Training Archive: CristinaIn the 7 days ending 2008-02-10:
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| M | T | W | H | F | S | S | ||||||||
Sunday Feb 10 | ||
| Running warm up/down (trail) 12:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| The 2km walk to the start today was along the beach! | ||
| Orienteering race 1:49:30 [3] | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Well, this was a lot of work for an invalidated course. The walk to the start was quite lovely but the actual terrain was anything but. It was a fern wonderland and very difficult to move anywhere. Both the NZ and AUS teams protested the courses based on questionable control placements and mapping. It's hard to say how my orienteering was because at least a few of my rough legs were due in part to the aforementioned issues. Pity the last day was the least fun, but it was still heaps better than that wretched day at Catalina! And this hasn't detracted at all from the great rest of the week.
After the O we made our way up to Goat Island to look at the slimy sea creatures in and around the rocks. Ew. I can't believe people eat sea things. | ||
| C • sea goats? 16 | ||
Saturday Feb 9 | ||
| Orienteering race 1:02:20 [3] 4 km (15:35 / km) +175m 12:47 / km | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Middle distance course in tricky pine dunes stuff. At first it seems like it was a bit of a mess, but when I look at my history in similar terrain (low visibility, intricate detail), this is actually quite an improvement! I finished and was never horribly lost. I had no energy at all (again), but I didn't really need it today since the goal was just to move slowly and actually orienteer.
As much as I got my butt kicked today (I'm getting sort of used to it), I wish we were back in the same stuff tomorrow so I could go at it again and give it another try. Last day of O tomorrow. It's gone by quickly! | ||
Friday Feb 8 | ||
| Note | |
| Today was relaxation day in Marokopa. I think this was the only day that we set no alarms. We slept in! Read a lot, walked on the beach, played some scrabble.
In the afternoon we did have to make our way all the way up past Auckland for the weekend's events. We stopped back on the way in Waitomo Caves to watch the woodchopping competition, Australia vs New Zealand. We got a little summary of the sport and the nuances of the event from the mayor of Waitomo Caves. More surprising than the fact that the mayor had competed in local competitions was the fact that this town even had a mayor! Then we hit the road to Hellensville. | ||
Thursday Feb 7 | ||
| Note | |
| Today we went 'blackwater rafting' in the Waitomo Caves. It basically involved wading and tubing along some underground streams to see the glow worms that grow in the caves. It was pretty neat.
Afterwards we continued into the town itself to do some more touristy things and begin our quest to find John and Martha. My friend Cort lived in the tiny town of Waitomo Caves many years ago and told us to look up some family friends of his while we were there. He gave us their phone number, but also said, "just walk into the bar and ask, it's that kind of town." And indeed it was. Everybody seemed to know them and we kept showing up in places where John had just been. Eventually we caught each other and got together for some coffee and we discovered that they had left NZ at one point and lived in Sudbury, two streets away from my parents. Martha (not a kiwi) and I went to the same high school, 35 years apart, and even knew some of the same teachers. Melissa and Martha went to the same college. Basically, they were very nice, and we got along swimmingly, and friends of friends are always fun to meet, so they gave us the keys to their beach house ('bach', as they say here) and we were off for a relaxing evening on the coast. | ||
Wednesday Feb 6 | ||
| Orienteering 2:00:30 [3] 6.7 km (17:59 / km) +330m 14:26 / km | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Today we orienteered in the woods! Nice to be out of the sun and the grassy paddocks. It was very nice terrain, though a bit steep. Open pinelands type stuff, sort of felt like the high terrain in the west/CA/WA.
I felt a little better than yesterday, but I still felt like I was running at very high altitude. I had two rather large mistakes. The first one was due to plain exhaustion, I think, as it was a matter of reversing up and down. Then I blew the next one, too, but it seems that some very good orienteers did exactly what I did, so I don't feel so bad. It seems like I was excruciatingly slow, and I pretty much was, but the winning time in W21E was about 65, so it wasn't exactly fast terrain. After the O we headed over the Raglan for some grub and to check out some nice beaches. Bumped into lots of other orienteers! | ||
| C • I'm enjoying your trip 3 | ||
| Running warm up/down 10:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
Tuesday Feb 5 | ||
| Orienteering 1:10:00 [2] 5 km (14:00 / km) | |
| shoes: Jalas | ||
| Loop race. Today was just one of those days when I couldn't do it. I "ran" two of my four loops and then called it a day. Would have stopped after the first one (I was totally beat and just couldn't focus on the map) but I figured it was good training to keep going. I don't think it was good training, so I didn't keep going. I guess I'm tired from all these races back to back, not sleeping well, etc. Better to rest a little more than waste time not having fun and tiring myself out. (Time and distance guesses for now.)
This morning we took a tour of the Hobbiton set from LOTR and in the evening we checked out the Hamilton Gardens, which were quite awesome. | ||
Monday Feb 4 | ||
| Orienteering race 21:53 [4] *** 2.5 km (8:45 / km) | |
| 21c shoes: Asics B&Y | ||
| Sprint at Waikato University, WRE.
Blah. It seems that it is too often that 1 control can really ruin a race. I ran pretty well for the first two thirds of the course. (Well enough that no one had caught me yet, which is always a good thing with so many good runners around.) On my way to the 15th control I got really confused by the map and did what most people would consider to be the sensible thing to do and stopped running. But that got me more confused, so I stood and looked for a while and finally just headed back the way I'd come. This just confirmed that I'd done exactly what I'd meant to do, but the 2-3 minutes (!) that this took is pretty awful. I was only about 20 or 30 meters from the control. I ran the rest of the course okay, so with a few bobbles in the beginning on maybe 2 controls, overall it was okay, except the one. I could scream at how stupid that was. I went back to look at that leg with seabass afterwards and the map did make perfect sense (it's a really nice map, no reason it shouldn't) but I think I was confused by an uncrossable wall that looked more like an overhang to me. I'm not really sure what I should have done. Normally, if something doesn't make sense, it's good to stop and figure out why. But in this case it took a rested mind to look at it and made sense, where as if I had had confidence that the (simple) route that I had taken was right, then I could have run the next 10 seconds and kept going. I don't know. Anyway, I thought the course was a blast and the map was awesome. Time to concentrate more so I don't suck so much. | ||
| Running warm up/down 10:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Asics B&Y | ||