There are four truly big hills on the Kokoda Challenge course: in Mudgeeraba Forest, Fairview Mountain, "Polly's" hill, and the hill at Beechmont (up through Black Shoot and down via the Hellfire Pass). So what did Team Insanity do on the weekend? Tackle two of them.
The KC summary describes the Hellfire Pass as "the steepest and longest descent of the course".
We started our morning by parking at Belliss Rd and noting that the carpark was full (although not a full as it could have been had some people learned how to park!). But off we went, walking down the dirt road that lead from the Belliss Rd checkpoint towards the Hellfire Pass, and no sooner had we reached the concrete causeway a few hundred metres along the road than we encountered our first team of the day jogging down the last part of the hill. We exchanged good morning's and turned onto the grassy trail which lead towards the hill.
It didn't take long for us to leave the nice sloping foothill and hit the "proper" hill, and it only took five to ten minutes for everyone to have removed their jackets.
Aside from a small flatter section around halfway up the hill, the Hellfire Pass is about 3 to 4 kilometres of hill. And it you're walking it in the anti-KC direction, it's all uphill. It took us a little under an hour to reach the top of the Hellfire Pass, and this was where we saw our second team for the day, once again, heading in the downhill direction. "It's busy out here this morning," they commented on the way past to which we merely nodded while trying not to look like the uphill had hurt.
After turning the corner onto Freemans Rd we understood their comment more; a few hundred metres in from of us were yet another team, this time heading in the same direction as us, along with some locals out for a walk. "Quick, let's pass them!" Brock decided, picking up speed. And so we did, about a kilometre later - after the house which looks like it was pulled from an episode of The Flintstones - as we walked past the cow paddock. A few hundred metres later we passed by yet another team heading in the other direction, and continued following the road until we came to a junction only to choose the wrong direction by reading the directions without looking at the map itself and ending up in a cul-de-sac, adding about 800m to our walk and once again putting us behind the team we'd just overtaken, and with a little under a kilometre to our destination of Syd Duncan Park, we never quite made up the gap a second time. Even with our wrong turn, it had taken 1hr 36 minutes to travel the 8.3 km between checkpoints.
Syd Duncan Park, situated on the top of a hill, overlooks the Gold Coast tourist strip and a corner of the Hinze Dam and even though it was bright and sunny it was clear that it would be cold here at night. We stayed long enough to grab food from our bags and take a few photos before heading back towards the Hellfire Pass.
Our return leg of this section means that we were travelling it in the same direction, the only differences being that we had only walked 8.3km instead of 66 to get to this point, and that it was currently the middle of the day (whereas we are expecting to be walking this section in the middle of the night). The road section is fairly uneventful as it slopes it's way up towards the top of the Hellfire Pass, and we get one more view of the coast before ending up back on the trail.
In broad daylight it's a manageable task to jog down the Hellfire Pass as long as you're careful with your footing and your knees are holding up. We're all a little sceptical of just how possible that's going to be in the middle of the night. We made it down the hill with only a few occurrences of sliding or balance issues and again got to enjoy (a word which really is a relative term on these treks) the flatter section in the middle, even if only for the smaller amount of concentration required. There was a slight moment of "anything you can do I can do better" when Shane and Brock attempted to out-sprint each other along a flat section and up an incline (I have no idea who won - I wasn't stupid enough to join in!) but we shortly encountered the remainder of the downhill and once again jogged a large portion of it, slowing back to a walk once we reached the concrete causeway at the foot of the hill. After a short stroll back to the Belliss Rd checkpoint we had completed the 7.5km return journey 1hr 13min.
We sat by the side of the road for lunch and were watched by one of the local horses (which was less threatening than last week's encounter with the magpies) and discussed where we should head for the afternoon. We had several maps with us: the Mt Nathan section which we had practiced last week; Polly's Hill and the stretch from the Environmental Centre to Syd Duncan Park. After a short dicussion we settled on Polly's Hill and headed towards Neranwood and Polly's Country Kitchen via Mudgeeraba where we got to see the start line, the Hardy's Rd turnoff (section 1) and Austinville Rd (section 3).
