Training Log Archive: slow-twitch

Atu te whare ki te mahi, te ara iti.

Atu te mahi ki te whare, te ara roa: Wananga - pae hoiho - te ara Turitea (mahipuke!) - te awa - Esplanade - pae kuri - Riverdale - (ngaro! =< ) - whare. Reka!

C • Maori language week or stre... 5

Intended rest day, but also the ankle started getting a little tender overnight - so we'll see what happens tomorrow to the intended run

From flat to campus. Fairly direct but took in the odd small zig zag through the esplanade for fun. Must stop thinking that because I'm running in I therefore don't have to be at the bus stop before 820 and therefore can stay in bed a 'little' longer... so was running a bit late again today. But was hard work this morning so even if I'd had time for the intended long way to work would not have had the energy

From campus to flat. Was going to take the direct route at least until across the bridge so as to not commit myself to extra time/distance until I was happy that the foot was ok - then do laps round the esplanade if AOK. However took a wrong turn early on and ended up climbing up to Summerhill, so thankfully no problems! Then right through the esplanade, behind the holiday park and a lap of the dog-walking area before striking back for home through Savage Reserve (I'm guessing Scribe Street and Che Fu Lane must also be round here somewhere). Still not an hour plus but will do for the mo.

C • Street names 3

Short blat around the mean streets of Carterton to see how the foot felt. Would otherwise have done little more than eat all weekend. More fatigue than soreness, so will try easing back on to program this week. Lovely morning (if a little cold) with peeks of snow-covered Tararuas to look out for on the way round.

Not sure what to make of this - one of my brother's dogs (who has devoted her life to being the exception that proves the rule wrt collie intelligence) refused to have anything to do with me when I turned up the previous night, but as soon as she saw me all sweaty and in running clothes was all "hey I remember you, come play with me!!"

C • I must be behind the times ... 2

Ankle seems to get through my exercises no probs but aches on and off at other times... maybe when the weather clears up I'll take it for a test run but right now quite happy to have an excuse to not be out there

Ankle not as bad as I'd thought though sore after standing in the lab most of the day. If I'm good and remember to do my rehab this time, mightn't be too long before I'm at least road running again. Seems to happen whenever I'm intending to lift the effort a bit =<

To start, then back to event centre to clear and check, then back to start. Was obviously too long in the Territory and forgotten about these new fangled gizmo-controls

Pukepuke - can't remember what my last run on Manawatu sand dunes (my home terrain if I have one) would have been, maybe Qb'day last year? A little messy at the beginning (30+ secs lost on 1, 2+ minutes on a parallel error to the south of 2) & very messy towards the end, but there was a bit in the middle that went very nicely! Would have made the senior boys top 10 at the school champs so can't complain.

Running much faster and longer than I expected to, must be fitter than I think at the mo'. Helped keep the gas up that Malcolm I caught me at 9 & we saw A LOT of each other on & off to almost the finish. Good little battle but I could have handled it better - many little mistakes I mightn't have made otherwise, including choosing the wrong time to give him the lead for a leg - I thought he was heading too far right, yet just had to keep following, didn't I!!! Hit the wall with just 300m to go then went & rolled my stupid ankle.

From new temporary flat to campus. Slightly less direct route but not the major deviation I'd planned as I found quite a bit more of the sleep I forgot to take with me to Australia and wasn't out the door until after 9. Still appear to be the first into the office - gotta love academia! Better pace today but seemed to be working way too hard to get it.

C • Your trainings sounded much... 1

From campus to new temporary flat. Probably by pretty much most direct route (ie didn't get lost like I was half expecting to). Will need to find less direct routes as current mission is to build the base back up & half hour runs won't cut it. As is often te case with the first run after a short break, had trouble pulling the pace back to something sensible (think I'll call that the Ireland Effect), but don't seem to have hurt myself much as a result.

C • ouch 1

Feeling shattered (and slightly cold) day

Travel day, starting in the weest smallest hours, after dinner with Lachlan, SusC & Blair, talking just enough non-orienteering shit to stop Claire the non-orienteering flatmate from strangling us all.

