Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Roughly two years ago, I ran a WRE sprint in Switzerland, won in almost exactly the same time as today's, in a field with Fabian Hertner and Martin Hubmann at the front end. Nick Hann is good, but I don't think he's better than the aforementioned pair, which means that it's probably a fairly good indicator as to how much further I am off the pace this year that I was three minutes further back today than I was then. After last Friday I felt that I needed to find another 1-2 minutes if I want to have a realistic chance of qualifying on Sunday, and today did nothing to disabuse me of that notion.

This was something of a running race, without much in the way of complex route choice, although a few controls where you needed to look for the right place to come off the track into the vegetation. Lost a little time on 17 through mistaking a contour in dark green for a track and not being able to get through somewhere where I expected to, but otherwise I was generally just slow - perhaps I should have got that message when I was only just hanging on to Anna Fitzgerald through our apparently common first few controls.

We'd been warned in advance about the higher lake levels and large amounts of surface water (Rotorua has had 445mm of rain in the last 30 days), but it wasn't too bad with nothing more than ankle-deep. Sprints are prone to last-minute changes, but one problem we definitely don't have in Australia - at least not in my considerable experience of sprint controlling - is that of having to delete a control because of new geothermal activity around the control site.

There was a night market in one of the streets of Rotorua this evening. You'll be shocked to hear that a street with lots of food stalls in a place where lots of orienteers are currently based was a good place to see them. Also there was the leader of the NZ Labour Party (doing a "politics in the pub" night), but I left the politics for the locals this time round.

Sprint - Course 1 - Splits

I entered M21E for the midweek events months ago (before I knew I was going to spend most of the summer injured), and was wondering why I had this morning (especially when my back was sore after an hour standing up with the mike before I ran). Thought I'd go out to enjoy myself, and cut it short if either I stopped enjoying myself or it was hurting too much.

I did enjoy myself. It was a scrappy run technically, but then the flatter parts of the terrain were difficult to be precise in. My worst section of the course was the first part of the redwoods - dropped about 4 minutes to those around me between 12 and 16, including probably 2.5 minutes on 14 (an over-ambitious straight option and pulled up short in a featureless area) and a very silly small overshoot of the road crossing control. Wasn't particularly looking forward to the final sector in the green but in fact this was my best part of the course - it was slow but you could keep moving (or alternatively often bail out to a walking/MTB track). My running also came good (relatively speaking) in this bit and I felt better in the last 10 minutes than I have since I've arrived - maybe I should walk across a mountain range the day before races more often. Was only a few from the bottom, but 13 minutes down on Bruce (compared with 20+ in the Oceania Middle and Long) probably puts some perspective on this run relative to the others.

Rotorua isn't quite as smelly as I remember it, but still definitely has plenty of steam appearing at random intervals (if you see a traffic cone randomly placed in a paved area it's probably covering up a vent).

Middle/Long - Course 1 - Splits

This is entered as a "rest day" on the basis that it didn't involve any "training", but it was a pretty solid day's work - doing the Tongariro Crossing walk, which is about 20km and predictably spectacular, climbing from 1100m to 1880m before dropping back to 750m. This is not exactly a solitary wilderness experience - heard somewhere that 4000 people per day walk it in peak season - but the crowds somehow didn't really spoil it (apart from occasionally getting in the way of photos). Found the first part of the descent on a steep volcanic sand surface a bit testing, but nothing to really bring into play my unease of sorts with heights.

Oceania Middle. A steep limestone area, mostly on farmland, and I simply couldn't handle running on the steep slippery ground - never felt as if I was running with any sort of confidence, despite feeling a little stronger than I have earlier in the week. The result was predictably abysmal. Possibly the lowlight was going in thigh-deep into a muddy marsh (although I did manage to extract myself, with some difficulty, without losing either shoe or SI stick). Didn't always feel confident navigating around the limestone, with a minute or so lost at 10 and smaller losses at 9 and 13 (12 I found OK, but negotiating the sheet-mud gully to get up to it was not a thing of beauty). I'd like to come back here when it's dry.

The conditions, both during this weekend and in the build-up to it, have created more than their share of challenges for the organisers (especially when it comes to parking) - perhaps the best pre-start entertainment today was seeing the jack-knifed food van, and Marquita on the tractor helping to extract it (perhaps we'll need to suggest adding tractor-driving to future IOF Event Adviser courses).

As for the Challenge, so near and yet so far; we lost 37 to 35, with two classes today (W21 and M55) being lost by less than a minute. This makes me somewhat more frustrated at letting the opportunity slip on Saturday.