Again, there seemed to be a large number of vehicles parked on the side of the road, and we figured there must be other teams out on this section of the course as well. It didn't take us long to find one of them. We'd barely walked past Polly's when we crossed paths with a team heading the other way along the road. Rather than follow the part of the section which leads under the bridge and over the creek we elected to follow the road but had an excellent aerial view of where the course actually runs.
The start of the fire trail was met with the usual "Is that all there is?" comment from Brock and much muttering from me. This particular hill, similarly to the Hellfire Pass, is around 3km of almost continuous inclines, the only difference being is that the spot height of this hill was 446m as opposed to around 500m. After being passed by yet another team heading in the opposite direction (who told us that we were about halfway when in reality we had perhaps 75% of the climb to go) we made it to the top in about 45 minutes, where we encountered a pair of hikers who informed us that at least when we came back on our return journey that it would only take 20 minutes to get back down.
Shane was starting to struggle with some pain in his right knee but was happy to keep going for a little while "to see if it sorts itself out" so we started on the descent towards the Environmental Centre. We hadn't ventured very far down the hill before Shane was seeking out tree branches to use as walking sticks (although next time he should be able to try out hiking poles instead!). Around 15 minutes later we'd made it down the first part of the descent, walked over the short, flatter section, and were walking the second descent when around 2.5km out from the Environmental Centre checkpoint Shane was having enough trouble with the descent that we agreed to turn around and head back. This helped for a while, as we had to make our way back to the top of the hill, however once there (even with a very short rest break - it was unreasonably cold given that it was still only a little after 2pm) we had to descend back to the main road, and this would prove to be a slow shuffle.
Around an hour later, we made it back to the road where we stopped for a brief chat with a few people who had come down the hill behind us. Apparently there were a few cases of dehydration two years ago when it was raining (due to people being wrapped up in raincoats etc). We're all still hoping it's dry on that weekend - it's tough enough out there without having to contend with rain and mud as well (although perhaps the mud would make for an interesting sledding hill descent technique?).
Despite spending quite a bit of time on the descent of Polly's Hill, we still managed to cover around 9km in around 2hrs 18min which is still a reasonable pace overall.
We stopped in at Polly's Country Kitchen for food before heading home: lasagna, burgers, fries, soft drinks and hot chocolate. The lasagna came with a salad topped with a yellow flower as garnish, and the first thing Brock did was to eat the flower and place the stem back on the plate.
"Did you just eat that flower?" Nicole asked somewhat incredulously.
"It's edible."
"How would you know that?"
"I used to eat them all the time when I was a kid."
"Yeah," Shane said. "The neighbours probably kept an eye out. 'There's that kid that keeps eating our garden!'"
"Do you mean to say you don't ever just eat flowers?" Brock asked.
"Nooo..."
"It's a nasturtium; it's edible," Brock insisted.
"It's still a flower."
All bizarre eating habits aside, the food was good and most welcome after all the walking!
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
It Turns Out I *Can* Still Run...
After having only done two walk jog sessions last week I headed out on my own this week to gauge how my knee is holding up. Tuesday I managed a little under 3km (which was my intended distance, however I ran into Sarah just before the end of my session - turns out that tunnel thing under the freeway heads into the shiny council building...). It felt sluggish, but as is usually the case, was actually the fastest I've run that distance all year (go figure).
I headed out again today and ran 4.75km cleanly without any issues (although not having run properly for any great distance since the beginning of April means that my lungs are still re-adjusting and I probably sound more like a train than usual).
Will try my luck with a long(er) run on the weekend... still aiming for anything over 5k! But it's been a good week so far, and perhaps sticking to only 3 days a week will help keep some of those issues at bay. I may not be ready for the Gold Coast Half, but perhaps can still pull it all together for the Noosa Half in August (which also has the added benefit of being a month after KC2008 so I won't by trying to squish too much into a few weeks).
I headed out again today and ran 4.75km cleanly without any issues (although not having run properly for any great distance since the beginning of April means that my lungs are still re-adjusting and I probably sound more like a train than usual).
