Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Got out of the plane in Perth (after a relaxed flight on a plane which was only a third full) to hear a news story about a "brave Aussie mum" giving birth in the midst of Sandy to the light of glowsticks, and thought one of our AP number had become famous (at least for 15 minutes), but it turned out it was someone else. (In any big overseas news story the media is always on the lookout for a local angle - this week's winner for most desperate search for a local angle goes to a story about how the crane that's dangling from the 90th floor of a Manhattan building is operated by an Australian building company).

Having not had the chance to do anything in the morning and not being confident I'd last the distance well enough to do anything other than flake out in the evening (although it's after 8 now and I haven't hit the wall yet), I went out at lunchtime to the conveniently close Kings Park. A 10x1 minute set, feeling very ordinary at the start but a bit better later on. The bit of ground I was using had a dip in the middle so there was a bit of a climb towards the end of each rep (especially on the even-numbered ones), which I wasn't always handling that well. Got a bit better as it went on but never all that fast.

Today's file trawling gem was a site inspection report from 1968 from somewhere east of Carnarvon in which the inspector reported that when he turned up he couldn't find anyone except a "native". Don't think we'll mention this one too loudly in our Reconciliation Week activities next week. (It's around that time that a Carnarvon publican, one Wilson Tuckey, was fined - $50 if I recall correctly - for taking to an Aboriginal customer with an iron bar, hence his nickname).

And Perth seems to have given itself de facto daylight saving - it's a city that starts early and finishes early. By the time it was 15 minutes out of the city centre I was the only person left on the bus, and it wasn't 6.30 yet.

Going to/from Kings Park. A real struggle on the way there, much nicer going back (and not only because it was net downhill).

First session of a day slightly rearranged by virtue of a morning engagement at Melbourne Uni - started out in Clifton Hill and headed out across the river into Kew. Grinding the gears big-time at the start, not especially awake once I loosened up, and struggling up hills. Apart from that it wasn't too bad.

First hot-weather run of the season - hovering about 30 degrees at lunchtime - and it was a real struggle, despite stopping for water both early and late on the Tan. Really hanging on at the end and felt tired through the rest of the day, too (was clearly still lacking in fluid by evening, even if I wasn't producing liquid quite as dark as Craney's). It gets easier from here - hopefully.

Off to Perth tomorrow morning. It's going to be a long day - getting up at 2am WA time, flying across the country and then doing a full day's work.

Fairly standard morning session at Fitzroy. Not as much stiffness to get out the system as I thought there might be.

MFR Monday night from Morten's new place in (very) North Fitzroy, with the best turnout we've had for a while on a warmish night. (The address was a trap for young players - the numbering on Nicholson Street restarts when it crosses the council boundary, so if you went to 30 Nicholson Street Fitzroy when you were looking for 30 Nicholson Street North Fitzroy, you would be about 4km from where you thought you were - and just to confuse things further the boundary of the suburb is two blocks north of the council boundary).

The run itself was nothing to get too excited about, but thought it might have been harder going coming off my first long run for a while. Didn't feel as if I would have had a lot of extra pace had it been needed, though.

And it looks like we really are going to have to come up with a match-fixing policy (or adopt the twenty pages of legalese that is the ASC template for one).

In a bit of a rush to get things ready; I'm in Perth from Wednesday to Friday (which will provide a different venue for the Thursday long run) and still have quite a bit to do between now and then.

C • Nicholson St 1

First run which bore a vague passing resemblance to a long run for three months, down towards the Studley boathouse and then back through Kew. This was a run of four quarters on a nice morning; a nondescript first quarter, an excellent second quarter flowing fairly nicely, a hard-working third quarter with some sharp hills, and then struggling a bit to bring it home, with fatigued quads and not a lot of uphill strength. One hopes that the last of these is merely temporary and reflects a lack of recent long runs, and will improve as I get more of them under my belt.

It was Banyule Council election day and I did the tour of the four local polling booths, with brief pauses en route to get updates on the latest shenanigans (mainly another candidate who'd promised us preferences, and registered a how-to-vote card to that effect, turning up with a different card sending preferences to our chief rival). This was a run which felt very good in patches but was slower than it felt.

There was obviously some wayward bowling (or a bad wicketkeeper) on display at Ivanhoe Grammar: the score was 1/47 after 12 overs, with one batsman on 13, the other on 7 and extras 19.

