Training Log Archive: jennycas

Had expected to be fairly stiff today but ended up playing chasie with the Wallaringan sub-juniors (staying in another house on the same property as us) this morning so that must have been a good warm up. This was the same map as the Aust Relays in 2018 although extended to the NE, and not going into the deepest erosions in the SW, although there were still some pretty good ones. I found that nearly all of the controls came up pretty much where I was expecting them to, although going by the splits (and in fact there were a lot of long winning times given that this was a middle distance, but in the evening the setter/vetter - with whom I shared a house - were looking at how many errors even the placegetters had made in most classes, and were reassured that they hadn't actually got the distances wrong after all) it seems that not everyone found the controls so easily...you definitely had to keep concentrating, on this map!

Feel as though I ought to have taken a few wider route choices to save climb, e.g. on 9, but I did manage to get in & out of the creeks ok. Mostly happy with control-circle navigation apart from hesitation on 4 where the same double-watercourse-mapped-as-single confused me in 2018. On the longer legs out to the NE was getting quite thirsty and looking forward to the drink control at 11 but when I got there it had run out and this was the case for about the last 20 women - seems not everyone had been aware of the ordering system. Anyway, this then made me run faster because I wanted to get back before becoming too hot & bothered, and running faster created a breeze, so it was all good. Once I'd passed Jo (caught her 2 min?) and Anna had passed me, I could still see Anna in the distance for a bit until the low-vis stuff after 17, then after the spectator control I was surprised to see her coming back towards 18 as I approached it and also I got a better line into 19. So I was reasonably happy with this run, fitness not withstanding. Afterwards went back to Crooked Straight to do lines of pink tapes etc while OHOC people set up the arena - and by the time Simon & I left there it was basically dark.

Course 2 - Splits

Simon & I put all but the closest 6 of the 70 controls, and all of the water (with Adrian's help) out at Crooked Straight today, so that's good. Not so good is that there's now one emu less in the world - driving out there from Renmark this morning, I was watching a flock of pigeons ahead of me on the road and hoping they'd fly away in time so that I didn't hit them, then I saw out the corner of my eye an emu heading straight for the car from my right and although I braked hastily there was an almighty thump and feathers everywhere and an emu lying in the road with a broken leg :(

A farmer coming the other way had seen the emu run out (it was going at 30+ km/h and effectively hit my car rather than the other way around, but I was still doing nearly 80 and have the dent in the driver's door to prove it - ironically, if I hadn't braked I may have missed it after all) and he said he'd go home to get his gun...10 min later he came back and shot the poor emu, and another fellow who'd been driving alongside his orange orchard and also stopped when he saw what happened, helped the farmer drag its body off the road - I felt awful, but what else can you do?

Poor Simon may be thinking that I am a terrible driver, because he was also travelling with me in 2015 when the roo hit us between Jamestown and Bri Glen as we were on our way to tape control sites for Easter.

C • Stray wildlife 1

It had rained enough in the night for Brownhill Creek to be flowing past the pool - I realise that this is just suburban runoff though.

C • Swimming 2

Why do I always leave work just that little bit too late to be able to read the map properly? Made a couple of dodgy route choices because of this, but knew the actual 'control flag' locations ok because this was the short course which I'd set for (what turned out to be the really wet) Sprint Series event 15 months ago.

Even the stairs at work required effort today, so I dunno why I went up the hill afterwards, but the fresh air was beneficial in advance of another evening doing NOL map stuff at the Uppills'.

Would nearly have been ok to get around all 4 'sprintervals' (although I wasn't sprinting) before it got too dark but the time spent in the queue to get out of the carpark at work (everyone wants to leave at 5:10pm) and then I still had to tape my ankles, meant that I really only had adequate daylight for 2.5 - I perservered with 3.4 but then copped a stick across the eyes in the gloom, and decided to call it quits. Shame, because I was otherwise having fun. And ironically, my headlamp was actually in the car...

Flat easy jog on post-rogaine legs, through bovine farmland along Ellison Creek from the Tilleys Hill Rd junction, to find the 19th-century underground water storage tanks from which water was piped towards Mitcham village. Startled a couple of beautiful white-faced (slate-grey) herons and also a fox - wondered if the latter was eyeing off the former.