Will try my luck with a long(er) run on the weekend... still aiming for anything over 5k! But it's been a good week so far, and perhaps sticking to only 3 days a week will help keep some of those issues at bay. I may not be ready for the Gold Coast Half, but perhaps can still pull it all together for the Noosa Half in August (which also has the added benefit of being a month after KC2008 so I won't by trying to squish too much into a few weeks).
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Nerang State Forest and Mt Nathan
Team Insanity headed to the Gold Coast and onto the KC course for the second time to practice the Nerang State Forest sections (the last 17.5 kilometres of the course) and we'd picked an excellent weekend to opt for a later start (8.45 am as opposed to anything closer to dawn) given the crisp conditions.
We'd barely started on our "warmup" section (the part that's not part of the course) when two people jogged up behind us (up a hill, no less) and after confirming that we were practicing for Kokoda, asked us if we knew which was the corner you took to head towards the finish line. Given that they were jogging in t-shirts and bike-pant length skins they must have been roaming around longer than us (we were still wearing jackets - or in the case of Nicole, a scarf). A little further along the trail we passed more hikers heading the other direction and began to wonder if there would be other teams out all day.
The sunshine was welcome as we passed by the quarry, but for most of the first few kilometres we were walking along a shaded trail, and when walking along the main ridgeline that runs through the forest there was a constant strong breeze.
Our maps indicated that we needed to take a sharp turn to the south-west to head towards Nerang-Beaudesert Rd (the location for the last major checkpoint of the course), but it was marked with an incorrect number on the map (and despite walking this loop several times, Nicole "always misses that turn") and we continued further north for almost a kilometre before realising we had gone too far and turning back. (For future reference, the sharp turn onto the grungy looking trail is the correct route).
We made it down from the ridge without any difficulties and out to the main road making the stats for our warm-up section 1hr 52min for 8.5-9km.
From this corner of the forest our walk was all the actual course practice. Despite Nicole's comment of "it's sort of flattish with a big hill at the end", the 7.1km northbound trail was in fact rather hilly. Sure, they were short hills, but it was by no means "flat". This section of the course had quite a bit of fresh tree carnage over the track in places, presumably from the storm the night before. In some places this was only a few branches, but others it was a whole tree.
As always seems to happen, the steep hill at the end of the section appeared out of nowhere as we rounded a corner but we made it to the top (and the imaginary checkpoint) with no real issues in a time of 55 minutes for the 7.1km section.
Deciding to continue on without a break we followed the ridgeline south with the breeze once again hitting us. A large chunk of this section is relatively flat as it follows the ridge and after a few kilometres we reach the trail we'd turned onto earlier in the day. From this point heading back towards the Velodrome there's a series of downhills with one remaining short incline after the quarry a few kilometres from the end, but there main challenge of this section on race day will be that it comes after having walked 86km. On occasion there are glimpses of the Gold Coast high-rises, but for the most part there's really very little to look at aside from the track and the trees. And, apparently, a mobile phone (which Brock found a few kilometres from the end). Today we managed to race through the 10.4km section in 1hr 48min.
We stopped for a lunch break at the car (where a few brave local magpies walked up to us in an attempt to procure food only to end up being teased with some car keys) and attempted to locate a relative for the mystery phone with no success. Figuring that at some point someone may call the phone and be able to identify the owner, we took it with us to our next destination - Mt Nathan.
The Mt Nathan section of the KC course is simple enough on paper: 5km from checkpoint to checkpoint, up the mountain, then back down the other side. In reality the trail up Mt Nathan is possibly the most scruffy, eroded away track on the course. It also doesn't help that there are additional obstacles such as overgrown plants to deal with. To access to beginning of the track we had to negotiate an overgrown weed patch and "climb" a short section of hill (as the lower parts of the track were blocked by more of the weeds).
As is always the case on this hill, additional attention needs to be paid to where we were walking as there are loose rocks scattered amongst the ditches on the way up. We had a brief respite from the incline where the trail flattens out and descends a little, and we found ourselves negotiating yet another fallen tree, but soon made it to the summit 24 minutes after we'd left the car.
