Training Log Archive: jennycas

It only takes 22 min to get from Macclesfield to Bridgewater so I was able to join Zara/Callum, Lauren, Fern, Bridget & Simon for the first of the Sunday morning Bridgewater runs (I am going to miss a few in the near future). I started out feeling absolutely crap because the subsequent activity to riding up the hill yesterday should not have been sitting for a couple of hours without any stretching, but I gradually improved. Tired, though, definitely, and ankle had had enough of the rough sections by the end.

We took the Heysen Trail Spur to Hahndorf via Verdun, having to stop for a freight train to pass when we reached the line, then crossed the Onkaparinga on the road bridge and took Taminga Grove south under the freeway. The Cox's Creek crossing had a fair bit of water in it, to Callum's delight, then we went up to, through and down from Mylor CP into Mylor, up Wilson Rd, followed the Heysen trail down Aldgate Tce (the spongey stuff in the creek bottom has gone and now there's kind of a swamp) and finally back into Bridgie. A few doublings back for little Biddy girl towards the end, but after all this is the longest Bridgewater run we've done for a couple of years. It was scenic and wildflowery and a perfect cool morning for such a run.

Afterwards George & I took Grandfather to the Callington show which we managed to have a quick look around in between the rain showers. 'Twas cold and windy, though, and a number of children's balloons were seen sailing on the breeze in a northeasterly direction. I wonder if any will be found by landowners out at Pymton?

I tried to remember some of Lauren's advice about technique and swimming didn't seem like quite such an effort today - almost enjoyable.

C • yay 1

To the pool (easy), then to the Uppills' at Hawthorndene (hard). This involved a headwind and struggling up Shepherds Hill into it - and getting swooped 3 times by the wattlebird, which had completely ignored me when I ran past it on Friday. I had already been rained sideways upon by the time I was coming back past my house along Winston Ave and seriously considered piking, except for the fact that I'd arranged for George to collect me from the Uppills' after he had washed the truck for the boss at Blewitt Springs. Of course, when he arrived, Robin & I were nowhere near finished dissecting the OA rules because we were having too much fun (nerds and proud of it) and it turned out that he had only come from home, having piked on truck-washing!

So he was sent forth in search of bakery goods :) then we finally made it to our B&B in Macclesfield about 6pm (copious supplies of bacon & eggs, but no jams or juice - go figure) and the highlight of the weekend was definitely dinner at the Three Brothers Arms. Although it's of no interest to me, their list of imported beers is extensive, and George pronounced the Monty Python's Holy Grail ale very good when it reached its optimum drinking temperature of 13 degrees.

C • Scheduling 2

I was going to test Simon's theory that intervals will make you less stiff, as long as what you're stiff from isn't previous intervals, by doing the hills that I have been meaning to do for a couple of weeks, but either I or the theory failed dismally. First one was 3.01, so that's nearly okay, but then on the second one I suddenly found myself walking up the hill and my hamstrings were just so lactic (actually I'm not quite sure that's possible?) that then I just did a loop around the park - found a singletrack I hadn't run on before - and finished with the last of the hills on the 3 Hills Loop, which was an effort. Should only take 11-12 min to run home from the park but today it took nearly 14, which seemed like forever.

Am getting quite sick of having to tape my ankle and take its instability into account every (other) time I put my foot down. Unfortunately it wasn't hard to believe Kath when she implied that it's not easily re-strengthened. Starting to wonder about a certain 80km run which is sort of hanging over my head already (no, I am not having second thoughts - yet).

The lake/trainline/steps loop with Zara/Callum, Fern, Simon, Lauren (who had just come from doing intervals!). Over 50% of us were still feeling the weekend in our legs but mine were definitely better than a couple of days ago.

Afterwards Zara & I stood around for long enough to get mozzie-bitten and decided that we are definitely going to walk the whole 71km Queen Charlotte Track starting 2 days after the rogaine (with Kay, who is going to hire a bike and thinks that I should do likewise). So now we have to determine where we want to stay each night - apparently the boat drops your gear there so all you need to walk with is a daypack :)

I may have caught up on sleep, but not energy, just yet, and legs were very tight in the morning so the planned intervals fell by the wayside. Secondarily planned evening recovery jog went the same way since George was home early for once and so we went out for dinner and carbo-loaded (for nothing in particular) instead.

