Training Log Archive: slow-twitch

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 ;-)