Training Log Archive: shanel

Event: WARA Autumn 12hr Rogaine - Mallee Fowl Replay
 

Event: Australian Championships Rogaine
 

I guess it's time to put some words to log before all is forgotten.

Tim and I planned 80km by my string (straightline + obvious hill advoidance pinned in). Which gave us all but 6 controls which would have been 2500 out of 2760 pts and we would have had easy options to pick up 4 of those controls at the end.

We started off with Wil and Ben for the first 2 or 3 controls before we went around the SW corner in the opposite direction to them and we continued clockwise around the map whilst they went anti-clockwise.

We pushed over the ridge out of 84 and had a nice run down the watercourse to a track and on to 94. More track/watercourse/track down watercourse run for a couple of controls, passing David Baldwin who was in tourist mode a took a photo as we went past in full flight.

Got away from the watercourses for a while through 34, 64, 63 and felt comfortable minimising the climb across some of the higher terrain before going through a whole lot more watercourse work. Into a bit of a gorge for 82 as night fell and more of the standard pattern, up a watercourse, across a saddle, down the watercourse on the over side.

Got to 91 about 10:30, which was our first decision point. Our next control 83 was my 40km mark and I hoped to get there by 11:00 which would give us 13 hrs for the 2nd 40km. So we were looking good and headed for 83, but we were a bit sick of the watercourses so we decided to take the ridge up and over a big hill and down into the little watercourse.

But we tried to contour around the top of the hill and it got too steep to get round, leaving us with a slow difficult decent down to the main watercourse anyway. This cost us a heap of time, 3km leg took 1hr 20mins. So nearly all our extra time for slowing down in the second half was gone and things continued to get messier from there.

We tried the ridge approach again from 74 to 73 and failed again hitting the water drop just past the control. Warer drop was all but dry, luckily Tim still had heaps of water, so I got the last litre before we headed back up to the control and back down to the track, passing quite a few teams who were now heading for the dry water drop.

Tim was pretty knackered by now and I'd been having quite a lot of stomach pain and was having a lot of trouble finding anything to eat that agreed with me. Anyway, more watercourse towards 92 over a saddle and into another main water course up the second little side creek, but it quickly disappeared with no sign of the control. I had a quick look over the spur to the left which looked like it would be the first little side creek, Tim looked to the right and could see another creek that way so we went right to the next watercourse, nothing there, that must be the first one, so onto the next one, nothing fitted. Eventually Tim worked out we were on the longer wiggly creek way past where we wanted to be , so back over to the creek I'd originally spotted over the spur to find the control 70m from where I'd been half an hour earlier.

Towards 55 I was starting to really loose the plot nav. wise and was badly misjudging the distance up the water course and the direction we were heading up the water course, so heaps more screwing around, we were about to head up a big knoll (671) but decided it looked too big, so we sat down to gather our thoughts before eventually somehow getting it right.

All confidence now gone and heading towards 5am we decided a messy ridge route to 66 wasn't going to happen, so with another hour and a half of darkness to go we dropped down another water course to the road to avoid any more serious nav. before daylight. Up the road to 33, big water course to the hut at 67, time for Tim to sit down and relax for a while, so I took a few extra photos whilst I was waiting and worked out we could get one more control before cuttin gmost of the nice flat SE corner and getting as much as possible on the way in.

Finally did a nice ridge route between 86 and 69. Watercourse most of the way to 44. Cut the corner to 56. Then my biggest mistake, I thought the ridge up towards 93 looked too steep and we'd find an easier way up a watercourse a bit further down the river. But we got stuck in the gorge with no way out, by the time we got to a spot where we could get out of the gorge we were too far from 93 and had to drop it. In hindsight we should have just gone up the evil ridge or round the right side instead, if we hadn't dropped that 90 pts we could have got 7th place instead of 14th.

Eventually headed up a little watercourse to leave the gorge, but it was the wrong on, so we wasted a little bit of time going over to the right one. Quickly up to 54 on a big spur overlooking the HH, Tim wasn't sure we'd have time to get 53 on the summit, but we got it easily and we finished with over 20 mins to spare.

Still had plenty in the tank at the end, but my stomach really appreciated Tim easing of the pace in the second half. Not as good a result as I'd hoped for, but at least I know I need to work on my eating plan, maybe I'll try not eating next time. No blisters and minimal soreness afterwards. Hoping to go much better at the state champs.

I got my i-gotU GT-600 GPS logger (which I order from Adelaide) today. Just in time to fly to Adelaide tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have time to make sure it works nicely.

Gentle run around Kings Park to stay fresh and loose. Started out slow and picked up the pace a little as I went. Burst of speed at the end with the help of the little kicker.

May have spotted Chris doing a Floreat solo UWA sprint.