Fitness Program

During the period of this camp we are doing a series of runs. We have a number of 3.4km runs and 5.5km runs. We also have a 9.2km run and an 11km beach run as well as a number of fitness games.

Day 5 Friday 12th March

Today we went for our first run. We got our of our tents in the morning and went straight to a shed. We found a timetable of the runs and the program for the rest of the Wombana camp. Some of the kids started complaining about how they were gonna have to do the 9.2km run so soon and one started telling people about how hard the power training on the day before it would be. I jogged as fast as i could for the first part of it and found i was soon worn out. I ended up getting a time of around thirty minutes for the 3.4km run.

Day 6 Saturday 13th March
Today we went for the first 5.5 km run. I found myself being really down on myself but despite that i tried to keep going for the whole run. I felt really dehydrated during the run but that had never stopped me before so i kept on trying. I couldent get out of my head that i would end up getting a bad time and i think that it was probably because of this that i did so poorly. I ended up walking but trying to set goals for myself and ended up getting a time of 45:37. This made me feel really disappointed about myself but i feel that it also sparked a will to do better and to try harder on the other runs.

Day 7 Sunday 14th March
Today we had a fitness game instead of a run. When i awoke i found myself dreading what it might be. I thought that it might have been some sort of sprint race around the camp or something. It turned out that it was actually a lot of fun. We played a game which was in this case named "Rats and rabbits". It was one of those games which can be called anything (within reason) and still be the same. When rats was called the rabbits would try to catch them (before they reached a set point) and vice versa for the rabbits. If you took a step without having either rats or rabbits called then you were out. I did pretty well with this and ended up not being caught (even though i didnt manage to catch anyone). A lot of the time the person conducting it would say something random that started with "ra" to try and get us to run. We then were told about which ways a ship was (bow,stern,starboard,and port) and told to run to them when they were called. We were told things which mixed up where certain things were which led to some people scratching their heads the whole time. We then did a game of soccer where the entire team had to be on the balls side of the pitch when a goal was scored or else points were lost. If our whole team was on the correct side when we scored yet five people from the other team were still on the wrong side then we would score the goal plus one for every person on the other team on the wrong side (in this case we would get 6 points). If we were on the wrong side but we scored then the opponents would get the point plus one for each of us on the wrong side. It was fun but it was also tiring and it was easy to forget that amidst the fun of it. We won the game 5-1 against Wardlis 2 and 3 but this was only because we didnt forget about having the team on the correct side.

Day 8 Monday 15th March
Today we woke up for the second 5.5km run. It felt different this time. Even though i was for more tired i was determined to push myself and so i decided that i would jog all the way to the sacred rock. It was hard but i managed to make it and only then did i start to walk but i still set goals like jogging to a signpost. However shortly after the sacred rock i met one of the Wambana staff who told me to turn around and jog the whole way back. I did as he said but because i was feeling so tired i stopped a couple of times. I felt really proud that i did jog the whole way back and forth but also disappointed that i didnt get my proper time. I got around 33 minutes for that run but because i had to turn around i feel really disappointed about it.

Day 9 Tuesday 16th March
I woke up looking really forward to the fitness game. We started by doing a jog to warm ourselves up (its really cold in the mornings here). After that we did the same game as before (rats and rabbits) only this time it was called crusts and crumbs. I found this more enjoyable then before because so many times we would have to stop ourselves from running or all of a sudden go into a sprint when it seemed like he was going on a ramble (when he would say crusts or crumbs halfway through it). Then we played a game called chain dodgeball. In it you have a square which everyone except the chosen people stand outside of. The people who are chosen to be it must always be connected in some way and you can only hit the guy at the back. You are not allowed to form a ring to protect the person at the back but you are allowed to deflect balls from him. The only person who can be out is the person at the back of the chain and as a result he cannot catch or deflect balls from himself. It was fun but i found it annoying that nobody listened to my ideas on how we would be most effective.

Day 10 Wednesday 17th March
This morning i woke up dreading the power training. However it turned out that it wasent actually that bad. We had to do these sprints around some metho bottles and try to get in front of the person who was in front of us. As usual i was underestimated and was put second to last right. During the time it took for the guy in front to get to the guy at the back i had already passed at least five people. I found it ironic that the guy in front of me had said that he was so much better then me yet i kept beating him at this kind of stuff.

