Training Log Archive: jennycas

I guess this was worth dragging myself out of bed for - clearly nobody else had wanted to book for 7am on a Saturday morning, so I had a whole lane to myself, meaning that I didn't have to stress my hamstring by hurrying to keep out of anyone's way.

Evalin's Vampire-O at the West Tce cemetery, except that I wasn't in a score-O team and just jogged (in deference to my hamstring which hadn't appreciated an afternoon of gardening) around the normal course as a casual onlooker, which made the vampires a bit sad when they realised that I wasn't catchable.

Some great costumes, some complete newcomers, and such a simple premise: two teams had blank control cards and glowing red torches, and if any other team was caught by the vampires they had to hand over their control card*, lose all their points and become vampires themselves, unless they could catch another team...it was absolutely hilarious when Angus' team, having hidden their red light until the last moment, ran down and vampired Toby/Jack/Max's team right towards the end. I could hear Toby screaming "Run Jack, run" from some distance away!

*unless they'd previously found an immunity object at a control and carried it with them for the rest of the course; holy water, a silver sword and a string of garlic were all placed out there for teams' protection.

C • Sounds terrific. 12

I'm counting this because in the juniors' haste to collect all the controls before the cemetery's gates closed at 9 pm, one wasn't allocated to anyone, and so I went out & back the long way around via the pedestrian gate next to the main gate to get it all by myself, plodding on very tired legs, although I did run a bit faster when I saw someone else's torchlight in the cemetery...turned out it was my own headlamp reflecting off a tombstone!

Slow plod along the valley-->trainline--->ridgeline on a nice cool evening, although my legs really didn't want to play and had to be encouraged with iterations of "just another few minutes" after each stretching stop. I'd been busy watching my feet but looked up when I heard the grunting noise (like a motorbike crossed with a bush pig crossed with a chainsaw). Reward was a sighting of two Phascolarctii - presumably parent and offspring - enthusiastically feasting upon the same eucalypt.

Pleasant conversational run with Fern although my legs didn't really appreciate going either up or down. We espied multiple fat-bottomed Phascolarctos cinereus wedged upon high.

C • Thank you 3

Back feeling a lot better at this end of today, and it was a lovely evening, but I didn't have much time because of needing to present at a pharmacists' dinner meeting.

Short jog along the valley, up the hill, down the ridgeline in Sheps on a pleasantly cool drizzly evening, also on tired legs.

After a successful weekend of in-law visiting, this event was literally next door to the airport, and it was pouring rain but I'd already pre-entered, and we had plenty of time to spare before our flight, so why not? Basically, parkland on either side of the Cooks River with a couple of long bridge transport legs, and at 1:5 000 the organisers had said that it could be possible to get all 30 controls within 45 min so I took them at their word. Managed a sneak decision-making preview while chatting to Vicki Wilmott before the start, and decided to go anti-clockwise around to the south side of the river then see how much of the north end of the map I could do. Turned out it was everything, with nearly 2 minutes to spare, although official clock time is 20 sec longer than on my watch so I'm glad I wasn't cutting it any finer. Looking over the map again now I can see where it might have been possible to be a minute or two more efficient, but oh well.

Afterwards the drowned rat was glad she'd read the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and travelled with a towel.

C • Must be nice 3