Training Log Archive: jennycas

Not-quite-redwoods run (because Zara suddenly remembered about book club).

C • Hahaha oh Zara 2

Slow painful stagger over to Mitcham & back. Morning runs are rapidly becoming a thing of the past for me; strange to think I used to be able to do 17km before work/breakfast...

6 x 1 min on Montefiore Hill with the group. Grateful for not doing the whole hill as legs were still a bit lactic from Sunday.

To/from the hill, plus runthroughs.

Not super enthused for orienteering today - Pewsey Vale's always an area where in the native scrub you can waste a minute or more just getting through the junk to the correct side of the boulder where the flag will be, and more recently when they felled & replanted the pines they didn't bother removing the windrows so it's almost impossible to follow up a row in a straight line, and I did far too much circle work for both reasons. So this course just seemed to go on & on, and zigzagged back across itself quite a bit (very hard to read the control circles & lines to work out which number I was going to next) and I spent a couple of minutes helping someone look - unsuccessfully - for his dropped SI card. But I was grateful for my personal inbuilt layer of insulation when the rain showers came through, and for no trees dropping branches on me when the wind gusts came through. Once I'd dried off and finally warmed up, Geoff & I drove the back way down Trial Hill Rd to lunch at Lyndoch bakery where we hadn't been for many years. So on balance this was a worthwhile outing?

After dropping my parents to visit aunt & uncle at Petwood (a "you can't get there from here" locality right alongside the SE freeway but not remotely near any freeway exits) I had about 3 hours before collecting them again, to run another test course at Narrinyeri plus checking out a few extra potential control sites and ruling some of them out - I don't quite understand the green vs white; it seems the opposite of reality in some places. Also sussed out the bonus northern section which now belongs to national parks and could be useful for a couple of controls, but you need to get there by simultaneously crossing over the creek and under the train line...

Feels a bit weird to be planning for an event which quite possibly may not go ahead, but in the meantime, the mental health benefits of 'forest-bathing' are undeniable. And there's a surprising array of wildflowers out there; I narrowly avoided stepping on a single purple Pheladenia deformis (previously known as Caladenia deformis) otherwise known as blue fairy orchid or blue beard - these are much less common than Glossodia, or purple cockatoo orchid (now re-named to Caladenia major). Confused, much?

C • Confused yes... 6

Up to Bellevue Heights then followed a very steep track (which I'd never been on before, and my knees protested) downnn into the gorge, and another very steep track back uppp again. The 6 min spent along the river bottom just about justified the effort because it's so peaceful down there; I'd mentally prepared for wet feet but there were convenient stepping stones at both my crossing points.