Training Log Archive: jennycas

Event: Xmas 5 Days 2016
 

Heavy-legged jog around Bushman, which is what this town was known as until somebody local got the bright idea of federating all the states...some lovely turn-of-the-century architecture around, in federation style (no less) and also, since this town actually has hills - unlike any town which we passed through yesterday - I ran up to the war memorial monument on the hilltop next to the caravan park.

We then went to visit The Dish (AKA Parkes Radio Telescope) and took back roads through Wellington to Gulgong where we lunched (and were thankfully able to obtain fuel) and then although I'd been keen on the Bylong Valley Way, realised it would take too long and also I wasn't doing too well on winding roads in the ute. So we headed through towards Cassilis instead, and were intrigued immediately after crossing the headwaters of the Goulburn River to see a sign to The Drip. This turned out to be a cliff overhang along the river (flowing, but only wading depth with some deeper pools) about 1.5km from the car park and to which many people had walked in their swimsuits! I have a feeling that there may have been a NSW champs rogaine near here a few years ago?

By the time we left The Drip it was after 2:30pm and we still had 300km to drive to get to Newcastle - oops. So our only stop was in Merriwa, where I found Pluto! This has solved a 10-year old mystery for me; along the road from Coonabarabran to the Warrumbungles are signs representing various planets, based on a scale model of the solar system which has Siding Springs Observatory as the sun. And I had always wondered how far away Pluto is...the other thing I found in this town is that you can still get HavaHeart ice creams; the heart-shaped choc-dipped vanilla ice creams which I'd thought had vanished some years ago.

C • The Drip 1

We got to the event site at Islington Tafe at least 14 min before starts closed - thank goodness the Hunter Expressway has been completed since my NSW road atlas was printed and although I didn't get much of a warmup it was still fairly warm so I was happy not to have run any earlier. Fun course at 1: 3000 so things came up very quickly, including controls which were on other people's courses but I took care to read the numbers. And descriptions too, but that didn't stop me from not realising that control 5 was on top of the little grandstand. A couple of minor misreadings of the control circle, plus I went too wide where a fence was actually mapped as crossable, but these were small things compared to going in the wrong entrance of the Christmas tree shaped maze on the oval at the finish because I somehow had my map turned around 90 degrees after the creek crossing. Public humiliation is the way to go - but seriously, we should have a maze more often.

Found excellent fish and chips afterwards :)

Day1 Hard 2 - Splits