Training Log Archive: jennycas

Event: NOL Round 4, Race 11, / 12 (WRE), St Helens, Tasmania
 

Getting to Launceston was a bit of a saga last night with the plane which B&S and I were on leaving Adelaide an hour late which theoretically meant only 10 min in Melbourne (traversing the full distance of both arms of the Qantas terminal) to make the connecting flight but in fact the Launceston flight was also waiting for passengers from Sydney and so even our gear made it. Would have liked to be served more than 2 x snacks for dinner, though.

Carload for the weekend was tri-state; Bridget, Simon & myself, Bruce & Blair from Vic, Anna & Jack from Qld. Later in the weekend we tried to work out State of Origin points...

Agenda was as usual: drive out to St Helens to go orienteering (although there was time for a quick lap of the farmers' markets in search of coffee and to see the monkeys in the park, before leaving Launie) although this time the middle distance was in the tin mining and great fun it was despite, or maybe because of, the 2-3 inches of rain in the week beforehand, making all the white clay and most of the logs fairly slick. I totally ballsed up controls 1 (bounced off the track below it), 5 (was marked on the end of an embankment, with a high point 10m west, but they were actually part of a contiguous earth wall and I looked on what I thought to be the end of it which was of course the high point and funnily enough had no control behind it. So I went away and scratched my head and came back a couple of min later), 11 (bounced off 12, but so did Liggo, of whom I saw a fair bit during the course) and 16 (bounced off the powerline on the way) but it was lots of fun. Whish I'd been able to run a bit faster though - really struggled to lift my legs in the heather & bracken and Bridget had caught me 4 min by control 3. Think my legs were still a bit post-rogaine.

We had thought St Columba Falls could be worth a look afterward but the need for warmth and food drove us back towards St Helens IGA and the cosiness of Queechy Cottages.

C • Cottages 1

Last one until September, as the pool closes this weekend. Knees a bit tight. Tasty Buttercup bakery smells today, and Brownhill Creek is flowing. Could be a good weekend to see waterfalls at Morialta if I didn't have to go to Tas and orienteer in the wilds of St Helens.

It had stopped raining, and I finished work in time to go for a run in the park (with Simon & Angus for the first part) which was pleasant although sore foot took a long time to warm up, and all of me was still very tired. Mind you, that was the case after Capertee also. Think I'd better wait until the Wed after the WRC to start driving towards Ayers Rock with parents.

Troubled by the persistently painful (despite golf-ball-rolling) post-rogaine tight spot under my heel . Also I'm still very tired, and it's turned into winter outside.

I stuffed up 83 by thinking I'd overshot the correct gully on a downhill leg, because I didn't see that it curved under the control circle, but actually that was a control which lots of teams had trouble with and it seems that the eventual winners never found (they would otherwise have cleaned up the course with an hour to spare).

I was getting a bit anxious because we needed to be at 92 in the far SE corner of the map by 6am to achieve everything we intended to do in the morning and there weren't many shortcut options for that final section, but we managed a steady crawl up & over rocky Nackara Hill, without getting blown away - it seemed to be blowing a gale on every high ridgeline. Last leg before 92 was 3km across absolutely flat open land but there was a dam halfway and we aimed off ok from there, arriving at 5:55am, which was when I finally put on a second layer. Now for a slog along the old abandoned railway line for the next 3 controls, trying not to think about either a nap or our feet. I was looking forward to a few more controls involving navigation, but then we decided to add in an extra out towards flat country, which we knew would be pushing it for time - and so I promptly took off at an angle about 30 degrees too far east, never spotting the track we were meant to have crossed, climbing an unmapped small knoll and of course not finding a control beyond it but having a view clear across to The Cone where we had been at 9pm (the course almost lent itself to crossovers).

Aargh! Another 15 min wasted but our route towards the next control took us past the hill we wanted anyway, and then the next 3 hours were a steady slog through often low-visibility scrub in the morning sun, and we had time at the end to get an extra 20 points just south of the HH although Zara said no way were we running to it. And we didn't have to; got in with 10 min to spare although a number of teams had nearly an hour because with no controls for nearly 3km in a westerly direction from the HH, anything else was too far for them to bother going to get. Ended up 3rd overall, 130pts behind Steve Cooper/Dave Nicolson and the winners were the NZ guys. Top 10 was pretty well stacked with people practicing for the WRC; Susanne & Plaxy about 200 points behind us and the Colwells only 100. I think Z & I can be a bit faster, both on our feet and at navigation, in a couple of months' time, even if I'm not as young as I used to be and this rogaine has made me a year older...

midday-->6pm 15 controls, 26.5km, 820pts
6pm--> midnight 11 controls, 16.5km, 620pts
midnight --> 6am 9 controls, 14.5km, 570pts
6am--> midday 13 controls, 24.5km, 630pts
So we finished off almost as fast as we started, although there was of course a fair bit of time wasted in the first couple of hours.

Also I think I did pretty well with carbo-loading and in fact didn't eat that much out on course (by my standards):
4 baked potatoes with cheese - accidentally left the Vegemite home :(
3 toasted English muffins with cheese
3 muesli bars
3 ginger nut biscuits
2 dried bananas
handful of BBQ shapes - the old kind before Arnotts rearranged the taste
salt & magnesium tablets, coffee lollies
fruit from water drops: 1 banana, 2 apples, 2 mandarins

And the best bit was that they actually had sausages for lunch at the hash house - yay! I was so disappointed last year when it was only stew...

We traded Susanne for all the tables & chairs which went into Zara's car, hastily packed up the tents because it was starting to rain (so I didn't manage to get a proper nap before driving) then headed off with 4 of us in an absolutely-laden car - dad having the bucket of randomness wedged between his knees! My knees would neither straighten nor bend by the time we reached Burra but my toes were in much better shape than Susanne's or Zara's (and I hate to think what Chris Brown & Karen's were like after wearing hiking boots). We got the last cottage at Paxton Sq, had a hot shower and dined on random rogaine leftovers and were all, including parents who'd had a busy weekend of helping on admin, in bed by about 7pm although not before Susanne had worked out what she considered to be the optimum route for cleaning up the entire course in about 95km.

I guess we are all rogaining nerds, in my family :)

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