Training Log Archive: jennycas

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).

All the SI units went out today at Tanunda Creek, between me and Vincent again, also some of the water, and I showed the start team the layout there, and Jeffa & I went through the plans for the Assembly area, and Terry Bluett came along to supervise all of us, as IOF controller for the elite courses. And then I went home to check the maps again for the 3rd time, and decided to wait until after the event was all over to log my sighting of a red-bellied black snake (unfortunately I didn't get to see its red belly). Ankle was less happy today in runners, than in O shoes on Tuesday.

Pretty sedate today in deference to my ankle.

Have been meaning to find out how long it takes to ride to the pool. Answer: 12 minutes there, 15 min back into a headwind - also I rode to the supermarket and then picked up my car from the place where it was getting 4 new tyres.

Between us Vincent and I put out 98 controls for the Aust long champs and the associated model event, so I was able to go home and sleep in my own bed with a sense of satisfaction at a job well done. Was surprised to see how much the grass in the hilltop meadow has grown with no cattle in there. Walking through knee-deep cold wet grass, carrying an armful of controls, with a dodgy ankle, wasn't brilliant, but the views were :) And it's scary to see how high the driftwood in the creek is, indicating that a month ago with the heavy rain, the creek was, at its worst, neck deep (on me). There's no way we would have been able to hold the event if it was currently flowing like that!

Mack Creek, set by the minimalist Andrew McComb, but his style suited this terrain, with long route choice legs where often running a long way round on the track (past the taped-off environmentally sensitive orchid populations) was faster than yacka-bashing. And the single trails along the creek were beautiful on a gloriously sunny day. I went left on the long leg 3-4, along the crek, up to the dam, up the track, over the knoll, which I'm sure was the best option, then on 5 I climbed to take the track byt apparently going along the bottom wasn't too bad, took the northern track to 7 and Anna was gaining on me slowly here (she started 10 min after me). Anna, Jas and Mace all caught me at 8 (I was 2 min in front of Jas at that point) and I chased them across the hillsides for the next couple of controls, then while I was being careful of my downhill ankle on the steep descent from 11, I somehow put my other ankle, the one I'd rolled on Thursday, in a hole or something, and I heard it tear somewhere higher up than previously. Wasn't sure if I'd make it back to the finish but it was only 500m to hobble, in which time I lost about 3 min on the other girls but the only place I lost was that Jasmine ended up ahead of me, so I was 9th.