Kerang Region 2022

A quick recap of my Kerang trip before the monthly review, although I wouldn't call it a holiday. I organised two days of travel to also include some new parkrun locations, since I don't plan on travelling three or four hours to these places on a normal weekend - and benefiting from an extra event on Sunday for new year's day.

Friday afternoon was just spent travelling, getting fuel after about an hour then going the rest of the way without stopping. A few sections of the highway had 60 kilometre speed limit, but overall not too bad. I passed a few take-away food places in the main street of town as I was driving through - right next to each other - and also a couple of supermarkets nearby. If you lived in town you'd be a bit limited for choice, but that would be the same or worse for a lot of towns. The motel had most of the Foxtel sport channels, the best option was a BBL match where I got to watch a Melbourne team lose as per usual.

I seem to wake up every hour when I have an alarm set for the morning, so this was no different. Had a 7am alarm to drive to Lake Boga Foreshore for the usual Saturday parkrun - 45 kilometres but at 100 km/h with no traffic is a quick trip. I did a four kilometre warm up before the start - on a mixture of bitumen and concrete (the worst) - then almost missed the start as I didn't realise it was a couple of minutes walk from the finish.

Due to having consecutive parkrun days I was hoping to only run around 20 minutes, but like usual had someone running just behind me for the first two kilometres. Still can't understand why people start at 4:00/km then finish closer to 5:00/km and never learn. I finished the course under 19:30, it's just a small section of the lake as I'd guess the whole way around would be 25 kilometres or more.

Completed a short two kilometre warm down afterwards and at the end of all that my right foot was still a bit sore - from the previous week of double parkrun and driving to Bendigo - but hadn't gotten any worse, and still better than earlier in the week.

Swan Hill was only about 15 minutes further away, so went for a quick visit. It's a bit bigger than Kerang and other towns in the area - you can tell since it has it's own KFC, McDonald's, Subway, etc. I hadn't been paying much attention to the map so didn't realise the town was right on the Murray River border - I knew it was close - but didn't notice any particular damage caused by the floods from earlier in the year.

The town has a contribution to the Big Things Of Australia - the Giant Murray Cod. Stopped for a quick photo and also to have a walk around the town, but some shops were closed for the holiday so no magnet. Also walked along the river bank and across the bridge to New South Wales.

Drove back to Kerang, stopped at the bakery for lunch then back to the hotel. Went back out walking again in the afternoon but it does seem to get really hot out in the regional areas and there wasn't much shade around. Checked out a few of the landmarks in town like Atkinson Park, some clock tower in the main street, some lookout tower across from the park, not much activity here either due to new year's eve.

Back to the motel after dinner had some more BBL to watch, I didn't realise Kerang had their own fireworks when they went off in the park at 9:30pm, it was so close I thought it was someone outside the motel at first. They didn't last too long so didn't get time to walk over for a closer look. They had another session at midnight though which were much louder and went for around 10 minutes.

Had another parkrun for Sunday but this one was within walking distance for the Kerang Regional event. I hadn't scrolled down four months on their facebook page to see they had changed the course because of floods and again nearly missed the start. It was even warmer than the previous morning but with a very small attendance I was able to run at my own pace just under 20 minutes.

So that was it, back to the hotel to get ready for the long drive back to Melbourne. Managed to go the whole way without stopping but had the usual soreness in my left leg in particular, made worse by driving shortly after exercising I think but got through a bit better having just done the two hour trip to Bendigo the previous weekend to get used to it.