Our rough plan was to simply walk up and back down the hill, rather than to do the whole section (which would take us back to Nerang State Forest and add on about another hour), and we stuck to this. The return journey down Mt Nathan wasn't fast (as we once again had to watch our footing), but we made it back to the car in about 25 minutes which means that a rough guess of us taking about an hour for this section should be achievable.
We'd barely started on our "warmup" section (the part that's not part of the course) when two people jogged up behind us (up a hill, no less) and after confirming that we were practicing for Kokoda, asked us if we knew which was the corner you took to head towards the finish line. Given that they were jogging in t-shirts and bike-pant length skins they must have been roaming around longer than us (we were still wearing jackets - or in the case of Nicole, a scarf). A little further along the trail we passed more hikers heading the other direction and began to wonder if there would be other teams out all day.
The sunshine was welcome as we passed by the quarry, but for most of the first few kilometres we were walking along a shaded trail, and when walking along the main ridgeline that runs through the forest there was a constant strong breeze.
Our maps indicated that we needed to take a sharp turn to the south-west to head towards Nerang-Beaudesert Rd (the location for the last major checkpoint of the course), but it was marked with an incorrect number on the map (and despite walking this loop several times, Nicole "always misses that turn") and we continued further north for almost a kilometre before realising we had gone too far and turning back. (For future reference, the sharp turn onto the grungy looking trail is the correct route).
We made it down from the ridge without any difficulties and out to the main road making the stats for our warm-up section 1hr 52min for 8.5-9km.
From this corner of the forest our walk was all the actual course practice. Despite Nicole's comment of "it's sort of flattish with a big hill at the end", the 7.1km northbound trail was in fact rather hilly. Sure, they were short hills, but it was by no means "flat". This section of the course had quite a bit of fresh tree carnage over the track in places, presumably from the storm the night before. In some places this was only a few branches, but others it was a whole tree.
As always seems to happen, the steep hill at the end of the section appeared out of nowhere as we rounded a corner but we made it to the top (and the imaginary checkpoint) with no real issues in a time of 55 minutes for the 7.1km section.
Deciding to continue on without a break we followed the ridgeline south with the breeze once again hitting us. A large chunk of this section is relatively flat as it follows the ridge and after a few kilometres we reach the trail we'd turned onto earlier in the day. From this point heading back towards the Velodrome there's a series of downhills with one remaining short incline after the quarry a few kilometres from the end, but there main challenge of this section on race day will be that it comes after having walked 86km. On occasion there are glimpses of the Gold Coast high-rises, but for the most part there's really very little to look at aside from the track and the trees. And, apparently, a mobile phone (which Brock found a few kilometres from the end). Today we managed to race through the 10.4km section in 1hr 48min.
We stopped for a lunch break at the car (where a few brave local magpies walked up to us in an attempt to procure food only to end up being teased with some car keys) and attempted to locate a relative for the mystery phone with no success. Figuring that at some point someone may call the phone and be able to identify the owner, we took it with us to our next destination - Mt Nathan.
The Mt Nathan section of the KC course is simple enough on paper: 5km from checkpoint to checkpoint, up the mountain, then back down the other side. In reality the trail up Mt Nathan is possibly the most scruffy, eroded away track on the course. It also doesn't help that there are additional obstacles such as overgrown plants to deal with. To access to beginning of the track we had to negotiate an overgrown weed patch and "climb" a short section of hill (as the lower parts of the track were blocked by more of the weeds).
As is always the case on this hill, additional attention needs to be paid to where we were walking as there are loose rocks scattered amongst the ditches on the way up. We had a brief respite from the incline where the trail flattens out and descends a little, and we found ourselves negotiating yet another fallen tree, but soon made it to the summit 24 minutes after we'd left the car.
Our rough plan was to simply walk up and back down the hill, rather than to do the whole section (which would take us back to Nerang State Forest and add on about another hour), and we stuck to this. The return journey down Mt Nathan wasn't fast (as we once again had to watch our footing), but we made it back to the car in about 25 minutes which means that a rough guess of us taking about an hour for this section should be achievable.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
And They Call This A Lookout?