My actual involvement in the election was later in the day (after first attending the auction of my grandmother's house in Essendon, for a couple of hundred thousand more than we were expecting) - first handing out and then scrutineering. The latter task made good use of my skills of having to keep track of multiple preference flows, as it wasn't obvious beforehand who would be the final two or three candidates so I needed to keep on top of multiple scenarios at once. At the end of the day I suspect we haven't done quite enough - trailing by 12% on primary votes which I estimate will narrow to about 4% on preferences, with postals and pre-polls to come.

Nice morning at Fitzroy (it wasn't until lunchtime that the showers started), working well through the water, and didn't have any issues with cramps this week.

It seems the Australian Sports Commission are keen for us (and presumably all the other sports they fund) to have a policy on match-fixing. I'm not sure if this is exactly a major issue for us (and even if an Australian did do something dodgy in a race somewhere overseas where betting exists, I think OA's existing disciplinary powers would be sufficient to take action), but we might have to put something together regardless.

(I've never had the pleasure of seeing how many zeroes were listed after my name in a list of European betting odds; at the last individual race I ran in where there was betting which I knew of, a 2006 WRE in Norway, I was lumped in the category "Any other result 41.00").

Back to the 6am Thursday starts, not really because of the length of the run but more because I was running with Grant (mainly in the name of discussing OA high performance issues) and he had to get back around 7.30 to do his shift of parenting. Spent the first half around the west side of Black Mountain, then back through Aranda and Cook before a final loop on Aranda Hill (with a little bit of terrain thrown into the mix). Felt fairly reasonable for the most part; I'm wondering if the watch lost satellites for a bit because it supposedly took 26 minutes for the first 4k and that seems implausibly slow. Hamstring issues seem to be more or less gone (at least for now).

Taking advantage of being in Canberra to explore some old haunts, mainly on the lower parts of Black Mountain - home to as many tame kangaroos as always. Didn't feel that great although hamstring/back are slowly becoming less of an issue.

Naturally, it wouldn't be a run in Canberra without seeing at least one person I recognised - today's sighting was Martin Dent (he was going in the opposite direction so I didn't get the chance to ask him about London - not that going in the same direction would have helped much because he probably would have been going 30% faster than I was).

I'm currently going through Australian Championships splits as preparation for writing my race reports for the Australian Orienteer. There were plenty of last-few-controls blowouts by potential winners at the Long Championships, but the prize goes to the person (who shall remain nameless, even though I'm pretty sure they're not on AP) who was in front at the third-last control and then proceeded to do 33.54 on a second-last leg for which the fastest split was 1.44.

C • Do they qualify for the Bendigo noodle award? 2

Canberra also provided the opportunity to get out into semi-bush on a Wednesday night. This was at the Pinnacle, an area which was infamous for long grass back in the day (I once set an event there where some of the grass was over head height), but the grass hasn't really shot up yet - just enough for occasional elephant tracks but not enough to get in the way.

The field would have done justice to the Australian Championships - four of the top nine were there, and I think Grant, Rob Walter, Shep and Olle (but probably not me) would have been decent substitutes for the ones who weren't. Lizzie and Grace weren't bad additions to the field either (especially as both of them beat me).

As for the run itself - pretty slow, and didn't feel as I had any strength whatsoever up hills (of which there were a few). Didn't miss anything apart from not getting my exit direction quite right leaving 9 (it helped that the controls, several of which were on small rock, were very visible). It's a bit of a culture shock to go back to punching control cards, and having to remember where the splits button is on my watch.

First attempt at doing anything fast (other than last Saturday's race) since Tasmania. Hamstring still sore early (but soreness eased quickly) and didn't feel as if I was that fast or that strong, but still a little faster than anything I managed on this workout in August or September (although narrowly failed to break 10 for a loop).

The judges for the Walkley Awards clearly recognise brilliance when they see it: Paul Dyer of the Northern Territory News has been nominated for an award for best headline for "Why I Stuck A Cracker Up My Clacker".

On my way to Canberra now; will be up there the next couple of days.

C • And that is a cracker! 1

A not-particularly-inspired swim, although at least without swallowing the amount of extraneous material that I did last week. Seemed to get whacked at regular intervals by a breaststroker in the next lane who had a very wide armspan.

