Training Log Archive: Jacko

Rode to Kindy with Anthony on the trailer bike for a morning on kindy duty. Spun all the kids so fast on the roundabout that the teacher was almost having kittens and checking her public liability policy. Then rode back in the afternoon to pick him up.

C • Round-a-bout 1

Now onto the 2nd bike leg and now we didn't have a map at all and luckily Pulsation were happy to have us along for the ride. Their lights were getting worse and our nav in the rogaine must have impressed them....... don't know why coz I had us wondering around looking for 21 for a while as it looked to me like it should have bordered the fence line. Wally enjoyed showing us into the landing strip though when we bumped into him as we back tracked.

Looking at the map now I realise how much the course we took with Pulsation differed from our planned route. This certainly cost us a lot of time but at the time we were tired and I think I just accepted we were lucky to be continuing at all. I was involved with the nav a little but they were fairly quick on the bikes and we had to work hard to keep up leaving little time to consult them over nav. My fear of them riding off and leaving us without a map prevented me from trying to take over nav duty. The result was a long route to 25 which now explains why we saw Paddy Pallin ride past us at 24 yet we didn't ride that way. On our map we had planned to take their route also to 25. (by now I know I won?t ever make the map mistake again!) We actually over shot 25 and as we walked back up to it Wally80 came into it and claimed to lead us to another control...... grrrrr;-)

Got 26 Ok and then the fun started. When we hit Cirello Road we followed pulsation along the first track left and lead us into private property. I muttered something to them like "we really should see signs of a railway on our right" and they replied "theres no railway near here" and rode of up some guys driveway. We had no option but to follow in our map absence and pretty soon we had a dog chasing us and a half dressed stoner guy yelling at us with a rifle in his hand (that is no joke). I calmed him when I said we were in a race and he wasn't suddenly in "Close encounters of the 3rd Kind". Puslation even asked him for directions so he put the rifle on the tray of his ute and said "Go back and turn left over the railway" After that they were more inclined to listen to my nav advice!

Riding into the last TA it was freezing so we moved onto the last trek as quick as possible. This was a long walk which was a little frustrating as it was ideal for a steady plod home but Matt's knee was sore and he hobbled home with lots of groaning and leaning on me on the down hills.

Overall really happy to finish without being short coursed, although by skipping 8, 29, 30 and 31 we effectively short coursed ourselves. Our limited speed on foot was frustrating as we found our first trek was really good being able to run. Even though he beat us overall, a highlight was Wally's face when he arrived at the finish to find me showered and dressed.

Personally I was really happy with my food intake and felt great throughout the race. Nav is definitely improving and the addition of Dolf to the team was a huge benefit for his nav and also his humour..... Luckily Liz is a great sport and enjoys all the banter. Really good to now know a few faces in these races, not only for a bit of banter (and help thanks Wally) on the course but also to catch up with after and share stories. Thanks guys and gals

C • Railway 11

Event: Espresso 24hr Adventure Race
 

Our teams main goal for this race was to finish without being short coursed and personally I wanted to feel like I had nothing left at the end of the race.

The paddle leg went generally well. I was concerned when we had to switch to our second kayak before we had even started as the first was going down as we inflated it. Unfortunately the second turned out to be pretty ordinary too as we found at the end as we emptied enough water to fill a bathtub. The water had somehow got between the bladder and the skin. To my great relief I was later told "Don't worry Muz has bought the boats now and is going to fix them all up"........ I paddled with Liz and we had the pleasure of leading Team Paddy Pallin by a whisker for part of this race (albeit only for a few seconds and we hadn't lost sight of the starting bridge yet but we'll take it)

The paddle included a few exciting bits like where I was helping some other teams get over a log and while pulling our boat over Liz let go of her paddle and it disappeared under the log. Luckily it popped up about 5 meters down river shortly after which resulted in a desperate dive and swim for me. After that we managed to beach ourselves on almost every slightly submerged log. Unfortunately the boat seemed to get harder and harder to keep straight as the race went on (later realised this was probably because of one side filling up). All in all a long hard slog that really could have been 5km shorter. Once Matt and Dolf arrived we hauled the boats up and shivered through transition to get nice dry socks and shoes on only to have to take them off for the rope bridge.

In the spirit of Team Ranga Liz was easily the fastest across the ropes, or so she kept saying anyway. Onto the 1st trek and we were able to get a steady jog going for all but the up hills and we naved pretty well for what were fairly easy CP's. By the end however Matt's ITB was really playing up so that was the end of running or even shuffling for the remainder of the race.

Came into TA2 just after dark Said hi to a happy Rowl by the fire and hit the bikes. We got on the wrong track coming out of the TA but just ended up changing our route to 5 we soon realised that there was gonna be a lot of pushing of the bikes. On the way to 6 we got a bit lost and bumped into Danger and Boltboi and some other team who all seemed equally disorientated. Boltboi and Danger seemed pretty confident after a brief map check and we thought that was good enough for us so we headed down to 6 after them. When they took off back up the hill we had just come down Dolf suggested a short cut which paid off and after the hellish climb to 7 from the southern track we descended the west side to find Danger and co about to start the climb up to it. Skipped 8 as we had already decided to just get the basic course and hopefully finish well. In retrospect sitting at my desk looking at the map we should have gone to 8 but hey..... Rode straight past 9 so had to back track about 200m to go and find it. Meanwhile Pulsation came passed and wondered what we were looking for as they didn't even think there was a CP 9. They were happy to come back and find it with us. Luckily they returned the favour in spades when we discovered I had put the maps for the next 2 legs in the wrong tub.... Sorry Dolf I should have listened to you at TA 2.

So at TA 3/4 our realisation that we didn't have the maps hit and I had to hang my head in shame. Luckily Team pulsation were happy to have us tag along with them. This turned out to be a good partnership as there lights were terrible and there nav only slightly better. Our lights were great......

As we were about to leave and share a map 4 sprightly looking athlete types in Paddy Pallin shirts bounded into the TA so I took the opportunity to ask the old wise owl who seemed to be there leader if I could have his discarded map. After briefly telling him our predicament he looked at me the way a teacher does to a child with special needs and handed me the map...... Thanks Tooms!
The rogaine took us a little over 2 hours for 80mins time bonus (4 CP's on the east side). Enough said, need to plan that better next time.