Just two of us in the end, and we drove through a light drizzle up to Hunter's Hill to get to the edge of the Lane Cove National Park. This is a resource which is slowly being eaten away by developers; I don't know how long it has to go. It's huge, so I guess a while. Plus the locals are both well heeled and articulate so there may be limits to how far claims that new corporate premises will be integrated "lightly" into bushland. And despite everything, this run (which you can see is squeezed into a pretty thin strip of bushland on the river bank) is not appreciably different to running through, say, the "real" bush; and it's only 20 minutes from Marrickville with Sunday AM traffic.
You can see we had to take a detour through a bit of suburb; the track & bridge were being refurbished due to the summer fires; there are boardwalks laid down at strategic points across the mangrove swamps, and presumably these were damaged by fire.
Liz has been paddling up the Lane Cove River recently on Saturdays. It's a much more significant entity than the Cooks River, for sure, where I think a canoe would get grounded at low tide. Even though you are very close to suburbia you still feel the quiet of nature. OK, quiet plus birds. But birds aren't all bad if you're not trying to sleep.
It's startling the variety of ground; primarily three kinds, the swamp, the sandstone and the soil, but these have their own internal variations and there are also sections of domesticated land, cleared and grassed with little beaches on the river banks. Surprising to see no sign of any boats though; in the bits of Middle Harbour (further north) that I've seen, where the landscape is vaguely similar, anything resembling water access has boats, even if they're old rowing boats chained to a tree. Perhaps the council here is less sympathetic.
All the variety of ground makes the running even harder. Nothing's flat, so you're either going up or downhill, both of which are hard work. There's rocks, logs, rocks and mud to avoid on the path, and trees to get under - not too many - plus branches to dodge. It takes a degree of concentration, which is fine on the first 10k or so, but not so easy as you get near to home on the way back. When I'm tired I mainly like to concentrate on breathing (it makes a surprising difference - given that you could do it without thinking - to pay attention to the mechanics) but with trail running concentration has to be on the path. Even more given that I was running without glasses, due to the previously mentioned fog issue. Anyway, no falls this time, unlike the NOSH where I went head-over-heels in the last kilometer.
I was pleased to stop though. Only 18 km this week, but I swear it was harder than the 21 last weekend. Still, I had a look at the Sydney Marathon course yesterday, and it has a lot of hills. I se more of these trail runs in my future.
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