Lunchtime session around the Tan. Hamstring pretty sore when I started after a morning of sitting down - loosened up pretty well in the first couple of minutes, although not completely painless at any stage. Felt as if I had a reasonable level of strength out there, though (and managed to avoid running into any trees this time).

Yesterday was a good run but my back didn't take kindly to the drive back followed immediately by four hours sitting down in the teleconference - quite significant lower back tightness this morning with associated upper hamstring soreness. I headed out expecting it to loosen up, and to some extent it did, but this was never a comfortable run and by the end I was glad to see it over.

Bendigo event on the north side of Kooyoora, as noted previously in these pages the most difficult square kilometre in Australia. I didn't know this was on until Bruce mentioned it last week but thought it was worth the trip.

A little wobbly on 1 and 3 but didn't end up losing much time on either, and caught two minutes on David Brownridge at 4. We were essentially together for the rest of the course. He led me into 5 (a difficult control even by the standards of this area); from there I was leading more than trailing, but wasn't able to consolidate the small breaks I got at 7 and 11. I wasn't really attacking the terrain and didn't feel as if I was going that quickly, but had no time losses more than 10-15 seconds until 13, where we drifted a bit wide and lost 30 seconds or so.

Unless someone turned up very late I didn't know about, this was my first win in an event of any sort since last year's SA Championships, something I was pretty happy with in a decent field. Like the SA Championships I got some help with the fastest person in the field DNFing (although Bryan had apparently already lost a fair bit of time when he pulled out). Bruce, in his first comeback race, was about 30 seconds behind me.

C • Results 9

C • Jealous! 4

At Fitzroy, rather less leaf-cluttered than it was on Monday. There was a certain amount of meteorologicial excitement but the lightning didn't get close enough to make us get out of the pool. A reasonable session and didn't cramp up this week.

Being on a bike in the CBD at 6-ish on a Friday night is always slightly perilous. Tonight's extra element, on top of the usual quota of slightly tipsy and/or impatient drivers and slightly tipsy pedestrians, was a couple of hundred Adelaide United supporters marching down La Trobe Street en masse. (Seeing a group from a distance behind a banner with accompanying police, I thought at first it was a demo).

And so far there hasn't been a rush of volunteers in the climate game to provide Alan Jones with the "factual accuracy" training which the Australian Communications and Media Authority has ordered him to undertake. If he's only allowed to broadcast factually accurate content the only thing which will be left will be the traffic reports.

Continuing the process of gradually building back towards normal training, albeit slowly. A pleasant morning for a long(ish) run; headed out through Macleod and Yallambie. I never seem to be able to get my route right through the latter suburb, usually ending up at the high fence at the back of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (probably not a fence it's a good idea to make an unsanctioned crossing of). Flowing well at times although hills not great, and certainly not as sleepy as last time.

I was rather puzzled to get an e-mail today containing an ad for something called 'Barossa Langhorne Creek Shiraz' - evidently the Barossa has expanded considerably since SA Championships weekend. I noticed this particularly because (a) I've recently been through Langhorne Creek (which is east of Strathalbyn) and (b) one of the things I did today was put together the list of the 28 Australian sites which have complete daily rainfall records for 1900 to 2011, and Langhorne Creek is one of them. Not sure what's going on here as wine regions are usually fussy about their boundaries; about 10 years back I was involved on the fringes of a court case in which the issue was the boundary of the Coonawarra region.

C • Langhorne Creek 2

A short and fairly easy run on the Eaglemont loop, not feeling especially inspired and quite a few traffic interruptions.

There was no need to go hungry on Ride to Work Day this morning - with a few minor tweaks to my route I could have taken in nine different breakfasts.

A fairly standard run, flat along the river in the first half, hillier through Bulleen (including the pipeline track - minus any screaming children this time) in the second. Moving OK once loosened up. Again left hamstring a bit tight but not as bad as yesterday.

Riding in this morning was an excellent advertisement for Ride To Work day tomorrow - sailing past a three-kilometre traffic jam on Heidelberg Road (it usually backs up from the Chandler Highway intersection, but not that far). I wonder if any of the drivers in said traffic jam will get the hint? (probably not).

And, for the second time in a couple of months, a familiar orienteering name was spotted in the columns of the Economist, but on this occasion I don't think Francois Gonon of the University of Bordeaux (a neurophysicist who'd done an interesting study on how preliminary, and often incorrect, research results got more media coverage than the final outcomes did) is the same Francois Gonon as the one who's been a reasonably frequent presence on WOC podiums in recent years.

