Training Log Archive: slow-twitch

A very sedate stroll through the white and yellow courses for the battle hill club event in a couple of weeks time. A few changes to the fences etc mean a few changes were required to the courses, but it takes what I thought was a dodgy bit out of the yellow so probably all for the better.

Ran* round all the remaining red and orange control sites. Made a few slight adjustments here and there but mostly good. One or two will actually test the red orienteers a bit (though they'll have some nice orange and white fabric to help them out) but it'll still be more about fitness and route choice than navigation. Need to make more than a few slight adjustments to the map though. Amazing how much more I picked up once I knew where the courses were going compared to a few weeks back when I was just having a look round "making sure" nothing had changed much.

*Coming off a sleepless night (well, morning to be honest), the running and the navigation-flow felt surprisingly good at first, but about halfway through simultaneously hit the big hills, a nasty nasty patch of cold wet weather, and areas requiring a fair bit of remapping stop-starts. So things slowed down quite a bit unfortunately.

Mainly zig zaging thru the bot gardens, trying to stay off the paved paths as much as possible, and trying to get in as many short uphills and downhills and changes thereof as possible. No particular reason - just seemed a fun way to stretch out the run time-wise without going too far away. Kohekohe trees all through the gardens are flowering crazy, a bit of puriri out as well, and kohia in fruit, so birdman probably heard more tui today than there were in total in Wellington city 10 years ago. Amazing what you can achieve just by killing a few (thousand) possums and other beasties.

Felt good most of the way, might have stayed out for more than an hour (which wasn't the intention) only when I passed big bro's place to see how the de-leaking of the buildings was going he was out front putting up new letterboxes. So after a bit of a chat, thought I'd better hurry back directly to the office. Don't know why because pretty much everything I did this afternoon will need redoing tomorrow :-(

Easy recovery run - Boulcott, Clifton, Waterfront. Felt "just right".

Warming up and down. Catching up that I'd picked the right day to miss, & was technically still in contention for the Wellington multiday championship...

Bombing Range - the forest here is some of the nicest running in the whole Manawatu sanddune stretch but the open country makes up for it! Only nearly trod on one bomb (that I noticed) which looked worryingly toy-like. The orienteering process was working a bit better than Saturday, still nowhere near the flow that I've been known to hit in the past, but much less "fluff" mistakes or time loss. Unfortunately more than made up for that with one biggy. Going through the green to get out onto the coastal strip for 9 lost complete track of where I was, and once I finally found a spot to crash through the low acacia hedge, spent 5+ minutes relocating. Turned out while I was trying to work out if I was way too far north or way too far south I'd pretty much wandered at least one tight circle round the control - wish the possibility I'd come out exactly at the right spot had crossed my mind.

Running/fitness not quite up to Saturday, was hurting a bit and starting to do slightly silly things by the time I'd finished the "yellow" part of the course, but it's positive that I seemed to find my legs again a bit, coming through the last few forest controls.