Sunday saw yet again another training walk - this time tackling another 3 stages - we headed off at the reasonable hour of 8.30am from St Ives show grounds, heading off with a large group of walkers. One thing we've noticed about Oxfam is you see all shapes, ages and sizes out training, and this group had a bit of everything. We did the old "we're jogging as much as we can.." line, they made lots of comments and we headed off on our own only to bottle neck at a high barbed wire fence that we needed to scale and jump over, very clumsily. We left them and headed off, retracing the steps we got lost in St Ives the previous week. All good with steady running, and Mia and Tracy having a good chat about gardening and gardening techniques......being a non gardener I studied the map, my feet and anything else of interest, thinking "she's going to be a long day". Seriously though, whatever it takes, even if it means gardening chat to get us through... After a bit of civilisation as we were about to reenter the bush we saw...that same pack of walkers. Hmmm, we tried to work out how they could have got past us WITHOUT TAKING A SHORTCUT, and had to listen to them mocking us as we ran past them. "Keep ahead of them at all costs" became our mantra for the day...even when we took a wrong turn, like a pack of scalded cats we retraced our steps and bolted on - anything to keep ahead. This leg saw 4 stream crossings - too deep to walk through without saturating our shoes (with 25+kms to walk) and too wide to jump. We resorted to the girlie girl tactic of taking our shoes and socks off, which although a pain, we thought would prevent soggy feet and the dreaded blisters. At our 4th stream crossing who should come charging past us, bounding ankle deep through the water? those soddin' walkers again, and more snide comments. So it raises a couple of questions...that old chestnut - is (our) running actually slower than walking(gulp) and should we walk through streams rather than faff with shoes and socks. Everything about these walks is a learning - about ourselves, about techniques, about our bodies, so we clocked these two up for discussion and researching with experienced Oxfam'ers.
Stage 2 saw a nice run from Kambora school to Davidson park - reasonably steady and uneventful, or so we thought, until I slipped a little, brushed up against a tree stump and....ripped my stinking uber-expensive Skins. And not just a little hole, but a big flappy, unsalvagable-need-to-buy-a-new-pair-of-Skins kind of hole. Tracy made me feel better by saying I looked really "hard core". It helped a little but still didn't stop me sulking!. A short break at Davidson saw us heading into the bush for a tough 7.5kms to Ararat, where Tracy was to leave us and Mia and I to wander home. This leg is tough with a smoothish 3.5km's in, then a tough second half, with lots of climbing. We kind of went into silent mode as we toughed it out, listening to Ipods and just moving forward. We ran into a family out strolling in a place that wasn't really strollable - the mother was 7 months prergnant and the dad was carrying 2 young boys. We were struggling up the climbs which were not only steep but slippery and muddy as well, and this family was going to be taking the same route as us. We tried to help, and Mia was able to at one stage, but they said they were fine, although as we ran on with more climbing over rough slippery stuff we couldn't stop thinking of them and whether we should have done more. So 29km's on, we hobbled to the checkpoint at Ararat where Vic and Evey were waiting for Tracy. Mia and I walked on for another few kms home, and it felt a nice change not to have to run. So a good day and a long day, and apart from the second half of the last leg, we have covered the whole course now. Mia's feet were better this week with a sock/shoe change strategy at each stop. As for my Skins, well hopefully they are our first and only casualty of the event.
Stages St Ives to Kambora (12kms)difficulty 2 2hours 15 mins, Kambora to Davidson (10kms)difficulty 3; 1 hour 30mins, Davidson to Ararat (7.5kms) difficulty 2 (although we think should be more); 1 hour 15mins
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