This was a reasonably warm and windy spring morning. A windy morning at this time of year means a lot of leaves falling from the trees of inner Melbourne. A fair number of those leaves ended up floating in the Fitzroy pool (particularly its shallow end), and despite my best efforts some of them ended up in my mouth. This made for a less than pleasant swim, with several bouts of coughing and spluttering trying to dislodge the latest foreign object to find its way into my system. Not too upset to see it over and done with.

(When I started I thought the pool staff might have been slack in cleaning the pool at the start of the day, but the amount of material which accumulated on my towel in 36 minutes disabused me of that notion).

I thought I might have had a bigger annoyance to deal with than leaves in a pool when the garage door openers failed to work, but it turned out to be nothing more dramatic (or expensive to fix) than a loose plug (and for good measure the back garage door which I thought was stuck opened without too much trouble).

This was supposed to be the first MFR Monday night in daylight but it turned out to be a solo effort, so I set out north from my place, having told the three-year-old next door that I was going to look for the monster that he's getting very excited about at the moment. (Personally, I suspect the monster lives in my washing machine and comes out to eat a sock every now and again).

Quite a decent run once it got going, although left hamstring tightness made its presence felt again. Finished off a day with plenty of physical activity, including my fastest ride home for a while (with a bit of help from a tail wind and a good run with the lights).

Those of you who didn't turn up - the red pumpkin curry worked really well this time.

A delightfully sunny morning at a time of year when a sunny Sunday is still a blessing, and not a curse as it can be in January - the marathoners must have enjoyed these conditions (as did the cyclists, who were much in evidence). Fairly familiar ground out to the Finns Reserve bridge, but in the reverse direction to what I usually do (which, among other things, meant I spotted a gap in a fence I hadn't seen before). Never felt as if all my body parts were functioning quite as they should, but feeling better on the run than I have on other days this week, flowing quite well at times. A bit of left knee soreness overnight but no sign of it on the run.

The Albert Park branch of the Liberals have declared war on possums - Jenny will be pleased:

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/animals/birth...

I'm not sure how many members the Albert Park Liberals have - when I was living there, they struggled to find people without criminal records to put up as election candidates. (One mischief-making soul circulated a flyer congratulating their 1993 Melbourne Ports candidate on successfully completing her good-behaviour bond).

C • Fence hole 3

Took a bit longer to start than I sometimes do on a Saturday (and paid the price later in the form of queues at the Preston Market). A somewhat ho-hum run but grinding up the hills OK (and there were a few in this one, based on Eaglemont). Some tightness in my left hamstring - normally it's the right one that does this.

A familiar name in the real estate section of today's Age was the surgeon who's done my two operations in Australia (and made a good job of it), for compartment syndrome in 2002 and taking the metalwork out of my elbow (and some other cleaning up) in 2006. Evidently surgery is a more lucrative occupation than climate science because the quoted asking price for his soon-to-be-former property is "more than $7.3 million".

Pool running at Fitzroy. Going along very nicely until I got a really sharp lower leg cramp with a few minutes to go - this happens every now and again in this session. Quite tight in the quads early on, surely not a legacy of the mountains of Montmorency?

It's going to be a rare weekend this weekend; I have no plans to go outside the boundaries of metropolitan Melbourne.

It probably doesn't qualify for the "You know you're an orienteer when" thread since it isn't strictly about orienteering (it would have been had it involved recognising a control site), but it may say something that the biggest thing I noticed on the Gangnam Style video clip was that I recognised three of the locations as being places I'd run in or through on this trip to Seoul a few years ago.

Didn't sleep well last night, for no particular reason. This had a spin-off into the run, where I seemed to be more asleep for most of its first half than I had been through large parts of the night, and feeling as if I was definitely thankful that this one would only be one hour and not two as it will be in a few weeks from now. Started to work into it a bit more in the final third and handled some decently-sized hills in the last 10 minutes without too much trouble.

Always hard to concentrate at work on a big weather day, even if most of the action was in South Australia (and will be in north-eastern NSW, perhaps spilling over into Queensland, tonight and tomorrow morning).

Irony of the day: Japan Tobacco have stopped sourcing plants from the region around Fukushima after testing revealed elevated levels of cesium. Presumably they're worried that the radiation might give people cancer.