C • plans for weekend 2

Shepherds Hill, Eden Hills, Bellevue Heights, Flinders Uni and home. Pretty slow and it turned out my knees and shins were tighter than I thought. Nearly wasn't going to bother with a run but when I came home from work I ate chocolate and then it was necessary to run to justify its consumption. I'm not sure whether that's reverse psychology, or reverse-reverse :)

Bridget & Lauren joined me in the pond while Simon went for a jog in its vicinity and Fern rode her bike up Shepherds Hill Rd (I've long suspected that she's tougher than the rest of us). Lauren kindly informed me that my stroke is better than it was - but there must be other things I'm doing wrong because I'm not getting any faster.

No sore spots - apart from my ankle which I rolled again, on absolutely nothing, while walking home from work. So then in the night I had to try not to lie on opposing knee & ankle, shoulder & elbow, because they were all bitching at me. Even so, I've caught up on sleep quicker than after any other rogaine, probably because of the 2x2hour naps on Sunday afternoon.

C • life experience makes toughness I think! 4

We didn't feel as though we were moving heaps fast in the night - my ankle really didn't like the rough descents and I was very tentative, but the ascents weren't too bad - at least in the dark you can't see that the hillside is something you'd consider a 'cliff" in daylight. All the same, I'm going to do some hill intervals before NZ! The emphasis for this event had always been about practising night navigation, and I'd never wanted to push really hard, so it was nice to take the time to chat to other teams we saw in the night and hear how they were doing.

Around 3.30am we saw Mike/Hugh Round's team at a control (the one with the port bottle, which was well and truly empty by the time we were there) and they expressed surprise that we were still heading north as they were on their way back to the hash house, having gone north first. I said to Z "I don't think we're going to make it as far as we'd hoped, we might have to reconsider the remaining 3 1/2 hours". So we got 2 more controls then it was 4:30am at the NW water drop about 2/3 of the way up the map and we decided to follow the stone wall east across the map, with only 50 + 30pts on the way, so that we could at least get to the 80 on the roads in the very NE corner.

So with 90 min and 11km to go we finally hit roads, or at least runnable terrain, and I put my accelerator foot down, then the other one followed it, and Zara was close behind, and in the end we made it with 10 min to spare, on 1600 points (total available 2560 so that wasn't even 60%). We were beaten into 4th by Olivier and Annika being on the same score but having finished 11 min ahead of us. The Rounds were 2nd, 10pts ahead (but apparently having forgotten to punch a 70 pointer) and Andrew McComb and teammate, clearly in training for next month's WRC, won on 1760, having gone north and been efficient with the gorge. Oh, and we won't talk about Steve & Dave's 1330 for the 6 hour - that's in another league entirely!

We were definitely outclassed but it was a good training exercise. Happy with night navigation, expecting my ankle to be stronger in a month, and intending to spend a significant portion of the WRC planning time weighing up alternate routes and points per km.

Sunce I was home by midday I saw no reason not to spend a beautiful spring afternoon napping rather than attending to the garden, being just a little wrecked! The plan for Monday night, if anyone who ran Black Hill today doesn't feel like running, is to meet at Unley Pool 6pm and go for a swim - the tickets are on me!

Think my ankle is finally allowing me to kick marginally better. Not a fan of inhaling so much water, though.

To the pool, across to Unley Rd to meet Julie & George for brunch, then home in time to pack for the rogaine. Getting more used to playing in Saturday-morning-shoppers type 'traffic'.

I'd had difficulty mustering enthusiasm for an overnight 12 hour rogaine, especially one out Saunders Gorge way (for anyone who drove to the Aust Relays via Mt Pleasant, when you come down the escarpment and hit the plains, the gorge goes back up into the hills north of there). Hash House was in the very southeastern corner of the map, the Marne Gorge in the northern end, and lots of rolling (read:steep) hills in between, with looong grass cleverly hiding all the rocks which are underfoot just waiting to be tripped over.

