Training Log Archive: PrueD

Kimbolton North. Arguably my worst effort for some years. I left Benalla late and it took 2 hours to get there. As I approached the area the rain grew more and more steady, the sky darkened and the temperature dropped. I wore tights and gaiters for the first time - but the tights soon became wet and were freezing cold. Nearly the whole map was green after the rain this year and visibility was really poor. After last month's noodle (and after looking at some other GPS tracks) I decided to give the features a miss and straightline it - which worked reasonably well up until 6.

Approaching 6, at the furthest corner of the map, the control was not where I thought it should be. I was getting colder and colder and, after 43 minutes noodling, was nearly ready to lie down and die. No-one else was around and I was convinced I was on the wrong spur - but which way to go? As there was nothing to go off. Then along came Ian (he DOES come in handy some times). Turns out that I was on the right spur but just didn't go far enough along it.

I plodded back, completing the course, but was absolutely frozen and could hardly get changed. 2 hours 23 mins!! That is the third time I have been in that area and been absolutely frozen. There seems to be an event near there in July each year and it is always freezing!

C • well done 4

Today is a big gardening day. However, because it involved the extensive use of mechanical equipment (e.g. an elderly neighbour passing by in his new 'car' [motorscooter] yelled out 'that is one mean machine' in reference to my hedgetrimmers) I will not be logging it.

But I did go for a swim in the Benalla pool - where the inevitable happened - between Thursday and today the price has gone up 20c - to $5.50. And of course I had only taken $5.30. So the inevitable conversation was held - 'No, I can't let you in - it will throw out my books'. 'The price ALWAYS goes up on the first of July.'

The assumption in the conversation was that, being from Benalla, I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN! The fact that I went on Thursday and nothing was said, or that there was no sign up, was irrelevant.

Luckily I had a 20c piece floating around in my bag and I got in. And they wonder why no-one goes! My swim was slow.

The good thing about working at home in Benalla is that I can disappear for an hour or so to go for a swim, as I did this morning. And the other good thing is that people drop into for a visit - as they did yesterday. Mr Herbert, from the 2nd placed team in the XV category at last weekend's rogaine, arrived yesterday bearing a printout of the results and conceding defeat, though only by a small margin. He felt much better after some freshly baked cream cake.

The downside of working at home is that I don't actually do any work!

I have taken on a job through my business that could be the envy of many orienteers - producing a national training resource kit for mapping during emergencies (fire, flood etc). I've been putting off starting for ages but finally decided that I need to come back to Benalla to do it - where I can spread myself around and there is a bit of peace and quiet. I will probably stay for a while. So I walked around the Benalla lake this afternoon.

Regarding last Saturday's rogaine - the results were well and truly stuffed up - and I cautiously had to put in a request for them to be checked. It turned out that we were given the wrong navlights (and hence got someone else's score of 760 instead of our 1330). However the team that was lucky enough to get our score got 1350! Seems the late penalty was added rather than subtracted. So the results came off the internet and are being checked again. But I can't complain too much because the weekend hosted 2 events and the schools' champs and is arguably the worst weekend for doing admin - I used to be the schools' coordinator and it wasn't nice. Thank God for a decent SI system (and operators, of course) in orienteering!