Training Log Archive: jennycas

Maybe I'm easily annoyed, but when I booked flights to Sydney for myself & Geoff for Mar 4/5 weekend on the basis of NSW sprint champs being @Cockatoo Island on the Sunday, preceded by a sprint @Rookwood cemetery on the Saturday, I certainly didn't expect those events to then completely vanish from the ONSW calendar - and I am now more than a little pissed off!

C • SA Sprint Champs 5

Similar format to the last time we did a sprint relay here - teams of 2, each person runs twice. I was paired with Dante, who runs very fast. And even though I had a bit of trouble with getting across the creek, because the channel seems to be more washed out since recent rains, I tried to run hard and we actually came in first!
6:32 (0.7km)
7:32 (1.0km)
5:52 (0.7km)
The bad news came when Kate Marschall was looking at her map and saying "I punched the same culvert control twice, but the codes should have been different" and then both she & I realised that there were 2 culvert controls, very close to each other. Might have been 15m apart on the map but they were closer on the ground (and the one we punched twice by accident had an unmapped barrier around it so the control was hanging from this whereas the other control was flat on the ground) and given that it was my second-last control of the race and I honestly thought I had already been to all of the controls which were out there, I didn't even check the code but just focused on how I was going to get across the creek next up.

Suitably humiliated now. Feel as though I am becoming far more scatterbrained when orienteering than ever I used to be :(

Beforehand with the group for 12 min and afterwards I went down the creek towards the forest & back which was 9 min each way.

Surburban jog after the flight home (Geoff's driving back later in the week). Stomach was uncomfortably full of airline dinner but I appreciated the lower humidity compared to Sydernee. We took our niece & nephew tenpin bowling AND minigolfing today in order to retain favourite auntie/uncle status :)

From Glenbrook (after lunching there) down to Jamisontown via Lapstone Station - found a connecting path from there to River Rd. Lots of people out boating and jetskiing on the Nepean. Cloudy breezy afternoon; tired legs were glad of the net descent.

A bit sorry not to be orienteering anywhere today. I really enjoyed the Christmas 5-Days; pity I only go to them about every 10 years. Anyhow, we spent the day driving to/from the Glow Worm tunnel at Newnes (about 2.5 hrs each way, so marginally better ratio of time on foot to time in car than the Gloucester Tops) which was interesting, being in an old shale-oil railway tunnel in the Gardens of Stone NP, but I was a little disappointed in the quantity of glow worms, being seriously spoiled by a couple of previous rides in boats on underground rivers through amazing glow worm caves in NZ!

Was a bit ashamed of lunch having been courtesy of McDonald's at Lithgow (nephew's choice, and it was raining at the time) so went for a hot-and-steamy jog after getting home to sister-in-law's. The roads go every which way through Glenmore Park, which would make a good street-O map. I think there's one out this way?

Probably should not have fronted up for this, given how painfully my blistered heel was keeping me awake in the night, but layered with 3 Band-Aids and in running shoes at a flat jog along the road it seemed manageable. So I stubbornly went out on course - and promptly made a lot of mistakes because I was concentrating too much on where I was putting my feet in a vain attempt to avoid further heel chafing, and not enough on my bearings, so had some real shockers, missing track junctions and going up/down wrong creeks. Final straw was on 9 where I still don't understand how I ended up too far east, but the 1: 7500 scale may have had something to do with it.

I started to realise that if I took any longer on course I might run out of time to go back to the motel for a shower before checking out, and I might jeopardise any chance of being capable of doing a longer run when it cools down in a couple of days' time. And also I couldn't face the thought of the long leg across the long-grassed area just to come back across the long-grassed area , so I called it quits and walked slowly and painfully back to the finish. I don't like to be a quitter :(

We lunched in and walked around the waterfront at Brooklyn by the Mooney Mooney crossing. I couldn't convince G to catch the little ferry out to Dangar Island from there but we did cross on the vehicle ferry at Berowra Waters before making our way to Penrith via Arcadia & Cattai. 9pm fireworks display at Panthers wasn't too bad viewed from a hilltop a couple km away; however, everyone local seemed to have their own personal fireworks stash and to be setting them off in the creek at the end of the street. I expect this activity to be repeated in about 20 minutes' time when the clock strikes 12 and all the dogs to go slightly troppo as a result.

