Training Log Archive: jennycas

We both benefited from a sedentary morning, especially as G wasn't well overnight, but having ventured out for a late lunch at Stanthorpe Cheese and visit to Sutton's Juice Factory, I convinced him to venture into the Broadwater State Forest with the promise of some 4WDing to the assembly location of last year's Qld middle distance champs. I enjoyed myself trundling around the big rocks and rock maze but was still very slow and can't attribute much of that to forest regrowth after fire. Feet didn't hurt as much today because new O shoes weren't laced quite so tightly but this did mean nearly losing them in the swampier areas. I was excited to see flannel flowers (didn't know they grew in granite country, and surely it's too late in the season for them) plus Boronia amabilis, which grows only in this area. Also happy to be amongst the native pines - still disappointed that there were none on the Armidale weekend's maps, even when the property was called Pine Tree.

After yesterday, I was aware that I'd bitten off more than I could chew by entering W21 for this weekend, but I'd initially hoped to use it as an opportunity to once run a course longer than the longest W45 day at Easter will be. Which is not to say that I was sorry when I got to the start and found that 7km had turned into 6.4km, because I knew even this would still take me over 2 hours at walking pace.

Goal was to navigate cleanly, obviously, but I have no idea what would have been the best route on some legs, although in hindsight staying out of the light yellow where the grass was above my head could have been a good idea, and even following a fenceline meant wading through grass - often the marshy creeklines were the most runnable bits. Others seemed to manage running ok though, and on the rocky slopes also, whereas I just felt that I could never run more than a couple of steps with any confidence that I wouldn't put my foot in a hole. Was a bit annoyed on 4 where I'd actually come up through the giant rocks to the top of the hill in the correct place but then inferred a small gully where there wasn't one, at 90 degrees to where I was heading across the hilltop, and then convinced myself that maybe the sheer sides of the giant boulders were the 5m rockface I was looking for, so wasted about 5 min there before coming back up to the top and seeing Eric heading in the direction I should have kept going for only about another 30 metres initially...

By control 5 I'd been out nearly an hour already and seriously considered just cutting off the entire crossover section when I saw the 1km leg across to 6 and 1.2km back from 8 but I am not a quitter, and actually I was able to follow some bare rock slabs up to near 6 (could feel my arms getting burned by the sun) but then getting into the medium green young wattle (regrowth after fires) was like hitting a physical wall, and I had to fight my way through more of this than the map showed to get across to 7, and then on 8 I was looking for a linear high point but instead found a line of rocky ground 20m west but simply couldn't see the real thing in the green, so bailed out to the 'open' grassy patch and came back in again, taking nearly 10 min for a 200m leg.

Final few controls were ok although I was starting to worry that I might be the last finisher and the organisers would want to be collecting the controls already...and G was starting to wonder where I was. We headed north to Stanthorpe this afternoon and one of the fun things to do on Monday will be picking all the horrible seeds out of my O pants, I couldn't face it when we arrived at our nice accommodation.

C • Long Grass 16

Event: 2022 NSW State League #3/#4
 

It wasn't a great night for sleeping, because while not actually raining upon us, basically we were in the clouds and so there was steady dripping from the trees on to the tent all night long. I woke at first light and figured that rather than huddle in the dampness I'd go for a walk around the 4km loop although not scramble up to the top of Cathedral Rocks by myself. This is granite country which had been burned out in the fires 3 summers ago, and is regenerating ok I think; the marshy valleys reminded me a lot of Namadgi high country and definitely the replacement bridges on the walking track were very necessary as even tiny gullies are now flowing. Anyway, the highlight of this walk was that I saw no fewer than four lyrebirds, even startling a courting pair who sprang away from each other as though they had been busted canoodling! I heard at least a couple more also - the lyrebird is an amazing mimic and in fact you can tell when one is nearby because of the sound of about four different bird species all singing at once.

I wasn't particularly enthused for this event - we'd spent the morning viewing waterfalls at Ebor, and @Wollomombi where two rivers tumble over the cliffs from farmland and meet in a gorge far below, and we wished we'd had time to walk to more vantage points, but had already spent an hour at the fish hatchery (feeding rainbow trout is fun) between the two location - plus the event info implied very long grass which had pigs rootling in it. It also had a lot of orienteers rootling around looking for controls; I overshot my first one by only about 100m but it then seemed to take about 5 min to get back through the scrubby spiky green to the previous little spur where I needed to be. The blackberry patches were well mapped and could be navigated by, but the long grass could swallow up 1m boulders and their flags with ease.

So, I had to walk most of this, especially as new O shoes were killing my feet. Only other mistake was mistaking an unmapped linear bare rock (I know, it was too small for ISOM, but I was thinking about the tiny ones which were mapped last weekend) for the mapped one 200m further on, and stopping short to look in the wrong clump of rocks. Even with no errors I would still have taken nearly an hour though!

