Training Log Archive: jennycas

And hungry. So much hungrier after a 12 hour rogaine than a 24...

C • Because less tired? 4

Would have been a glorious afternoon for a bike ride after I'd dropped parents home, but I was absolutely stuffed.

I had been looking forward to this rogaine at Caroona Creek/Tourillie Gorge (scene of my first rogaine, with Kay in 1989) for ages, even when I wasn't sure if I had a partner (and I nearly didn't again when Zara's car broke down catastrophically on Friday night but at least thanks to RAA she made it to meet me & mum & dad where we were staying at the cottages in Burra, and somehow we managed to fit everything for 4 of us, including 3 tents, into my car - parents have not learnt from any of my previous injunctions to pack compactly!) and so the fact that we got to the HH site after map handout time and then still had to put up our tents, really wasn't a big deal, especially since the organisers had thoughtfully mentioned that they'd measured the straight line distance to get all 40 controls as just under 50km, so all we had to do was work out what to leave out - and there were a cluster of controls in farmland near the HH of which we could get some or all on our way back in, depending on the time available to us.

I do like a course which hasn't been over-set (thanks Vincent & Margaret; can't believe they did most of the setting on their bikes while staying at the old Mt Bryan East schoolhouse), and we figured that a certain men's team would probably be aiming to clean up. Certainly by the way they went bolting up the road towards 92 out of the start, it seemed likely; although 44, an orphan on the road in the SW corner, was one we'd definitely ruled out for ourselves already. We went to 92 first also, on the track which leads to the top of Tourillie Gorge, got a couple along the Heysen Trail in the gorge and then headed south, with the mixed team of Stephen & Catherine (3rd overall) hot on our heels, although they turned east after a couple of 70-pointers while we did an extensive inner southern loop, even going to the water drop at the dugout hut along the track through Caroona CP at about 3pm before following the track east to the top of the range, dropping down to one control before a steep gully rock scramble back west up the escarpment to 91, looking back at the amazing views. In general we'd planned so that between controls we went along gullies rather than crossing over ridges, thus minimising climb and often distance as well. And since we'd done the inner south already, we had to be very efficient with the time available to us, because the only way back was around the outer southern rim of the course.

The other big climb was to 71 on a ridgeline back north of Tourillie Gorge, which was in spinifex country and took a bit of getting down from, but after that we were out of the really steep stuff (and none of it had been anything like Capertee or Angorichina), and made it to the water drop at the eastern end of Tourillie Gorge not long after 5pm which was the halfway mark in time and just under 30km in distance. Headed south down the eastern side of the range and I convinced Zara to skip 21 on a track only 300m from 61 because I thought it would give us a poor attack to the next control and we didn't have much time to spare but in fact I had trouble with 42 anyway, not believing that the hill in front of me was the hill I wanted even though it couldn't be anything else because east of there the plains stretch all the way to NSW.

Anyway, that was 10-15 min of faffing around just on dusk, at which point I was feeling really tired mentally (it had been a long week/with poor sleep, for various reasons) but I switched into night navigation mode and was mostly very cautious with distance & direction although this didn't prevent us from overshooting 57 slightly by misreading the unmapped creeks in the mallee - something that Slatts and Bruce G turned out to have more trouble with than we did, on a number of occasions, and so although we'd been able to tell from the intention sheets that they were significantly ahead of us, the gap seemed to be narrowing and we had got some controls earlier on which they hadn't been to yet. As we punched 55 we could see their lights at the top of the ridge near 81, half an hour to the west, and to our surprise when we got to 81 with 90 min to go we discovered that they'd headed to 44 on the road in the SW corner rather than straight north to 66, and it didn't appear that they would have time to get 66 (it was a bit of a scramble as we discovered) so they wouldn't be going to clean up after all. By the time we got to the first of the controls in the farmland near the HH we had only 45 min left, but we managed 3 more controls, including 27 on 'a dam' (follow the frogs, in pitch black) and then we ran up the last hill and got in with approx. 4 min to spare, having missed only 4 controls and thinking that our best effort with no time losses could have got us only 20 points more.

Turned out we didn't need to try *quite* so hard, because we won by 100 points. We were pretty pleased with our route, and also our pace - certainly faster than last year's 12 hour although we are probably not quite as fit as when we did 58km at Yacka, the stinking hot 12hr in October 2008 (and won by 200 points). Plus the ground was soft underfoot after more than an inch of rain on Thursday, and the wildflowers beautiful - native hops, daisy bushes, yellow cassia and some sort of wattle bush. Also, I justified wearing my gaiters, because I saw a fine specimen of a black snake.

Over to Mitcham and around on a nice spring morning, thinking this would be kinder to my knees than running. Very slow because I took Juliet the MTB (whose tyres hadn't been pumped) and also because I'm rather out of practice. Passed by the house of this weekend's rogaine setter and got some tips on controls which would be suitable for my parents to go to :)

Up Hillrise as the sun was setting, then there was enough light to continue up to Mead St steps and also sneak around the bikes-only enchanted forest MTB loop before heading down the Lynton Connector. I heard footsteps coming up behind me and a couple of guys wearing compression socks & carrying water bottles went past - they were training for Yurrebilla. This made me think that I should at least find a couple more hills, so I did, in the now-dark suburbs. Good fun but knees were a bit unhappy by the end and I was thirsty because it was a warm evening.

Got to training about 10 min late and couldn't see the others so did the uni loop backwards but didn't find them, so went along the river figuring that they wouldn't do the Nth Adl loop 2 weeks in a row). As I neared the Festival Centre I thought perhaps I should run up & down some stairs, then I saw a gaggle of junior Arrows doing likewise so I joined them. Ran back via the weir afterwards. Legs a bit hammered from a Killer Massage last night but it could have been worse. I just don't seem to ever loosen up properly these days :(

Up & down the stairs x 10. I'm more agile going up than down but that's not saying much.