Training Log Archive: slow-twitch

Evening sprint training Wellington waterfront and civic square. Aim was to keep up the flow and tempo. Mainly worked out, at least on the key route choice legs knew what I was doing going into the leg. But there were a few stops in control circles when I wasn't sure what was going on and as it got wetter and darker there was probably a bit more of that.

Roads and riverbank, Heretaunga Park loop from home, with a bit added on the assumption there'd be another way off the stopbank north of Heretaunga Park. On the one hand I should be glad that added exactly the extra time I was looking for anyway (although I think I would have been a bit slower than previous efforts on the 'standard' loop), but dead ends are so annoying! At the hour mark my thighs suddenly reminded me that running is different from walking and everything from there on was a bit of a battle.

Hopefully the low energy levels that have meant I haven't wanted to do much on the non-fieldwork days over the last month are over. It probably hasn't helped that there have been 3 job interviews over that time, all of which required a bit of travel... May be another field based project starting next week though, so probably still not much hope of getting back into that regime I was starting to figure out at the beginning of winter.

Quick trap check, then walking out via Brown's Track

Very cruisey day - nothing to clear from the possum traps so just the remainder of the rat traps to check

Mainly checking rat traps, starting from the south end of the line and working back. Got well over halfway before it got to the time I was going to call it a day. Actually saw people today.

Big day (out over 9hrs, but stop-start). One leg-hold trap to clear, not too far from the hut, then finishing off yesterday's bait bagging (river still cold), then checking the bastard end of the perimeter trap line - up a mixture of scree and scrub to Cattle Ridge - there was a track here once but it was long overgrown until we came along to install the traps. Just to make the scrabbly section even tougher, just about every trap either had a possum or had sprung off, no chance of getting any momentum up!

Filling in for a few days on the Orongorongo project again. Walk into OVFS from Catchpool, 1 leg-hold to clear about a km down the trapline, then heading down the opposite side of the riverbed laying out little bags of bait with marker dye every 20m (if there was any veg to attach them to). In and out of the river quite a bit which was cold enough the legs were getting a bit wobbly towards the end.

Wainui Rec Area, checking remaining tracking tunnels and a fair bit of packhorsing to collect up the caches I'd left on Sunday

Wainui Rec Area: A guess at the total walking time to do the full round of tunnels - every one that is rat tracked gets closed and there was a LOT of rat tracking, so was actually a significantly longer day...

Wainui Rec Area: A guess at how long it would take to simply walk the whole round - setting the tracking tunnels, including installing the remaining wide ones, so actual time 'out' was much longer

Wainui Rec Area: Installing the remaining 'narrow' tunnels and site marking for where their 'paired' wide tunnels will go - the required tunnels still not having arrived.

Wainui Rec Area: Round 2 of the comparative rat tracking trial. After working into the night setting up Round 1 (up the Whakanui Track, etc) we'd decided it would be more sensible to get all the tunnels in place first before starting the trial. It didn't help though that in the mean time half the tunnels needed had vanished from the ZIP shed (which nobody has owned up to knowing anything about). So today was all about getting half the tunnels installed instead (and a little bit of exploring to try to get maximum line length without too many annoying side branches). Despite my best intentions, Lyndsay seemed to end up doing most of the packhorse work, but she didn't mind and this was the only day I had her so I suppose it was good to get full benefit of a helper!

Ditched the orienteering today as the weather has made it easy to admit my body could use a quiet day or 2...

After a couple of hours freezing my butt off at the main Catchpool carpark playing security/information officer while our helicopter was working, out the main highway to the one part of the Cattle Ridge track I hadn't seen yet, up to the Browns track junction to replace some factually incorrect signage, down and up Browns to sweep non-toxic bait off the track because we have to assume people are stupid (if it's not frustrating enough to go down and up such a steep slippery track anyway, there were no baits visible), then carrying along Cattle Ridge with the intent of doing some trap maintenance only to discover I didn't have the right tools for the job. On the plus side it was a stunner of a day - hard to believe thursday's experience was just 2 days beforehand. My knees are definitely over the final descent down Butcher's for the moment, however.

C • Stunner Saturday 1

Completing the containment trap line , cattle ridge and down the former track to the river. Lovely cold gusty sleety day with a particularly nasty shower just as I was starting the return trip, probably playing hypothermia roulette by the time I was back at the car.

Again, out longer but much stop-start. Felt a bit less energetic today, think I was subconsciously resigned to cutting the day short when the forecast heavy rain was going to hit in the afternoon, which never happened. Still got further along the line than expected, so should get close enough to finishing on Thursday to be annoying!