Training Log Archive: jennycas

After walking Robbie-dog with Alex, ran up/along the three hills of Red Hill ridgeline and back down to Caley Cres. Probably about 5 min slower than I used to be for getting around this loop but it was a nice cool morning to be out for necessary exercise before sitting in the car for about 7 hours (not helped by the fact that the ute's aircon decided to crap itself and so we did a lap of all the auto-electricians in Cowra, finding out that they are booked up for the next 2 weeks). By the time we got to Wellington it was necessary to stop at an icecreamery - I had a banana split with "neapolitan" whipped cream in three different colours - and by the time we got to our motel near the Warrumbungles after a supermarket run in Coonabarabran I was fairly much ready for bed.

C • Warrumbungles area 3

Made up a bit of sleep deficit with the clocks going back an hour although the cats where I'm staying at Alex's still woke up at their usual time! Had a bit of a funny tummy this morning and legs were feeling a little empty before the start, also feeling slightly mashed (not actually smashed though) from having braced a lot on slippery downhills yesterday, and so expected that the others running W21Sport (the NOL class you have when you're too ancient and/or decrepit for proper National League; the last time I'd run here was the 11km WOC long trial on my 40th birthday weekend) would come through me in due course and I just had to try to navigate as cleanly as possible. Sometimes though it was impossible to see the little rocky knolls for the long grass, and on the long leg back over the hill I let myself get dragged offline by a chain of elite women then found myself looking out over a great big steep valley at 90 degrees to where I wanted to be crossing the ridgeline - oops.

After that, my dodgy ankle was really starting to hurt and going down the other side of the hill Briohny and Tash and Nicola came past me like I was standing still because I can't descend in marshy bracken very well at all. Last couple of controls in the flat low-vis stuff were fun though, as was the whole weekend, especially catching up with people I haven't seen for some years in some cases; I actually didn't realise that I had missed socialising during all the COVID restrictions, thought I'd just become more anti-social...

Day2 Long Course 5 - Splits

Event: 2022 Wildfire Autumn Classics; NOL4-5, ACTL1-2
 

It's 5 years since I have been orienteering in Canberra, and the last/only occasion I've run on The Gib was Aust Middle/Relays in 2013 - what I remembered from then was: a) the map is basically one steep hill; and b) it's overmapped and there are a lot of features which don't meet IOF specifications for minimum size (acknowledging that the map predates ISOM 2017). The event info implied long grass and low shrubs impacting runnability, but not actually that these would make it hard to actually find the features or see the controls - a lot of people came unstuck in a lot of places, whereas I generally managed not to do so although I was a little high on a couple of occasions and also got lucky being led into more than one control by junior boys (also when I saw a bunch of them faffing around, I figured that wasn't where the control was).

Ended up 4 minutes behind Jo Allison, although I think she'd had trouble on a couple of controls. Anyway, I thought this wasn't a bad result for running on less than 4 hours sleep - it was nearly 1am by the time I'd finished packing everything including camping gear for 2 weeks away (admittedly I didn't leave work until 9pm), and then I had a 6am flight to Canberra (after dropping me at the airport, Geoff went home and loaded up the car and started driving east) and I was rather excited to encounter a tiny antechinus out there, scurrying away from being about to be stepped on!

Course 5 - Splits

Over to Mitcham & back before work because I knew there was no chance of getting away from work in daylight tonight - in fact I think I've done an entire extra day's worth of work this week and am still behind.

It's been a stressful couple of days - found out during the process of finalising the sale of our old house, that even though we paid out that home loan in September 2014, the mortgage release documents were never submitted...still not sure whether this should have been the responsibility of Suncorp, the conveyancer or ourselves, but I suspect that what happened is: Suncorp didn't listen when we said repeatedly "no, we DO NOT want to keep the 30-year mortgage open just in case we decide to draw back the funds which you believe we have paid in advance"!

C • Selling houses 2