Street-O @ Yarra Bend

The last Saturday event until daylight savings ends. A nice warm day and a well-set course - but I found it hard going! I did my usual Course A, but came in after 54 minutes. Lots of short walking breaks.

8.3 km in 6:31/km

No run for me last night - I was course setter for the last Street-O in this current series. I got to sit around in the cold waiting for people to come back in.

On my way to the event, I pulled up behind a car with Qld plates and noticed the slogin: QUEENSLAND - THE SMART STATE. Indeed. This is the same "smart" state whose Premier agreed that daylight savings caused increased rates of skin cancer. Right...

I have a bird tale to share with you.

I was out this morning "inspecting" the garden when a female King Parrot landed on the clothesline and reminded me that the bird feeder needed refilling.

I took feeder and birdseed over to the deck lounger - I sat down straddling the lounger, with the feeder sitting on the lounger between my knees (if that makes sense). As I unscrewed the feeder, the parrot landed on the edge of the chair and waited for me to take the bottom off. So I'm sitting there holding the feeder upside down, and the parrot is picking sunflower seeds from the tray just inches from my hand.

Way cool.

She actually brushed against me at one stage as she worked her way around the edge of the feeder. So tame! She even nibbled my finger when the seeds ran out - lucky she didn't bite!

And there was a rainbow lorikeet squarking in frustration on the deck, too nervous to join us on the lounger where the food was!

Street-O @ Waverley Woods

The last of the Monday Specials. Judy had set a Wonka-O complete with Golden Tickets and letterboxes full of chocolates. I didn't find any golden tickets (but Rick said I must have missed the one at #13), but got one chocolate from #34. If I'd known they were worth 5 points each, I might have grabbed one from #6 as well, but it was hard enough carrying one. We had to get them home uneaten to collect the 5 points.

Had a nice steady run, with the usual stops at each control point to write down the tag number, and argue with Rick about #13. I only planned to run for 30-40 minutes, but each time I decided to get "just one more". Finally called it quits after a long slog uphill from #7.

The guy at the pizza shop came out with a large hawaiian pizza once we were all back in (his treat! awesome...), and Judy exchanged the Golden Tickets for Wonka Bars, so everyone went home fed and happy.

Hip is good, although I'll roll around on the rubber ball once I've posted this. My right glute felt a bit sore (on the other side) - probably a leftover from the weekend, but I'll roll around on that side too.

Distance	Avg pace	Avg HR
8.0 km	6:39 /km	159 bpm (84%)

Victorian Orienteering Champs

An orienteering weekend away with the Middle Distance Champs on Saturday and the Long Distance Champs on Sunday - both events out towards Ballarat. We'd had to pre-enter a few weeks earlier, so I'd entered down a grade because I wasn't sure what my hip would be up to. I went in W21AS - "A Short".

Sailors Creek

Lovely flattish, open, runnable forest, and I ran nearly the whole course. Once I'd remembered the difference between a pit (brown V) and a mineshaft (black V) and found the first control, I was off - nailing every control, not wasting time, and generally having a good run.

My feet hurt a bit across the top of the arch - I was wearing my orienteering shoes which have spikes and a hard sole, and I guess my feet were out of practice on the hard terrain. Both hips were a bit achy afterwards from the jarring.

Course: 5 (W21AS)
Course Length: 3.2 km
Actual Distance: 3.5 km (red-lining it!)
Elevation: 92m
Time taken: 44 minutes

Second place (out of 4)

Overnight at Paddys Ranges State Park

Beautiful area. Very glad I packed my sub-zero sleeping bag as the temperature dropped below zero overnight. As long as I didn't wriggle too much and let any cold air in, I was toasty warm.



edit: -4°C in Ballarat overnight.

Mount Beckworth

Hilly, rocks everywhere, and a lot hotter than yesterday. Today was the real reason I dropped down a grade - my "proper" grade (W35A) was twice as long.

I don't navigate very well in rocks, and the brown squiggly things in this area (contour lines) are too complex to make much sense. I started by dropping down to the road and following it until I had a clear entry point to control #1. From there I went okay, carefully following rock features and having an amazing run of luck. I pretty much landed straight on top of each control, and at no time did I wonder where the hell I was or where the control might be hiding.