Sunday 11 May: Team Insanity's training session last weekend was just a short, local one. Wayne was off on another work trip (some people have interesting sounding jobs... :) ) so Brock, Shane and I meet at the Mt Gravatt Outlook on Sunday morning with a map and a rough plan of walking for a few hours.
All in all, it was a very uneventful walk. We set off from the Outlook at 9am heading down Mt Gravatt through the Griffith University campus, and into the larger part of Toohey Forest. We didn't have a plan for where we were walking to, so followed a series of signs to the picnic area where we walked past a family having a Mother's Day BBQ breakfast (which we smelt appreciatively on the way past) before doing a lap of the carpark (past the BBQ) and out onto Toohey Rd in search of a small part of the reserve with a lookout.
It's perhaps a good thing that the Kokoda Challenge isn't really a navigational event in light of the fact that we seem to end up on the wrong path / street from time to time, or in this case, walking the wrong direction down the main road. We wandered down a side street which "looked kind of bush-like" and down a "track" past a few houses before deciding that the dense bamboo "forest" wasn't quite what we were expecting and turning back around.
After meandering past the BBQ a third time (still with no offers of food) we found the path we were looking for and made our way to Pegg's Lookout. Presumably when this "lookout" was named as such, there was a view? Sure, there are glimpses of some the mountains southwest of Brisbane in the distance, but the most dominating feature of the landscape is most definitely the Salisbury industrial area! Somewhat disappointed, we headed back towards the main roads, this time detouring past an old quarry where we were overtaken by some mountain bikers and their dog.
Back in the larger section of the forest we once again passed the BBQ-ing family (again, no offers of food...) and the two other interest points on the map: the Western Outlook and the Sandstone Lookout. The best way to describe both locations is with the word "trees" - the view-blocking kind. Having managed to completely underwhelmed by all three lookouts in one morning we started to head back towards Mt Gravatt and despite an attempt at a detour through the sports facilities at the University, made it back to the summit without any major issues. However, despite the uninspiring walk, we managed to clock up about 15 kilometres in about 3 hours. Better luck next week!
All in all, it was a very uneventful walk. We set off from the Outlook at 9am heading down Mt Gravatt through the Griffith University campus, and into the larger part of Toohey Forest. We didn't have a plan for where we were walking to, so followed a series of signs to the picnic area where we walked past a family having a Mother's Day BBQ breakfast (which we smelt appreciatively on the way past) before doing a lap of the carpark (past the BBQ) and out onto Toohey Rd in search of a small part of the reserve with a lookout.
It's perhaps a good thing that the Kokoda Challenge isn't really a navigational event in light of the fact that we seem to end up on the wrong path / street from time to time, or in this case, walking the wrong direction down the main road. We wandered down a side street which "looked kind of bush-like" and down a "track" past a few houses before deciding that the dense bamboo "forest" wasn't quite what we were expecting and turning back around.
After meandering past the BBQ a third time (still with no offers of food) we found the path we were looking for and made our way to Pegg's Lookout. Presumably when this "lookout" was named as such, there was a view? Sure, there are glimpses of some the mountains southwest of Brisbane in the distance, but the most dominating feature of the landscape is most definitely the Salisbury industrial area! Somewhat disappointed, we headed back towards the main roads, this time detouring past an old quarry where we were overtaken by some mountain bikers and their dog.
Back in the larger section of the forest we once again passed the BBQ-ing family (again, no offers of food...) and the two other interest points on the map: the Western Outlook and the Sandstone Lookout. The best way to describe both locations is with the word "trees" - the view-blocking kind. Having managed to completely underwhelmed by all three lookouts in one morning we started to head back towards Mt Gravatt and despite an attempt at a detour through the sports facilities at the University, made it back to the summit without any major issues. However, despite the uninspiring walk, we managed to clock up about 15 kilometres in about 3 hours. Better luck next week!
