End to end TVT

Endomondo Running Workout:  18.57 km in 2h:05m:00s

Sharon and I went on a good run at a steady pace (both still post-marathon) up past the waterfall and along cup-and-saucer creek and eventually by a bit of black magic that I didn't quite understand and couldn't really guarantee to replicate onto Bexley Rd and down to the M7 (or maybe the M5) where the TVT (two valley track for new viewers) actually begins. Or ends. Anyway, this was good because I've only been able to find half of the TVT whenever I've gone out on my own, and running both valleys is obviously better. I'm looking to increase the amount of trail running, and even though it's not the most difficult, sorry, technical, trail in Sydney, it's not a road. It has rocks, hills, trees and water crossings. And some rather poor signposting, meaning it's almost impossible not to get lost. Not so badly lost that you can't get un-lost fairly easily though. Of course, in addition to being off road, in summer it being under-tree is a huge bonus as well, typically 5 or so degrees cooler along the track compared to the road.

We met a few people on the track; there's a definite moral hierarchy involved with being a track user; clearly, judging by the disapproving looks and lack of cheer, bird-watchers believe themselves to be higher up the hierarchy than runners. Walkers don't appear to be particularly morally sensitive, but dog walkers all clearly have guilty consciences. Cyclists, thankfully, aren't seen.

Tracks are interesting things. Since I was eleven, I've been thinking about them; how they form, how they evolve, how they disappear. People follow each other, but in the beginning there aren't many clues about where to go. So "follow" isn't quite the right word. A track comes into being as an average of new attempts to go somewhere. Changes happen through a mixture of accident and enhancement. I'm thinking about this because at the point where we got lost, the one track has developed two offshoots. One of those I've seen before, but it is much deeper now. More people have pushed along it, each one perhaps a little further before deciding that it is the wrong track and turning around. One day perhaps it will no longer be the wrong track, because its end point will be somewhere useful. The other false path we followed is new to me (I've been lost at this point before). As you'd expect from a new path, it's quite short. But it will also probably continue to grow.

Both of these false tracks came into being, presumably, because the bush mimicked the first metre of the continuation of the real track, leading people astray. Impressive mimicry, when you consider that the real track is there, it's by no means invisible or overgrown; when you find it after trying the two dead ends you wonder why you didn't immediately see it.

Further along, though, someone;s decided to take a hand and run a bulldozer through the bushland. Yes, well, that's a track too.

This reminds me, suddenly, of a conversation I overheard, and some thoughts I had thunk after Jabulani. One guy was complaining, moderately heatedly, that he would have been competitive in the 46 km event if it hadn't been for the incredibly bad signage. He'd had to wait, on several occasions apparently, for someone to catch up with him and show him the way. Like me, it was his first run in the National Park. The organiser was a bit surprised; the track was well signposted, he said. I was ambivalent; my own view was that the directions the organisers had provided were pretty sub-par; they were directions written by someone who knew the route too well and didn't have the imagination to look at it with a stranger's anxious eyes. But having said that, even though I had a lot of doubts, I was able to follow these sub-par directions to the finish. Perhaps this complaining runner just wasn't accustomed to reading the signs of the bush; perhaps he read them in a different language, coming from a country or a region where the bush is not the same. Perhaps, short of providing every runner with one end of Ariadne's thread, it is impossible to map an unequivocal path through the bush.