Training Log Archive: slow-twitch

Finally got some luck on the random-line-generation, scoring some open mature beech forest on the edge of Ngaumu forestry block. Still got a bit interesting at the end with the last couple of stations taking about as long as the rest of the line, and I'm kinda hoping I can beat the rain to that end on Monday or else it will turn a bit treachorous.

Whareama-ish. Same as Monday except collecting cards rather than putting them out, and with added slipperiness which was only really a problem for the last hundred or so metres of the line and the start of the climb out, but certainly made those bits waaayyy trickier. Made up for not getting a climbing session in this week. The good news is nobody has to go there again.

In the Whareama neck of the woods this time. Passed various potential orienteering venues on the way, but the destination very definitely not one of them. Tempted to create a new activity label (crawling on hands and knees? scrub wrestling? being made to want to cry?) that would better reflect most of today's effort. Hunters in tomorrow's intended block tomorrow apparently so an extra day off, which will come in handy I think

Hydrabad (the Waitarere one, not the Indian one or the Pakistani one), including a fair bit of low vis light green action. First run in sand-dunes for a while and first in Waitarere for an even longer while. It showed. Actually the strike rate isn't too bad (although if I really wanted to be critical I could mark myself down for hesitation-type time wastage within or near the circles for a few more controls) but the mistakes were big ones, probably easily 10-15 minutes lost overall. 2-3 drifted wide right - should have been referring to compass more often especially as I knew my internal sense of direction was 'out' a little; 6 after a good route on the leg, fell off the map in the final forest block and took a long time to relocate - not helped by having 2 completely contradictory theories as to how it had gone wrong in the first place; 8 drifted again, poor compass use again! and should have been aware the forest edge should have been closer; 11-12, wrong time to take a direct route choice, didn't register until too late a minor track leading almost to the control from the nearest forestry road. Some good spikes on other controls and I surprised myself a little just how fast I was moving in some of the cleaner parts of the forest.

HD - after a fairly brutal reintroduction to fieldwork a nice relaxing day was in order so started off with a good hard session at the climbing wall. No great achievements but getting the feeling some technique and strength is starting to come back.

JWOC trials middle distance, on a new town-belt style map on the edge of Porirua. Much more fun than I was expecting, though I'm glad nobody will be able to complain about the Oceania middle being the physically toughest MD of the year now. Started off at a relaxed pace but was pushing quite hard by the end - especially when I got into a bit of a pack through the last few controls. Lost time in the circle at 4 and 12 (12 the terrain was a bit weird, which of course makes it a good control site, 4 I'm not entirely convinced there's not more wiggly track than what's on the map) and the elephants that made the trail between 8 & 9 had all contoured round a bit too low and it took me a bit too long to work that out. Otherwise a pretty good nav effort despite lacking a bit of focus through the first half dozen or so controls.

(Before anyone asks, I didn't do well enough to make the JWOC girls team)

Back to Tora Bush. Not so long a day - successfully found efficiencies on the drive there and on the walk from road to line. Most if not all efficiency found on the line itself was wasted in a half hour search for a compass that magically untied itself from my pack.

Apparently by deciding I didn't need to be the 4th person on a 3 person job to pull in the lines put out on monday, I missed a 'fun' day yesterday. Rain+steep, bare clay 4wd track 'fun'.

Tora Bush solo effort. Access to and from today's line was sweet (except that most of the 300m climb was all at once). The line* itself however - 450m in a little under 4 hours, anybody? Collecting on friday will go faster I'm sure (bloody well better)

*Zig-zag, really. The protocol if you hit hazardous terrain is to turn 90 degrees then turn back to the original bearing as soon as it is safe to do so. I may have set a record for the number of turns on a line... there's a reason this spot was obviously allowed to revert back to bush pretty early on...

First day assisting with a broad scale rodent survey which involves putting out 450m long lines of chew cards on a randomly determined bearing from a randomly determined point which can be anywhere there is forest or shrubland cover in the East Wairarapa Hills. Enough adventures can be had getting to randomly determined points that it's going to take some time to get all the lines done... Today's adventures were mostly of the driving variety and sucked up enough of the day to halve our plans, but even once we set out on foot there was plenty of fun trying to figure out how to use a mostly unmapped track network to get us each to where we needed to be. Our line was mostly easy going once we got there and went quickly with 2 people. My main job was to ride the compass - just quietly, word is that I made the straightest GPS trace seen so far on the project ;-)

Mill Creek, the (relatively) more gentle part of the map. Slow going, although I must have been doing alright in the uphill section, seemed close to winding in Rob M and Andrew Riddell on the way to 6, yet they managed to get c10 minutes ahead of me by the finish - with the hard lumpy ground on dodgy ankles and sore knees I guess there weren't very many parts of the downhill section I felt comfortable putting the speed on. Relatively easy (not really red-course terrain) so pretty clean. Just a bit low into #1, and on a day I'd been keeping pretty straight #11 was the wrong time to cleverly contour around - didn't register til too late I was saving at most 10 m climb on a not very fast contour.

Have picked up some casual field work with the regional council this week (and next, I think) so I think my training will be mostly walking for a little while.

HD. Only successful on 2 climbs, including the one I couldn't quite finish last time, but spent a lot of time (and energy) on a couple that we knew would be beyond us - for now! So still a good session. And tough - expecting the full hit-by-a-bus feeling tomorrow! Wasn't sure if the knees would like it but seemed fine.

