Training Log Archive: slow-twitch

Pukekura North. One for the speedsters as it was mostly track running and not all the legs required much care and attention through the junctions once the route choice was route chosen. Would have been nice to do this one of those summers I was knocking back 5k PBs! Only significant mistake was 11 to 12, carefully navigating through the maze of tracks coming down the hill to get to ...what I then realised was an uncrossable fence rather than the track I was going to use, making my clever route choice much less clever. Probably my biggest mistake of the weekend and Winsplits doesn't even pick it up! Other than that I think there were just a couple of unnecessary hesitations I marked myself down on, and even picked up a handful of top 3 splits (admittedly one when I was desperately trying to stay in Bruce Arthur's slipstream) despite not considering myself one of the speedsters that would have had the advantage here.

Pukekura South. Similar to the morning with more off track options. Dead on the hills though with a lurgy I'd been trying to fight off finally starting to make its presence felt so by the end wasn't using those options and struggling up the tracks instead. Number 7 mucked me up, coming up out of the gardens and to the road from 6 just didn't seem to align me up with the options I was expecting and while I stopped for a moment to figure it out it can't have been a long enough moment so somehow ended up going down the eastern side of the old homestead and then having to go right around and get the control from behind. Still wasn't making 100% sense by the time I punched so may have even lost a little bit of time on the theoretically very easy 8. (This time it is bad enough for Winsplits so apparently 30+ sec lost on 7) The only other thing I really remember is that basically the whole post-map-flip part of the course was a real battle and I wasn't too surprised to start feeling ill a little while after finishing.

NPGHS. Updating this some weeks later, what do I remember? That I felt very sluggish through the ups and downs (mostly the ups TBH) for the first 3 controls then picked the pace up through the school without loosing my head. Felt the hill for the 22nd control though! Didn't think to check that my SI registered the finish, and it would have been well over a minute before I thought about that and punched 'to be sure' (which apparently would have overwritten a finish time if I already had it). So was probably actually easily 1-2 minutes faster than the official time which is what I think I used here!

WITT and Te Henui cemetery. Cautiously picked my way through the cemetery thinking that I'd be dropping time the whole way and wondering why nobody was shooting past. But from the splits looked like we pretty much all took the same approach. Then soon after entering the campus simultaneously got caught by Paul and started spotting Blair what looked like within a minute ahead (I know he was suffering with his back but wasn't going to turn down a chance to get one over him). So from there it was pretty much a manic head-to-head-but-both-trying-to-do-our-own-thing with Paul which he got away from in the last couple of controls but I'm pretty pleased with how I kept my head together and was pretty much clean through that battle (or he would have got away a bit earlier...)

Event: THE LONELY MOUNTAIN SPRINTS
 

Easy pace from work to a loop of South Hagley (maybe about 50:50 grass and paved) and back. If casser still lurks around here he can vouch for me, or at least that I got as far as halfway down Cashel Mall

Jog from home to the 5k base. Walked back afterwards though!

Slight improvement, and only 3rd worst (apparently in 2012 in Hamilton I once ran faster than last week but slower than this week). Probably the 30 second difference was that there was no walking this week, although I think that was only because there was a woman wearing the same colour top as Jan H (who I'd passed around halfway) trying to catch me for the last km or so.