Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Back into the redwoods with Jenny and Zara. The plan was to try to get to the top of the hill but we didn't quite work out the trail network (at this point we were off the orienteering map) and ended up coming from 3/4 of the way up the hill back down to the bottom, at which point we decided a second attempt was unwarranted. Certainly a very nice forest to run in and we weren't the only people doing it by any means. Strangely, I was struggling on the gentle climbs but handling the steeper ones (including stairs) much better.

I'd begun to suspect that my Garmin's distance measurement was beginning to behave somewhat erratically, and the fact that my distance was 500 metres shorter than Zara's tends to confirm that (the redwoods probably aren't hugely conducive to satellite detection either).

Spent the rest of the day making our way slowly to Mount Maunganui via various Rotorua attractions (although only once, at the gondola/luge place, did we partake in the numerous local opportunities to spend copious quantities of money).

C • Garmin 4

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