Training Log Archive: jennycas

Event: World Masters Orienteering Championships 2017
 

We ended up last night at the same guesthouse in Mt Maunganui as 2 weeks ago and obtained pizza from the Pizza Library again (although I accidentally ordered from the wrong shop and the boys had to go across town to collect it). Still not feeling great this morning but thought a run might help, so ran towards The Mount intending to do the base track around it but that's still closed, and neither Blair nor I felt like going up all the steps to the top so we just headed back to the hostel. I made sure to run hard while on the beach, but was stuffed at the end of it. Last glimpse of the Bay of Plenty for this trip was at Waihi Beach and then we drove through Karangahake Gorge stopping to explore the Windows Walkway along an old goldmining tramway with scenic views to the river below.

My accommodation for WMOC week is in a motel at Botany (SE suburbs of Auckland) with Bruce & JohnN and while it's not exotic, it's ok except for the WiFi connectivity which requires sitting in the corridor outside our unit...

C • WiFi 2

Redwoods run with a difference, also with Zara & Blair. Beautifully soft underfoot in the lovely tree-ferny enchanted forest, which my legs appreciated. We passed a group of Japanese tourists who clapped & cheered! Have been feeling a bit headachy and sore-throaty the last couple of days which I'd put down to general mustiness in the house where we're staying and stiff neck from strange beds, but I might actually be getting slightly sick. Feeling a little queasy on the mountain roads too (maybe from lack of salt?) so after we'd been to see Lake Tarawera - hard to believe that the whole thing erupted disastrously in 1886 - I opted out of doing the luge from top of the Skyline gondola with G & J & B and just had fun watching everyone else. Views were good from up there though, and we also went for a nice short walk to the waterfalls below the outflow of Lake Rotorua and were lucky enough to see some kayakers shoot over.

C • Tarewera 1

Yesterday afternoon when we walked around Rotorua we found a park where fenced-off pools were steaming, or boiling sulphurously, or bubbling mud, and where random extra steaming cracks in the pavement had been covered with traffic cones, which were then steaming out of the hole in the top!

Geothermal features had been promised for today's event around the lake foreshore and gardens, and I did have one control on a steaming vent, plus some other courses needed a control to be deleted because of new 'activity'. Also, the water level in the lake is higher than usual due to recent rains and we were warned that a snorkel might be required...I had one leg along the beach which involved wading thigh-deep in refreshingly cold water, but that was the most interesting part of the course; the rest involved fairly hard running mostly on pavement (which my hamstring didn't appreciate), a couple of macro route choices, and plenty of opportunity to plan ahead.

Not sure how my result in W21 (not a big field) compares to the W40s' km rates - that's a pretty competitive class - but hopefully my legs will be a bit fresher by the time the WMOC sprint final comes around. And now I don't have to do any more races for 2 whole days...

Decided to have a quiet afternoon rather than going Zorbing with the other South Aussies, then in the evening our household went to the Thursday night markets in the centre of town where we encountered lots of other orienteers and sampled lots and lots of different types of food. I can't believe how much I have eaten on this trip, but it's all been very tasty :)

Sprint - Course 4 - Splits

Whakarewarewa redwoods forest on the outskirts of Rotorua, with the amazing assembly area under the trees - some of them 70m high and planted in 1901 - being less than 2km from the house we were staying in. It truly felt like an international event with all of the European orienteers present (plus the map/terrain reminded me somewhat of UBC in Vancouver) and the catering was excellent - I went back for a 2nd sausage which I never do unless at the end of a rogaine, and then bought a piece of rhubarb & custard pizza/pie!

I'd entered 21s for this because all the races I've done lately have been rather shorter than the WMOC W40 final will be, and my main goal was to keep pushing hard even when I got tired. Secondary goal, given that I was starting 12 min before Bridget, was to finish before she did, and I managed this, despite numerous small faffings-around when looking for controls (such as a pit lovingly hand-dug by the organisers a couple of days beforehand) hidden among the tree ferns. But I think everyone had numerous small faffings-around and at least I didn't need to have more than 2 goes at finding any one control or lose more than a couple of minutes on any of them (but I probably lost 6-7 min all up).

