Training Log Archive: jennycas

Stiff and slow and out of practice when the pool reopened for the summer, but water temperature was perfect.

Sociable run with Fern & Tyson & Lexie, in search of orchids. We found purple cockatoo, donkey, greenhood, spider.

We managed to get across Sturt Creek at Frank Smith Park pretty easily last night so I thought I'd see what the stepping stones were like in Sturt Gorge. It's so peaceful down there and I stopped and had a little cry because now there's another funeral in Sydney we won't be going to either (I am so ready for this COVID decade to be over).

In the words of Josh Pyke:
'Cause I saw two fall before they were ready to
And I found no sense or gain to bear the cost
Comfort comes to those with faith in mysterious ways
But for me faith don't make up for what we lost

C • So sorry.... 12

Down to Frank Smith Park and back up through Blackwood Forest with Zara and Fern. The hills felt much worse than they did on Saturday, especially Rankeys Hill Rd.

Depleted group tonight, maybe because they all knew Evalin was in Coober Pedy? Anyway, I ended up doing 5 x 1000m in loose association (which is to say, about 30-40 sec behind by the end of each km) with Emily and Gemma, and while times between 4.51 and 4.58 are nothing special, at least I survived ok :)

C • 5x1000m 3

Geoff somehow misheard my saying we needed to leave at 0645 as 0615, so I wasn't very impressed when his alarm went at 5am (!) - unsurprisingly we arrived at Narrinyeri in plenty of time and then had to wait half an hour for others to arrive and help us set up tents, but we managed to get the big one up just before an icy rain shower came through. In my 2 hours working on the start, I managed to convince nearly everyone to take a map bag, but a couple of people who had started during sunny patches came unstuck when their bag-less maps disintegrated during a heavy squall...

I was actually last starter by the time I went out, and didn't expect to see anyone much on course, but plodded around on stiff painful legs and tried to keep the navigation clean. Was startled to be swooped repeatedly by a couple of magpies on the way to my 3rd control but actually they were having a go at a hawk in midair and I presume I was just collateral (no damage).

I made a dumb error on the south side of the road where I stopped 100m short on an uphill diagonal leg (distracted by other people, oops) and foolishly did a couple of laps of the wrong clump of rocks. Wasn't quite clean on my approach to that control the next time I had it, either. Perfect when collecting it, though...a bit scrappy on a couple of other legs as I got tired & hungry and when wet hair got in my eyes after the next squall, so was a bit disappointed to be so much over the hour, but that's still better than Fern who never found one of our controls (on a slope which never really was fully mapped last year, but we'll do it thoroughly in time for Easter 2024).

So by the time G & I got home after dropping the trailer back to Hawthorndene we'd been away over 9 hours - now our kitchen smells of the wet tents which are draped over the clothes racks - and Tyson had already uploaded the results!

C • Results 8