The Bush Bashers finally had a weekend without rain which meant Sunday morning, David, Ruth and Kerrie (minus Ian and Iain), embarked on the 17.5km trek from St Ives Showground through to Apple Tree Bay. This is the first time we've taken on two sections of trail in one shot and we were aiming to cover from Checkpoint 4-5 through to Checkpoint 5-6 in approximately 3.5 - 4 hours. This also means it's time to start thinking about nutrition and with Steve imparting his endurance race nutritional knowledge to us - i.e. predominantly liquid diet and no sausages for David - we set about trialling Heed, Perpetuem and Hammer Gels to find out what works best for each of us. Looks yummy huh?
Checkpoint 4 - Checkpoint 5
Distance: 9.5km
Time Taken: 2 hrs 05 mins
This is an interesting section of track up the back of St Ives and across to North Turramurra. It was all fairly uneventful until we discovered the descent down the Warrimoo Track - whooska, what a nightmare. We guess it's not as bad as last year's trail though where they had to come UP this section of track instead of down! Trust us.. down is definitely the preferable option here. One thing we did realise was that given how challenging this part of the trail is, it would be in our best interests to cover it while it's still daylight. Making this decision also helps set the time goals for completing each previous checkpoint so we can ensure we cover this section as quickly as possible.
Ruth and David
Ruth and Kerrie
So.. what goes down, must come up, and up was via the Sphinx Track which started at Cowan Creek and ended at the Sphinx War Memorial. This was a gorgeous piece of track as can be seen by the photos below...
Looking down the Sphinx Track to Cowan Creek
Checkpoint 5 - Checkpoint 6
Distance: 8km
Time Taken: 2 hrs 15 mins
Starting at Kur-ring-gai Creative Arts High School, we set off down the Murrua Trail - a very steep descent which may as well have been any random path down the hill. The word 'indistinct' was used in the description on the map and was very apt all things considered! Once at the bottom, the next section of trail followed the creek and although flat, was quite narrow and at times slippery. At the end of this section of track are some wonderful mangroves and living in the mud are these fabulous crabs with orange claws. Cute huh?
At the sighting of the crabs, it meant we were on the home stretch with a 2km hike up and over a hill into Apple Tree Bay to complete the section. It was a pretty welcome sight coming into Apple Tree Bay and knowing we'd both completed 17.5kms and for the most part, felt really good about it. The BEST part of course.. was taking off our muddy, dirty shoes and putting on nice, fresh clean ones for the trip home!!
Apple Tree Bay
Looking out to Apple Tree Bay - so pretty!
Wet, Muddy Shoes
Thank You!
Many thanks to all of our wonderful donors this week. We've had lots of international donations which is a great encouragement - we really appreciate your messages of support as we prepare for the event. On the day (and night!), you'll actually be able to track our progress on the Oxfam website but we'll post details of that closer to the day.
The key thing right now is that we're standing at $815 of our $5000 target. If you're in Australia and thinking of donating, why not do it before 30 June so you can claim it as a tax deduction for your 2006-2007 tax return? Sound good? Excellent - click this link and go straight to our page on the Oxfam site to donate!
Looking Forward...
In the meantime, weekday training continues with Ruth racking up kilometres and kilometres of running, David tackling inclines on the treadmill, Ian maintaining his 10km a day runs and Kerrie doing hill work in the rain. Next week, we should be getting our headtorches (thanks Steve!) and we'll be starting some night training during the week.
Sounds like fun? Sure! See you next week for the next update.. :-)