Day 11 Thursday 18th March
Today we did the 9.2km run. I was freaking out about it so much worrying about how i would do and if i would do well. I feel that i did pretty poorly but it was really quite hard not to do as well as other times. The whole run track was really sandy which made it really hard to run for long without stumbling. It still felt really disappointing since i ended up getting a time of 65 minutes.

Day 12 Friday 19th March
Fitness game today. This time we played a game ball game where people in red rashies would try to pass the ball to each other without it either hitting the ground or being stolen by someone in a blue rashy. It was fun but i didnt really get into it until the last few minutes of it and our team ended up losing 2-1

Day 13 Saturday 20th March
Today we had the 3.4km run. I was really looking forward to it with my new resolve to do better and i did. I managed to beat my time by around three minutes making my personal best for the run around twenty-seven minutes. I was really happy that i had managed to beat my time but i knew that i could still do better. Today ive decided to set a goal for myself. Next 3.4 run im going to get at 25minutes or less.

Day 14 Sunday 21st March
I went my all on this run due to my disappointment at no being able to finish the other 5.5km run. I felt so tired throught the second half of the run but i kept pushing myself as hard as i could. I manage to do great shaving around almost five minutes of my time off my time. My current time is 40:50 and im going to try to get under forty minutes on my next run.

Day 15 Monday 22nd March
Today we woke up for power training. We jogged down to where we had done the beach run and did a few quick sprints there before jogging back to the camp. It was tiring but it didnt fell that exhausting. It felt more like my muscles didnt want to move more then them feeling like they'd moved to much. Most of us were wandering why we had gone out there if we were just going to be doing runs which we could have done back at camp. The only answer ive been able to come up for with this was that we were told that we only had 15 minutes of actual power training.

Day 16 Tuesday 23rd March
No training today. I was off at a surf camp trying to stand up. I guess surfing might fit into the fitness program but we have a whole section of the blog devoted to surfing.

Day 17 Wednesday 24th March
No training today either. Already told you im doing surfing these two days so why not go read about that cause your not gonna find it here.

Day 18 Thursday 25th March
To ease us back into the morning runs we had the 3.4km run this morning. I went my best and managed to get a pretty good time of 25 minutes. I didnt feel as exhausted as i usually do after the runs which means that im starting to get a fair bit fitter from this. Im looking forward to getting home because then i wont have to get up so early for these runs.

Day 19 Friday 26th March
Today we did some fitness games. We did a slow jog around the oval to warm up and then moved right on into a fitness game. In this fitness game we had to have our group carry one person from the group each time. That person wasent allowed to run so he relied on the others to carry him. We had to repeat this until only one person was left and then he had to run back to finish (he cant carry himself). I tried to tell the people in our group that it (since we would have to reverse the order) we have the hardest to carry person carried first and the other one going last. That we no matter what they wouldnt have much difficulty. But of course my team didnt listen to me and carried the lightest person first and last with the harder people in the middle. The other team did what i had suggested to our team and beat us by one or two people each time. Then we moved on to my highlet of the fitness program. In this game you can tag people but when they are tagged they have to link arms with you. When they do this you cant tag people with the arms that are linked so if you have a group of three people the guy in the middle cant tag anyone. Once they have five or six people they can break off into other groups. I spent the first part of the game just standing in one place telling the guy to go off after someone who had just backed themselves into a corner whenever he got near me. They ran and he chased after them and it wasnt until he had tagged two other people that this stopped working. The guy at the edge of the chain reached forward to tag me and at the last second i shot off towards the other edge of the chain (they never expect you to come at them) and while he was surprised ran right past him. There were almost ten times when they had tried to trap me and i had slipped right out of there fingers either running right at them or getting them confused enough that they broke the chain. (when someone breaks the chain nobody from that chain can tag anyone) During the last moments before i was caught i tried to run through the chain again (through the gaps in it. Not ramming into it) they closed in to stop me from running through them. Then i tried to make it look like i was trying to still find a way through it. Made to dart of to the side and then ran straight away from them. This only stunned them for a second though and they soon caught me cause i had to run around a chain of people. When i was caught it took ages for the game to finish cause nobody listened to what i had to say. It was fun though and i really enjoyed it.

