Training Log Archive: jennycas

Just a short jog along the bikepath to the national park visitors' centre, around their wetlands and back again. Then I decided to drive up & over the Mt Victory Road, so stopped for short walks at the lovely Grand Canyon and to Splitters' Falls - more water than I've previously seen in this creek system but then again, I've usually been to the Grampians in summer/autumn - plus the steep stairs down/up to/from Mackenzie Falls of course, before heading down to Zumsteins and out to the plains beyond, past Mt Zero. Lunched at Dimboola which is a town I've only once before been into (on a V-Line bus from Bendigo to Adelaide in 1995) because the highway bypasses it, thought about camping by the Wimmera River but I had no tent and need to be at work tomorrow, so sadly headed for home although Geoff did offer to come and meet me and bring camping gear...

First leg runner in a W45 team for SA with Patsy Burley and Sandra Afnan, and boy, was the mass start a schemozzle. With 200-odd teams packed tightly into the graveyard we were all looking at each other presuming that the start would be done row by row (i.e. each course a few seconds apart) but when the countdown began, it was clear that everyone would be taking off together. Which lasted all of about 30 seconds and then we came to a screeching halt in the bottleneck, because nearly 200 first-leg-runners cannot simultaneously race 150m down a narrow singletrack to the start triangle, and in fact there were kids getting tripped and falling in the crush. When the queue of people jogging on the spot finally began to move (probably not even a minute but it felt longer), not everyone even realised when they'd passed the actual start flag, and about 50% kept going on the singletrack all the way east to the road while the rest of us confusedly followed pink tapes through the green thicket until they spat us out in a vague flat area and we eventually bounced off the road anyway.

After this I had completely lost sight of any other W45s, not that I would have been able to keep up with the likes of Clare Hawthorne, Jenny Enderby and Jo Allison anyway. My foot wasn't super-happy and my navigation a bit scrappy but it didn't really matter since both of my team-mates were each anticipated to take more than an hour anyway. Had originally thought of leaving the arena at midday and driving straight home but figured it would be rude not to wait for Patsy and then Sandra to finish, and in any case tomorrow's a public holiday in SA so there's no sense of urgency.

Plus, I'd been awake for about 3 hours in the night and thought undertaking a 7-hour drive would be unwise, so instead I chatted some more to friends I hadn't seen for 2 1/2 years in some cases, before reluctantly leaving the event and heading for Halls Gap, where I got a room at the Mountain Grand which has definitely seen better days, and certainly it's a lot more rundown than when Geoff & I stayed here in the early 2000s, but for $100/night I'm not complaining unless there are bedbugs. And I had time for a couple of hours' wandering around to Venus Baths and Clematis Falls before sunset which is now an hour later than it was yesterday.

So, this was the race I most wanted to do least-worst in this week. But I knew that at least 8 people on the W45 entry list (I deliberately didn't look at starting order) are faster runners than me and also capable of navigating better, so my only option was to make no mistakes whatsoever and hope that some other people weren't as clean today. Nailed everything in the N/W granite section (partly by following footpads through the Cape daisies) although was very slow on both steep downhills and steep uphills, decided to take the road all the way around on the long leg to 12 knowing that others would be faster than me but there's nothing I can do about that, and in fact right at the end of the leg Jo Allison appeared from having started 10 minutes behind me, but I kept her in sight through the next couple of short legs where she was a bit offline and then after leaving 14 I promptly got stuck in an Acacia paradoxa thicket and never saw her again.

The final 6 controls were in the Peg-Leg-Gully mining section along the creek and there were elephant-tracks everywhere, with people running all over the place. The only thing I was certain of was that larger features would stand out better, so I tried to read these carefully without panicking when things didn't come up as soon as I had expected, and somehow from having been in 8th after the long leg I ended up 5th (just) by the end of the course, and I'll definitely take that, as the best I could have done navigationally was *maybe* enough to beat Meredith Gray 1 min ahead, whereas Jo ended up 14 min faster than me even though I ran my little heart out and my not-so-little bottom followed as fast as my little legs could carry it.

Aus Long 7 - Splits

Event: Australian Orienteering Champs Pt 2
 

Tight little course on Salesian College, with a map flip. Much as I love sprints, I know that I'm not fast enough to be competetive so had basically written down any expectations of a good placing, even more so when I missed seeing that you could get through next to the forbidden path on 2-3 and therefore I ran all the way around which was about 30 sec slower (turns out Rachel did that too, and she still won).

Was very quick with decision-making & execution through the next 4 controls - Plan And Bang as per Bridget's sage advice - but then failed to take my own advice which is: always to work back from the end of the leg in order to see the traps. And therefore I fell into the trap of not seeing that you couldn't access 9 from the SW, or that you could take the northerly route to 10. Or, and this is the big one, that there was a curved black line mimicking the control circle (which was indeed cut appropriately) immediately north of my 11 (control 85, which caught out lots of people on lots of courses) and therefore I ended up having to go all the way west around the end of the fence by the basketball stadium, which was definitely slower than if I'd chosen the eastern route up front, even though Winsplits doesn't think this was a mistake - I guess that proves that it happened to lots of other people also.

So, I don't know how much time I lost overall, but it could have added up to as much as a minute compared to taking optimal route on all legs. Even so, I somehow ended up 7th of the 30-odd W45s so I guess it shows that I was running faster than I was thinking, after all. Also ended up exhausted after what somehow turned into an 8-hour day away from the house, in order to run for less than 15 minutes!

Aus Sprint 6 - Splits

Had obtained a copy of last April's courses on Neil's *other* new map and since Hania & I had both missed that event, today we caught a Blair-taxi out to the hill which I persist in thinking of as either Mt Herbert or Mt Egmont, for a run around the rocks on the way to seeing Quentin & Hania's bush block between Wychitella & Wedderburn. This was a nice little course although navigationally I didn't quite do the granite detail justice because I kept being distracted by thinking that every black stick on the ground might have a red belly and so in fact I walked very cautiously through all of the sections with long grass.

Public race after spectating the schools' relays; although the course configuration didn't really allow for a spectator control, Aislinn had done a good job of getting people out from the oval under the railway line via the creek culvert and then back from the forest through the Adelaide Road underpass, which I had predicted. So it was fun to do the same thing after the kids had run, even though I was not exactly on one of the relay courses. Took it fairly easy, often stopped to let faster people past me, enjoyed the wildflowers and the wallabies, walked up the big hills and through all of the prickly-gorse section north of the line. Navigationally I am still questioning some of my track vs cross-country route choices but I didn't lose too much time in the control circles, except when I didn't understand that 13 was going to be right inside the quarry. Still wondering how I managed to be away from 'home' for 5 hours when the arena in Chewton was only 10 mins' walk from our accommodation!

Day 3-Goldfields Course B - Splits

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