Afterwards we did the 3km walk to look at the indigenous rock art sites on Mt Yarrowyck before heading to 'camp' at a so-called shed which one of the local Armidale orienteers had made available on his property. Actually this turned out to be more like a house (kitchen! hot showers!) and about 10 Newcastle orienteers were camping there also, so I made some new friends :)

C • Newcaastle friends... 1

Clearer skies this morning and so I took the walking track from the campground around Dawson's Spring and to the summit where this time I had 360 degree views across the ancient volcano, then after breakfast G & I walked the short loop around the spring - basically, a hanging swamp overflows down a rock slab, creating an impressive little waterfall - and of course after breaking camp we went via the summit lookout too, before he drove back down the flanks of the caldera and I gibbered again at the narrow road. We then continued around to Sawn Rocks in the northern part of Kaputar NP and did the short walk to the most impressive hexagonal basalt columns which I have ever seen; the creek bed below the sheer organ-pipes cliffs was littered with them also. By the time we made it through the hills to Bingara it was well past lunchtime, getting warm in the car and we still had 3 hours to drive over towards Ebor Falls; very tempting to just check into a motel somewhere but I'd promised G waterfall country so we continued eastwards - as the altitude increased, so the temperature decreased and by the time we made it to the soggy drizzly campground at Cathedral Rock NP, we were at over 1400m altitude and temperature was down to 12 degrees and the sun had set completely by about 5:40 pm :(

C • Mt K 2

On our way north to Narrabri we passed Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (snigger) and Neptune. Did not go to Pluto because:
a) we'd already found it at Merriwa in Dec 2016 - there are actually 4 different incarnations of the World's Largest Virtual Solar System Drive radiating out from Coonabarabran on different highways;
b) we'd spent so much of the day on detours to Pilliga Pottery, Sandstone Caves and the Australia Telescope array (the giant radio telescope dishes are in motion on rails, how cool is that?) that it was already getting dark by the time we made it up the 20km of winding road to the campground in the saddle just below the top of 1510m Mt Kaputar. Also very foggy, although the rain had mostly passed, and when I went for a heavy-legged jog on roads up to the trig point lookout in the misty darkness after we'd set up the tent, even my headlamp wasn't of much assistance.

Back out to the national park this morning, passing Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury on the way: https://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/country-nsw/... (but we couldn't go right into Siding Spring Observatory itself).

From Camp Blackman which was the HH site for the 2006 WRC and where I'd decided we wouldn't camp this time because a campground with 100+ sites is not Geoff's idea of a good time, I ran a 5ish-km loop on the firetrails around the river flats with no shade and head high grasses on either side of the tracks, although being right in the basin of the old volcano did mean having 360-degree views of all the surrounding peaks and the observatory on high in the distance. This run would have earned me an entire 30 points during the WRC.

Afterwards I'd thought about walking up/around Belougery Split Rock but didn't want to do the rough trail without a buddy so settled for a 3km creek walk which G decided was too much for him anyway, then we drove out the western end of the national park and beyond the end of the ranges saw the signs pointing to Emu Logic which emu farm I remembered as having hosted one of the Detours on last year's Australian version of The Amazing Race. So we looked in there but it was pretty underwhelming, then drove north in a hot car on dirt roads to Baradine and the Pilliga Forest Discovery Centre (to get some ideas for tomorrow's touring) before heading back to Coona, as the locals call it!

Obviously, the reason for coming via Coonabarabran was to go bushwalking in the Warrumbungles, and on a day when it wasn't 35 degrees, unlike the WRC in Oct 2006. I hoped to get Geoff up as far as the Breadknife but was a bit worried about this after he'd run out of legs so early in the twilight rogaine, and I'd already figured that he wouldn't be up for the 14-15km Grand High Tops loop; as it turned out, the return track for that circuit is currently closed for maintenance. The main track up the valley starts out quite gently, is paved as it gets steeper, and eventually ends up in flights of stairs, so it was about 400m climb and 11-12km return to the high point of our walk which was a lookout above the Breadknife and with amazing views of other rock outcrops in all directions. G was definitely feeling it on the way back down though as it was quite a warm day, and even I was deeply grateful not to be going cross-country today - not sure how much thicker the scrub is now than before the 2013 fires, but there's no way on earth I would go rogaining through there now!

The Warrumbungles Mountain Motel is approx 8km from the outskirts of Coonabarabran and since we were heading in to town to the pub for dinner I decided to run there; having realised that the sun would set at 5:45 I did try to run faster but it was impossible as my knees in particular were not happy after the long descent this morning. Although, I was so speedy that I did pass Jupiter!