I wore my softer trail shoes and had no problems with my feet. Hips were fine.

Course: 10 (W21AS)
Course Length: 3.9 km
Actual Distance: 4.9 km
Elevation: 310m
Time Taken: 1:14

First place! (out of 2)

bling:

Street-O @ Wantirna South

An excellent run - the hip moved very freely and I could maintain a steady pace up and down the shallow hills. Felt strong. It was a nice course too - the controls followed each other easily and I didn't need a lot of time to map-read. Only a couple of very short walking breaks. All up, a very good night.

Back 30 seconds late, but who's counting.

6.4 km in 6:02/km average pace.

Hip Update

Visit to the Myo last night. I told him the sorry story of the last 5 weeks (rolled ankle, no activity, rubber ball torture) and he showed me photos from his Safari trip to Africa.

He's happy that the rubber ball seems to be doing the trick, as he dug his elbow into my hip and butt. I'm allowed to do short runs and take Voltarin afterwards. I also need to get back into my morning walks as walking helps strengthen the medius muscle. He gave me a couple of exercises to do too - stand on one leg, and slump and raise the opposite hip; and on my back in 'bridge' to activate the glutes. He's not too fussed about muscle strength/weakness though - it's fine. He only gave me these exercises because I asked him about them.

I've also been under attack from my sinuses for the last few days - and now that our caring government has removed the only decent drug from the market (pseudoephedrine), I'm stuck with some half-arsed substitute that only lasts four hours and doesn't do as good a job. Ugh.

Run tonight - running helps the head, if not the hip. And I have good drugs for the hip(!)

Street-O @ Maroondah Triangle

This was my course. I had everyone collecting street names, with a twist - the value of the control was based on the scrabble score for the initial letter of the street sign.

The hip behaved and I had an enjoyable short run - 6 kms in 6:37/km.

This is part the report I wrote for the Street-O website:

Scrabble-O

One of the privileges of being the course setter [on a Monday Special] is that you can plan the perfect route in advance. The one that will net you the greatest number of controls or the highest possible score in the shortest possible distance. Pre-planning means that you can simply run without having to calculate "where to next", or endless route choices and changes of plan.

I did none of these things.

The aim of tonight's run was to collect the first letter of the street sign. "Hopkin's Notation" was introduced early on in the season, and I've always found it easier to look for large plain street signs than small fiddly yellow post tags. So street signs it was.

To make it more interesting, the value of each control was based on scrabble scoring. So a street sign at Joseph St gave you a "J", which in scrabble terms is worth 8 points. Posts which had 2 street signs were worth double points. The sign on the corner of Beaufort Rd and Diana St gave a "B" and a "D" which equals (3+2)*2=10. This meant that you didn't know the value of the control until you got there.

With 25 controls on offer there were plenty of options.

I hadn't realised how far it was to #4, or how steep the hill was near #6. I'd forgotten which controls had doubles and I couldn't remember which one the triple was at. And what a stupid place to put #10 (sorry!). It made a lot more sense in the daylight, and in the car.

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, which is the main thing. :-)

Weekend update

Planted out a tiny bit of garden on Saturday, and spent most of Sunday stripping wallpaper and cleaning walls in the toilet and laundry. This particular wallpaper (yellow flowers) didn't want to come off so it wasn't as easy as it should have been.

Then went for a walk around Lillydale Lake with two beagles and their owner - nearly 7 km in 2 hours. Bloody freezing.

My weight is fluctuating between 72 and 74kgs, and the hip is mostly behaving itself. When I miss my rubber ball torture for a few days, it starts to get achy again, so I guess it's not quite 100% yet.

Street-O @ Montmorency

Wahoo, I'm running again! Very hilly area, and I took a few hill breaks, but the running felt good and the hip played along. Warm evening - WeatherZone recorded 25 degrees at 7pm.

One blonde moment when three of us (girls!) had trouble deciding which way to leave control #20 (should have followed Len (it was a complex map, okay!!)); and a control oops at #6 which cost Dale and I a few minutes. The map was correct - there was a lit lamppost at the control point - but no control. We found it eventually hidden at the base of an unlit power pole.

Back a few minutes late.

5.7 km in 40 minutes. MotionBased has my moving pace at 6:54/km (including walks)