An unpleasant day for a run

I posted a couple of days ago about the poor quality weather we have been having.  After a reasonable day on Friday yesterday returned to ordinary with 11.8mm of rain and strong winds.  Today has delivered less rain (2.6mm so far) still strong winds and the temperature has thus far (13:30) only staggered up to 4.9C.  (That was nearly the maximum: it got to 5.2 at 14:20!)

This made my decision to go to Mt Ainslie for the ACT Veterans Athletics Handicap somewhat difficult, but participating would maintain my stagger towards 100 handicaps completed and maintain my eligibility for awards.

When I arrived I was struck by the number of people wearing down parkas and vests.  Some of them maintained this attire for their run/walk.
The second striking thing was the low number of cars in the parking area.  My estimate was about 50% less than usual for this event.
The starters were dressed for the occasion.  I have never before noticed their clocks being in waterproof covers, but can see it would be sensible on days like this.
To put it mildly the track was not in great condition, although it did remind of school cross country in the UK.  At least there wasn't a ploughed field (nor a paddock full of incontinent bovines) to negotiate!
The pre-event notes mentioned the word "undulation".  Here is the first one.  Possibly due to the amount of clothing I was wearing (full thermals, shorts, tee-shirt and spray jacket) plus the high traction mud I was finding it difficult to get going and didn't mind pausing to take some photos.
Another undulation along the back of Campbell Park offices.  The field was a little spread out and sparser than usual.  Note also the individualist (in black on far RHS of the track) running towards me.  They didn't even have the excuse of running in a series, so could only rely on a defence of weakness of intellect for not being somewhere warmer and drier.
This is not Sir John Franklin, nor Captain Oates, but a former President of the Vets showing his style as he marshalled people up towards the Ainslie-Majura saddle.  Well done for schlepping a full length Driza-Bone that far!
 I used the word 'up' in the previous paragraph.  This image does not do justice to the slope of the 8th kilometre.
 Finally the welcome sight of the finish.  The officials are still wearing their wet and cold weather gear!
I didn't take 85 minutes for the 9.3km: I suspect more like 57 which is still pretty blooming slow.  I will take a leaf from Prone, the physician on the expedition covered by the Ascent of Rumdoodle, and claim to have been suffering from photo-lassitude.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more