Only 16 teams did the 12 hour, starting at 7pm; lots more did the 6hr starting at 5pm, and so we enviously watched them all starting off while there were still 3 full hours of daylight left. Zara and I planned a 40km straight-line loop which seemed conservative (having covered nearly 60km in previous 12 hour rogaines), and we left out the Marne Gorge, but included most of the controls between the HH and the top end of the map, so there was a fair bit of zigzagging, and in hindsight we didn't think enough about the opportunity cost of some of the low pointers we were going to.

We started with the SW corner, which probably had the longest grass :( First 3 controls were running on the road but by the time we'd got the next couple up in the hills it was nearly dark and just as I was thinking about getting my torch out, I tripped, on a rock so small I never saw it, and nearly rolled forward down the hill but my landing was cushioned by larger rocks strategically placed under my knee, shoulder and elbow! I had a brief "I want my mummy" moment but there was no blood, just good bruises still coming.

About 10pm we started seeing teams from the 6-hour heading back towards the hash house and doubted they'd make it in time. (We also saw Steve & Dave and they were motoring along.) Then at about 11pm, which was 6-hour cutoff, going along a ridgeline, a team asked us where they were and we tried to direct them to the safety loop track figuring that since they were already going to be disqualified for lateness they may as well at least get a lift back. A couple of hours later, crossing the same ridgeline again, we saw vehicle lights coming and figured we'd better stop to talk to the safety vehicle, which was indeed looking for that team, but had just heard that they had made it back safely.

Some days you just feel like crap -and this was one of them. I guess due to a salt/water/sleep deficit, but it's the least productive work day I've had for a while. Felt really stressed about something, but no idea what (the rogaine? Surely not!). Was going to swim after picking up Summer Series programmes from Snap Printing but since I was practically falling asleep while driving, gave it a miss.

Started from Wilpena St, with Fern, and took 21 min to get to the park, by which time I was completely stuffed. I talked the others (Zara/Callum, Bridget/Simon) into going via the redwoods then up the singletrack to the tap at the top of the park; sadly the cherry blossom was underwhelming, but the forget-me-nots were lovely. We came back via the singletrack above the waterfalls and then along the creek. Wildflowers were worth looking at but the rough stuff was hard on my ankle which swelled a bit afterwards. The park loop was 66 min with quite a few stops, then 21min back to Fern's.

I had to drop past my parents' afterwards so somehow it was 10:30pm by the time I had made and eaten dinner. I have done a very poor job of banking sleep this week in advance of Saturday night when I won't get any (whose bright idea was a 12-hour overnight rogaine anyway?) and I woke up next morning with a horrible hangover feeling probably attributable to not drinking enough after running - felt better after salt tablets with my breakfast!

10x210m on the rough grass at Mortlock Oval. I had to dodge the lawnmowing tractor and also a man with one leg, who was on crutches, walking across the oval with his dog. I felt bad because in the time it took him to make his way across I had gone up and back twice. So I can't really complain about feeling slow.
50, 50, 49, 48, 48, 49, 50, 50, 50, 50

12 min warmup, 12 min warmdown, 12 min recoveries (approx 78-84 sec, which got slightly slower towards the end).

I have missed running at Morialta so thought I'd do the short loop, taking it easy, before OASA meeting. Going up was fine, but the downtrack is rougher and more washed out than ever and there are trees down across the track in a number of places, meaning that this really isn't a useful loop for practicing belting downhill any more. Then again, I'm starting to think that with this ankle my downhill-belting days are over (but at some future time I will probably forget I said that).

From the Uppills', through Hawthorndene, down the creek to Blackwood Forest and back through the school with Simon, Bridget, Fern & Eric. Hamstring not too bad and shins, which were a bit cranky last night, seemed to have settled down. I was happy with a short run, though, because I wanted to get back and enter for Cradle Mtn (entries opened at 8pm, and to quote Chris Brown, will probably fill up by 9pm. But 8pm in the east is only 7:30 around here - mission now accomplished :)

A quota of 60 runners fills very quickly - apparently it was only half an hour before people were already on the waiting list!

