Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Verge garden update
Below is the other end - it struggled for a while but is coming into it's own. The white flower belongs to a Randwick geranium. There's actually almost exactly the same mix of plants this end as the other - I'm amazed by the difference.
I haven't quite got the layout to work - but you should be able to see (back at the lush end) the knotweed
Verge garden update
Below is the other end - it struggled for a while but is coming into it's own. The white flower belongs to a Randwick geranium. There's actually almost exactly the same mix of plants this end as the other - I'm amazed by the difference.
I haven't quite got the layout to work - but you should be able to see (back at the lush end) the knotweedSaturday, October 18, 2014
Kamay 20K
Kamay / Kurnell
This was a fantastic little run; if you can follow it to Google Earth somehow and check out the pictures you'll get a fair idea of the landscape. The refinery doesn't intrude on the consciousness at all. I didn't particularly enjoy the 3 km on sand at the start, although it was reasonably firm. The breakwaters were awkward, as was the concrete under the pier. This bit of beach - Silver Beach - is not the scenic highlight of the area. There were a couple of people out engaged in some kind of structured activity - musselling? Beachcombing? I'm not sure I'd eat anything from Botany Bay.
So, off the beach and into the National Park proper, the track starts off with the usual Sydney scrub before getting high / exposed enough to drive a complete change of vegetation to the flat, dense, what I think of as heath-like, bushes and grasses, stunted trees, and sandy paths.
Then down to the foreshore proper, lots of rocky shelfs (shelves?), interesting erosion patterns. This is trick running for me because I've had a couple of falls and I'm a bit of a foot dragger, so I tend to slow down more than is ideal for racing. Well, it's not really a race, I guess. I absolutely don't want to fall. This is the first real view of the ocean as well, and with the sun in the East (it's only just risen) the light is spectacular. I was too busy concentrating on the foot placement to really relish the view, but it's amazing the extent that you can be aware of your surroundings without paying too much attention.
After a couple of km along the rocks the trail turns back inland for, first of all, some sand dunes. It's not completely surprising that here should be sand dunes near an ocean, of course, but they're not so obvious from any of the maps I'd looked at before today. Plus, with so much rock, the sand is a little unexpected.
I ran up the first dune, but that was it. The next two I walked up, and ran down. Not easy to do, irritatingly, because the downside combined rocks and sand, so no relaxed stretch out & run. Mid dune, I noticed some blue grass - vivid blue - and on a second look, realised that the grass was in low lying water that was reflecting the sky with close to 100% fidelity - I'd loved to have taken a picture of that, I've never see water reflect blue so truly before.
Hopefully you're getting some idea of the complexity of the landscape - the dunes debouched us onto the rocks again for a brief spell, then we headed back inland for ..... the puddles! The race director had warned us there was water on the track (Kurnel had 5 1/4 inches of rain on Tuesday) and there'd been the odd puddle, but nothing unavoidable. I had been thinking he was being a tad alarmist, but in the next 5 km there were a lot of puddles, 10 to 20 metres long, with nothing to do but run through them. Of course, you can't see what's at the bottom of a puddle, so there's lot's of foot lifting to avoid trip hazards, which means lots of splash as well. And lots of mud. Plus now, with wet feet, every bid of sand you run through attaches itself to your shoes.
About here we ran through some amazing stands of wind-blown purple flowering things that looked a little bit like small leaved geraniums, masses of them, very pretty. Next year I think I'll run this course with a camera strapped to my head! The path through the flowers was wet, narrow, muddy, puddly, and led straight to the most exciting section of the course, the bog. I'm not completely clear why the fact that there was a shoe sucking swamp at the 10 km mark wasn't mentioned in the pre-race notes. It would have been quite useful to know! At one stage here I was up to the knees in mud. Awesome.
