Training Log Archive: jennycas

Figured I'd do the longest course today, so that 11km next Sun doesn't seem quite so daunting. I'm well aware that the native scrub sections here are very slow going (only one person on the 2.8km hard course broke the hour) and also that most of the pines have been felled & replanted since first we ran there over 30 years ago, but I really hadn't expected to faff around so much on a navigational level - just too much else to keep in my head lately, I guess, including mum's escalating memory loss. Mind you, even Simon had trouble with the first control, because the area mapped as light yellow open is now 5m-high young pines with an uncrossable windrow of old felled pines guarding the control knoll, so people got pushed all the way downhill to the track to get around that and then if they were lucky, found a MTB trail (of which there were lots & lots, all post-dating the map) to get back up the hill. I found the control feature before Simon did :)

Not really sure what I did on the next leg...seemed to go up & down the appropriate number of hills & gullies without ever being quite certain of where I was because the white vs yellow boundaries were fairly nebulous, and when I finally hit the track, thought I was too far NE of the red line so ran SW down the hill, came to an unexpected crossroads and eventually identified it as the mapped T-junction 300m further downhill than I needed to be for the control! After that I paid more attention to my surroundings but still managed to overshoot features more than once. Route choice 7-8 was definitely back through the finish, so I startled G at the car by grabbing a drink & muesli bar (probably should have taken my hat, because it was getting warm in the sun - although I would have continually lost it to the vegetation).

Took track routes more in the southern part, although not as often as I probably should have because I actually did come here to orienteer rather than just run. Grateful that the last part was in the more open paddocks, which did not stop me from getting confused about which paddock I was in. Overshot the 3rd-last control and as I was leaving it, saw Greg M & Ben C coming into it, so then I tried a bit harder all the way up the hill to the finish and they did not catch me! Managed to break 2 hours also, so I was pleased, although feel that there was at least 15 min of errors/poor routes in there. And my parents were happy that they'd managed to get around the surprisingly-physical easy course.

I informed the course planner that it had been "wonderfully challenging", and I left him to determine, upon which word I had placed the greater emphasis...

C • map 3

Since G was kind enough to drop parents home, I took advantage of the summery evening to go for a ride, as apparently I hadn't run hard enough earlier in the day.