Training Log Archive: jennycas

Event: NavDash 4 Garvey Park
 

This interesting bit of park-and-bushland along the Swan River was an easy walk from our caravan park and I even spotted a couple of controls along the way! Probably should have gone for a jog to warm up though because I was pretty stiff & sore and couldn't get much above a plod :(

Couldn't resist doing another course since it was at no extra cost, and this gave me the opportunity to test direct routes when previously I had detoured around the scrubby bits. Getting warm in the sun since the breeze from the river (which had previously blown away all the burn-off smoke from yesterday) had died down, and my knees were rather painful but at least this shorter course covered all the interesting bits of the wetlands without any distance-adding transport legs. And no, I didn't take the 'shortcut' between any pair of peninsulae...

Long - Splits

Ran around the block of roads which circumnavigate Hyden Rock (hard underfoot and tried to run hard also) then after 45 min was content to take it easier on the walking trails from the wave to Hippo's Yawn and back across the saltpan flats to our accommodation and finished off with a lap of Lake Magic ("Please do not drive on the salt lake. The fee for being pulled out of the mud is $500."). Lovely cool drizzly morning but not much bounce; not sure if I need new shoes or to lose weight - or both?

We headed to Narrogin via Kulin and the Tin Horse Highway (many highly entertaining horse 'sculptures' which would appear to have accounted for all the 44-gallon drums in the area) and I spent a few hours with Tony & Noel checking out the maps, terrain and proposed arenas for next year's Aust Sprint & Middle Champs after Easter. All very good :)

Now for our last night in Perth G & I have managed to track down a Sizzler all-you-can-eat restaurant! If you live in the West, Sizzler is probably no big deal but it vanished without a trace from the eastern states about the end of last century...sadly they don't do potato skins any more, but otherwise it was still reminiscent of junior squad days.

I had hoped to run the coastal bike path from Twilight Beach back to Esperance but didn't think my knees would cope with 12+km on pavement, so when I saw that the Great Ocean Trail was also marked as meandering north through the dunes from Twilight Beach to Pink Lake, hoped for some soft sandy singletrack and asked G to meet me at the other end. What I actually got was a hard-packed gravel road, which used to be bitumen but is now abandoned (maybe because it's in OOB due to the wind farm?) and so this didn't take me very long.

Therefore we made it to Hyden in plenty of time to not only admire Wave Rock and walk up on the top (the runoff from which was integral to the town's water supply until as recently as 2000) but also to check out The Humps 15km north - with aboriginal hand prints at Mulka's Cave - and do the summit walk there just upon sunset before returning to our accommodation which was much more comfortable and spacious than the caravan I remembered staying in @Hyden circa 1993 with Kay & co. Incidentally, Wave Rock now even has an 'airport'!

Plan A was to get up early and drive out to Cape Le Grand in time to watch the sunrise from Frenchman's Peak - yeah, right. What actually happened was that we slept a *little* longer, breakfasted in the cafe next to our foreshore motel ($395 for 3 nights has been very good value and with a complete absence of crunchy millipedes underfoot, unlike in the Porongorups) watching the freighters move in & out of the port, so got out to the national park about 10am.

Frenchman's Peak is a very cool climb up the bare slopes of a large granite hill, with caves up the top and great views in all directions, and enough footholds on the rock that it was never actually scary. Some of the people we saw attempting it didn't look very fit though...

Next was Hellfire Bay which is a lovely little spot with amazing white sand & azure water, and I was tempted to swim there but thought I'd better wait until end of day and wash the sunscreen off then. We walked over to Little Hellfire which was even nicer, framed by granite rocks going down to the water, but again I just waded (with my camera, as the waves rolled in). Then I walked a couple km from Thistle Cove to Lucky Bay while G drove around; the day was getting warm and my hamstring unhappy, so this was enough although very scenic.

Lucky Bay was a bit of a letdown, with lots of seaweed in the water and lots of cars on the beach, and the waves weren't as good either but I got properly wet anyway. The campground there is huge but seems to be set up entirely for caravans with flat bare spots; didn't see anywhere that you could tuck a little hiking tent away under the trees.

Back in Esperance, after we'd strolled the main street and learned some more of the town's history (and identified excellent pizza place for later on), I went for a run northeastwards and once past the old tanker jetty, could run on the beach proper which was much better than hard pavement. Getting dark by the return trip and the port/wharf was all lit up. A pity we have to leave tomorrow because there is still lots more to explore here.

Awoke to the sounds of the dawn service a couple of blocks away, so went for a sunrise run along the foreshore past the port - Esperance reminds us a bit of Pt Lincoln or Ceduna - up Wireless Hill to the lookout and back in time for us to catch the 8:15* am 26-person boat to spend the morning at Woody Island out in the Recherche Archipelago. It's a great little spot with campsites permanently set up, a kiosk/bar, and a few short walks. Highlight of the guided tour to the 173m summit of the island was when the guide put out some grated carrot on a granite slab and the native mice and skinks came out of the bushes to eat it.

We spent the afternoon driving out past (no-longer) Pink Lake and the (15-turbine) windfarm, stopped in at some of the many white sand beaches along the way and made it back to Wireless Hill in time to watch the 5:18pm sunset.

*They didn't actually check off names. And departed at 8:10, meaning that the fellow who arrived on the wharf at 8:11 was a little grumpy, as was the captain who had to go back for him.

C • Esperance 6

Headed up the road to the Tree-in-the-Rock carpark (25 min), admired the Red-Eared Firetail finches darting about, and back down to our accommodation (19 min) where the Red-Winged blue wrens were flitting around the back door. Lovely cool morning with after-rain smells.

We then drove north through the Stirling Ranges (I intend hiking the peaks here next Easter midweek) and east towards Esperance, detouring south through the Fitzgerald River National Park where I really appreciated the vastness of the Barrens (not unlike Scotland except that it wasn't raining) and G did not appreciate 40km of corrugations on an unsealed road. But at least the bridge across the mouth of the Culham Inlet lagoon near Hopetoun is no longer washed away*. That must have been one hell of a storm last year in February!

*actually, it's still washed away; you can definitely see where the bridge used to be, and where what's left of it still sits beside the new temporary causeway...

C • Stirlings 4

Made it to Esperance before the sun went down, which it did as the clock struck 5:15 and I was jogging along the foreshore in an attempt to alleviate the stiffness from sitting all day in the car (although we did stop for little short walks and to photograph the vegetation, at numerous points of interest).

Since my body clock is still on Adelaide time I woke up early enough to do the 5.5km loop walk in the Porongorups, which I last did in 2006 nationals week, and got some great views before it rained again. Then we headed across to Denmark, where I had set myself a - rather long as it turned out - sprint course on a Juffymap (Paul, I owe you a beer) which I'd been told contained "two hospitals and a school" but actually there was lots more stuff and it was really interesting. Well mapped, too, although I would quibble a wall which was marked as passable...maybe only for a Dowling? Anyway, the sun was shining both when I started and when I finished but I got sprinkled twice in between. It poured on us when we reached Albany so we sought refuge in retail therapy and got back to the Porongorups at nearly 5pm, with the plan of doing the Castle Rock walk which turned out to be a little longer than our dodgy tourist map showed, but there was still time for G to climb up the ladder to the Skywalk and we finished before the end of civil twilight (which I have just realised will be even earlier in Esperance).

C • Walls 2

C • Civil twilight 2