Training Log Archive: jennycas

Event: Rawnsley Park Southern Arrows Fundraiser
 

After spending a couple of hours on the start, because this was an Arrows' event which Simon had set. Fairly straightforward course (utilising the area over the back of the range and finishing at the bunkhouse), but it was lovely to be out in the Flinders in the late afternoon light although the rocks were slippery after rain and often I was too low for the control & had to climb a bit. On a danger downhill leg I managed to cross one spur too far over, but corrected okay :)

Was explaining to Sara at our campsite that the first time my family had camped at Rawnsley was in 1981 and she commented that this was before she was born...

With Zara/Callum on a wet rainy night. I've finally got my Belair courses set to be adequately challenging, if not as varied as I'd like, despite the fact that at this time of year about 50% of the park is OOB due to environmentally sensitive exclusion zones.

Incidentally, I'm a bit suspicious of the fact that the new SA Govt has changed the name of the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources to Department for Environment and Water, and created a new Department for Energy and Mining...

C • Conglomeration 6

Weir-zoo footbridge loop with Toby/Ben, Ruhi/Dante at a slightly faster pace than I would have done on my own. Tired today; could be something to do with flying in @10pm last night!

C • 10pm 2

WMOC 2017 long final area again although less physical than yesterday. I'd arranged an early start because of a 4pm flight out of Auckland and so it was still raining & very dark in the forest, but perhaps that was good because it forced me to slow down & read the map properly (need headlamp as well as glasses?). I read my notes from last year's race which said that I should have taken tracks more, and this time I took my own advice. Couldn't cure my habit of always going to the top of hillocks so that I could get a better idea of the lie of the land, so did probably do a bit of unnecessary climb, but only lost a couple of minutes all up, and tried to run hard, partly because of the circulating thunderstorm (the closest flash-and-clap came as I was passing through the spectator runthrough, in about 64 min, which was good race practice for a long final) and managed to stay focused until the end.

I can't believe how good value for money these races were - only $100NZ all up - and it was a really fun weekend with the only sad note being that the overnight rainstorms caused the demise of the newborn lambs in the paddock next to our accommodation (but seriously, lambing in June?).

C • Lambs 5

Haha, this was embarrassingly bad :( The first part, where my course didn't go at last year's WMOC, was really good, both in terms of pace & navigation, but then once I'd crossed the road into the coastal strip, legs fell off and brain fell out. Kept having to stop to scoop it back in...not really, I just did some super-dumb things because I was getting tired and lost what Winsplits tells me was a total of nearly 19 min across half a dozen controls. Was tripping & stumbling all over the place (only actually stacked it once) and failing to read the map or my compass because I was too busy watching my feet, which wouldn't lift at all by this stage. The last control* being slightly uphill wasn't helpful and an elderly gentleman walking with a stick beat me to it!

*a giant red beach ball, which represents a jaffa, because the acronym for this carnival is JAFA, which stands for Just Another Friendly Auckland-region event - and very good events they are too even though the misspelling is doing my head in. (Now I'm thinking about chocolate, but the chocolate moratorium has to remain in place until WMOC.)

C • Chocolate moratorium? 3