Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

At Naseby again for a two-loop mass start race through the most intense of the detail. Started reasonably well with no significant slip-ups in the first half of the first loop, but erratic after that, and ran into major trouble in the same area on both loops - climbing into steep stuff on the east side of the map. I dropped 5 minutes over two controls there on the first loop, and 4 on one in the second, as part of about 14 minutes lost altogether - far too much. In a Simon-less field that was also about the distance I was away from the lead.

After the first quarter I didn't see a lot of people, although I was with Eric for a while around the changeover - he messed 9 up even more badly than I did - and saw Scott Simson from tiem to time. By the end beating him was the extent of my ambitions, which I managed to do.

So ended a week in which the orienteering experiences were interesting, with an impressive variety of terrain, but I can't be happy with a set of performances which ranged from mediocre to decidedly poor. Now onto the west coast for a couple of days.

My first attempt at Naseby, an area which I'd been looking forward to running on for a long time - since dropping in there (without a map) in 1994 and wondering how on earth people orienteered in this (it's highly intense goldmining, mostly in low-visibility pine). For a while it looked like we weren't going to get to run there because of high fire danger (Christchurch had its second-hottest January day on record, 35.7, on Thursday), but the change came through in the nick of time.

I lost a bit of time on 1 and more on 2, but then settled well through the next section, before a silly mistake on the long 7th leg - Naseby has numerous mountain bike tracks (it must have been incredibly hard at APOC 1984 with none of these and a 1:15000 map), but their shape is heavily generalised and I misread a bend, going off 150 metres too late. Lost about 2 minutes there, then much better through the middle of the course, and surprisingly caught Brent Edwards 6 minutes at 21. That was my undoing - I promptly blew 22 (last control in a felled section) comprehensively, to the tune of about 4 minutes. Wobbly to the finish. Without that mistake it would have been at least a vaguely respectable result, but as it was it was disappointing.

C • Like to see the map. 1

Oceania Middle Champs. Again just above midfield at the back of a close bunch, again well behind Simon (7 minutes this time).

This was a completely different area - knolls and depressions on limestone, with cliffs and scattered rocks as well - mostly open. It was probably my best technical run of the week with only two glitches, a 30-seconder at 7 and 15-seconder at 10, but still not really fast enough, and definitely too much of a wuss on the steep downhills (the exit from 14 being Exhibit A). Felt pretty good in the warm-up, less sharp for much of the race.

Odd spot of the day: Ecmo started 2 minutes ahead of me and I saw him leaving 9 as I was approaching, with a gap that looked like about 2 minutes. I next saw him exiting 14 as I was climbing to 13 and the gap seemed to gave grown substantially and inexplicably. It turned out that he missed 13 altogether.

The other odd spot of this period involves the place we're staying at, the Danseys Pass Motor Camp, a caravan park in the middle of nowhere. They lost our booking so we spent Thursday night on mattresses in the lounge. Tonight we managed to procure a cabin. It's a lovely middle-of-nowhere spot, but could politely be described as rustic - not much seems to have changed since 1960 (certainly not the fridges) and the cabins and bedding are the most decrepit I've seen in any commercial accommodation establishment in any country that's never been run by communists (*).

(* - despite what some of the wilder fringes of the NZ Business Roundtable might have said about the Helen Clark administration, NZ definitely falls into this category)

A bit of a Clayton's rest day - with much better weather this morning we set about climbing Avalanche Peak, a 1833m summit out of Arthurs Pass (1100m vertical climb). This was a reasonably hard grind - certainly not remotely technical, but a couple of fairly exposed bits for someone like me who doesn't have a brilliant head for heights (something I first discovered on Half Dome in Yosemite in 2000). Wouldn't have wanted it to be much windier. Magic scenery as you'd expect. Also a bit of wildlife in the form of a kea (alpine parrot) which took off with Jim's lunch at the summit.

Quad preservation was the order of the day on the descent.

Oceania Long Champs. Expected a tough slog and got one - a steep area in the hills east of Arthur's Pass. It was the sort of area that I'm glad to have experienced, but certainly wouldn't want to be on every week.

Like many I had trouble getting into the map and terrain and lost time on four of the first six, but avoided disaster (nothing bigger than 30 seconds), unlike numerous others. Settled after that but always had at the back of the mind that this was going to be a long race and was conservative accordingly. Downhill running, especially in steep-enough-to-be-scary areas, is clearly a major weakness - we had a long leg back down the mountain and I thought my route was decent (as did the course-setter) but I lost 5 minutes to some people on a 14-minute leg. Thought it might have been about to fall apart when I started cramping at 27 but managed to recover.

Strangest incident of the day was when Jamie Stewart caught me 4 minutes at 20. 20 was the 'map change' control, the change being of the flip-over variety. Jamie yelled something at me which I couldn't understand - it turned out it was 'where's the map change' or words to that effect (probably with a couple of expletives thrown in) - he thought he was looking for a new map box and when he couldn't find out set off home. I couldn't work out what he was doing as he was clearly overshooting 21, which I overshot myself to the tune of about 2 minutes (my worst error of the day).

Ended up 13th, a little above midfield (or more than a little above midfield if you count the DNFs) - for a long time I was last but the slower ones all seemed to be late in the draw. Simon was very impressive indeed, 13 minutes ahead of the best New Zealander, and Eric did well too - it's his type of country but I didn't think he would have the endurance for a race like this these days.

C • NZ 2

Oceania Relays, 2nd leg. Not one of my finer performances with two major mistakes, both of them through not keeping track of distance on a line feature. One of these was a beach - I know beach navigation is dangerous but thought I had my pace counting sorted out. I didn't, thought I had undershot when I'd actually overshot, relocated off 17 when looking for 11 and lost 5-6 minutes. Also about 3 minutes at 16 in the green.

This followed a promising first loop; I wasn't quite sure of myself in the dune detail but didn't really do anything wrong, and caught up several minutes on Ben (who'd lost a fair bit of time on 1). It was the second loop where I came unstuck; after the second mistake it was a bit of a struggle physically too, but that may have been above the shoulders.

Somewhat to my surprise I had lost almost no ground to the leaders. Ecmo brought us up to the sprint for third which he narrowly lost - but it turned out to be the sprint for second because Ben had missed a control.

Oceania Sprint Champs. Took me as long to warm up as I can ever remember before an orienteering race - and I suspect it's not going to get any easier as I get closer to 40 - but felt good once I was running.

Missed 1 a bit but then settled quite well. Ryan caught me at the spectator control halfway through; I sort of held onto him for a few controls (more than I expected) before losing ground. Still running respectably well for me in a park sprint - I usually regard par for these as 2.45 down and got inside that. Major issue was having trouble telling the difference between in-bounds and out-of-bounds gardens. An interesting area.

Came about two-thirds of the way down the field, but at the front of a close cluster.

My table was looking good for the quiz night too - until a disastrous performance on the Maori round.