MetroRogaine
Canberra, August 6 2006
By Jude Barton

As a training run for Trailwalker, I persuaded Pete to do Metrogaine with me on Sunday. We've done a few together over the last year or so, and I think that this is the first time that we've been organised enough to not incur the late fee.... I was also getting a bit scared after Julie, Leanne and Vanessa's great runs last weekend at the bush marathon.... and thought I'd better do some cramming... :0) or risk being dropped about 5ks into Trailwalker.....

After sleeping in ... whoops.....we found the mandatory contact and highlighters and were ready, fed and packed in 20mins.

The event was based at the scout hall on the corner near CGGS where we collected our maps, said hi to Benita, hijacked a picnic table and sat down for the obligatory colouring in session, during which time the temperature dropped significantly... and oodles of pikelets may have been consumed. Julie would not have been impressed with the quality of contacting....... but it's hard to do on a slated picnic table with gloves on (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).

I was happy that finally all those times that I've tailed Julie, Leanne and Pete around a course (and I just make up the 'team') are starting to pay off and I can at least contribute more meaningfully to the planning process... still not very good at colouring in though...

The course covered Red Hill - out to Oakey Hill/Curtin horse paddocks/zoo to the west, the wetlands to the east. Hindmarsh Drive to the south and north to Mnt Pleasant/Campbell/ANU. Pete and I had done a sneaky little adventure up into the Mt Mugga quarry on Friday and I was secretly hoping it would go back up there :0).

After initial thoughts that we'd head west, we concluded that rather than chasing around small points we were better off plotting a course to the east and north with some big points followed by a lap of the entire lake (some big points but a long way between) and back through some 60/70s in yarralumla. It did seem unlikely that anyone would clear the course. Pete was secretly hoping that we'd come somewhere near Adrian and Paul (impressive back up from the 60k last weekend) who'd teamed up for the day, but I thought we were a lost cause and thought that both they, and Tom L-S would be well in front.

We took off at 10am and headed around the northern edge of mont red to the security post near the saddle via a 10 and 40 then bush bashed straight up the side to the restaurant, quickly shedding some layers and heading off for Davidson Trig over that awful new paved section. We counting the bolts on the bottom plate of each leg of the trig (2) and ran down the southern side to pick up a quick 80 (green chains on the play equipment ) and fanged straight back over Mont Red (new horse holding paddocks???) past the first knoll on the eastern end (small tree) and down towards red hill shops, where we started our urban campaign.

Picking up some points in Narrabundah we fanged down the golf course (big golf ball = Maxiflite) and down to the (red) small grandstand at the remote control car arena (who knew it existed....???) we hurdled the little swampy creek and headed through Kingston, the causeway and Telopea park before hitting some awesome gardens at parliament house, where we stopped for a quick reassess of the plan .... no way we're going to make is around the lake in 2hours via the points so we ran and talked it through on the way to the 'unconformity' between old and new parl house... (where the rock was 650million years old) a quick water stop at old parly, the Mauritius flag (which has no black on it) near the lake and we took off across kings bridge (about 3hours by now) via aspen island to the concrete eagle at defence and up to mount pleasant (where the cannon points at the library) said g'day to the dodgy looking biker up there and ran down and over the next ridge to Campbell shops (4 charity bins) past the flags (3) at the nurses memorial on Anzac Parade to Blundells Cottage ($10 for family entry). Here we hit the Sunday arvo pedestrian traffic... but dodged the bikes/kids/kites, picked up one at Nerang Pool then braved the traffic to count the flags on capital hill.

With 1:10 remaining, we flew over the bridge, down to find Aus of the year 1991 (Simon Fairweather) and round the lake via the Japanese gardens, the vault (championship par = 15) and up to the ridge behind the embassies with 40mins remaining we almost ran right past the climbing equipment in Yarralumla (red ropes).

With 45mins to go... my long run the day before came back to haunt me and Pete had to do some distracting work as we ran to the brickwork to find out the colour of Thor's hammer (I think it was green), by which time I'd come good. We came back via the Deakin anticline where Pete exploded and the tide turned as I had to coerce him to run up Hopetoun Cirt. to the finish with 11 mins to spare.

We managed to accumulate 2430 points and pip Adrian and Paul (who won the men's category) by 10, for second overall. The winning team beat us both by about 100 points. Either way it was our best result to date! Apart from walking up to Davidson Trig and Mount Pleasant ... we ran consistently for all 5 hours.

A quick attempt at some recovery at home and off to Netties where we lost 51-57 against Arawang .... bugger.... 

jude