Went to street-O at Montmorency tonight, partly because it was close, partly because I had some gear to offload. It's a long time since I've run a street-O here (although I set one a few years ago) - it used to be on the Eastern Series rota but became part of the Northern Series when that split off. It was about 25 degrees cooler than on at least one previous occasion here, but the hills are still there.

Taking it fairly easy, still being in break mode, and feeling a little clogged up, especially early on. Hills decent though, and started to get a bit of flow going later. Most people took a fairly similar route. The main decision was when to get two low-scoring central controls, 1 and 8 - which in turn depended on how confident you were of getting the lot (if you weren't confident, they were best left for the end in case they needed to be dropped). I'd seen that the finish was straightforward and hence that one could afford to be behind the clock with four controls to go and still get in comfortably.

It is council election time in Banyule (and just about everywhere else in Victoria), and various posters and some letterbox-stuffing were in evidence. Those unfamiliar with the machinations of Banyule City Council will be unsurprised to learn that the posters of a candidate who claimed to be '100% independent' are 0% true (OK, so he's not actually a formally endorsed Liberal candidate).

C • Whipstick ward 2

Gradually reacquainting myself with the concept of 'running', although still in small doses. This one felt a bit strange in the internals early on but otherwise pretty routine, not anything to get excited about but not too bad either.

I've previously noted that Palmerville was near the top of the degree-of-difficulty stakes when it comes to the 21 temperature stations on my list which I haven't yet been to, and a news story today has not disabused me of that notion. The story so far is that a gold prospector in the area has disappeared without trace, the station lessee and his wife (both of whom have declined to be interviewed by police), who have a reputation for being, shall we say, unfriendly towards visitors, were seen by three other witnesses in the area with a rifle, and shots were heard. (On the other hand, perhaps there will be a window of opportunity to get there if/when the current occupants are relocated at the pleasure of Her Majesty).

A fairly relaxed swim at the newly-renovated Collingwood after getting off the boat. Water warm as always indoors.

Spent most of the swim pondering the state of the Tasmanian economy (not very good on the evidence seen in the last couple of weeks, the collapse of Gunns being only the most visible example). To at least some extent they're going through the process of disengaging from a traditional working-class economy a couple of decades after the rest of the country did, and without too much obvious yet to replace it. Tourism doesn't seem to be doing that brilliantly at this time of year either - not that some of the businesses do a lot to help themselves, such as the place that wanted a 2-night minimum booking midweek in off-season (Swansea), the one (and not a small B+B either) which had a note up saying that reception was currently unattended but if you hung around for an hour someone might turn up (Strahan), or eating places which purported to serve dinner but closed at 7pm (numerous examples all over the state). If any of the above go broke it will not be the fault of either Julia Gillard or Lara Giddings, not that it will stop the owners saying so.

(Perhaps I'd have been more uplifted if I'd instead been pondering Tasmania's natural beauty; I reacquainted myself with many parts of this, and took in some new ones).

C • In a constructive way... 3

Another tourist run to finish off the Tasmanian trip, at Mount Field - Russell Falls-Horseshoe Falls-Lady Barron Falls and back down the road (the rest of the loop track being closed). Didn't eat anything beforehand and went rather sooner after waking up than usual, but was quite a reasonable run, although never pushing the pace. Chilly morning but no rain.

From there it was on to Deloraine via Bothwell to pick up my car, taking in such sights on the way as the Central Plateau, Pine Lake, Liffey Falls and the Shep Memorial Driveway. Now on the boat on the way back to Melbourne (well, not actually moving anywhere yet), feeling pretty recharged and ready to launch myself into things - although still planning a couple more easy weeks running before getting into serious summer training around the last week of October.

And today's entry in World's Dumbest Criminals (thanks to the RiotACT):

"The leading luminary of the trio, William John Callan, 19, was caught in part due to his posing on his unsecured Facebook page, showing him posing next to the revolver used in a robbery"

Having changed our plans again (this time because of not being able to stay at Lake St. Clair), we headed out to somewhere I haven't been before, the high parts of Mount Field National Park. This had an epic bleakness about it on a day like this, with plenty of snow patches around above the treeline (although not the unstable snowbanks and slush of Tuesday), but the real highlight was the ice formations (especially, but not only, on plants) - the temperature had been hovering between 0.something and -0.something for about 24 hours so there was a lot of melting and refreezing. Turned around as the weather closed in, which did expose Jenny to her first experience of falling snow (not something South Australians get to experience much).