Day 20 Saturday 27th March
This morning i had the 5.5km run. Like before i woke up really eager to prove that i could do better then before. When i got to the shed (where we start our runs) we were told that it might rain today and that if it did we had to keep going (i was never planning on stopping even if it did). A number of people were complaining that they were feeling sick or that they had hurt themselves so they got out of the run. It felt pretty easy running down to the jetty which is the halfway point but as soon as i reached it (it was darker then usual this morning) i ended up hitting my leg against the towbar. I was jogging so fortunately i only hurt my leg and it wasent bleeding but it made it harder for me to keep jogging. Worst part about it was that on the way back i had the wind blowing against me as well as the my leg making it harder. Nontheless i tried my hardest and managed to beat my old time by seventeen seconds. Meaning that i now have a new best time of 40:33. Im happy with this time but i would have liked to beat the forty minute mark.

Day 21 Sunday 28th March
This morning we did the 3.4km run. I tried to really push it and decided to try and set myself a goal to beat someone today. Near the end i overtook a few people and decided that i would try to beat Angus in this run. About a hundred metres away from the end i was able to overtake him but during the last bit of road he started to run and overtake me. I sprinted determined to try and beat him and managed to tie with him during the at the very end of the run.

Day 22 Monday 29th March
Today we had our last fitness game. We had a game which was soccer in which we had to pass the ball over a line in order to be able to score a goal. We were each were partnered up with someone who was supposed to be our running speed. I was able to get the ball over the line so that we could score once and i managed to prevent the person i was partnered up with from hardly ever getting the ball. He only got the ball three times and only one of those times was i unable to get it away from him. It would have helped if they hadnt kept acting like they were better then me but there are just people like that. It made it a bit less enjoyable but it was fun nonetheless.

Day 23 Tuesday 30th March
Today was the day which pretty much everyone was waiting for. The 11km beach run. The day before we had been briefed on where we would be running and the distances of each section of the run. At the start of the run i was pretty much right at the back of the pack. I kept trying to run for a greater distance and i slowly managed to but i found it very difficult. I probably would have been able to do a lot better if i had prepared for it more. I was doing the run in short jeans (we had to wear shorts. I only had jeans for shorts) and boots (my shoes are still wet). This meant that i probably had it harder for the run as i soon found out that boots arent particularly the best thing to be wearing during a beach run. I likewise found out that jeans are not the best thing to be running in as they keep slipping down. This made my running really awkward and i found out that i was the first person ever to have run the 11km beach run with boots on let alone jeans. For the first half of the run i would try to encourage myself in my head to do well. I told myself that the pain was all in my head and tried various other techniques to try to encourage myself to keep going. For the second half when i found that i was having trouble thinking i just kept repeating the end to the muse song (i think its) uprising in my head. Just repeating the last lines (of which i can only rememeber as):
They will not control us
They will stop degrading us
They will not enslave us
We will be victorious
Managed to keep me going. During the last kilometre or so my head started feeling so light that i just gave it my all. My feet seemed to pick up the pace and go faster then they had for the whole of the run. I realized once i saw the end of the run just how much i had achieved and used that to keep myself going for the last few metres. I ended up getting a time of 1:37:00. This means that i was going at an average of about 8km/h and im proud of the fact that even though my body was in so much pain i was able to make myself keep going. Im amazed about this but i found that pretty much everyone was missing the cycle tour now. Overall during this camp we have run the equivalent of a marathon over these days. In fact weve probably gone more.

Im really proud of how well ive done in these runs. When i first heard that we had an 11km beach run i was so worried about it that i was thinking i wouldent stand a chance at it but now i can see just how far ive come. Ive gotten a lot fitter then i was before and i feel that im also mentally more strong as well. Im looking forward to cycling with my dad when i get back from this camp. I hope that i never forget the lessons that i have learnt during this camp and chances are that thanks to this blog i wont.

