The CrossingHazeldene To Kanumbra
No More Adventures
After the Kinglake detour, I was tired, sore and had another 7 kilometres to make up. I stayed on proper roads through Flagpole Hill and Yea and finished at Kanumbra after 63.2 kilometres.
I wasn’t going off-road again.
The previous evening’s Kinglake detour had given me a late night, a battered body and about 7 extra kilometres to cover. We returned to the exact point near Hazeldene where I had finished and, just before four in the morning, I started walking again.
This time I was sticking to proper roads.
That made an already tight schedule even tighter. The map apps would still show shorter walking routes, but I wasn’t going to risk another one. I didn’t want to move any of the key dates, so I had to make the revised route work.
Time to step up.
Had I been able to keep going forward the previous night, I had about another 2 kilometres to go to reach the road. Instead, I had walked about 4 kilometres down the rough 4WD track and reached the main road 7 kilometres away from where I would have come out.
When I reached that spot in daylight, it looked like I would have needed to walk carefully between two fence lines. That would have been hard in the dark with just a torch so, in the end, I was probably glad I had turned left when I did…
The area was called Flagpole Hill.
That amused me because Flagpole Sitta was the first song I had ever managed to run all the way through.
I had picked up a few little bumps and niggles coming down the 4WD track, but generally I was all right. I had also genuinely enjoyed most of it. Most of the time, anyway. I summed it up with #shortcut, #notashortcut and #QuiteNormalForTrailRunning.
Lesson possibly learned.
After that I had a much less adventurous day. The roads were wet, the cloud was low, and there were green hills and winter flowers around me. The scenery was fantastic.
Brad and the Performance Healthcare team were helping again too. They had already donated the myotherapy and chiropractic treatment in Melbourne. Now they had donated a one-hour massage treatment as a prize for a Hearts Across Australia fundraising draw.
When I reached Yea, I stopped for a photo at the sign. I posted it with: “guess where no more mr fat guy is today” and #yayforyea.
I kept walking after Yea, past Molesworth and on to Kanumbra. I still had some benefit from the Melbourne massage, and Ben kept me company for about half the day. Both helped.
By the end of the day I had covered 63.2 kilometres across six sessions.
Sixty-kilometre day: achievement unlocked.
I was very happy with that. I had started the morning tired, sore and with another 7 kilometres to cover.
The extra distance from the previous evening’s “shortcut” meant the schedule needed reworking. It looked like we’d end Tuesday in Albury.
The rest of the schedule changes could wait. I was too tired to think about them that night.
Images From The Day