Karori Cemetery - even for a sprint style course, optimal distance traveled will be significantly greater than red line (billenicus has logged 3.9km and I suspect he had a few less there-and-backs down the wrong paths), which explains in part what looks like a slow time. The sore knee (which I was not aware of the whole time but tended to be very suddenly OUCH when it did show up) would also explain in part the slow time - I did try to pull the pace back a bit. However key contributing factor was a display of absolute headless chookery - I definitely left my orienteering brain at home and on a map that consists mostly of long strips of OOB green, any mistake can quickly and easily turn into an expensive one (though one of my better relative splits is a leg I thought I really ballsed up on, go figure). A few map issues didn't help either, but I blew out far enough without them I can't be that grumpy about it.

C • Distance 1

Sore knee. Usually comes right after a few days so being sensible rather than sticking to things. Not usually this bad though - fingers crossed.

Off road (apart from the 7ish minute 'warm-up' slog from home to the bottom of the first track). Tawhai Track, Pylon Roads, Horoeka Track. Knew I wouldn't be able to run the main climb on the Tawhai, but would have liked to have kept up the pace on the rest of it more than I did, but got there in the end and the reward was about 30 minutes of continuous sweet downhill.

May have to peg the 3 week commitment back to a 2 week one. Was feeling really positive Tues/Wed - like I've got my base back nice and quickly to a point that I can build on it with some thought to quality over quantity, but the last two days have been a bit ugly and things are starting to hurt. (Weather for the next 4 or 5 days could test the commitment anyway)

First real token effort of the 3 weeks and only because other plans fell through. Could call it a short gentle recovery run but I don't think I was successful in keeping the pace gentle and was probably hurting more after than before. Roads and riverbank - up to Hull's Creek and back and then a loop around the Glen rather than running directly home

Upper Hutt College map change at control 16 so not quite as manic as it looks. Good little blast, some interesting route choice problems and the odd trap to avoid. Just a handful of mistakes, overcomplicated route 5-6/didn't see a fence blocking what I thought was the way to 12/ran right past 19, but lost maybe just as much time in the latter part of the course with hesitations etc - started to outrun my navigation a little. Pushed hard right to the end - helped that I crossed paths with Neil K late in the course and he was close enough behind it became a race to see if I caught the finish before he caught me.

Body was ready for a day off running, so had a quick blat up and down the Horoeka Track just in time to beat the rain and very noticeable southerly change

Roads and riverbank, turning at Heretaunga Park and looping around St Pats and the driving range. Much closer to a comfortable 'long' run effort compared to last week's Trentham effort - even needed to add a few bits of extra distance at the end to get the time I had in mind. Maybe about 12-13km? Google doesn't know about the footpath between the river and Heretaunga so can't even get the usual rough estimate.

Maidstone Park, course about 50:50 sprint styles:brutal hilly trail running, or by time more like 2/3 of the latter. Legs very tired (more a late night than all the running this week I think) which made the brutal bit all the more brutal. Only orienteering time loss I can think of was just very slow into the first control getting my head into the game, and I think I missed the best exit from 13 (confirmed by seeing gruver's RC and split here). A couple of other legs that I had question marks over, seem to have gone ok in comparison

Belmont RP from Hill Road entrance. No idea of distance - the loop I was trying to do is either 7.5 or a bit over 8km depending on which part of the regional council's sign you believe, but I kept diverting off it (including one whole section that I still have no idea where either end of the track is in the real world). The added distance (some on purpose, some less so) probably more than compensated for one or two accidental short-cuts but can't say by how much. Legs mostly happy with the hills until about the 40 minute mark.

A shortish walk across the road - up Horoeka Track, around to and down Tawhai Track. Probably could've managed a short gentle run instead, but this was more where my head was at today and I think just as useful for all the sore bits from yesterday's efforts. Except the knees - they didn't much like the steeeeeep bit of the Tawhai descent. A useful reminder though of why not to include that track in any off-road runs once I'm regularly back into that kind of thing.

Roads and riverbank, very approximately 16km. At least 15 minutes more than I can probably handle at the moment, but good to know I've got that distance in me even if it is going to turn into a struggle. When I left the house still wasn't sure if I was going out for a short gentle run to recover from last night's madness or something longer, but once I'd warmed up was feeling too good to not carry on. Upriver to Trentham Memorial Park (on the basis that 'it's only just past St Pats Farm' - I'd forgotten the bloody golf course in-between), through the Park, down through Upper Hutt a bit until getting back out on to the riverbank via Heretaunga Park, which was where I discovered the reason the cruise upriver had gone so nicely was because apparently I'd had a nice tailwind all the way - so now a not so nice headwind just as I was starting to struggle anyway.

Definitely an easy day tomorrow - whether short run or longer walk to be decided on the basis of what feels sore when I wake up

Super short sprint at Tawa College. Felt sluggish to start off, but think the legs warmed up into it - at least by the end it felt like hard work because I was pushing the limit, not because I was seriously unfit. Lost 20-30 seconds to #3, went to a nearby control I'd seen on the way to the toilet pre-race, even though it didn't look right on the map. Silly me. Spiked everything else, but no idea if I was taking the best route choices.

Tawa's a bit out of the way to go for 12 minutes of orienteering, so followed up the first run with a blatant burgle of the (barely) short(er) course. Which apart from a couple of straightforward legs was about the same technicality. Again, can't say I nailed every route choice but only feel I lost time on 5-6, a bit of confusion mid leg meant I went a bit wider of the red line than I should have - and on reflection the left hand route might have been a better option anyway. Physically again got up to a pretty good speed once a few legs into the course, but by the end there were some unnecessarily long pauses at controls! (Probably the reason for the one split I got beaten on being one of the shortest legs)