The course was in a number of sections:
a) the 'high country' where we started up on the escarpment, with steep gullies, and such low visibility that I couldn't actually read the map in the dark forest and did the first few controls on guesswork, trying to figure out the 2.5m contours;
b) transport leg down the escarpment to the totally flat stuff at the bottom (whee for running slalom down MTB track);
c) a couple of controls in totally flat, fairly open area, one of which I ended up too far right on and the other of which was on Gandalf (I took Geoff back to photograph him later on);
d) flat swampy grid of plantation forest across the road, with wading options - by the time this was over my legs were a bit weary;
e) back into the tree-ferny stuff but this time there were subtle gullies and pits/depressions which many people had great difficulty in finding. Often it was a matter of deciding which would be the best route to provide a decent attack point: squiggly mountain bike track vs direct fern-crashing. I decided to take the tracks and run hard, which mostly paid off, and I got in 2 min before Bridget did, so she only beat me by 10 :)

In this redwoods forest is a treetop walkway incorporating something like 18 suspension bridges between tree platforms, and which was high above us while we were orienteering. Initially I scoffed at paying $25 for this but when we went back the next evening to look at the lanterns suspended from the trees, I was so enchanted by the scene that I decided to do the treetop walk by nightlight, which was absolutely magical, if a little chilly.

C • night time means 2

Middle/Long - Course 3 - Splits

Yesterday was a very long day, starting with getting up at 5:30am to collect Steve & kids at 6:30 (so that our spouses could come along to the event at their leisure) then driving 2 hours to the event - the last part winding along the narrow never-ending rim of the world, it seemed - and afterwards 4.5hrs to Whakapapa village on Mt Ruapehu so that the guys could walk the Tongariro Crossing today. I'd been having quite a lot of trouble with my hip flexor/groin the last couple of days, plus I was feeling pretty stuffed, so just took the lazy option of coffee with G at the ski village (we should probably have caught the chairlift up higher so that he could see snow, but I'm not great with heights and it was rather cold) and then when we got to the other end I did walk uphill until I met John & Blair & Bruce & boys, but I kept having to wait for the stream of foot-traffic going the other way, so I didn't even make it up as far as the treeline before I met them. And then we drove another couple of hours to Rotorua, stopping for a look at the impressive Huka falls which are Lake Taupo's outflow and the start of the Waikato river (whose swollen breadth we crossed on the way to/from the event yesterday also).

Oh dear, 14th today. I kinda knew this would happen, because steep slippery hillsides with big cliffy rocks on them are not my forte; also the competition was a stronger field than the previous races, but I still didn't expect to be quite so far down...mind you, if I hadn't decided to go through a gate rather than over it, and then wasted at least half a minute trying to get it closed again, I could have been a couple of places higher up. Navigationally I really struggled, taking a long time to get my head around the 1: 7500 scale - still don't know how I completely overran one side gully too far on 5; I simply never saw the first gully - and also not reading the difference between gully & sinkhole very well on the map, because the rocks overshadowed everything. They were quite imposing on the ground, too! When my arches finally stopped hurting and I was able to concentrate properly, my navigation started to improve, but by then the course was nearly over. Still don't know how the Estonian lady took 23 minutes?

Running 2nd in a W35-44 team with Rachel West & Anna Fitzgerald on a day when the forecast showers turned out to mean "prepare to get drenched at 10-minutely intervals". Thankfully I had sent my hunter-gatherer spouse forth in search of a groundsheet/tarpaulin yesterday! Of course, this meant that I managed to keep my gear dry until such time as it was necessary to pack up everything and trudge back up the hill to the cars in the rain...

Anyway, Rachel had a good solid run first up, and I felt like I was running fairly well physically although this pace was at the edges of my navigational ability; drifted too far right on 5 although corrected ok, and then after crossing between the lakes for the 2nd time I thought I'd go right around the hill then up & over the saddle into the little gully but somehow overshot and emerged into the paddock with the "party tent" and had to sneak back up the hill, which wasted another couple of minutes. Anna had a blinder, easily 5 min faster than me (although there was the unfortunate matter of her not actually punching the 2nd last control, but oh well).

Managed to get WMOC accreditation done at Queens Wharf this afternoon, so that's one less task for next Sat, and then caught the ferry back to Devonport (with Blair who was joining us for dinner) - nice harbour views.