You can see from the link that the course is mainly out and back, and the turnaround was not far post-bog. Coming back I noticed trail markings (pink ribbon mainly) that cut off about 80% of the swamp, so perhaps it wasn't the race director's fault. It may have been mine for not looking hard enough. I'm not completely convinced - I wasn't the only person to get bogged. In fairness to all, laying down trail markings in the pre-dawn (the 30k people were starting at 6:30, so the trail has to be marked efore them) cannot be easy. But following a trail isn't easy either - what the marker sees when laying a mark is not necessarily what the hounds see when following; the perspectives are different. The hare sees the turn AT the turn, already knowing where it is; the hound sees markers 100 meters off without knowing that they mark a turn. Once you've decided they don't mark a turn, you don't normally turn your head to check - worrying about your next footfall is a priority.
The course is largely out and back, so the out is, in the main, the story. One problem with this kind of course for me is where to drink? I hate stopping, because after about 12 km it's very hard to get moving again, but I don't like running without watching my feet, which is impossible if your head is tilted back guzzling fluids. The solution proved to be drinking while walking up the sand dunes. Pleasantly, on the return, the downhills were all soft sand so it was possible to stretch out. You don't go that fast, to be honest, because it's still soft sand, but it feels much better.
Connoisseurs of map reading will notice an odd detour at around about the 16 km mark. There were a couple of deviations from the outward trail on the way back - so we could practice running on new and unusual serrated (striated?) rock surfaces - and I overshot a turnoff to head down the large and very visible road. I was starting to worry (no pink ribbons) when I met three returning runners who nicely told me that they were lost, so we retraced our footsteps together and found the missing path. It was so obvious on return, it was impossible to believe we'd missed it. I don't know how far they had been ahead of me, and I felt a twinge of remorse as I set off down the correct path in front of them, but their detour had clearly taken more out of them than me and I stayed ahead of them until the end. This last section of the run was a lot of fun; back on solid dirt, no major obstacles, downhill-ish, and trees overhead, so shade. even though it was only 8:30, it was hot without cover. I like the last 3 km, anyway, in all my races. I usually have enough left for a finishing burst to express my mounting optimism. This possibly means I should have run harder earlier, but I don't see it, myself.
I'm very happy with the time. Wingello was 1:49 for a full 21 km; this was only 20 km, so the 1:41 is not quite as good as it sounds, but the terrain was not easy. Wingello was hard, but primarily only because of a large hill, or seven. but the Wingello trail was mainly fire-trail and dirt road, so easy underfoot.(footnote: I won my section - but missed the prize due to presentation absence.)
For sure I'm doing this one again. And I think I'll be back to the National Park as well, for recreation, because there's a lot more. Annoyingly, it's 1 hour 25 minutes by public transport from the city, so it's a bit awkward for excursions.
This was a fantastic little run; if you can follow it to Google Earth somehow and check out the pictures you'll get a fair idea of the landscape. The refinery doesn't intrude on the consciousness at all. I didn't particularly enjoy the 3 km on sand at the start, although it was reasonably firm. The breakwaters were awkward, as was the concrete under the pier. This bit of beach - Silver Beach - is not the scenic highlight of the area. There were a couple of people out engaged in some kind of structured activity - musselling? Beachcombing? I'm not sure I'd eat anything from Botany Bay.
So, off the beach and into the National Park proper, the track starts off with the usual Sydney scrub before getting high / exposed enough to drive a complete change of vegetation to the flat, dense, what I think of as heath-like, bushes and grasses, stunted trees, and sandy paths.
After a couple of km along the rocks the trail turns back inland for, first of all, some sand dunes. It's not completely surprising that here should be sand dunes near an ocean, of course, but they're not so obvious from any of the maps I'd looked at before today. Plus, with so much rock, the sand is a little unexpected.
I ran up the first dune, but that was it. The next two I walked up, and ran down. Not easy to do, irritatingly, because the downside combined rocks and sand, so no relaxed stretch out & run. Mid dune, I noticed some blue grass - vivid blue - and on a second look, realised that the grass was in low lying water that was reflecting the sky with close to 100% fidelity - I'd loved to have taken a picture of that, I've never see water reflect blue so truly before.