C • That explains it. 2

Day 5 Hard 2 - Splits

Rather tired this morning; had intended to get up earlier, but slept through my alarm (as did many people, it seems) and had intended to do a proper warmup but ended up just walking to the start with Tracy - it was pretty warm already, but at least still clouded over. Actually, this was a new map for me today - I'd thought we'd be running immediately south of yesterday's area but in fact it was across the road and thankfully rather less green. Equally flat, except for one big hill at the southern end of the course up which I had to walk, but I could see Tracy walking up in front of me (she'd started 2 min ahead). She kindly offered me a drink when I caught her at the drink control but I foolishly wanted to see if I could manage ok until the end. Hindsight says that with a cooler brain I may not have veered too far right when approaching a little gully on the creek at 17, and then compounded the error by thinking I still needed to go further right (but then I veered to the right on a number of other bearings also, so that's something I need to watch out for tomorrow).

Right near the end, heel blister became raw, which lacked pleasantness, and it's still painful this evening even though we did no strenuous exercise this afternoon but instead sampled the wares of places purveying cheese, chocolate, wine and beer, then drove via Broke to the historic village of Wollombi and back through Cessnock. Many of the towns around here have crepe myrtle as street trees and they are blooming gorgeously in pinks and purples (despite not having been pruned to within an inch of their life as I'd always thought is recommended in order to encourage flowering).

C • #17 1

Day4 Hard 2 - Splits

New O shoes time. And although they are half a size bigger than my old ones, it was just as much effort to wrestle my feet into them as usual. Decided the laces were improbably tight, so loosened them. Felt my heel chafing on the way to the start, so tightened them. Got halfway to control 3 and the excruciating pain under my right arch was unmanageable, so spent a couple of minutes loosening that shoe. By halfway round the course though, a blister was forming on the other heel even though I'd left that shoe tightened, and the rest of the course became a limp-jog. Clearly my feet are not the same size as each other...

As for the navigating, I actually quite like flat low-vis stuff, and the shade provided by the dense ti-trees (Leptospermum) meant it wasn't too hot. Did a couple of dumb overshootings at times though - some of them deliberate because I couldn't find an earlier singletrack through the green even though it was on the map, but overrunning the first control was not in my plan. I must have been about 30m away from it yet climbed up the embankment to avoid a patch of green, then came wrongly down a track too far south because I thought there was a track before the control when actually the mapped black line was a pipeline. Getting worse at reading the detail, I am :(

Favourite control was in an area of swampy paperbark tea tree (Melaleuca) which didn't currently have any water underfoot but instead a carpet of maidenhair ferns. This made up for all the gruesomely burned car wrecks out there, which give me the heebie-jeebies.

We spent the afternoon driving to/from the Barrington Tops, which turned out to be 3 hours each way, because I had the thought that at 1300m it would be a bit cooler than the 40 degrees down in Cessnock. And indeed, up at the Gloucester Tops it was maybe even not quite 30. Plus there was still enough water in the river to make the Gloucester Falls worth the drive - and we saw a lyrebird. On a cooler day I'd have done the 8km loop walk around the sub-alpine plateau but in any case my blister said no. On the way down, at one of the many river fords, we had to let a herd of beautiful shaggy Highland cattle wade in/drink from the river.

Broke up the return journey with dinner at a defiantly unrenovated pub in Dungog, where my steak was overcooked (if that was medium rare, I'd hate to see well done) and G's schnitzel cost a whole $10 and it was even spelled correctly on the menu unlike the economically-lettered SNIZL I saw on a menu during our roadtrip.

C • Lyrebird 2

Day 3 Hard 2 - Splits