Training Log Archive: jennycas

With Zara & Fern.This event had 3 options for the 6 hour: 10 am Sat, 2 pm Sat, 10am Sun, originally intended to satisfy gathering limits of 80 (but in fact in SA they're now up to 300). Bundaleer used to be a lovely tall pine forest (as I remembered from the 6-hour in 2010 which Steve & I somehow won by cleaning up the course in 42km) but was mostly burned out in 2013 and there are big sections of fallen burned logs although also some replantings; it's privately owned now but still a working forest. So that was the south part of the map, leading up to the stone walls on the ridgeline in the SW and actually there were some controls in farmland dropping down the ridge on the western side (this was slower going than we had anticipated, and also rather foggy), then the northern part was more grazing country with a bit of cropping - flatter & more open and maybe we should have gone that way first rather than getting there as it was getting dark, since we ended up reconfiguring that part to give more options towards the end in case Fern's legs suddenly said nope, this being her longest run since BC (before children) but actually she managed to run the whole last hour.

A bit annoyed to lose 10 points for being 25 sec late when we thought we had half a minute up our sleeve(s) but I shouldn't have counted on the event's elapsed time being 6 hours from the start, when the start time was a minute late...anyway, we lost far more time than that on getting over fences, because when you have a team of 3, this takes a while. And since Zara was definitely the fastest runner, we gifted her the team's single Navlight tag so that she could do all the punching at controls :) Although we covered about 7km in both the first and the last hours, intervening hours were only about 5km each, reflecting slower/steeper terrain then uncertainty of footing on drizzly hillsides in darkness, although it never got wet enough to need a raincoat, which is good because Fern & I had decided it wasn't worth carrying them.

Obviously I'm 20% slower than I was 10 years ago, but at least this felt better than the 6 hour at Mt Lofty in Sept 2018, after which my hamstring took 6 months to come good.

C • 300 8

Just a short one with Fern & Zara, feeling rather out of breath.

Evalin said we were going to "an oval 1.5km up the river, which may or may not have lights" and we all looked at her blankly. This turned out to mean St Peters River Park, which is definitely not lit up, but with 3 headlamps between 9 of us it sort of worked, all doing 6 laps of the approx 450m circumference playing field. This turned into chasie at times, complete with Simon's banshee impersonations, so I daresay the locals are still wondering who was being murdered down at the billabong!

Including the Hackney suspension bridge :)

More exercise than I did (or did not do) on June 29th last year. Orange glow over the ocean definitely lasted longer than any residual warmth from the setting sun.

C • 2019 11

G & I took parents for a walk in Belair (sightings of kangaroos, koalas, and the adventure playground's ice cream van - which was our intended destination) and afterwards I ran home down through the MTB trails and quarries of Randell's Reserve since I'd never been on the Randell X-over singletrack before but saw the sign for it last weekend. Gloriously sunny day with fabulous views, so this was mostly enjoyable although I had to grit my teeth for the last half hour on pavement.