Hopefully you're getting some idea of the complexity of the landscape - the dunes debouched us onto the rocks again for a brief spell, then we headed back inland for ..... the puddles! The race director had warned us there was water on the track (Kurnel had 5 1/4 inches of rain on Tuesday) and there'd been the odd puddle, but nothing unavoidable. I had been thinking he was being a tad alarmist, but in the next 5 km there were a lot of puddles, 10 to 20 metres long, with nothing to do but run through them. Of course, you can't see what's at the bottom of a puddle, so there's lot's of foot lifting to avoid trip hazards, which means lots of splash as well. And lots of mud. Plus now, with wet feet, every bid of sand you run through attaches itself to your shoes.
About here we ran through some amazing stands of wind-blown purple flowering things that looked a little bit like small leaved geraniums, masses of them, very pretty. Next year I think I'll run this course with a camera strapped to my head! The path through the flowers was wet, narrow, muddy, puddly, and led straight to the most exciting section of the course, the bog. I'm not completely clear why the fact that there was a shoe sucking swamp at the 10 km mark wasn't mentioned in the pre-race notes. It would have been quite useful to know! At one stage here I was up to the knees in mud. Awesome.
You can see from the link that the course is mainly out and back, and the turnaround was not far post-bog. Coming back I noticed trail markings (pink ribbon mainly) that cut off about 80% of the swamp, so perhaps it wasn't the race director's fault. It may have been mine for not looking hard enough. I'm not completely convinced - I wasn't the only person to get bogged. In fairness to all, laying down trail markings in the pre-dawn (the 30k people were starting at 6:30, so the trail has to be marked efore them) cannot be easy. But following a trail isn't easy either - what the marker sees when laying a mark is not necessarily what the hounds see when following; the perspectives are different. The hare sees the turn AT the turn, already knowing where it is; the hound sees markers 100 meters off without knowing that they mark a turn. Once you've decided they don't mark a turn, you don't normally turn your head to check - worrying about your next footfall is a priority.
The course is largely out and back, so the out is, in the main, the story. One problem with this kind of course for me is where to drink? I hate stopping, because after about 12 km it's very hard to get moving again, but I don't like running without watching my feet, which is impossible if your head is tilted back guzzling fluids. The solution proved to be drinking while walking up the sand dunes. Pleasantly, on the return, the downhills were all soft sand so it was possible to stretch out. You don't go that fast, to be honest, because it's still soft sand, but it feels much better.
Connoisseurs of map reading will notice an odd detour at around about the 16 km mark. There were a couple of deviations from the outward trail on the way back - so we could practice running on new and unusual serrated (striated?) rock surfaces - and I overshot a turnoff to head down the large and very visible road. I was starting to worry (no pink ribbons) when I met three returning runners who nicely told me that they were lost, so we retraced our footsteps together and found the missing path. It was so obvious on return, it was impossible to believe we'd missed it. I don't know how far they had been ahead of me, and I felt a twinge of remorse as I set off down the correct path in front of them, but their detour had clearly taken more out of them than me and I stayed ahead of them until the end. This last section of the run was a lot of fun; back on solid dirt, no major obstacles, downhill-ish, and trees overhead, so shade. even though it was only 8:30, it was hot without cover. I like the last 3 km, anyway, in all my races. I usually have enough left for a finishing burst to express my mounting optimism. This possibly means I should have run harder earlier, but I don't see it, myself.
I'm very happy with the time. Wingello was 1:49 for a full 21 km; this was only 20 km, so the 1:41 is not quite as good as it sounds, but the terrain was not easy. Wingello was hard, but primarily only because of a large hill, or seven. but the Wingello trail was mainly fire-trail and dirt road, so easy underfoot.(footnote: I won my section - but missed the prize due to presentation absence.)
For sure I'm doing this one again. And I think I'll be back to the National Park as well, for recreation, because there's a lot more. Annoyingly, it's 1 hour 25 minutes by public transport from the city, so it's a bit awkward for excursions.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Botany Bay - Spring
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)