Training Log Archive: jennycas

Event: ACT Middle/Long Championships & NOL
 

G & I flew to Canberra last night and stayed with a friend who we were dropping to the airport before 6am, after which we drove up Red Hill to watch the sunrise. It got a bit cold, sitting there for an hour, which was probably not the ideal start to the day when I was also starting a cold, but the views were lovely.

The race was on Wild Deer Sands, east of Bungendore. We had a WOC trials middle there a few years ago and I remembered low-visibility wattle regrowth with lumps and bumps from sand mining, but not a lot in the way of identifiable contours. So I figured I'd need to be careful with my compass - and I was, taking things pretty carefully and often stopping to figure out what on earth I'd just passed. In particular I found it hard to interpret the little ponds and swamps as to whether they would have water in or not, but also with 2 different sizes of high point symbol (!), not being able to tell whether the lump in front of me would be mapped as a high point or a knoll, or whether the pile of logs in front of me would have been mapped with a green line or not, I probably lost more time to hesitations than I'd first realised. Laurina went past me through 5-6-7 (where I was standing pretty much next to it but didn't expect the control to be physically in a depression) and then to my surprise I caught up to Rachel who was obviously having a shocker of a day and continued to do so; I kept seeing her on & off for the rest of the course.

G & I headed out to Braidwood for lunch and then drove the back way through to Captains Flat, which was pleasant, but never warm. Arrows went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant and Bridget ambushed me with birthday cake :)

I got up really early to make biscuits to take to work. They were in the shape of a 4 and an 0. Of course I had to taste-test them. They do say that "you are what you eat" so now I must be 40.
(Look out, Veteran rogainers, here I come!)

C • Congrats 11

Long Gully to the far end, up the hill on the bitumen, back along the southern park boundary. With B&S for the first part, Angus, Zara/noCallum :(
I was underdressed compared to the others. Acclimatising for Canberra?

Clear rain-washed morning (it has seemed more like winter than autumn since Easter, except our winters are often drier than this) so I went up through Randell's Reserve, hoping it wouldn't be too slippery, and back down Gloucester. Knee twinged a bit when I began the descent, and I felt it after Sunday also, so I am a little anxious as to how it will hold up with 3 straight weeks of orienteering midyear.

200, 400, 600, 600, 400, 400, 200, 200 with 200m float. Plus warmup/down laps. I couldn't bring myself to do the 800 in the middle so did an extra 2 and 4 instead.

Possibly because the morning was comparatively warm, the pool didn't seem to be.

C • Often works like that 4

This was rather more Para Wirra than Lady Alice, and the long course owed a lot to the configuration of Phil Hazell's badge event from last year (not that there are vast numbers of less-painful other configurations; this made the best of what was available). I am definitely terrain-unfit, and seemed to womble around a lot although navigationally I was fairly ok apart from sometimes getting entangled in some seriously green crap which I should have gone around. Took the direct route on the downhill green spur (yes, the same one which a number of people took last year when they didn't need to and thereby found themselves running off the printed map area provided on that day) and was surprised at how wide some people deliberately went on that leg. Sure, I had to walk it, but then by the end I was walking quite a lot.

And after I finished, I waited about the same amount of time again for my parents who managed to take 3hrs22 for a 4.4km moderate course, rogaine-pace, cheerfully ignorant of course closure time. The organisers and I figured they knew exactly where they were, so there was no point in going to look for them; it wasn't going to make them get to the finish any quicker...