C • Good on ya! 5

Not exactly sure of the distance - last year this was advertised as 10km and turned out to be a bit longer; this year it had been advertised as 9.6km on the website and then suddenly in the last week a new 10km course appeared, and (this was the funny thing) it went the opposite direction around the river, but most people didn't realise this, so, having lined up on the start line, were then informed "you're facing the wrong way"!

Elder Park - new zoo footbridge (apparently this cost $1 million to build) - Torrens weir - Bonython Park - Port Rd - back along the south side of the river to Elder Park. I've Google-Earth measured it and it's definitely more than 9.6, but less than 10, I think. Anyway it doesn't really matter because they didn't appear to be recording times and I wasn't ever treating this as a full-on race since I was still eating breakfast when I hopped in the car at 7.30 to drive in to town for an 8am start, and my hamstrings were pretty tight from yesterday. There are no km markers either so I decided it was all about a steady tempo run and I achieved this but can see that I've lost speed from doing no intervals since I did my ankle.

Nicole Butterfield did just over 40 for this; she agreed that it was a bit less than 10km. I asked about her experience of running Yurrebilla, and then, suddenly, I heard myself saying "you should run Cradle Mtn, entries open (and close) tomorrow!"

As I was warming down along the river some guy running caught up to me and asked "what was all that back there?" The run was a breast cancer fundraiser so everyone was wearing pink and some, even the guys, were wearing fairy wings, and a lot of people had placards on their backs saying who they were running for (I can't do that, I don't wear my heart on my sleeve and anyway the names are too numerous to mention in my line of work) and so this guy reckoned he had thought it was mardi gras or something! Talked to him a bit about running City-Bay (he claimed to have done 42 but from a later start group because of not having run it previously) and when I said I did 51 he said "that's not bad, for a girl - I don't mean to be sexist or anything" and I said "yeah, but some of my friends did 47" (meaning Lauren & Nicole) and he said "you mean they are girls too?".

So, it was kind of weird, being simultaneously chatted up and patronised...I bet he's never been off-road in his life!

I rode from home to Steve & Maya's at Stirling East and George met me there in time for lunch. This felt like a bit of an epic; the worst bits were the bottom of Shepherds Hill Rd and the top of Sheoak Rd. The best bit was trundling up Jubilee Drive (which is dirt, with washouts) in the park, admiring the wildflowers and thinking that I'm glad to have a hybrid :) I got swooped again by the bird in the backstreets at the bottom of Shepherds Hill; since it had no less than 6 passes at me I was able to determine that it's a wattlebird, not a miner!

C • Tough ride 1

From Zara's (with Callum, of course) up Pole Rd to Ironbank, Cherry Gardens, Mundoo Lane, Ilunga Drive, Scott Creek Cemetery, Nicholls Drive, Brown Rd, Loftia Park, Evans Drive, Woolybutt Rd and we walked the last bit down through the scrub and lots of wildflowers. It was a lovely run, we got thoroughly rained on, and we got some more of our NZ plans sorted.

Halfway along the ridge on Nicholls Rd we were suddenly joined by a large white full-sized (German) poodle and another smaller brown poodloid. They wanted to play with Callum, even though he wanted to keep running, and we tried many times to send them back but they accompanied us all the way to the bitumen (at least 1km) and there I was able to grab them and read the names on their tags - Jazzi was the dumb blonde and Hudson the ringleader. While we were wondering whether to take them back where they came from, a car drove up and their owner jumped out and hauled them into the car, then proceeded to explain to us that she had only "just gone inside to get their food, and when she came out they weren't there". While she was telling us this, Hudson jumped out of the window and made another break for freedom. It's pretty clear that this isn't the first time these dogs have run away, and it won't be the last!

C • Long dog pursuits 1

I was pretty stiff after running so figured this might help before doing a 10km fun run tomorrow.

It hadn't taken me long to get waaay too comfortable with not having gone running for a couple of days so I figured I really should do this, even after somehow procrastinating until 9pm (by which time it had stopped raining).

