Training Log Archive: jennycas

The last time I'd run on Mt Alexander was Easter 2013 up the north end and I'd been thinking that if today was going to be equally steep and junky I might sit this one out, but actually the southern part was pretty nice, open forest with big rocks and very soft underfoot after recent rains which had precluded parking in the paddock (the organisers did an amazing job arranging shuttle buses). I ran the senior girls' course from the Aust Schools' Champs which started up the top near the campground so had a net descent which I am not great at, but I would not have come last, although given that I had a basically clean run I can see just how much running speed I have lost over the past 30 years, given that in 1992 I came 3rd, admittedly in a time that would have only been good enough for 23rd today - the schools' competition is fast & furious in all age classes!

The happiest/muddiest person there today was definitely Loki, the Keys' border collie - I don't envy Warren & Natasha having to bathe that dog tonight :)

Goldfields 2-B - Splits

Senior girls' course from the Aust Schools' Champs, around the botanic gardens and Sacred Heart College in Kyneton. My lower back had stiffened up badly by last night and this morning I couldn't even bend down (am presuming that I was using those muscles to brace against unstable ankles on all the loose rocks yesterday) but by the time I'd warmed up across to the start it seemed fairly much ok and certainly wasn't distracting me from navigating properly. Good little course, shame about the weird control descriptions particularly on my #20 which was described as being where a wall met a garden bed but in fact it wasn't on a garden bed at all, it was inside an undercover area (room full of student lockers) - see Ricky's log for further details and map snippet - and I spent about half a minute looking around all of the garden beds in the vicinity for a control; I'm fairly certain I wasn't alone in losing time there! On the other hand, when I mentioned this issue to some people they said "oh, I don't read descriptions" and therefore they'd had no trouble with it...

Goldfields 1-B - Splits

Demoralising day. Ankle tendon had been ok running yesterday but started twinging while standing around on steep hillsides spectating the Daylesford sprint, and wasn't happy when I woke up this morning so I knew it wouldn't like the rocky ground and mullock heaps. Plus I had rather psyched myself out by the thought of the deep, potentially uncrossable trenches on this map, and that fear wasn't alleviated by hearing one junior boy say to the other at the start "You could die out there if you fall down a hole like the one I found on the model map"!

So, I basically walked all of this because it was so painful - did think about pulling out very early on but decided to get my money's worth. Took the long way around to the first control because I feared not being able to get down the cliff, then wombled around on the way into the control circle. Was too low on 2 as there was nothing I could clearly identify as a watercourse on my way there (not being critical but I did wonder if all of the blue dashed lines could have been equally represented by brown dotted lines, apart from the utter mess that would have made of the map) and bounced off the mapped pit (currently a waterhole). Have no excuse for stopping halfway to 4 and going off to check a control I could see to the left of my line on a feature I couldn't clearly identify (in fact I came back past that control later on and still couldn't figure out what it was actually on) which wasted me a couple of minutes.

Took the track around to 5 which I think many people did and in fact Ceri came past me on the way into 6 and then vanished down the cliff to the next control as though I were standing still - I went down that one on my bum because I was so uncertain of my ankle. Was a bit too high on 8 and definitely too low on 10 because I had deliberately (stupidly) gone around to the bottom of the cliff which I thought I wouldn't be able to get down. Most fun leg was actually wading the river crossing at the end because this was an ice bath for my ankle...in the end, managed to stay out for long enough that this course eventually cost me less than $1 per minute, but am a bit annoyed at some of the dumb things I did while I was too busy watching my feet rather than the map and which meant I ended up taking more than 20 min/km. I'm not ready to be mediocre just yet :(

Back in Chewton, went for a flat walk along the creek to find the crossing point from the 2009 AMDC, at which I had accidentally tripped and fallen headlong up to my neck in that particular ice-bath on that very cold wet day when the Saints lost the AFL Grand Final.

C • Ceri 1

Aus Middle 8A - Splits

Event: Australian Orienteering Champs Pt 1
 

Not sure when the last time I'd been to Jubilee Lake Caravan Park would have been, but it doesn't appear to have changed much since Susanne & I stayed here for Aust Champs 1995 (with our respective boyfriends, neither of whom orienteer any more...). Likewise I hadn't been on this map, originally named Lake Wombat, for about 20 years. Glad to be old enough today to have a 1:7 500 map, haha, and actually I found the gold-mining detail very readable and the actual diggings not as fearsome as I'd feared, although I did go wide on the leg 5-6 which I think was a poor route choice. Kept seeing Meredith Gray who'd started 2 min before me but appears to have lost time on the first control - she runs a lot faster than I do of course but I think I was lucky sometimes to see her leaving a control (the visibility was much better than expected).

A bit annoyed at myself for overrunning the 9th control by probably not much more than a minute, then after control 10 the navigational aspect was over already and it was a track run in. Think our course could have stood to be a *little* longer since Sara Prince won W45 in 23:33, but TBH I had expected to be that much down on whoever won, anyway. Not complaining about 4th on the day although this was probably more luck than judgement, as my father is wont to say. Great to catch up with Hania and her parents today, hadn't seen them since a little pandemic was brewing 30 months ago.

Vic Middle 8 - Splits

Slept badly because I still had a bunch of work emails which I needed to send this morning, but once I was on the road the day was fairly much ok, although it seemed like a long drive across to Castlemaine. Made it to the (very nice) house in Chewton with enough daylight left to go for a run in the forest - the old Garfield water wheel being only about 10 mins' jog away, and I took a copy of the O map with me, and when I got there I wasn't entirely surprised to see the entire Kiwi schools' team just finishing up their training, which made me think that I did want to do some actual orienteering too. Without proper O shoes or ankle tape I was very tentative with my footing, but this was still fun, especially orchid-spotting (little pink lady-fingers, greenhoods, and a Diuris species which I think is also known as the leopard orchid) and more than once there was already a toilet-paper-streamer at one of the control locations I had chosen!

I've sublet the second bedroom of Henrietta's Country House https://henriettasbnb.com/ to Blair, and he had arrived by the time I returned from the forest, so now we are settled in for the week and just have to try not to break any of the ornaments :)

Pootle along the creek before Geoff & I took my parents for a walk at Morialta. I suspected correctly that the national park would be super-popular on a sunny public holiday and that parking at the start of the walks would be impossible, so dropped parents off at the turnaround with G to chaperone them, drove back out to the main road (dodging walkers, illegally-parked cars, and other drivers desperately looking for a park) and jogged back in, which process took about 20 min but I caught the others up fairly quickly because they'd stopped for koala-spotting. The flat walk to the base of First Falls (still impressive, but less thunderous than on Sunday) is less than 1km each way and I got the impression that this was enough for parents, so jogged back to retrieve the car rather than getting them to walk out to Stradbroke Rd...

Had hoped to do this last night but was still busy doing actual work, so after dropping parents home I went back into work for this afternoon and finished up with enough daylight left to run around the long course which I'd set for what turned out to be the super-wet Jan 2020 event when most people were in NZ at Sprint The Bay. Knees didn't want to run fast, so I focused on decision-making and route choice, and am still questioning some of my decisions even though I know the uni pretty well. Curious to know what actual running distance turned out to be?