Training Log Archive: jennycas

Yesterday afternoon Bruce (as part of his bronze medal-winning preparations) wanted to check out the area for the sprint final at Auckland University, so John & I went too, and spent an hour or so walking around the campus even though all the while a little voice in my head was saying "any attempt to survey or train in the terrain is forbidden". The thing is, it wasn't; in fact it was allowed (without a map in hand, of course) until 6am today! And I know that I do well when I can visualise what an area will look like on the ground as soon as I see it on the map...was still scratching itchy midge bites - there's even one on my ear - on the way to the start (we even got a tiny warmup map, and special yellow chest numbers for the top 10 finalists in each class) but forgot all about the itch as soon as I started lining up on the pedestrian overpass which was very neatly used for the 6-minute start process.

First few controls were in the park - I swear there must have been one on nearly every significant tree - and then we crossed into the uni campus, did a loop around it, crossed under the main road through the underpass (some people had trouble realising where the official underpass ended and the under-canopy between buildings began, but it made sense to me and so I won that split, although I had a bit of trouble reading my way to the next - spectator - control) and then a short loop through buildings near the finish. I took a wide route along the road on the longer leg here which I think was good but then didn't quite have the best exit from the next 2 controls. Ran hard up the finish but fumbled the punch on both the last control and the finish unit which I like to think accounts for the 2 seconds which 4th place beat me by. Did think I was going to be 6th, but one of the Finns mispunched and so I was 5th, which I had hoped for. More surprisingly though, I was only a minute behind Jo Allison, who's one of Australia's TWELVE gold medallists today!

C • Woo Hoo 4

Sprint Final - Women 40 Final A - Splits

Epsom Campus, University of Auckland. Actually a really tricky course which made good use of a small area. 'Longer' courses including W40 had a map flip, which meant that in the start box I was able to plan my route to the second-last control, and subsequently had the 3rd-fastest split for that! Also, when I looked at the longer leg 2-3, straightaway I saw the western route, which while it was perhaps a bit longer, had only one set of stairs, so I took that, and somehow won that split. We had a similar leg in the opposite direction later on (15-16) and I pretty much just put my map away and ran 80% of it on memory, winning that split too. What I did not do well was to miss a crucial gap between buildings immediately after 11, whereupon I found myself somehow navigating to 13 without yet having been to 12, and when I did realise this I was so confused that in trying to correct my error I actually ran straight past 12 without realising it, then had to double back, so that was about 100 sec wasted :(

Just had to think of it as an extra control and not let it affect my race. In fact, I still qualified - in 7th although it would otherwise have been 3rd - and was pretty happy given the early awakening to take Geoff to the airport at 6am and the discovery at that time of a couple dozen midge or sandfly bites all over my torso, which I have no idea how or when I acquired.

Sprint Qualification - Women 40 Heat 1 - Splits

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).