C • I know 1

Couldn't face, not so much the putting on of ankle tape as the removal of skin along with it afterwards, so took the dog for a nice long walk with the specific aim of raiding a neighbourhood loquat tree. They have a very short fruiting season; October is it, and they're fairly obscure, rarely seen in shops (I introduced Tracy to loquats when she was in Adelaide).

The evening was taken up with the Aust Champs Carnival "wind-up" dinner at the German Club, to which I took my parents - who spent the entire week helping on the finish despite not being financial members of OASA (they are life members of Wallaringa though). Food at the German Club was truly horrible, as always, but the company was good and it's reassuring to note that the fatigue has faded from people's faces and nobody is saying "never again". Mention was even made, more than once, but very quietly, of "So where are we going to hold Easter 2015?"

C • Loquats 8

Have hit a slight metaphysical brick wall this week; not surprising post-nationals I guess, but I didn't realise how wrecked I was until I accidentally slept in until 8am today (was feeling a bit post-physio too, but that's more like being hit by an actual brick wall). When I came home from work there was still lots of daylight to go outside and exercise in, but I ignored it and made/consumed pizza & drank wine, which was a very good choice, even though it wasn't officially a Healthy Choice (it's either a state government or SA Health directive, that all "junk food" be removed from all departments and cafeterias and replaced with Healthy Choices, so now not even the fundraising chocolates are allowed, and so you should have seen our secretary frothing at the mouth yesterday when she couldn't buy a Freddo frog anywhere in the hospital!).

C • Healthy Choices 1

Zara has been doing all these long runs and I've been a slack tart since Sea to Summit so figured I'd better get my act together. I haven't run Brownhill Creek for ages because it's been my bike route, but today was a lovely morning to do the full length. I took all the singletracks and got to the far end just on 50, feeling good, started to think that maybe my previous best of 93 was achievable but by the time I got back into the suburbs I was flagging, having forgotten that a run of this length requires breakfast beforehand. A couple of scavenged cumquats didn't really fill the hole, and I was getting a bit wobbly by the end but I just managed to crack 93.

Can tell that the ground is drying out already (and soon I will be complaining about my shins again) but the creek is still trickling well upstream (there have to be springs) even though down by the pool there's no water in it at all.

P.S. Who posted Dave & Julie's 80km run route, by the way? It opens straight to the Garmin file - but I can't see the comments behind it. (They are not quite like other people, could probably do Cradle before breakfast!)

C • Jim 4

Attack of the Killer Physio

Kath has her uses - she was able to look up her notes and tell me that this is not the same ankle which I did so badly 2 yrs ago at WOC trials in St Helens (I remember now, that was technically my "good" ankle, while this is the one which has historically been wrenched many times before). She reckons I should always run with it taped because it has no stability.

We then bonded over our dislike of dental hygienists - turns out we have been to the same one, who is very condescending.

Same as last week from Fern's, except with a few more singletrails and a couple of redundancies for poor hayfeverish Bridget, who could hardly see where she was going. Simon, Lauren, Eric were also present. My ankle tape sweated loose in no time.

Zara has heard from Dave Baldwin that he & Julie Quinn did an 80km training run last weekend as part of their lead up to the World Champs rogaine. This makes us feel only slightly inadequate. They have also done every 24hr state champs on offer this year, including the NSW and Vic champs on back-to-back weekends. Somehow I assume that they have every intention of winning outright.

C • 80k run 3

So, this morning when I put my brain in, I tamped it down well, screwed the lid on tightly, then added some air holes. I also wore my runners and used extra extra ankle tape. I was going to remain focused at all costs, except perhaps at the expense of my ankle, which was fairly unhappy running across hillsides early in the course, but didn't mind runing linearly along spurs and gullies. The course wasn't at all steep and there was very little undergrowth, and the purple (Caladenia?) orchids were everywhere and I had to try not to step on them.

