Training Log Archive: jennycas

Neck & shoulders have been painfully tight the past few days, even before driving down the mountains; at least swimming didn't make them worse.

The last time that I was up Brown Hill, I'd noticed some trail signs on the private farmland east of the (defunct) trig point, indicating a route down the southern side to Brownhill Creek. So this time I went up the hill fairly directly (lots of stops to catch my breath though; I am exhausted today) then down through the farmland being ignored by cows although the young calves were skittish, and at the bottom of the trail, which is near the junction with Tilleys Hill Rd, I saw signs for the Waterworks trail and so followed the side creek upstream, surprised that it was actually flowing after no real rain for a month, but I am sure that there are springs in these hills.

Didn't make it as far as the 19th-century water storage works because I suddenly started to worry that the carpark back at McElligott's Quarry might close at 6 now that daylight saving has finished (turns out it's locked at 8pm all year round) so turned around at an unexpected lovely little arched stone bridge which reminded me of the entrance to Hobbiton - and further downstream I passed a big old monkey-nut pine which I always think of as the Party Tree from The Hobbit.

Stiffly around Ploughman's Wetlands, and some circular streets which reminded me of Canberra in autumn - the crocuses are appearing - before driving from Orange to Sydney in order to fly home. Traffic was mostly ok but 5-ish hours is still a long time to be concentrating on other vehicles and so when I got near the bottom of the mountains I took time out to walk around Glenbrook Lagoon. Seems weird to be going straight past Penrith and not visiting the in-laws!

Ophir Diggings was day 1 of Easter 1996, my first year in elites, and when I got out my 25-year-old map last week and looked at how steep it is, I promptly traded down from 6km to 4km for today's course. A good thing that I did so, since it was after 11 when I eventually went out, having been involved in helping the lady who'd broken her ankle on the way to the first control (not that she knew yet that it was fractured but even my worst sprain which I couldn't fully put weight on for two weeks hadn't resulted in an ankle looking that deformed or caused as much pain as she was in, so I was pretty sure it was broken although I didn't think it was my place to say so).

Anyway, I was very careful about my foot placement after that, especially as the first part of the course was steeply downhill towards the river, but I wasn't in any hurry and managed to get in & out of the junky diggings/erosions ok. Enjoyed the short leg 8-9 through the candle-lit tunnel and then promptly started contouring towards 12, having conveniently amnesed the fact that I first needed to go down the hill to 10 & 11, then back up to 12. Also enjoyed the last part of the course with 4 crossings of the sheoak-lined river (Lewis Ponds Creek which joins up with Summer Hill Creek at the site of the former gold-mining metropolis of Ophir), but was getting hungry towards the end.

In the afternoon we drove up Mt Canobolas and from the nearby campground, walked to Federal Falls which was 4km return, and later did a shorter walk to the 1350m summit of Mt Towac with glorious 360 degree views and not marred by any transmitter towers.

Popular sprint course around the botanical gardens, which weren't exactly mapped to ISSprOM standards (not that they were claimed to be) and even though I jogged very slowly because I was worried about my hamstring I still got a bit confused by olive green being used for some patches of bushland and not others and made a 90 degree error on the way to my 9th control, actually punching a totally wrong one (mini-flags with hanging SI units and the number wasn't obvious, but also I didn't check it) on a shelter instead of a boulder (at 1: 2500 the boulder looked like a building on the map) and only working it out when the track towards the next control wasn't going the right way. So then I backtracked, found the correct control, attempted the leg to 10 again and got confused again because the tracks had changed and when I saw a bright green lawn, thought I must have somehow got into the OOB by mistake. Anyway, prolly a couple min lost there but actually I dunno because there weren't any splits. And it doesn't really matter because it was a fun little event either way (apart from too long spent standing in the sun in the waiting-to-download queue).

SLEH came around for lunch and then we all headed to Canowindra to the Age Of Fishes fossil museum, watching a very black cloud in the southeast which then came our way and dumped lots of big - up to 2cm, which I've never seen before - hail (Susanne was triumphant because she'd asked Blair if there was ice in those clouds and he'd thought not) so actually the storm was of greater interest than the fish fossils, to everyone but the geologist in our party! Lachlan got everyone else's money's worth as well as his own out of the museum though :)

C • L's visit 2

Hamstrings protested against being made to run around the western suburbs of Orange this morning (in anticipation of spending all day on chairing the L3 controllers' workshop). Also I underestimated ground-to-map ratio...

