Training Log Archive: Vaala

Round Bottle Lake from Bower Ave with M. Some bits were like fighting your way through a wind tunnel.

Had planned to go biking but life sure is getting in the way lately. Feeling more than a bit stressed...and a bit sick :-(
But we did manage to get out for a walk along the river in the dark which was nice but not nearly long enough.

My icebugs arrived this morning! Exciting! I walked around the house in them like a kid at Christmas. They stick to our kitchen floor...

A delightfully cold evening and it seemed like it might be quite wet so I abandoned my original plan of biking up Huntsbury and doing a loop to collect the remaining controls from there. Instead tootled over to Albert Terrace and headed up that way. All was well and good (although I took the lazy way to #43 - it's hard to work out quite how far up the valley you are when a large part of it is off the map and plus the long grass was all cold and wet and I'm a wimp) until #72. I was attempting to find it before putting on my headlight but I somehow thought a waratah was actually a strainer post and there sure weren't any of those up there! Eventually (after, like, 10 minutes of cursing the control, waratahs and the horrible cold wind) gave up and put on my light, tripped over the pipe leading to the control and saw it just a couple of metres away. Oh dear!
Oh yeah, new shoes were cool. I only slipped over once and that was on a mossy rock in the valley. Quite a good night for testing grip in slippery, wet mud and tussock.

Since I missed the rogaine I got to bring in controls...yay! Well it was yay until #40 where I spent over half an hour looking for it because, well, I can't navigate and I was tired and a bit cold by then. The problem with bringing in controls is you can't just give up! Then, of course, M showed me a vastly better route I hadn't even noticed. Sigh. Then again, I found all the others fine despite being dark and all that. 7 more controls to go so more fun times tomorrow :-)

C • Sure you can give up. You ... 9

Couldn't do the rogaine since there is just too much going on lately which was really quite tragic.

Routeburn shelter to a little bit past the falls and back again. Again time includes lazing around taking photos and chatting to lots of random people who wanted to chat (and boy were they chatty today - spend at least half an hour accosted by people wanting to chat). Got up to the falls in about an hour and a half despite all this people chatting business (sigh) and my slow and sluggish legs. Would have liked to go a bit further since I was ahead of schedule and it was very pretty but the weather was getting a bit horrible on the tops and I didn't really fancy getting any wetter or colder. Plus M was waiting back at the car with a fever :-(
I really hope race day weather is not horrible because it will be a completely miserable crossing and I might cry and get scared. I think I'm scared enough as it is.