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Training Update
Given that I walked about 38 kilometres on Monday I piked on my running training this week on Tuesday and Wednesday. I actually wasn't all that sore, just tired, so it wasn't a particularly good excuse.
But on Thursday I headed out at lunch for a jog/walk session with Kirit (from work -> despite being on a health kick at the moment he still smokes too much to be able to run continuously for even a few kilometres). He's just signed up for one of those gym personal trainer gigs and decided he needed some new clothes for the gym (apparently it's important to look the part... whatever) so we jogged/walked from Eagle St through the gardens and along the river to Queen St in about 20 minutes. I then turned around and ran the same way back in 12.25 without any protesting from my knee.
Given that Thursday's run went well, I headed out on Friday but elected just to do a short loop (about 3km). Knee = mostly ok.
And today? The knee's been holding up ok over the last few days so my plan was to think "long run" and just see how it went when I was out there, but about 3km in I was noticing some twinginess so headed on home making it only a 3.75km run. I guess that means more stretching and exercises for me :(
But on Thursday I headed out at lunch for a jog/walk session with Kirit (from work -> despite being on a health kick at the moment he still smokes too much to be able to run continuously for even a few kilometres). He's just signed up for one of those gym personal trainer gigs and decided he needed some new clothes for the gym (apparently it's important to look the part... whatever) so we jogged/walked from Eagle St through the gardens and along the river to Queen St in about 20 minutes. I then turned around and ran the same way back in 12.25 without any protesting from my knee.
Given that Thursday's run went well, I headed out on Friday but elected just to do a short loop (about 3km). Knee = mostly ok.
And today? The knee's been holding up ok over the last few days so my plan was to think "long run" and just see how it went when I was out there, but about 3km in I was noticing some twinginess so headed on home making it only a 3.75km run. I guess that means more stretching and exercises for me :(
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
How Many Times Do We Have To Cross This Creek?
It's 11 weeks out from the 2008 Kokoda Challenge and Team Insanity has finally had a training session with all four members present!
Our plan for the Labour Day Monday was to walk to Border Track between Lamington National Park and Binna Burra in the morning, then proceed over to the KC course to tackle the hill between Polly's Kitchen and the Environmental Centre (otherwise known as Section 5). We met up before dawn and headed south to switch cars with some of our support crew volunteers (who were also keen to walk the Border Track). After a slight delay (apparently our support crew slept in? :) ) Team Insanity and our plus-one for the day, Stuart, headed out towards Lamington.
We started walking the Border Track just before 8am, and seemed to be walking quickly courtesy of Stuart leading at a rocketing pace. Around 45 minutes later he cheeked his portable GPS to check how far we'd walked only to announce "you're not going to like this". Apparently the GPS thought we'd travelled about 1.5 km! Thankfully a sign a little further along the trail indicated that we'd walked around 5 km (which felt more realistic)!
Our conversation topics varied greatly and included existing and proposed uses for the Nintendo Wii, how to leverage existing technology to improve and streamline the travel industry (it's worth noting here that we all work in IT so it's a perfectly normal topic to us) and the lack of flavour in energy bars.
A little before 10am we stopped to grab some snacks from our respective backpacks and while we were discussing the merits stopping to eat or continuing until we crossed paths with our Support Crew (who were walking in the opposite direction) they appeared around the next bend. We exchanged car keys, chatted and ate for around 5-10 minutes before heading on our way.
We shortly encountered the Mt Merino turnoff, and a sign indicating we had 9.9km to go and later when the path diverged once more we selected one of the trails figuring that it was probably the right one, and even it it wasn't it would still lead us to Binna Burra eventually. Our path followed a creek, crossing it many times over the next few kilometres. Things to note for next time: it's just as important to watch for head-high branches as it is for tree roots, and shoes dry out remarkably quickly after being dunked in a creek. Along the way there were some excellent waterfall photo opportunities, but when we reached a lookout on the edge of the valley we checked the map only to find out that we were at the Coomera Falls lookout and that we probably had at least another hour to walk before we made it to the end of the trail.