I think everyone was feeling a little beaten up this morning, and a bit daunted about having a similar length course to yesterday. Starting an hour and a half later, it seemed quite warm already, and my decision to carry water was a good one as the first half of the course was in open farmland and I'm glad that I was able to pour water on my head whenever my brain felt in danger of overheating. Being well aware that others would be running faster than me in the open, I just tried to keep navigation as clean as possible (not hard as it was fairly straightforward) and then slowed right down mentally as soon as I'd crossed the fence into the green forest, telling myself that it was ok to actually stop to read the map if necessary. Slowed down physically too, being faced with a wall of young native pines, but I figured they would have the same effect on everyone.

Got the first green control ok although had nearly convinced myself that I wasn't in the right gully, then turned around and saw someone punching it. Second forest control I was too high on, misread the rocks and wasted 2-3 min there, but didn't panic. The next three danger legs in the green I took very slowly, counting off every little feature out loud as I went, and being utterly delighted when I saw the flag each time. This strategy paid off, because as it turned out, nearly everyone had more trouble than me and somehow I ended up in second on the day - with Belinda 10 min clear of me, mind you. And this run was good enough to put me in 3rd overall for W45, with Susanne 5th, so I was very pleased to receive a yellow mug with Australian 3-Days 2020 on it, especially as it feels a bit unreal after the past 12 months that this year's Easter races even took place.

It's also been wonderful, if a little surreal, to have Susanne around again and for us to go orienteering together just like how it used to be; in fact the majority of the W45 field was a roll-call of our junior squad days. Sus appears to have made no mistakes at all over the entire weekend, but then again, she is the best fine navigator that I know of :)

C • Junior squad roll-call 4

Day 3 Course 12 - Splits

Last time I ran on the southern part of Gumble was the 2007 Christmas 5-Days, when the international juniors all came out to Aust to compete 6 months before JWOC in Dubbo, and while Susanne & Lachlan & I all have slightly different recollections of that week spent in The House With The Bouncy Carpet, we'd none of us recalled the terrain being *quite* this tough. As Blair said, even Kangaroo Crossing is more runnable! The organisers had mentioned in the Easter event info that courses were planned under drought conditions and there is now more vegetation - but runnability is now about 20% slower than in 2007 I'd say, and these courses were set on the long side already...

Was glad to have an early start before it got warm but at 9am there seemed to be almost nobody apart from me and the spiders out in the forest; don't know how much time I spent pulling the webs off my face and apologising to the occupants! Took the first few controls veeerrry carefully because there's not much to relocate off in low-vis native pines which grow so thickly together that you can hardly get between them. Was a little low on my 4th control but saw Mace leaving it (and yes, this is one which could probably have had water placed at it without too much difficulty) and then we started off on a looonng leg to the SW in roughly similar directions although she was a bit to my right when we crossed the creek and I didn't see her after that (she was on W35 course).

My plan, such as it was, involved heading SW up to a comparatively open ridgeline and then S down a spur running off it, but I was so focused on going up - which seemed to take forever - that I didn't take the time to make the features I passed fit properly and so hit the ridgeline rather further north than I'd intended to do. Worked it out ok but that meant I had to go around in a semicircle to get on to the spur I then needed and this was a waste of time - took 3 min longer than Susanne on that leg and Tracy & Belinda did 15-16 compared to my 26 min! Wonder if they actually took the creek or even farmland around to the SE.

Next leg to 6 I somehow ended up deciding to do the massive slog up & over the hill because the approach to the control from going around either end just looked too risky. This meant a very slow descent into the control where Marina (on W40 course) passed me like I was standing still. I have absolutely no mountain-goat genetics, but at least my knees are holding up ok this weekend. Anyway, there were a couple of shorter legs up next which I felt like I did ok - Emily Walter caught up to me here (10 min, as it turned out) but I got away again on the next uphill leg, then it was another slog up to the ridgeline and again I came out too far north and had to bash through bonus extra green before beginning the danger downhill diagonal section which I executed perfectly apart from having difficulty getting down the cliff at the end, and giving Emily a very clear view of exactly where the control was. She must have had trouble on the next couple though because I actually managed to finish before her despite the uphill finish chute. I commented to Susanne who ended up a couple min slower than me - her navigation is cleaner though - that Tracy wouldn't get under 80 for this course, and in fact she did 82, which is a very similar time differential between us, also very similar overall times for both of us, when compared to Wattle Ridge.

Warmdown was taking Heidi around the Mini-Knat string course, which was in itself a bit epic and took her 45 min. Because she's so used to alligator punches in Darwin, the SI stick almost holds secondary interest, but she kept up a great running commentary "First we do the boopa* then we do the punch". Still think I got a better deal than Susanne shadowing Eleanor around the easy course which took E 70 min in the thick stuff. Sus & I were very grateful today, to have retired from elites!

*beeper

C • Water 25

Day 2 Course 12 - Splits