Training Log Archive: jennycas

I was going to swim in the afternoon until I realised that the pool closes at midday on weekends from May 1st. Therefore I was in a hurry, and got slightly confused counting laps.

To the bottom of Pony Ridge and back via Mitcham. It was cold in the valley this morning, glad I wore a thermal top. I am becoming incrementally more confident, though I still daren't remove a hand from the handlebars to indicate turning. So I'd be pleased to find someplace where I can ride further, but which has no traffic!

C • Linear park 4

Attack of the Killer Physio

This didn't hurt - much. And no needles were required. Rogaining must be good for me :)

It may just have been that my bruised foot was twinging with pretty much every step, but this should have been an enjoyable run, 'cos the company was good - and instead it just reminded me of the things I don't like about night runs (torchlight bounces all over the place and I can't see where I'm putting my feet on rough tracks).

Short Colonel Light Gardens loop. Thought I was taking it easy but the time is the same as a few weeks ago when it required more effort. Legs are basically okay now, knees a bit tight, but the bone bruise on my ankle from my shoe pressing on it for 24 hours is still quite painful.

Sooo vague and sleep-deprived today that I seriously didn't trust myself to drive into town after work to go running. Considered a jog from home but I didn't trust myself not to trip over a crack in the pavement in the dark. Also, my knees/ITB/shins hurt quite a lot, so they will be stretched rather than being made to run. (I did, however, remember to go out at lunchtime and return the satellite phones which SARA had hired for the rogaine.)

C • well done on the rogaine! Super! 2

We didn't leave the hash house until after 11am, having shared mum's birthday cake with her, and then I had volunteered myself and Zara to pick up a couple of controls (one each; I got the hill climb but hers was further to walk) which conveniently meant driving the full loop through Bunyeroo Gorge so we could see in daylight all the scenery we had missed in the night. Gosh it's beautiful up there, can't wait to go back in June. It's green at the minute, but the locusts have already descended. We had to stop near the Wilpena turnoff because of a family of emus which were standing in the middle of the road eating them!

At Hawker we got petrol, checked the seismograph in the servo, and said hi to Kay who had ridden her MTB from Blinman to Wilpena via the Mawson trail that morning (people who tell me I'm not quite sane just haven't met her yet) and I managed to avoid most of the long weekend traffic so was home 4 hours later, with very stiff knees!

C • Green? 1

We got down into the bottom of Bunyeroo Gorge at 3am and I was worried, after the last couple of controls having been slow, that it could take a while to cover the next 20km to the soup kitchen at Slippery Dip rest area on the Brachina road, where we needed to be before it closed at 10am, in order to get back from there by 4pm. But this section turned out to be pretty easy both physically and navigationally, so we ran the road as much as possible, and Zara wasn't showing any signs of pleading for a nap as she had feared.

Once we heard the voices of Paul Hoopmann and Steven Dose crossing our path, and we saw Sarah & Olivia coming out of a creekbed control as we went up into it, but they were all heading in the opposite direction, and we didn't think that many other teams would be out this way, except for team 42 whose tag we kept seing on intention sheets, always 55-70 min ahead of us at each control, and who we suspected were probably the Victorian guys we had been with right at the beginning, and who looked to have been the only other people (apart from Julie & David) who were certain to be faster than us.

Sunrise came just as we reached the junction with the Brachina road at the north end of the gorge, and we were at the soup kitchen just on 8am, having already done the dogleg to 59. I practically inhaled a banana, buttered roll, mandarin and piece of cake, then stuffed 2 more mandies and another roll into my pack (now heavy again with a water refill) while Zara begged for and sculled a cup of tea. We were here 25 min but it was worth it. Imagine if I'd had to carry that much extra food with me. I don't know what I'll do in NZ if they don't have fruit drops.

Really happy with how we were doing now, having lost no more than 20 min on navigation during the night, we headed south again to do the other half of the east side of the eastern range, before turning east and zigzagging through the hills via 85 and 91. My feet, which are pretty tough, weren't troubling me at all despite the rocky ground, apart from a really painful spot where I had laced them tightly and where a bruise was now forming. Nurofen ingestion = Jenny being able to pick up the pace. If we could be at Dingley Dell campground by 2.30pm then we could hopefully get 69, 58, and 77 in the hills, plus 64 which was very close to the hash house.

We left 77 with an hour to go but it took a while to get down off the ridgeline to the south. I had figured this was the shortest way down but it didn't set us up very well for approaching 64 (The Gully) from the west, across a number of creeks and spurs, when the better option was NW via an obvious junction. There was another team looking confused in a broad open gully, and I ignored them, going on to the next gully in the trees, where there didn't seem to be any control. Dunno what we did wrong, actually, but we never found it (neither did quite a few other teams in the night), and then I panicked. Must have needed to eat something. Back to the broad gully, back again to the wooded gully, and then I said to Zara "we only have 20 minutes, we have to get the hell out of here!" so we did. 1.5km back to the hash house through young pines, but I didn't know precisely where we were starting from, so it was on a bearing and a prayer, and just as I got really confused, with 8 min to go, Zara wisely said "head for that bare hill" and then I heard the unmistakeable sound of the generator so we bolted in that direction and got in with only 1 minute to spare!

We were 3rd overall, as it happens, and on 2730 points, the same score as the Victorians (Andrew Baker & Jonathan Sutcliffe, who were indeed team 42, and with whom we compared notes over breakfast next morning) but they got in 5 minutes ahead of us and therefore we were beaten on time. Could have just strolled back in without looking for 64 and we would have been ahead of them on time...David & Julie won comprehensively, of course, by 480 points, the available total being 3210.

I was really pleased with this event, and with both Zara's and my fitness and navigation, and with our general efficiency, (though I will be wanting to shave 5 min off each stop in the worlds) so we're both feeling a lot more confident about NZ now.