Travel day - returning to Darwin. Made a few short stops along the way but because the weather had taken a turn for the worse (I think there were at least 5 clouds in the sky at one point) decided not to do any long walks.

I did have the best of intentions of throwing in the odd run over the course of this trip, but the combination of the heat, lots of time on my feet (there was plenty more walking but not energetic at all, which I haven't logged) and sleeping, or more accurately attempting to sleep (didn't have any Ronan Keating on my MP3 thingy) on the back seat of the landcruiser put paid to that idea. Ah well, in a few days this holiday will be over, so I might just have to make that the holiday over in more ways than one!

Another very hot day. Two hours on the Gubara walk to some deep pools in shady forest. Supposedly a 4 hour trip but had the idea of shady forest spurring me on on the way in and the idea of an airconditioned landcruiser doing the same for the return trip. Just to make it fun the track was mostly soft sand. Had heard this was the best spot in Kakadu for turtle and fish spotting. No turtles but did get to see a nice big saratoga (a fish straight out of Jurassic Park) doing circuits of the biggest pool. Also spent over half an hour in the same heat walking into and out of the Nangawulurr rock painting site to see 20 000 years' worth of accumulated graffiti.

Walking above Twin Falls. Very hot and probably could have spent less time up there but still nice. Judging from how smooth the creek bed is, must be an amazing sight in full flow. The walk+boat trip+boulder hopping walk to the bottom of the falls doesn't justify a log entry but I will still mention it as it is an absolutely stunning spot - any thought that I might be waterfalled-out disappeared at first sight of the falls.

Yellow Water boat trip. Today Birdman died and went to heaven.

Jim Jim Falls, or at least the plunge pool, as the falls themselves are one of the first in Kakadu to run dry every year. The walk in and out is 90% boulder hopping which is fun & good agility training, but my legs were feeling very sore the next day.

An intense little haul up to the top of Gunlom Falls, where I found some familiar faces who tried to convince me to do the rogaine this weekend. Beautiful spot but very busy!

Maguk - another beautiful waterfall but much less crowded, and some interesting wildlife in the forest & creek leading there. Unfortunately this is the day I didn't load the film in my camera properly. Also have no idea where the track to the top of the falls branched off so missed seeing that side of it.

Travel day - Batchelor to Mary River Roadhouse. Stopped for a short scrambly walk to Robin Falls where I saw no robins but swarms of butterflies. Other than that, the only time the HR rose was while I was driving through a small bush fire

NT Long champs - much better day so a good one to end on. 50% down on the top woman (Susanne Cas) which I rate as OK for foreign conditions, especially as everyone else on the course was 70+ mins. Good enough for the M35 cup, anyway ;-)

Saved myself just in time from 2-3 more mistakes, at least one of which would have been a big blow-out. The mistakes I did make were all smallish with no more than 3-5 minutes lost in total.

Took a few legs to get properly into the 1:15 000 (we really should run more at this scale) & had to concentrate to not invert contours at times (worst case almost leading to that big blowout). This is maybe a trap to look out for when spur/gulley terrain is significantly less steep to what we're used to in NZ. Happy with route choices though it would be interesting to be able to compare properly the left (high) and right (low) choices for 6-7. Susanne & I went left and are both sure that's the way to go, but Kate was equally happy with her right hand route - I'd probably have gone further right and stayed low until the control spur had I gone that way.

Underfoot on average much easier running than yesterday with the slow broken rock mainly confined to where it was mapped. Ridgetops and broad valleys were especially good, so used these as much as I could. Heat noticeable but used all my camelback (sucking it dry on the last leg) and every drinks control so managed well up to about #12 & wasn't much to go from there.

Rush to make my start time after a few delays getting there.

Took the "history-walk" with the land owner around some of what remains of the WW2 airforce camp we'd been running through. Sometimes I think with orienteering we get to some places with fascinating stories but are too busy with the race to learn about them, so this was a neat opportunity. It was also over an hour walking around in the hottest part of the afternoon so thankfully no race tomorrow!

