Training Log Archive: shanel

Distances guessed so far.

Event: Bassendean Metro Series
 

Event: Australian Rogaining Championships
 

Where Eagles Soar - Tasmania (with Andre)

We were going to plan an 84km course, but in typical fashion this turned into more like 86.5, and whilst this was very optimistic and would require a dream run, we had some easy to drop controls around the 50-60km marks.

Between our 1st and 2nd controls we tested out a couple of steep gullies, which resulted in us concluding that should stay away from any similar ones. Soon after we made a 300m climb over about 1100m to a control on a rocky, scrambly razor back spur, to find that the navlight punch didn't work, so we had to write down it's secret code.

Anyway we soon started to fall behind schedule and our first water drop which was meant to be at the 5 hr mark pushed out to 6 hrs, and since it was quite a hot afternoon Andre ran dry for an hour or two, and I survived on sips till just before the water drop.

Soon after refilling our drinks we dropped a control which gave us a nice bit of track time rather than more nasty gully time and started the trimming back of our course. By the time we got to the 40km mark which we'd planned to reach at 10pm I think it was already 11:30. So we dropped a 40 pointer and cut out the NW corner, which would hopefully save about 3 hrs and get us back on track.

We didn't have too much trouble finding any controls until around 4:30-5:00, just when we were thinking it would be light again soon, thus started a run right through to the end of Andre and I taking turns to loose concentration, and luckily just loose a few extra minuts finding controls. I think one of the causes of this was that after Andre had pushed the pace and led from the start ( and me struggling to hang on) and then after dark I started to lead more, around daylight we started yo-yoing with me pushing the pace up the hills and then Andre pushing the pace down hills and across the rocky stuff (me struggling to keep up again), so I think, we did't have one person leading for each leg and we'd also started loosing concentration.

Anyway after our second last control Andre zoomed off up and over our last hill, leaving me to gave to run to catch up eventually on the road, and the rest of the way back I just couldn't walk at Andres pace, so I kept having to run to catch up and get ahead a bit (the road felt like the hardest surface I've ever run on) and then from the last control we had to run all of the last 1.5 km back to the HH as the final minutes quickly ticked down and past, with us getting in 37 secs late (I think).

After bugging the admin guy (because there too slack to read all the results) looks like we got a very pleasing 7th overall and tRicky and Mark Imbert got 3rd overall. If we hadn't lost 10 points for running late we would of got 6th and ther were so many times we could of saved that time, even up to the last control.

Other noteworthy things were seeing an Echinda, a Wombat with a baby, Andre saw a Tassie Devil, plus heaps of Wallabies. And last week the bridges to get across the river to the northern 2/3rds of the map were flooded, which would of made for an interesting event if it had happened this week.

C • Great stuff! 2

Nearly the same as yesterday, light and easy with a few bursts of speed. On the second sprint, going down hill, I got up to 20kph, but when I wanted to drop back the pace I had too much momentum still going down hill and had to run it out a bit more before I eased off again.

Light and easy keeping loosener, with a few short bursts of speed, working on the theory that I don't want my legs to get too use to taking it easy.