We continued on. The trail was at little muddier that we'd seen at the Lamington end, but perhaps this was partly due to it being closer to midday than 8am and that there were more people out on the walks. But eventually we made it back to the carpark, sore knees, blistered feet and all. We weren't able to work out a complete distance that we walked, but we figure it was around 25km rather than the expected 21.1km of the Border Track and taking 4hrs 50min, it was a decent training session.
We discussed plans for the afternoon over lunch. Wayne had been having knee trouble for the last hour or two so we changed from our original plan of walking the Polly's Kitchen hill (which required two cars) to walking the Waterfall Creek loop so that he could head home.
So on to Numinbah Valley we went. If you ignore the roads, it's only a short jump to where we wanted to be, however there's only one road into Binna Burra, so it took us an hour to reach our destination of the Numinbah Environmental Centre (although we did get to drive past parts of the KC2008 course).
We set out on the Waterfall Creek loop (otherwise known as Section 6) a little before 2pm, and despite changing into dry socks and semi-dry shoes it only took me one one creek crossing to end up with wet feet again. This section of the KC course is known for it's creek crossings - 8 in total, despite the course notes indicating that there are 7, but for the first five or so kilometres it's otherwise fairly straightforward.
At the far end of the loop is a nasty hill - not the worst hill on the KC course, but bad nonetheless. Brock, continuing to display a concerning amount of enthusiasm despite insisting that he needs more practice to get "fitter", bounded up the hill, while Stuart, Shane and I plodded our way to the top. By this point Shane was experiencing knee pain and was finding downhill sections tough - unfortunate seeing as the modified loop for this year's course contained quite a few steep downhills through the next few kilometres that lead us to the Numinbah Hall (the new major checkpoint). The last few kilometres leading to the Hall are part of the new Gold Coast Great Walk so it's fairly easy to just follow the arrows. We arrived at the Hall at around 4.05pm which left us a little over an hour until sunset so despite being fairly worn out by this point we decided to keep going and rest when we made it back to the car (which was probably around 5km by road, and a little more than that following the KC course map).
The remaining 6 or so kilometres of the loop can be described as flat-ish (up to and including Chesters Rd), a long uphill (to the top of the ridgeline), flat-ish (along the ridgeline), and downhill (back to road level). The notes say that there's a trail from the edge of the ridge that leads back to the right of the ridge, and I remember something to this effect from walking it last year. The only problem is that it's one of those trails which are hard to spot and we couldn't find it. It probably also didn't help that I didn't know where it was to begin with - last year we were lead down from the ridge by one of our "added" team members. The main trail does lead down off the ridge to the left, however, and even though it deposited us on the road just south of where we wanted to be, at least we knew where we were - a good thing considering it was just before sunset so we were already losing light fairly quickly.
Once we hit the bitumen Brock and Stuart started jogging towards the car. Shane and I did what anyone else would have done: we walked, arriving back at the car at 5.10pm, making our time for the 13km Waterfall Creek loop 2 hrs 45 mins.
Complete training session stats: 38km, 7hrs 35mins. Avg speed = 5.01km/hr.
Our plan for the Labour Day Monday was to walk to Border Track between Lamington National Park and Binna Burra in the morning, then proceed over to the KC course to tackle the hill between Polly's Kitchen and the Environmental Centre (otherwise known as Section 5). We met up before dawn and headed south to switch cars with some of our support crew volunteers (who were also keen to walk the Border Track). After a slight delay (apparently our support crew slept in? :) ) Team Insanity and our plus-one for the day, Stuart, headed out towards Lamington.
We started walking the Border Track just before 8am, and seemed to be walking quickly courtesy of Stuart leading at a rocketing pace. Around 45 minutes later he cheeked his portable GPS to check how far we'd walked only to announce "you're not going to like this". Apparently the GPS thought we'd travelled about 1.5 km! Thankfully a sign a little further along the trail indicated that we'd walked around 5 km (which felt more realistic)!
Our conversation topics varied greatly and included existing and proposed uses for the Nintendo Wii, how to leverage existing technology to improve and streamline the travel industry (it's worth noting here that we all work in IT so it's a perfectly normal topic to us) and the lack of flavour in energy bars.
