fountain, nearly ending up back at 1. A bit of zigzagging into 7 som maybe 40 sec lost? Rest was fine though taking the path not the road to 14 would have been faster, and after the spectator control I had a couple of minor hesitations and Jas went past me pretty quickly.

Good (mostly) clean fun, as the boys in the sterile production unit used to say.

Pelaw Main (old colliery)

Generally I don't like dumped rubbish but this was different, somehow. And there was heaps of old machinery etc which George would have liked exploring.)

Got into the map pretty well, I thought, although struggled to read the features (need new glasses?) which were in some cases mapped smaller than regulation ISOM size. Not that it mattered greatly because with accurate distance and direction you could often see the control towering over the feature on the ground. Hesitated on 6 because although I could see the flag it seemed too far west from where I crossed the road. V caught me 2 min at 7, I had a better route to 8, after 9 she was out of sight so I found the rusty 'derrick' at 10 all by myself without bouncing off the track like many people did.

Slightly too far right on 11, a bit wide on the long leg to 12, but my biggest mistake was getting out into the open by the spectator control and seeing the flag for 14, but not realising that it was mine because the ruin it was mapped on turned out to be just a slab on the ground. So that's maybe 50 sec lost, which was my only real error for the course, other minor wobbles (including hitting the track to the right of 16, but that may have been a bonus) accounting for less than another minute in total. What the splits show after the spectator control is a consistent decline in pace, and I certainly noticed that I couldn't maintain as I had started, as the neuroma became more troublesome - but still was happy to be less than 10 min down on the winner (my personal benchmark for a middle).

NOL 2 - Splits

Middle NOL 2 - Splits

From the hotel on Flinders St past the station and around the botanic gardens then back along the north side of the Yarra. Eventually loosened up but knee still didn't like stairs during the day. It appeared to have just rained - but you can't tell anything about the weather when staying in a hotel. Still, it was convenient to be a beneficiary of Sheridan's conference funding :)

I had to be back in the city for an 8:30am conference session so had negotiated with Blair that I would only do the first half of his long run. Which turned out quite enjoyable; I felt good and it's always nice to run somewhere new, see the mist hanging in the river valley, and not put my foot in any potholes in the dark. The flaw in the plan came when I couldn't get the spare key to work in B's front door and ended up doing some quality communing with his doormat while trying to keep warm, until he came back. (I figured I'd used up all my whinging rights last night already.)

It is possible that after this run I gave a very good impression of a very disgruntled orienteer!

After a day sitting in the conference I was looking forward to Street O (hitched a ride with Blair out to Donvale) as it was a fairly nice evening and there were heaps of people there, plus I quite like scatter format. Score events, not so much. And this turned out to be a score.

I didn't want to run for an hour as I wasn't sure how my knee would feel, so didn't choose A course, asked how long B was and was told 50 min. Got a bit worried when the start was late and even more so when literally at the last second I understood that finish time was still 7:50, meaning that I had only maybe 46-7 min, but I didn't actually know what time we had been started! Plus I then started my watch late...

Still, I was running quite well (I think) not that I could really tell who was behind any of the headlamps I could see around me. I went down to the south, did a loop up through the middle, and then started to wish that I had picked A because it would have been interesting to see how long it took me to get all of them. Somehow I started to think that I actually had an hour, and despite my neuroma killing me, headed south again, and at nearly the bottom of the map had the realisation that I had only 10 min left not 20!

Headed north as fast as I could, neuroma protesting at every step, and thought I'd just be okay because from the control on the street end I could cut through the shopping centre. Wrong! It was a dead end which I hadn't read properly in the darkness, and by the time I'd hammered out of there as fast as I could I was over 2 min late (having also miscalculated because of when my watch started) and really cranky to realise that the late penalty is 3 points per min, when a quarter of the controls are only worth 1 and another quarter only 2. Stupid score event...eventually calmed down when I noticed people actually moving away from my wrath!

C • I hate score events too 4

Having seen the results it looks like they must have recorded everyone as starting at 7:02 and so I am only down as a minute late, losing 3 points rather than 9. Also controls 1-5 are worth 2, 6-10 worth 3, 11-15 worth 4 and 16-20 worth 5, so out of a possible total of 70 I got 62 (before penalty).

Haven't spent time in Melbourne CBD for ages, so ended up doing a fair amount of walking/window shopping including camping-store alley and the immigration museum, before checking into hotel. Feet ok after rogaine but the sore spot in knee still is.