Welcome to my Wombana Blog

My name is Danyon John White and I am going to be on extended stay for 23 days straight. During the first 4 days of extended stay we will be camping in tents and doing cycling for three of those days. Im looking forward to the camp but it seems like a very daunting prospect and im not sure that im going to go too well in it. For Wombana we will have four teachers: Mr. Baird, Mophit, Dale, and Paul. While we have the bikes a bike instructer called Peter will be helping us. Im going to be camping out with a kid named Cameron (Im always forgetting his name). Im probably going to be missing my mother Stephanie, my father John, and my two brothers Tristan and Ethan. Im going to be staying in a wardli with 4 or 5 other people. Wardli means dwelling or place of residence and comes from the aboriginal language and Wombana translates to "place of phisical and spiritual learning" Im in a Wardli with Phillip Craig, Luke Janowski, Xavier Warne, and Ian Smith.
Phillip Craig

Xavier Warne pretending to be dead (he had a blood nose)

Ian Smith

Luke Janowski

Cycle Tour

Day 1 Monday 8Th March

We have been introduced today to the rules of the camping part of the Wambana trip. I ended up having some mini pizzas with some cheese in them. I had to cut back on the ingredients but they were still quite nice. I was planning on cooking mac and cheese but my partner had to use the Trangia to cook his meal that night and we ended up running out of time for me to cook mine. I ended up having to have them cold. Its stuff like that which makes me miss home already.

Day 2 Tuesday 9Th March

Today we did two bike rides. One was a trip from Wambana to West Cowie Return and the other was the Warooka loop. On the trip for Wambana to West Cowie Return we travelled a distance of 20K's. It started off really nice and it was an easy run with the coast running along our right and the houses with their amazing gardens running along our left. We were introduced to the rock which we would be turning back at on the 3.4 km morning runs. However when we turned off into a dirt road it got really bumpy and the scenery was reduced to mostly just grass with some sparse trees. Soon after going on this road i fell off my bike and badly grazed my right hand and both my elbows.

My hand after 6 days of healing




We stopped around halfway through the ride to check out an abandoned single classroom school. It occurred to me how awkward it would have been and upon asking how it worked i was told that all of the kids were taught by one teacher. I found out that there are still some schools run without teachers. (i wish i had brought my camera there).
The Warooka loop ran for a total of 23K's and was far more "interesting" a ride. The scenery showcased all the beauty of the plants near the sea and the road itself was simply a trail that felt amazing to ride on yet looked as if it should be way more bumpy then it was. It feels amazing having done this much in one day yet i know that Ive still got another 80K's to go.
Tonight yet again my partner was cooking with the trangia so i had to have my vege sausages cold. For those who don't know I'm a vegetarian so any products that would normally be meat will be vege products. I don't eat fish so don't ask me if i do and i said vegetarian; not vegan; so i do eat animal products. The flies here are really bugging me and the march flies here are really fast. For some reason they seem to have picked my ears as a target.

Day 3 Wednesday 10Th

Today we rode around the Innes National Park. During this run we rode for 37K's. The entire ride was through a nice bitumen road with constant trees running along both sides of the road. The ride was from a small information area which had a weird giant rusted hollowed-out wheel-shaped thing to a small stub of a lighthouse. We made it to the lighthouse from where i took a picture of how far we were to go next.

The next stop is to the far right of the picture below



We then stopped at a beach where one of the kids on our camp (Ian) ran out onto the beach. He then started running around the waves before walking as close as he could to them with out getting wet. After coming back he said the he had run out there thinking that everyone was coming and then got disappointed when he found that nobody was there. While i was out there i took a photo of the lighthouse we had stopped by earlier.

Ian walking out to the ocean

The lighthouse which we had rode from


Tonight i used my Trangia to cook some mac and cheese which was probably the best Ive cooked on a Trangia.

Day 4 Thursday 11Th March
Today's bike ride was from the central Southern Yorke Peninsula to Edithburgh. The ride there took a total of 48K's. The scenery was amazing for all but a stretch of dirt road which was so samey that it seemed to go on forever. All of the ride except for the last 2K's was bumpy or dirt road. At one point we went completely off the road and used a trail that was nothing more then an area which had been set aside for road construction but had never had the road been built. During the last part of the road before Edithburgh we came across a wind farm. As we passed the wind farm i rode into a bush and sent myself sprawling across the dirt road. I got up as fast as i could and kept on riding and was able to catch up and get ahead of them just before we rode into Edithburgh. I felt so happy that id finally completed the bike run but it soon occured to me that the morning runs would be the hard part.