First of the aforementioned tourist runs, at Strahan before heading up into central Tasmania - an out-and-back to the local waterfalls at Hogarth Falls. Knee a bit stiff early but then became a pleasant run, if not an especially hard-working one.

We dropped in on Lake St. Clair in the afternoon (but didn't stay there because the campground was closed for building works, something they neglected to mention on their website) and met someone who had just come through on the Overland, who confirmed that conditions were much as we thought they would be (snow most of the way to New Pelion Hut).

A pretty relaxed day in Strahan as it turned out - rained most of the day (and was very windy early) and spent a fair bit of time doing not much, which isn't such a bad thing as I've had a lot of trouble disengaging in recent times.

The timing of our bailout did at least make the logistics of plan B a bit easier - Wednesday is one of the two days a week that buses do the Devonport-Cradle Mountain-Strahan run at this time of year (the skeletal nature of the timetable may explain why hardly anyone uses it), which meant we could get the bus to Rosebery and catch up with Jenny's parents (and vehicle, and gear we were sending around) there. (I had taken the possibility of not getting through seriously enough to check the bus timetables on Monday night). Had it not been a bus day I guess we would have had to try to hitch a ride to Deloraine (where my car is).

Have ended up in Strahan now. Even though there isn't any more long-distance walking to be done, I probably won't do much running this week - a few days away from it post-championships will do me good, I think, given the number of niggles I was dealing with in the later part of the season. Maybe the odd "tourist" run will come into it but not much else.

C • tourist run 7

OK, so that plan didn't quite work....

After the reports we'd heard yesterday afternoon I knew we were in for a hard slog early on; the hope was that the worst of it would be behind us by the time we got to Waterfall Valley (where the track drops from 1250 to 1000m and doesn't go much about 1100 after that) and the rest would be OK.

There wasn't much snow on the climb to Marions Lookout but then it was tougher going across to Kitchen Hut - in snow for probably 50% of the time, including some drifts deep enough to bury the track marker poles (a metre or so high). From there, though, it became even harder going - a mixture of snow drifts, slush and freezing meltwater. If it was predictable it wouldn't have been so bad but it wasn't - one moment you'd be on apparently solid ground and the next you'd be going in up to knees or hips (something neither of us found it easy to extricate ourselves from).

After 1 1/2 hours and perhaps 2 1/2 km of this we crested a spur and found a dry rock to sit on for lunch. The vista south to Mt Pelion West was extensive, and made it evident that there was still snow all the way across to there. This had a couple of implications. One was that we had 20 or 30 more kilometres of this and not 2 or 3, and another, as a result of that, was that we would have no chance of making New Pelion Gap before Thursday, which in turn would leave us on the wrong side of it when the next storm hit.

I don't think Jenny was too upset when I suggested we should turn around. A pretty good rule of thumb in such situations is that once you get to the point where you're starting to think about whether you turn back, you should. Could we have pressed on? Probably, but it would have taken a couple of days (minimum) longer than expected, and been pretty miserable (at least for the first half).

That left the return journey - under a bit of time pressure if we wanted to get the last shuttle bus back from the car park at 5.30. If anything this was worse than heading out - the snowbanks were even more unstable than they had been in the morning and both of us went in, deep, many times (especially in sections where there was boardwalk under the snow somewhere and we stepped off boardwalk without realising it). At one point I lost a shoe and didn't even notice for 50 metres, which may say something about how much feeling was left in my feet by that stage. Ended up making the bus OK, though.

Obviously this was a disappointment, but everything I've heard since has reinforced the idea that we made the right decision. A couple of other parties also returned, and we also heard on the grapevine that there had been 18 people at the Scott-Kilvert hut (not normally an overnight destination, so I'm guessing at least some of those were intending day walkers who had got stuck). The police and SES were also out looking for someone (a heart attack victim, apparently).

C • Epic Story 8

C • An argument for snow shoes 1

First of a few days of non-running although we haven't actually started on the Overland Track yet - now up at Cradle after doing the requisite walk around the lake. Might not be the easiest of conditions - there's still about a 50% snow cover at the base, and we heard today of a party who had taken six hours to get from Waterfall Valley to Kitchen Hut (normally a two-hour trip) because of snow - but that was yesterday and there will have been two more days of melting by the time we get there.