Oceania Relays. We never really expected to win M40, but hoped to at least be in some sort of touch.

Went out 8 minutes down after the first leg. Running was a bit of a struggle from the start (steep sand dune climbs a particular challenge), with a pretty poor split on the long 5th despite only missing the control slightly. Still, had got through most of the controls in the pine section OK and had only one, which looked straightforward, to get - at least the control site was straightforward, but that's not a lot of help when you exit the control in 90 degrees the wrong direction around the top of the wrong depression, continue to execute a massive parallel error, and finally work out what's going on when you're 500 metres away from the control on a 400-metre leg. Blew about 5 minutes on that one, and that was effectively that; one gully too far across on 17 (first one across the lake), and generally a struggle. Bruce salvaged something from the wreckage and pulled us up to 3rd (2nd Oceania), but way behind the NZ team.

Oceania Long. A run which looked promising for much of it but was ultimately disappointing, on a pretty physical dunes area with lots of low-visibility country (pampas grass under pine).

Took the safe track option on 1. Hit that and 2 OK, but lost 30 seconds on 3. Took a fairly straight option on the first long leg, 5, and wasn't entirely sure I'd got it right (with the plan to bounce back off the track if I missed it), but got it reasonably well. Decent technically through the middle of the course, although not especially strong. Michael Adams went through me at 8, but it turned out he'd missed 7 and I'd caught him rather than the reverse.

There was a significant forest change about 70% of the way in, into native manuka - mostly fairly clear underfoot but with sharper contours (going along ridges was not a good option here, whereas it had been in the pine). Came unstuck on 15, the second control in this section, not making sense of features which seemed bigger on the ground than they were on the map, and dropped maybe 2.5 minutes. (Bruce caught me here). At this point my body decided it was tired, and after sort of hanging onto Bruce on 16, I got caught in some bracken on the way to 17, then lost confidence on the way to 18 and probably spent a couple of minutes trying to work out where I was along the way, despite not going that far off the line as it turned out. Finished off OK but the damage was done - lost probably 6 minutes in the 15-18 section, which would have lifted me from 7th to (a still distant) 4th and, more significantly, given Australia the points given Bruce's big win. That was frustrating.

Long - Course Course 4 - Splits

Event: Oceania Championships 2017
 

Oceania Sprint at Unitec Carrington. This is an area which I don't have good memories of - it was here that my 2005 Oceania campaign came to a spectacular end on day 1 as an elbow-versus-pavement contest ended up in an emphatic win to the pavement (although I did finish the course). I suspected that this experience would probably make me pretty tentative here, although I tried to convince myself that cyclists and racing drivers must have to go back all the time to places where they've had bad crashes and they seem to cope.

At least I knew before I started that we wouldn't be going back to the exact scene (it's now underneath a building site), but it was unhelpful to have a heavy shower about 30 minutes before the start, and probably also to have a string of ambulances heading down past the start to what I presume was a road accident. (Also slightly distracting pre-start was the Finn with bells on his shoes - I was wondering if someone had forgotten to tell him that there are no bears in New Zealand, but in fact he was aiming to avert head-on collisions with other competitors after a bad experience at WMOC in Tallinn last year).

Felt reasonable warming up and on the first couple of controls, but tight on the first climb and from there I knew it was going to be a struggle - never really able to speed up. Was reasonably happy with my navigation through the first section, then lost 15 seconds or so on the first control into the gardens through not seeing the first path in. Had a good section through the complex bit in the later part of the course, but blown away for speed at the end. Well off the pace and will, I think, need to find at least a minute, perhaps two, to make the WMOC sprint final, but I guess not finishing the day in hospital makes it a step up from last time.

The presentations (running late) were an "interesting" experience. I was delegated to do the honours because the Orienteering NZ President was otherwise engaged, but what I hadn't realised was that this was going to mean 30 minutes squelching through the mudbath in front of the podium - spent some of this trying, and failing, to imagine various Olympic honchos doing something similar. A further downpour unloaded when we'd got up to the 70s and in the end we left the elites for tomorrow.

Before the start of proceedings, I caught up with an NZ forecaster friend for coffee. She's had what could politely be described as a busy fortnight (most of it outposted with Civil Defence, the NZ equivalent of the SES) and was, I think, grateful for the opportunity to unload - could barely get a word in edgeways :-). Having a Civil Defence sticker which in effect means "park where you like" is definitely an asset when it comes to getting to inner-city coffee locations...

Sprint - Course - 3 - Splits