Was slightly high on 2, Aislinn had caught me 2 min by 3, I lost 30sec going unnecessarily over a rocky knoll at the end of the leg to 4 then being slightly right of it, but as I punched she came down the bigger hill which she hadn't meant to go up. We were both a bit too far right on 6 and bounced off the fence but I caught on before she did, Clare was punching 6 as we came down, and after that I never really lost sight of Aislinn and the ground was less rough than earlier on so I could run quite strongly, and went pretty direct on the long leg, actually punched 10 before her and then we leapfrogged the last few controls. Kathryn had started 8 min behind me and I was amazed to finish just before she did - had been sure that she'd go through me halfway round.

Yeah, so I think this was a good run - not the most technical course but it gave me some confidence back - and it's nice to know that I'm racing better than I ever have before, even if my navigation is taking a while to catch up. The road trip back was okay too; I wasn't nearly as tired as when coming home from the relays a week ago, and our daisy chain (the one which I had made for Fern at Vaughan Springs yesterday, then hung from the back windscreen wiper as a joke) survived the drive, although it was somewhat tattered by the end, to say the least!

And now it's only 6 weeks until the World Champs rogaine so I'd better build some distance up again, and while I'm at it, entries for the Cradle Mountain Run open in a week (and will probably close the same night).

Vic Middle Champs, Spring Gully. As I told Blair, I did bad things to his perfectly good course. I have no excuses to make; I'm just glad that neither Susanne nor Kay was there to tell me what they thought of my efforts to deconstruct it!

Nearly over-ran the first control but looked to my right and saw it so dropped in. Then dropped 2 minutes on the second, a leg so short that the circles were touching. I ran almost the right distance in the right direction, pulled up short confused by the blackberries and couldn't see a gully which might hold a control, thought I must be on the knoll further north with green marked, but I could look back and see the control I had come from, ran SE to another control, back to my first to relocate off it, took the bearing again for the 3rd time and it still led me to the blackberry thicket, so I finally went beyond it and what do you know, there was a gully with a control in it!

Was mostly okay through the middle of the course except for dropping too low on 5 (misread the white/yellow boundary), caught Fern at 8 which was another little gully but bigger than expected so I briefly refused to drop into it despite seeing a control at the bottom, hesitated too close to the creek on the knoll at 11 while she was smart enough to climb the extra contour, Vanessa passed both of us at 12. I was really struggling with my ankle being painful and this was messing with my concentration, such as it was, and I managed to read the wrong control number at 15 and nearly went away again, but I saved my dumbest moment for right at the end.

Okay, so the control descriptions were too long for my holder and I had folded the last control under. No big deal, it's easy to remember that the last control is 100. It's also easy, when you're at control 19 of 21 and you look at your arm to see that "there's only one control left", to then take out your brain and throw it away and proceed to do the incredibly short leg from 20 to 21, except that I was starting from 19! And so I did laps of a couple of knolls immediately NE of 19 and couldn't find the control and couldn't understand why not. I could look at the control I'd just come from, and I even went back for a closer look twice, but it was only on the 3rd try when I got close enough to read the number that I realised what I was doing. Not even stopping to curse myself, I raced off in the rough direction of 20 and wasted another minute being too far left...

Yep, so I threw away, at a conservative estimate, at least 8 minutes on this course. I did, however, learn one thing today: that a piece of gooey chocolate cake, no matter how undeserved, when accompanied by ice cream and washed down by decent coffee, can make you feel a lot better!

C • Only eight minutes 2

Hoped this would loosen up my knees a bit but I'll have to count on Kath to do it properly on Monday. Water in my ear is now affecting my balance (hands up all those who think I'm unbalanced anyway).

Memo to self: if it's 8 degrees at home and doesn't feel too bad this doesn't mean that it won't be finger-and-toe-numbingly cold riding along the creek bottom. I was so happy when I finally caught some patches of sunshine on the way home. Finished feeling better than when I started but being fairly stuffed this week isn't resolving itself as quickly as I'd hoped.

C • Topography and low temperatures 9

As I stopped to stretch at the bottom of Pony Ridge and observed the head-high grass on the switchbacks I was thinking of all the Yurrebilla Trail runners who came down there on Sunday (apparently someone counted 28 switchbacks). They would still have been pretty fresh at that stage, not even 5km in. It's been great reading everyone's reports on Coolrunning - sounds like a lot of people found the day rather warm and were cramping by the time they started staggering up Black Hill after 46km. Dave Talbot won in an amazing time: 5hrs 14, and Nicole Butterfield's 6hrs 12 for first woman was no less impressive!