A little before 10am we stopped to grab some snacks from our respective backpacks and while we were discussing the merits stopping to eat or continuing until we crossed paths with our Support Crew (who were walking in the opposite direction) they appeared around the next bend. We exchanged car keys, chatted and ate for around 5-10 minutes before heading on our way.
We shortly encountered the Mt Merino turnoff, and a sign indicating we had 9.9km to go and later when the path diverged once more we selected one of the trails figuring that it was probably the right one, and even it it wasn't it would still lead us to Binna Burra eventually. Our path followed a creek, crossing it many times over the next few kilometres. Things to note for next time: it's just as important to watch for head-high branches as it is for tree roots, and shoes dry out remarkably quickly after being dunked in a creek. Along the way there were some excellent waterfall photo opportunities, but when we reached a lookout on the edge of the valley we checked the map only to find out that we were at the Coomera Falls lookout and that we probably had at least another hour to walk before we made it to the end of the trail.
We continued on. The trail was at little muddier that we'd seen at the Lamington end, but perhaps this was partly due to it being closer to midday than 8am and that there were more people out on the walks. But eventually we made it back to the carpark, sore knees, blistered feet and all. We weren't able to work out a complete distance that we walked, but we figure it was around 25km rather than the expected 21.1km of the Border Track and taking 4hrs 50min, it was a decent training session.
We discussed plans for the afternoon over lunch. Wayne had been having knee trouble for the last hour or two so we changed from our original plan of walking the Polly's Kitchen hill (which required two cars) to walking the Waterfall Creek loop so that he could head home.
So on to Numinbah Valley we went. If you ignore the roads, it's only a short jump to where we wanted to be, however there's only one road into Binna Burra, so it took us an hour to reach our destination of the Numinbah Environmental Centre (although we did get to drive past parts of the KC2008 course).
We set out on the Waterfall Creek loop (otherwise known as Section 6) a little before 2pm, and despite changing into dry socks and semi-dry shoes it only took me one one creek crossing to end up with wet feet again. This section of the KC course is known for it's creek crossings - 8 in total, despite the course notes indicating that there are 7, but for the first five or so kilometres it's otherwise fairly straightforward.
At the far end of the loop is a nasty hill - not the worst hill on the KC course, but bad nonetheless. Brock, continuing to display a concerning amount of enthusiasm despite insisting that he needs more practice to get "fitter", bounded up the hill, while Stuart, Shane and I plodded our way to the top. By this point Shane was experiencing knee pain and was finding downhill sections tough - unfortunate seeing as the modified loop for this year's course contained quite a few steep downhills through the next few kilometres that lead us to the Numinbah Hall (the new major checkpoint). The last few kilometres leading to the Hall are part of the new Gold Coast Great Walk so it's fairly easy to just follow the arrows. We arrived at the Hall at around 4.05pm which left us a little over an hour until sunset so despite being fairly worn out by this point we decided to keep going and rest when we made it back to the car (which was probably around 5km by road, and a little more than that following the KC course map).
The remaining 6 or so kilometres of the loop can be described as flat-ish (up to and including Chesters Rd), a long uphill (to the top of the ridgeline), flat-ish (along the ridgeline), and downhill (back to road level). The notes say that there's a trail from the edge of the ridge that leads back to the right of the ridge, and I remember something to this effect from walking it last year. The only problem is that it's one of those trails which are hard to spot and we couldn't find it. It probably also didn't help that I didn't know where it was to begin with - last year we were lead down from the ridge by one of our "added" team members. The main trail does lead down off the ridge to the left, however, and even though it deposited us on the road just south of where we wanted to be, at least we knew where we were - a good thing considering it was just before sunset so we were already losing light fairly quickly.
Once we hit the bitumen Brock and Stuart started jogging towards the car. Shane and I did what anyone else would have done: we walked, arriving back at the car at 5.10pm, making our time for the 13km Waterfall Creek loop 2 hrs 45 mins.
Complete training session stats: 38km, 7hrs 35mins. Avg speed = 5.01km/hr.
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