Training Log Archive: jennycas

I took a long time to get going this morning but eventually headed up to Zara's and we went for a run in the park before lunching at Stirling :)
Echo Tunnel, up past the waterfalls to the top of the park, out along the railway line to Station Rd, past Upper Sturt school & tennis courts then back via the redwoods and Long Gully. I wasn't moving very fast, and have hardly run any hills since S2S, but it was a pleasant chatting pace - with a thermal on.

Beautiful clear breezy morning to be in the park but this turned out to be a real struggle. I may have to rethink the length of the run I'm planning with tomorrow's birthday girl. Also don't think I've eaten enough proper food this week - burned the roof of my mouth on hot chips & gravy at the Pt Wakefield roadhouse coming home on Sun and the blisters have been nasty. (I didn't get any blisters on my feet from the rogaine though .)

Zara was feeling poorly, and Tyson was feeling paternal, so it was a redwoods run with Bridget & Liv & Lauren.

I'm going to pension off the shoes I wore in the rogaine. Apart from the fact that the 5c-sized hole in the toe which evolved in last month's 12 hour has now expanded to the size of a 50c piece, there is a stick right through the sole and sticking up about 5mm into the shoe. I was aware of having stepped on it in the middle of the night; if it wasn't for my fairly robust orthotics which now have a 5mm dent in the underside, our rogaining fun might have ended abruptly.

All the same, it's probably time for new orthotics...

Feet still rather puffy but swollen knee has gone down. I think that walking rather than running made a big difference to how much pressure was put upon my knees.

Today's note is about gear. I wore 3/4 tights and knee length Trimtex socks under O pants and I think this was a winning combination because the socks kept out even spinifex (mostly) and I didn't have extra compression on the strapping tape around my ankles as I would have had from short socks, resulting in a sort of chemical burn from the tape (that was the least pleasant part of the recent 12 hour). Definitely needed the 2 layers on legs for overnight warmth.

I carried 2 thermals plus the ubiquitous emergency raincoat, which wasn't brought out because it wouldn't have added much to warmth; a 3rd thermal was tempting but I survived ok without it, thankful for the (fingerless) gloves.

Also I took a second torch because I'm not convinced that the Ayups really last all night. And an empty water bottle to make it easier to fill up the 1.5L bladder at water drops. No longer do I mix Powerade or Sustagen into my hydration because I'd rather eat real food and have some salt tablets as backup.

No, really? I think I was in better shape than Steve today but that's not saying much - it took me 10 min to walk the 500m to work (in the only time window when it wasn't raining today, it seemed).

For the record, and because when I was planning food for this rogaine I really wished I'd written down what I ate during the Aust champs in the Flinders 2 years ago, my food consumption was:
5 potatoes with Vegemite & cheese (unfortunately they go really manky because the salt in the Vegemite draws the fluid out of the potatoes, so they have to be quarantined from everything else)
4 English fruit muffins - 2 with cheese & 2 with Nutella
3 muesli bars
3 gingernut biscuits
a handful of BBQ shapes
a handful of coffee lollies (Kopiko; I am definitely going to remember these)
from the water drops: an apple, a banana and 2 mandarins
a couple of snakes from the controls which had lollies at them

Steve said I took too much food. I hardly saw him eat, but I can't get away without real food. What I carried but didn't eat was:
5 more muesli bars and 2 more muffins and 5 more gingernuts (some of which would have been necessary, if there was no fruit left)
a bag of scroggin (I am going to not bother with this in future; real food is better)
a protein bar, of which I took one mouthful and spat it out; it was awful.
So I don't think that was *too* much extra, since it didn't trouble me to carry it.

I had a bit of a flat patch about 1am where I just couldn't seem to follow the same bearing as Steve, but once I'd worked out that my headlamp slips sideways slightly and so I was following its beam not my compass, and had consumed a couple of coffee lollies and some Nurofen for my feet, plus convinced Steve to do the same, we trotted along quite nicely for the next few hours, although a little underdressed for the conditions - I hadn't expected a clear night and so it was more like 4 degrees than the forecast 9. It was pretty quiet with him focusing on pace counting and not talking much so my mind was free to think about how lucky I am to live in a country where I have the disposable income to 'waste' on such an activity and where it's socially acceptable for me to go off and spend a weekend in the company of a man other than my husband.

The moon came up about 2am, a huge blood-red crescent hanging over the lights of Whyalla. Eerie, but not of any use to us navigationally, and we had managed quite well without it so far - there was enough starlight to see the outline of small hills but we had to intuit the existence of valleys. About 5:30am, though, we didn't correctly intuit that we had hit a creek below the control, because the blue line was marked as existing only above the control - and so we turned downstream without first checking just a little bit to the left as we had usually done in each control circle. It was bloody freezing, and we hurried down the creek without thinking much about the distance until we hit a fence nearly 600m from the control. Swore a little, headed back upstream for 750m, punched the control, headed downstream shivering for 750m, crossed the fence and I suggested to Steve that we follow it to where it bent, on the way to the next control. He said we should be all right with a straight bearing because the control would be on a track.

Well, we never saw the track, and Steve & I got sort of separated... we regrouped properly about 500m past where the track should have been and admitted to each other that the only option was to head to the fence and go in from the bend. The track should have gone off from the bend, but it truly didn't exist there any more, and even at the control it was pretty indistinct. Still, it was daylight by now, so we could work this out. Also we were at nearly the 75km mark and needed to find a few more controls than originally planned, over the next few hours, tempting as it would have been to take our aching feet back to the hash house about 4km away. There were some high pointers in the NE corner but they averaged 2-3km apart and Steve was the one feeling vague at this point, but I knew we could do it if I could just remain focused. It really was beautiful country with red sandy soil and casuarinas, myall and flowering eremophila bushes, and there was nowhere else I would rather be just then, not even the HH.

We were one of only 3 teams to go to control 94, 'the spider' which was a network of channels draining into a dam about 5km north of the hash house. Lost a bit of time here because we crossed the track about 400m NE of the dam but thought we were a bit closer to it than that. Still, relocated quickly and then slogged south on the track, with the sandiness really grating at Steve's underfoot blisters. Starting to wonder why we hadn't seen the Doses at all; Steve said that in the night they hadn't yet been through any of the controls we were at, but surely they must come through us soon. And indeed we saw them going the opposite way to us between the next couple of controls; they looked like they were running, but clearly they must have lost a lot of time somewhere, and we started to think that maybe they hadn't cleaned up after all, and that we might be in with a chance of beating them. So I pushed poor Steve to a final 20 points, with him warning me that we had to find it spot on, because he wouldn't be able to run into the finish if we were going to be late!

In the end, we won by over 400 points, and Steve turned to me and said "We didn't need to go to 21 after all!" Well, if you put it that way, I guess we could have come in at breakfast time...but on the other hand, if we hadn't lost nearly an hour pre-dawn, we could have gone to 31 and 44 as well. As it was, we got all but 6 controls and only left out 170 of the 3940 points on offer. Not bad for a team who walked the whole thing?

The best bit was that I had convinced George to fly to Whyalla - there was a flight which got in at 3:30pm - and drive us home, because Steve & I were pretty wrecked and could hardly walk once the endorphins wore off. And of course, this gave George the right to laugh at us every time we staggered/hobbled in and out of the car when we stopped (for junk food).

But it was a really good rogaine, one of my favourites in terms of terrain and conditions, I'd say. I've been wanting to do a 24 hour with Steve for ages and he didn't disappoint :)

C • 94 km. That is a long, long... 9

C • Fantastic adventure 1