Training Log Archive: TheInvisibleLog

Yesterday. The comedy of errors, and a story that needs to be told in phases.

Prologue: Ian had set the courses on Lyell Forest, his now traditional birthday celebration courses. He turns 83 today. You have to be impressed.
He set the usual courses 1,2,3,4 and 5, but added an extra that he called 1 short. Perhaps better described as 1.5. Trouble is, quite a few people have still not adjusted to our current course numbering and still use the somewhat dilapidated A, B, Bshort, C, D. I was potentially gioing to have responsibility for the results and was concerned at the strange courses on the board... including some B shorts being applied to course 2, and a B long! I could see the results job being a pain in the arse, so asked a few people to clarify their courses and tried to explain that there are no A,B,C,D courses now. I think one person in particular had trouble accepting this proposition.

Preparation: Ian was using old offset maps, so we had to draw courses. This is a rare experience these days. The old map boards are rarely used, so have not been changed to reflect the new course structure. In fact, they reflect the structure before last... A,B, C, D. I went to the board labelled A and drew up what I thought was course 1. Note.. I didn't check the control descriptions.

The early race: I had set myself the aim for running course 1 at a kilometre rate equal to that of the fastest course B time. That meant a time of 52 minutes. Controls 1 and 2 went without incident, though I was surprised to find another control near control 1. Spiked control 3 as well, because I contoured in to avoid loss of height and it was where i expected it to be, The cliff face was only about 30 metres high which surprised me. Turns out the control was in the correct place but the feature on the map wasn't. Long leg to control 4 and a fnce corner went without incident. I caught Colin here. The leg had caused him some troubles, as it had with Blair. Proceeded on a match race with Colin through 6 and 7.

Mid race: Not many controls to the finish now. But why was i going to beat y target time by 10 minutes? Something strange is going on. I asked Colin for a quick look at his map... it had two extra controls. I had obviously drawn course 1 short. Decided to rely on map memory for the last two on the course. Spent some time memorising and did a minor 90 degree error. This was useful as it put Colin ahead of me ay\t control 8, the last on my map. I had two more and a runner in front who I could chase. Had him in sight by the unmarked control 9 and had caught him on the approach to 10. I couldn't remember whether it was the right or left gully. Colin was going up the right ahead of m so I followed. He muttered something about 'you try the other one'. I thought this was a transparent play. It wasn't. Turned out I knew where I was and Colin knew where we needed to be. Between us we had the answer. So he showed me his map and I told him where we were.

Sprint to the finish 1: I made a big effort on the final leg to the finish, which was an uphill sprint. Left Colin (I thought) in my wake and reached the finish somewhat spent. But I was dead on 50 minutes.. mission accomplished. ?

Sprint to the finish 2: I had spent about a minute getting back the ability to breathe when Colin appeared across the road running away from the finish. It dawned on me that there was a third control I hadn't marked. Off i went in his wake, to the only feature down there. It had to be in the very shallow gully. Arriving just after him I then took off up the hill back to the finish. Hey... Colin is heading of to the left. Not another control? So I changed direction away from the finish, only a little later to see Colin changing direction towards the finish. Either he had made a mistake or was playing with me.

The post-mortem: My first finish time was 50 minutes, the second was a almost 52 according to the garmin which I had stopped and restarted. According to the SI box which counted my false recovery time, I was almost 53. So we went over our maps together and then the second last problem emerged. Courses 1 and 1 short had a different first control. I had run past the one I needed early on the course. DNF

Control collection Part 1: Went relatively painlessly until I got home and we did the final control check. Number 58 was missing. I then checked the maps and realised it was the last control on course 1 short, and I hadn't drawn that on my map either! In consequence, when Derek had collected all the controls in that direction, I assumed he had got all of them, but he had left 58 for Louise as the last runner of the day.

Control Collection Part 2: At 5.45 I hopped in the car and headed back to Lyell Forest. I was in a hurry to get there before dark, and left the map and torch at home. As luck would have it, this was when the kangaroos decided to get even for their brush with me at Mosquito Creek a couple of months ago. The ploy they used was very clever. One chose to stand still in the middle of Emu Creek road just where it knew it would be obscured by oncoming headlights. I saw it with 10 metres till impact, made a rapid breaking and swerving manouvre and achieved a glancing blow to the car. The damage was minimised to a defunct headlight and blinker and undercarriage mad flaps that needed to be forcibly removed. The outcome was a late arrival in the dark and a search for a control with no torch or map. I think I found it because I remembered the location from Ian's event last year.

You can forward the Black Crow early this year if you wish.

Postscript.: I did more damage to a kangaroo with my body than with the car.

NOODLE TIME
The gadget is up!

C • noodles are in place 4

To come

Picking up controls and map vetting. Well, a bit o running as well as walking.

Picking up control. Herein lies a story.

Run home from work in the rain. No car so I was committed. As Jymbo said... where did the warm weather go?

Commute to work. Spring! Short sleeves, short pants, no gloves!

Warm weather and the number of exercise sessions logged by my watching list has doubled.

C • exception 6