A Close Call

This weekend saw us doing our own things. Tracy was running 42kms in the bush for a charity event (which she totally destroyed finishing about the same time Mia and I had walked about 30km which did our heads in, but then that wouldn't have been hard that day). Katie was at home sick in bed battling a possible swine flu/cold combo she picked up after her big Sydney training weekend, and Mia and I were out on the trail doing a maybe 40-50km walk.
We headed out early again, with a 5.40am pickup to make the 6.19am train at Mt Kuring-gai to Cowan where we left the lovely warm train to head into the mist and cold, tackling stages 2/3/4 then back to the car. I couldn't find my gloves so wore socks to keep on hands warm. Nice look. That second stage from Cowan to Bewowra is hard and just goddamn long. We tried to walk at a good clip but the terrain just isn't suited for it. Mia was struggling a bit mentally after 5 days of hard skiing, and I quickly joined her, settling into whinge mode, which we then whinged about me whinging, so jointly decided a whinge free zone was necessary. By now, Mia was even more mentally challenged with boredom from listening to my whinge analysis and happily settled into listening to her ipod (rather than listening to me not whinging). You can see the kind of day we were having. We looked forward to stage 3 from beowora (ok, I KNOW I can't spell that word)to Apple Tree Bay, we'd done it once before and had enjoyed it with happy memories of long flats and a board walk in the middle of a glade like swamp. What we hadn't remembered was we'd done that at the start of a training session, not mid way when we were having enough motivational problems. By now, silence had descended as we trudged through the pretty but undulating and cold valley, finally coming out into the sun for a nice stroll to Apple Tree Bay. From here we headed along stage 4, past the Bobbin Head picnic'ers to the end of the bush before Kuring-gai creative arts school. To do the incredibly steep, gut wrenching hill or not? We decided not. Which ended up being the RIGHT CALL, as we headed back along the track and past the picnic'ers packing up for the day, we realised we were running out of light. And dumb, DUMB women that we are, we hadn't packed a head torch as it didn't occur to us it would take this long to walk 44'ish kms. We had a short amount of time to head up a long climb back through the bush to the train station. The sun had gone down, that purpley light was dimming and there was no end of the bush in sight. We had about 10 minutes before complete darkness. Once again all talking stopped as we focused on getting our sore legs moving at a pace that could get us out in time. The photos above say it all.
Our lessons (and there are many)
1. ALWAYS CARRY A TORCH. ALWAYS
2. No more fruitcake. Or Cheese and vegemite sandwiches. Especially on brown bread.
3. When a team mate has a cold, check up on her (especially when she's been your friend for 35 years), just in case she has the swine flu. We are in a pandemic afterall. Sorry Katie.
4. If we are ever having a barbeque at a picnic site and a pair of cold, tired, motivationally challenged walkers go past where they can easily smell the sausages cooking, we will ALWAYS offer them a sausage from now on.