Lost in Long Bay

I’ve wanted to run along the Coastal Track in the Long Bay Regional Park for quite some time now. I’d seen photos posted from the track and the views were phenomenal (even though views are sometimes lost on me because I tend to spend most of my time looking at the ground in front of my feet). 😉

Although I’ve never visited the Regional park all the online maps made it seem like a straight forward route.  I only had to follow the coastal track to the end where I’d turn left and follow the track back around to the carpark (albiet past where the the original track started).

But hey – when have I made anything simple actually so, especially when it comes to running any route for the first time.  Heck!  I still get lost running along routes I’ve run quite regularly ..

I need to stop and listen to my inner voice.  I mean I had wondered why after 3k’s I hadn’t come to a left turn when the entire route was only supposed to be 5.6 (ish) and then when I finally checked the GPS to find that I’d gone past the turn off by quite some distance and was now on an uncharted area of the Park I should have back tracked then – but no, that would be far too simple.

Instead I forged on until I hit “a dead end”

Thanks to my prior online research I knew where the Okura River was and even worse I knew that I’d now have to turn around and return along the same track that I’d just come down from, because even if I did manage to somehow find where I was supposed to turn, it would have ended up running even further. I was already going to run nearly 2k’s further than what was scheduled for the day.

This is one of the reasons that I usually walk a route before I run it, but since Long Bay is about a 30 minute drive from both my work and where I live, it’s not an area I pass through regularly.  At least I’ll know for next time.

I was slightly worried that although my knee has been coping quite well since I’ve started running regularly again, I haven’t done anything over 5k’s so the extra unplanned 2k was slightly unsettling.  Thankfully when I got back to my car, apart from being UBER hot and thirsty *note to self, take the water bladder if you are running somewhere you are unfamiliar with!* I felt good, a bit geographically challenged – but good.

Till next time

 
PS – Long Bay is truly as beautiful as the photos make it seem.