Sunday, June 5, 2011

Maggie reports on the Callan Park Training Session

Winners are grinners!

That was the answer to the conundrum set by Helen Murphy’s training session Sunday 5th June at Callan Park. Ingeniously using old Sprint maps from earlier this year, Helen set a course to warm us all up for the QB3 where different control cards gave a different start control for each racer, and all controls were taken in reverse order around the original course. For added difficulty each control had a letter which when rearranged at the finish formed the magic phrase. How anyone could work on a conundrum after running hard beats me – maybe they weren’t running hard enough, or maybe they are just that little bit fitter. Control markers were limited to yellow electrical tape, which made sure we had to be absolutely accurate in our navigation. This added quite a bit of spice when some controls were in woodlands where the leaves were turning golden!

As well as Uringans we also had the Currie family from Garingal and a mother and daughter team from Helen’s local school. When we do the CATI in Callan Park in September it would be good to encourage the local schools to join in –Helen will once again be pressed into service as despite her recent retirement she seems to be as much at school as she was before. Lawrence and Georgia ran and then shadowed Sophie and Jared around, making
a nice change for Jane and me, who could stand and chat at the finish instead of heading out again.

Cormac McMullen brought his dog along which prompted the youngsters to indulge in a dog counting spree as they ran around their course – as if they didn’t have enough to think about!

After the runs there was much post race review, possibly helped along by the fine weather
and the delicious cakes supplied by Helen and Georgia. Whilst the adults got on with tea drinking the youngsters had a impromptu hill rolling race. No-one over 14 seemed to want to join in – strange...

Although we had a great turnout it was unfortunate that some Uringans couldn’t come as they were helping at the NOSH event. When we planned the training, the NOSH run had no date and no organisers so I thought that the 5th of June was a safe and an ideal date for some training just before the QB3. Helen and I did discuss postponing the training in order to help Ron et al on the NOSH, but in the end there were enough volunteers to help Ron that we didn’t need to reschedule. Sorry to anyone who missed out but there is more training coming up so watch the website for details on that. However for those of us who were able to come along it was a very enjoyable morning and many thanks to Helen and Terry for a great training event.


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