Training Log Archive: slow-twitch

A walk around the Lake domain once the pissing-down was over, with the goal of getting life back in the legs before the next torture rolls around

Missiojn day with Drew and Amy. Up Mt Te Aroha at a reasonably honest pace. Good to get to the summit intentionally for once, even if that's pretty much exactly where the cloud-base was (so less spectacular views all-at-once than last visit, though I think we could see every major landmark at least once).

Mission Day part 2: run from Te Aroha summit, initially along the Dog Kennel track then down down down to come out through the Wairongomai valley with a 5-ish km slog back along the road to the Te Aroha domain. A bit of exaggeration to call it 2 hours running, in part because I didn't stop the watch every time we stopped to look at some of the gold-mining relics... (or interesting trees...) and also because the first 20 minutes or so the track was a bit too narrow and obstacle-filled to get up to a run for more than a few paces at a time. (If I was to do this again and the running was more important than the scenicness, I might start the downhill on the summit road until the point it brushed up against the track we were using - assuming it is the same road - there can't be too many up there?) But once we got onto the wider track and especially when it started joining up the old tram-lines, was beautiful smooth running. Just the almost continuous slight down-hill led to hurting in places that normally don't hurt. I was expecting/hoping to open right up for the final road stretch, but... Nah. Even if the time is a fudge it definitely felt like 2 hours afterwards!

C • Nice Area 2

Getting out of the house towards the end of a day that was far drearier than it was supposed to be, but as is always the case breaking through the unenthusiasm barrier was the only hard part. Home-Porritt-Claudelands Bush-Home by sometimes slightly indirect routes.

Sort of recovery run. Sort of because I went a bit further and longer than I had in mind but it was good. Office up to Cobham Bridge (which definitely got further away the moment I decided to carry on that far - the laws of physics do that), then back down the other side of the river, crossing at Claudelands.

Training session with the Hawks. 2 x c2km with hill climb. Was supposed to be 3 x, but by the end of the first I was feeling way too snotty to be doing high intensity stuff, and after losing over an entire minute on the second, decided the sensible option would be to bail.

C • wow 1

Didn't time it except for the 11 minute warm-up run from the Hawks clubroom to the lake (indirect route), but this seems about right for the before/after and recovery-during parts of the session

Kairangi. Dragged myself along despite lack of enthusiasm because saturday's plans were washed out, but glad I did, it was a nice day and probably about as nice a course as you can have on this map and still include the obligatory trip up to the predator resistant fence. No difficulty with any of the controls, but i never give myself a perfect score so marking one down for sticking with the left hand route choice on the 2nd big route choice leg when I think we decided in the end right was marginally better. Feeling a bit snotty by the end and had absolutely nothing on the uphills. On Kairangi that's generally a bit of an issue...

well, this WAS going to be back-to-action day... however colds and the like seem to have impeccable senses of timing...

Relay day. Seemed to go alright. (?)

It will probably be a bit quiet here now for a week or so. I think I've earned it.

putting out the northern block of controls then checking Robbie's work in the rock-garden (again, mostly pass marks). then out again a little bit later to swap long controls for relay controls in the overlapping bit.

Little bits and pieces while waiting to start. Probably not enough judging by how the physical side of the race played out.

Nationals Middle. 3rd but should have been at least 10 minutes faster and pretty sure I was dead last at the second control - lots of time lost there even when I'd figured out where it was and was simply trying to get to it, and a few more minutes at the next one which was probably a direct result of the first mistake. Found the next few alright, but not exactly orienteering smoothly but everything had clicked back into place by the longish leg back into the insane rocks for 10. This was also where the legs started getting into it after feeling very heavy from the start. Very happy with how i kicked through the rest of the course from there (except a bit of a miss at 17, but just about everyone did that) - that part of the course deserved a podium place at least - and a lesson in never giving up after a bad start, I suppose.

a nice walk putting out half the 'stadium' controls for the relay...

...followed by a nice kind of warm-down run around Robbie's half of the stadium. Only one disagreement! And it turns out in the final map prep that control had somehow dropped off the one course that used it too... :-/

A good pre-race warm-up shooting the breeze with Mr Harris (who it is great to see back in the country), and a slow circuit of the athletics track post race

Nationals sprint. 5th, felt in contention for 3rd (would have taken worse stuff than I would wish upon them to happen to Carsten or Nick H to do any better than that) and was only 10 seconds off that goal. I would be happy with that if I couldn't find at least those 10 seconds in 3 different ways: a route choice to 8 that seemed good at the time but every time I've looked at the map since it's been "what WAS I thinking?"; getting into a dead end rather than the correct gap to get to 9; and the combination of lungs being less than 90% and a bit of hesitation/confusion going into 6 as I started looking at the wrong bit of the map on final approach. Was still covering the ground pretty quick even if I was feeling a tiny bit sick - starting to feel like I'm getting some speed back.