Introduction to Statistics

Day 6 12th March

Today we were shown the statistics of our 3.4 km run. For this we were to round our times to the nearest minute and then to tell them to one of the Wambana staff. We then got a statistic of how many people got which time and found that the most people on a single time was three with us having the same times at 15 and 24 minutes. We then grouped these together to create a graph. We found that we had a right biased positive distribution. This means that we have more people with faster times then slower times. This would remain the same but it shows that we have a fairly steady and good group of poeple for running and that we have a distance of about only four minutes between each of our groups. We conducted a graph of stats which looked like this:

Wardli 2 Wardli 3 Wardli 4 Wardli 5
min 16 14 13 13
max 24 25 24 30
range 8 11 11 17
mode n/a 25 24 n/a
median 23 18 16 18
mean 21 19.40 18.40 21
Q1 16 14.5 14 14
Q3 24 25 24 29.5
IQR 8 10.5 10 15.5

The IQR is the average distance between our times. This shows that Wardli two was the most constant group while Wardli five was the most diverse.

Hardwicke Bay Revegetation Project

Day 8 15th March

Today we were told that we would be helping with the revegetation around Hardwicke Bay. We were told about how most of the plants that became weeds were brought from foreign countries for gardens. However there are also some that snuck into Australia. One species of weed stuck to the bottom of a boat going to Australia and when the boat unloaded its cargo and left the weed fell off the boat and ended up floating to shore a spreading seeds from there. After hearing this i was surprised at how many gardens around the place still had these weeds growing in there gardens. Even though we were told that it was going to be a revegetation project we ended up going to a house and pulling out a lot of dead plants and certain less reproductive weeds. We didnt have to worry with these plants but we were told that with a lot of the weeds if you broke part of them off and let it find soil it would grow to become another weed. We were also shown a weed that was covered in seeds. If you broke part of it off then about twenty seeds would come off it as well. I commented after cleaning up on how i should really have taken a before and after photo to show just how much work we had done. Because i forgot this though ill just have to say that by the time we had finished cleaning up the garden it looked half the size it was before because of all of the dead plants no longer cluttering it up.

Moffs History Tour 1

I was surprised at how the history tour was. It wasent so much of a tour as more of a couple of stops and stories about the past of the area. We found out about how the exploration of the whole of Australias coast was only thanks to the norfolk pine which was used as wood when Matthew Flinder's ship had its wood rotting away. We found out about how a lot of the larger animals that had used to live here were killed by the aboriginals burning down trees in order to hunt for food. We found out about how a lot of the people who moved to Australia had used linestone for their building aristocracy buildings but the other classes had used corregated iron to build sheds which were hailed as the perfect housing for pioneers of the lower classes. Back then the main form of travel over the sea was using sails. Most would also use steam engines when the wind stopped blowing to their favour. We learnt about how during the gold rush the Chinese were exploited by being forced to pay a tax to come to Australia to mine for gold. Eventually Australia their became too many people mining for gold so it was then made that nobody was allowed to come to Australia from China. This was ages ago so now the law has been abolished.

Snorkelling

Day 8 15th March

Today we went snorkelling around Edithburgh. We learnt to use the snorkles and how to get water out if they filled up inside a shallow pool near the ocean. I felt very worried about doing this with thoughts of "What if i dont blow out the water properly?" and "What if i blow it out while underwater" racing through my mind. When i went underwater all of a sudden my breathing started to speed up and i sometimes i felt like i couldent breath. After around ten minutes of practicing snorkelling i began to get better control of myself and spotted some fish swimming around the pool. I followed them for a while until another kid nearly swam straight into me and started to follow the fish but soon lost them. While exploring the area with the snorkels like we were told i found a Port Jackson shark egg which i mistook for some seaweed which had curled up on itself. I realized that it was an egg by the holes that had been cracked into it and the way that the cracks had been made. I showed it to one of the staff and they told me that it was a Port Jackson shark egg and gave me an empty clam shell that one of the other kids had found.

The port Jackson shark egg (right) and clam shell (left)