NT Middle Distance race - more honest would be 4 out of 16 spiked but feel most controls were "good enough" ie though I wasn't perfect into them got into the general area and spotted the feature or the flag quickly. Big mistakes were 1, 11, 12 with easily 15 mins lost in total (old-technology controls in the NT so no split times so guesswork on time loss!). 1 was concentrating on footing not navigation & wandered about 100 m past the control. 11 intent was to aim off to the right/south & did so but by way too much so a bit of time to relocate especially as I had that slight doubt I may have ended up to the north. 12 didn't really stick to plan, came off road too early then when the inevitable happened was in a part of the map with very little going on so took ages to relocate. Finally got into the map @ 13 and spiked my way to the finish.

Issues: hard/impossible to run on the shattered rock that covered most of the map (much more than the area covered in little black dots). Always have trouble sticking to my intended line when there's runnability issues so between that and the magnetic anomaly on a course of mostly compass legs was always drifting off to one side or the other. Also had issues with termite mounds, difficult to pick when a smaller mound was or wasn't on the map, but when I tried to ignore them it was difficult to find other features to navigate by instead. Despite starting towards the end of the allowable time, heat not really an issue as there was a cool breeze coming off the dam in most places.

No warm up or down (wanted to get started ASAP when I got there & hadn't run enough to feel the need to warm down)

Spent the afternoon cruising around Litchfield NP but no walks long or hard enough to justify logging. Everytime I come back to Oz, seem to be taken by surprise all over again by the colours and shapes of "old geology". If I was Greg I would also make some comment about Euros bushwalking in bikinis.

Warm up run to the start. Didn't really feel up to warming down post race, lying down a much better option. Decided that slowing down towards the end of the race counted as warm-down

Northern Territory Sprint Champs - UNT Casuarina and Dripstone Cliffs
An interesting experience, but a good one. Heart was racing while I was getting ready - probably the heat but had me panicking a bit, which of course didn't help slow it down. Though after the run to the start it had actually settled down. Wierd, but if it works...

The physical side - OK, didn't seem to be able to get up above 90% of normal sprint speed but that was probably for the best. Started feeling very wobbly coming up to about the halfway mark, and on the long leg, from the campus into the coastal bush, that followed the legs got very heavy. But then seemed to come right again - maybe a subconscious adjustment to the reduced "speed limit".

Mental side - lots of short legs which were mostly fairly easy but made it hard to look ahead to the longer legs long enough to plan a route choice. EG the long leg (11-12), probably by 8 I'd decided to attack from the technically easier left hand approach, but leaving 11 still hadn't worked out how to start the leg! Mistakes I remember: 5 I think I took the long way round a building but just secs in it, 6 hadn't really read anything in the circle by the time I got there, 10 was where I had the worst of the "very wobbly" mentioned above and lost time in the circle just trying to recognise anything & 14 got halfway to a "forbidden" fence before realising it - that was probably approaching a minute lost & I'd guess at 90 secs or so lost in total. Last control on the beach!!

2nd place in M21, less than a minute behind Tyson from Adelaide, but both beaten by the Poland brothers running M20. Fun listening to the locals, most who were running their first sprint, and most came away hooked!

My favourite quote from the event programme: (mapping notes for the Long race on Sunday) "Yellow marshes are buffalo wallows"

...Darwin

Multitasking (combined run & sauna) to the accompaniement of a brilliant tropical sunset. Government precinct, Bicentennial Park & Waterfront. If this is the "cool, dry" time of year I don't think I'll come back in the wet! Thought it would be murder but actually felt mostly comfortable during, just half an hour later was wondering if I'd actually been really really stupid (but better once all the fluids and electrolytes I wolfed down in that half hour actually kicked in). Will of course be trying to go about twice as fast, & think at the same time, tomorrow, but feeling a bit happier about how I'll handle it.

Added fun chasing megapodes around, this is obviously the time of day they come out into the open. Don't want to give the impression I'm some sort of dirty twitcher but I was hoping to find some megapodes on this trip, but finding them in effectively downtown Darwin just seems a little too easy!

Travel day. Wellington to Auckland. Auckalnd to Brisbane. Brisneyland to...