Training Log Archive: jennycas

Around the suburbs to break in a new pair of shoes and get some fresh air after a day trip to Clare to lunch at Skillogalee Winery for Geoff's birthday. On the way back we stopped in at The Rocks waterhole near Balaklava and observed that the currently-wadeable Wakefield River had been about 3m deeper than my head a couple of weeks ago!

Utterly exhausted at work by the time Friday night came around. Probably didn't help that I've had evening meetings three nights in a row this week...

Stefano, Orienteering SA's visiting Italian coach, has mapped Apex Park playground plus the surrounding BMX track & creek at Hawthorndene, and set sprint training tonight. Which was lots of fun because we were paired up to do 3 short courses of about 1km each, alternating as a relay. I was paired with Zara and I lost time on the very first control because I could see it but I couldn't get through the thicket to punch it (Simon crawled where I didn't dare) and also later on threw away a couple of minutes where both Meredith & I got really confused looking on the wrong - unmapped - mound near the creek because we'd stopped too soon. After this I realised that Z & I had the same course configuration for our team as Meredith & Des did, and it turned out that our teams had fairly similar overall speed! Meredith runs faster than me but she kept her feet dry whereas on the last leg I splashed through the creek 3 times, having taken my cue from Zara who was wisely thinking like a rogainer :)
9:57 - stuffed this one up
5:41 - shortest
8:49 - longest

Parked at the playground and ran across to meet the others at Belair, so that I could make a quick getaway later, but I hadn't counted on it being a relay and so was late for online OA Board meeting (which was also causing me to snub my spouse on his birthday, but we'll do something nice together this weekend).

With the Arro-Gang: B&S, Stefano, John, Liv, Sarah. Didn't go all the way into 3rd falls because
a) quite a few of us had to be at OSA meeting by 7:30
b) this would have necessitated 4 crossings of the stepping stones which were under fast-flowing water.
Don't think I've ever seen so much water flowing over 2nd falls - as Simon said, it spread out into 3 different ribbons.

Felt slow & unfit up to Deep View, but that may have been because I wasn't properly warmed up yet (always a problem for the first 20 min); do think there's some hill strength there to be built on.

Caught the train out to Ringwood (being on public transport makes me think of travelling in Europe) and met up with Hania and we went for a run "in the Dandenongs" although it was on the west face of the range and so I didn't see any scenic views. I'm sure the forest was nice too but we were too busy chatting! The track we took seemed to go up for quite a way but it didn't take nearly as long to come back downhill :)

I did not sleep that well in my cosy tent, listening to the wind roaring in the trees around the oval all night and hoping that none of them were falling on rogainers out in the forest. Also did not get going as early as I'd intended to (takes a while to put soggy O gear back on, and breakfast is a trap) and we finally headed out about 7:30am, with the goal of getting to some higher points beyond the pine forest on the western side of the map, but soon realised that with slow going through the young pines and some marshy creek crossings, this was unrealistic although with another hour to spare we'd have been fine. Rearranged the planned route to include control 40, the 40th-anniversary-of-Vic-Champs commemorative control on top of a knoll with port & lamingtons at it, and finished via the mineral spring (water tasted rather rusty) and a bonus swampy-creek control which we were glad to have allowed extra time for (saw Peter & Ewan here; they'd got in at nearly midnight which is not bad for a nearly-13 year old, and they won the family category with 1500 points) but we still ended up finishing with 20 min to spare.

Also ended up with 1800 points, just over half that available on course. Winners, Jon & Andrew, just cracked over 3000. Winning women's were just over 2400 and winning mixed just under 2400. So I do feel that even if we had slowed down in the night, as I definitely would have done, it ought to have been possible to get another 600 points if we'd stayed out all night. Truthfully though, my brain & legs were trying to convince me that I had done so anyway - and I'm not sure how well I would have coped with simultaneously trying to focus on night navigation which it sounds as though a lot of teams struggled with, although we might have been ok because Blair's bearings are great (even with the 9.5 degrees difference between grid & magnetic north lines that the organisers hadn't bothered to draw on the map) - just like Steve Cooper's - and lifting my legs over vegetation. Probably need to do some proper training in the terrain before next tackling a Vic rogaine!

C • Trunk-ated 8