Training Log: jennycas

On a day which was almost masquerading as springtime, got outside with enough daylight left to witness golden wattle in bloom and almond trees blossoming bridally.

Made it to the redwoods (longest run for a few weeks - oops) and then my knee certainly didn't want to go up & over the hill with Steve & Zara, so the rest of me didn't go either.

Needed something to do while a load of washing was in the machine, so went for a slow suburban stagger, but in hindsight I would have got just as much benefit from sitting down with a cup of tea.

Decent group tonight now that the SA Schools' Team has been announced :)

The session was 4 x 800m (plus warmup/cooldown); of course I can't sprint like the 13-year old boys but managed a sort-of tempo. Rogaine legs still tired and knee complained a bit but feet are all good - probably because the ground up there was comparatively soft after rain - and I even forgot how I'd drained a medium-sized heel blister on Sunday night.

My knee which had been deeply unhappy last night, seemed a bit better when I woke up, and we got to our first control "a cairn" just as the rising sun hit it so that was a good omen. With about 4:15 to play with if we wanted to be certain of not getting back late for our 12 hour limit, we wouldn't be able to get all the way out to the 90 in the NW even with some Cliffy-shuffle jogging, but there were no nasty surprises out here and so I convinced Mark to pick up an extra 40 points early on rather than leaving it for the way back in, and then we gradually agreed that we would in fact have time to go to 73 on the range just NW of the HH and contour around to get down the creek to 80, so that was a bonus control if you like and partly made up for the fact that we'd left out an originally-planned 70 points because of being behind schedule yesterday evening. Got in a bit early because we couldn't go to 25 as we'd already done that last night instead of coming in via control 30 as originally planned for the evening loop, and then it took me nearly half an hour to remove my ankle tape in slow motion, but even so we had managed to pack up our tents etc by the time of presentations.

At which it turned out that Alex and Katie had decided not to go to 73 at the end of their morning loop, and so we'd somehow managed to win the 12 hour with beating them by one control! As Mark said, not bad for an off-the-couch rogaine :)

Also, definitely earned lemon meringue pie from Maggie's Rendezvous in Orroroo on the way home, and I'm glad we did stop for coffee because it was after 7pm by the time I got back to my place. But it was such a lovely weekend in the Flinders Ranges and now I really want to help Mark out with setting the Worlds there...

C • Well done! 14