To the redwoods and back - my ankle needed a flat run - with Zara/Callum, Marcus/Holly and Fern. The arum lilies and periwinkle are flowering all along the creek, and the cherry plantation is just starting to blossom, so the forget-me-nots-can't be far behind. In 2 weeks the valley will be at its most beautiful.

Sooo tired that I nearly turned around and went home in the first 10 minutes but the cold afternoon breeze woke me up eventually (it was decidedly frigid). Did the shortest loop and was very cautious of my taped ankle on the trails but tried a bit harder on the way home. There is still water in the creek but it has already stopped flowing. And thus begins the prelude to summer...I will have to water my garden before going away this weekend.

Ankle was puffy and irritable by the end of a day at work (I impressed the perils of orienteering upon my colleagues by showing them the rock-bounce bruises on my leg) so I'm not sure what made me think that taking it for a run would be a better option than staying home and inhaling food (I mean grazing gently), which was what I really wanted to do...I did feel better oxygenated afterwards, and managed to stretch properly, but it's very hard to stretch my ITB on that side 'cos I can't flex my ankle, and my other knee is getting cranky 'cos it's taking more of the weight.

Not sure how I feel about a drive to Vic on Friday and running 11km on Sunday but hopefully I'll be less stuffed by then. I feel for Sus, she & Lachlan got home at 2am, to bed at 3 and then up at 6 on Monday, and now she's away on a field trip!

I struggled to maintain efficiency, and instead performed the submarine impersonation a bit too successfully. It was a pleasant spring afternoon to be swimming, though not many other people realised this :)

C • VIC champs 3

To the pool was the easy bit. From the pool to Fern's, up Shepherds Hill Rd, when I had only left myself the amount of time that I would have needed to get there from home, was a lot tougher. But I did manage to remain in the middle ring all the way (just) despite a noisy miner bird having four goes at swooping me while I was concentrating very hard on remaining in forward motion.

Wow, my quads were lactic! I will never make a triathlete (for many reasons). The run with Fern & Eric down through the creek, up to Craigburn, back through Blackwood High, was just what I felt like doing, but even with my ankle taped it wasn't very stable, so I won't run at Morialta tomorrow - too rough.

Rock Oyster, along the Marne River. Mallee scrub with lots of gullies on the escarpment, and lots of calcified oyster shells underfoot (some of which Gil Hollamby, the course planner, had made into trophies for the winning teams). I was running first with Susanne then Vanessa, even though I wasn't sure about my ankle. The fact that it was uncomfortable just walking across to the arena didn't fill me with confidence, so I taped it to within an inch of its life (figuratively speaking) and it held up okay running.

I was with Fel on the long leg to 3 where most people took the track option to the right, and we could see Jo & Jas in the distance. Going down into 4 I dislodged a 15kg rock, which bounced off my leg (that'll bruise tomorrow) and then rolled down the hill and I heard someone yell to Toph to look out and the rock landed between Toph and the control!

Gradually I pulled away from Fel, then up and over the big hill Lauren came powering from behind me. She went too far to the right on 8; I stayed on the line but then when I got near to the big creek I couldn't see the knoll my control was meant to be on (it's mapped with a 5m contour line but turned out not to be even as tall as me) and I saw a cliff beyond it in the creek, panicked and thought I was too far left so started to run right away from the control, saw the massive cliff before the creek opened out and realised I had to go back, just as Lauren did the same thing and Fel came down the hill & punched in front of us. So I assume I lost 90 sec there.

I chased both of them through the spectator control and by the time I got to 10 Lauren was out of sight. I overhauled Fel up & over the hill into 11 and we both did something daft here; despite using a knoll as an attack point then dropping into the creek I was too far right, hit the branch creek above the control but thought I was in the main creek too far left so ran upstream, lots of little knolls but none with controls, worked it out and ran downstream to the junction but forgot that I was coming from the branch creek not the main one and looked on the knoll on the wrong side of the creek. How quickly a brain fade can happen, and there's another 4 min gone! By this time Fel had vanished, Bridget had got past me though I never saw her, and then Ilka got me right at the end.

