Training Log Archive: jennycas

Left home at 0630 to collect Wataru from Bridgewater in time to get to Mt Crawford Forest for 8am to put out controls for today's training which he had set. Nigel and Leila were also to assist, and thank goodness for them, because by 0830 the rangers still hadn't appeared to unlock the gate into the forest and so Wataru and I had to run nearly 3 km up to the start location on the Tower Hill ridgeline before we could put out any of the mini-flags (leaving the Rocky Paddock ones to Leila and Nigel but they still had to hike a fair way from the main road also). I got my half-dozen done reasonably efficiently and then ran back down to my car, by which time the gate was open and others had started assembling at Sailors Gully picnic area.

Yeah, so this wasn't the most organised of days. Despite advertised meeting time 0930, the last person made it up the hill to start at 11am, by which time I'd already decided that there was no point in my actually doing the full training course as I'd probably be needed for collecting controls anyway. But I hadn't bargained on spending 45 minutes to cover less than 1 km in a patch of physically green prickly acacia which Vincent and I had decided in 2018 should not be used for control sites. Wataru knows that now too...but despite 3 attempts, and I actually found the correct patch of rocky ground in the middle of the prickle bushes on my third attempt, I still failed to find where he had put the flag on that one and will have to go back another day. I will also be picking thorns of Acacia paradoxa out of myself for the next few weeks; I think there are even some in my scalp :(

Another 45 min had all of the remaining 8 controls easily collected in the hilltop farmland and I was back down at the cars, whereupon it turned out that everyone else had left by then (Toby had asked "why didn't you just put out streamers which could be left there?" but apparently he did actually collect the 3 flags closest to the cars) and Wataru was still finishing doing the actual course so Remi - who was waiting to take him home - and I had to go back out and collect the ones in the pine forest on the hillside slopes, which was another half an hour. And I eventually got home at 1530, 9 hours after I had left, which is a bit ridiculous and definitely not something I had signed up for. But it was a really nice day out there (apart from the horrendously prickly scrub and the disconcerting blood patches on the forest roads which must be where some sort of feral animals being culled had been shot and left to bleed out before being chucked on the back of a ute to drip all the way down the track) and being able to do some blackberry picking by the creek while waiting for others to get their act together was a nice bonus.