So I went from 4th(?) to 8th(?) because of what I did on controls 8 & 11; without those mistakes I should have been on about 48 min - it wouldn't have been so bad if I wasn't letting my team down. Lauren kept her head better than me today so she really should have been in the top team. The irony is that I am finally running fast enough to be a contributing member of a relay team, and what do I do but go and run faster than I am thinking?

I was absolutely wrecked (mentally) afterwards, so maybe a slight amount of fatigue from yesterday's controlling has finally caught up with me. It's been a great week, though; not nearly as stressful as I thought it might have been, so I think I managed not to yell at anyone...and I've enjoyed all my runs, and had time to be sociable as well, even to my house guests :)

Day of Reckoning, Moment of Truth, etc etc.

The Aust Long Champs day dawned bright and breezy and when I got to the assembly area at 7:30am there was already one person in a campervan waiting to get into the parking paddock! Next half hour was spent redoing the signage at the turnoff into Gravel Pit Rd as 3 out of the 4 "Caution: Traffic Turning" signs which I'd put out last thing yesterday, had been nicked overnight. Then I took the maps to the start and observed the setup and timing very closely, then I set up the easy/very easy start, then I hung around in close proximity to the finish tent for about 4 hours and thankfully there was no major trouble to shoot. Then I helped Jeffa with the presentations, then Susanne/Lachlan/Fern/George and others helped me & Vincent with control collecting. It was beautiful up on the hillside in the afternoon sunlight. When we came back it should have been really easy to sort out the units which needed to go back to Vic & NSW but the puzzling thing was that the 7 spare units which I'd left right next to the SI unit boxes were nowhere to be found. Eventually it turned out that the computing team had helpfully packed them away and taken them home with the SA units!

So, we finally left the event about 5:30 and I had time to reflect on the day & debrief to George over coffee. VIncent's courses and Paul's mapping were very well received, Jeffa's organisation was superb, the arena was perfect for an Aust champs and so was the weather. So I think we can all be really proud of ourselves, and there were only a couple of less-than-perfect moments (inside my controller's hat).

Control 160 messed with a few people because we had described the middle boulder, there being 5 in total across the circle, but the control was on the 3rd in a row of 3 that stretched halfway across the circle. To make things slightly more complicated there is an unmapped boulder tucked under the olive tree thicket, which Vincent and I had originally taken to be that 3rd boulder until I realised that what we'd taken to be rocky ground at the SE edge of the thicket was what Paul had mapped as the 3rd boulder. So we had to put the control on the southeasternmost rock in that row even though it didn't then match the description of 2m boulder very well. If I'd caught on to this sooner we may not have used it as a control site -sorry!

The other contentious thing was having no water on the 4.2km course 12 (M55AS, M75A, W45AS, W65A). We had reasoned that with a 40-minute winning time, and even if the bulk of the people on the course took closer to an hour, having water available at the start & finish was adequate. I didn't anticipate that there would be quite so many people in the 80-100 minute range who went a long time without a drink, and I can see that for these people if they were out in the sun, they would have been thirsty even though it was a cool day, so I'll learn from that for next time.

The slightly odd thing was that a number of women (W50 or 55?) came in saying that they had found the pink tag for 106 even though there was no control there. I said "But did you go to 106 - the drink control on a boulder cluster on the spur?". Eventually I elicited from them that they had overshot the spur and had found the tag on a boulder in the next gully over, and I elicited from Vincent that this had been his original site for 106, although it was eliminated by the time I came along to check the tags, so I'd never been there!

C • 106 3

Trinity College, set by Robin. As I told her, it was complex enough that I actually made mistakes, which isn't a given on sprints. But in my defence, it was the fenced off OOB which confused me the first time, and the lack of it, despite being mapped, the second time. Apparently the fence was removed in the last week! I ran pretty fast (for me) but probably lost about a minute all up (which still loses me less places than in the AMDC).