Training Log Archive: jennycas

To the weir with the group, then I only managed 2 stair reps because of how bad my hip/hamstring is since tweaking it when I tripped & fell towards the end of Saturday's race, then I finished off via the footbridge behind the zoo, thinking about rogaining in the frosty moonlight. Trying to remember when I last did a rogaine with negative overnight temperatures - maybe SA Champs @Nackara in 2009?

Have realised that another reason why I was disappointed with the Long Final is that it wasn't technically as difficult as I had expected. Don't get me wrong; there were plenty of opportunities to come unstuck (which is why I red-lined everything, not daring to take a faster track because I might get misplaced when I left it) but I had been hoping for more of the low-visibility stuff like we'd had on the Oceania Long, which I really enjoyed. Other maps/races which I've really enjoyed include last year's Aust Long Champs at Amiens, Kooyoora at any time except when it's hot, and the Gothenburg terrain from WMOC 2015; basically, terrain where nobody else can run fast and they are all brought back to my level!

C • technical difficulty 2

Swimming over the hotspots upwelling in my lane made me think how this was a cheaper 'thermal pool' to be in than most of the commercial ones in NZ. Hip flexor not happy today, partly due to 5 hrs on a plane yesterday. But I am grateful that AirNZ does have some direct flights to Adelaide. Also I am completely exhausted and wondering why I signed up for a 24-hour rogaine this weekend.

C • Wondering why? 4

Good things about Oceania/WMOC:
- terrain
- courses
- arenas
- results displays
- carnival atmosphere
- catering
- getting to catch up with old friends from countries such as Denmark & New Caledonia
- getting to make new friends (Valerie, Tori)
I am in awe of the incredible organisational effort by so many volunteers.

Not-so good things about Oceania/WMOC:
- 10-hour days
- Auckland traffic
- driving 2 hours to events
- parking
- long walks to arenas
- bedbugs & fleas in our cheap motel
- getting sick
- sheer exhaustion
I overheard more than one person saying that this really wasn't a holiday at all!

C • Staying close 2

I kind of knew, after my results from the qualifiers, that the only way in which I might be able to somehow sneak into the top 10 today would be to have a perfectly clean run (and hope that others didn't) but still I was bitterly (childishly? unreasonably?) disappointed to come 13th. I think it's because I'd made training for this race into my major project of the past 6 months, and all I had to do was to not make any mistakes on the day, and yet I failed at that. Waiting around 4 hours in the rain for my start time gave me plenty of opportunity to get distracted by thoughts of which new patients are coming for chemo at work this week, and what I need to pack for the Aust Champs rogaine next weekend, so I really had to convince myself to focus properly at the start.

And then I went & blew nearly 3 minutes on the first control :( Just couldn't seem to find it anywhere and couldn't understand what either the vegetation or the contours were doing. Put that behind me, and concentrated well thereafter apart from circumnavigating an extra knoll in the green stuff on 6, and what I thought was a minor wobble on 12 also in the dunes, although actually I had 3rd fastest split on that and this may be where I got away from the woman who had started 4 minutes after me - although she still beat me overall. As did 11 other people. I'm so ashamed to have ended up with a lower place than in qualifying, although I can see, from the splits, that on legs where I navigated well and was running as hard as I possibly could (although I've since seen some track routes which I should have taken), I was still between 11th & 15th, which basically means I'm just not fast enough to be competitive in the terrain any more.

C • Well done anyway 3

Long - Final - Women 40 Final A - Splits

Basically around the block of roads which circumnavigates Greenmount, the
- presumably artificial - hill behind our motel which can only have been landfill in a previous life. Despite the sheets having been changed yesterday, the bedbugs still found me in the night yet again (it seems the bites weren't from midges after all) and I am definitely counting down the nights until I can go home & sleep in my own bed. But didn't feel worse for having got some exercise (although not really fresh air) and then we spent a perfect autumn day catching the ferry to/from and walking up/down Rangitoto, the volcanic island in Auckland Harbour which did't exist until about 500 years ago. Surprising how much vegetation is there now, and unsurprising how many orienteers were at the top today!

C • Lava flow 1

Another 7am departure and 5pm return today; we got there @9 but I wasn't running until after midday. Really wanted to make the most of this being the last year that 2nd-chance qualifiers will be available at WMOC, but struggled to read the map at all and made some fairly daft route choices, having no real understanding of which way was up and which way down, so went unnecessarily over some ridges and around some basins; don't like 2.5m contours and was annoyed afterwards to see that the A3 map which the men received for their longer courses was printed with much finer contours than the A4 I had, meaning that it was possible for them to actually read what was between the contours, which I had no chance of doing.

Lost time on 1, (good track route to 2 though), circumnavigated the deep basin unnecessarily to 4 when I should have taken the tracks, too far left on 5 and then on 6 completely failed to see the road/track option to the left, got confused by crossing unmapped very faint rides and somehow started navigating to 7, corrected this but then still managed to actually go to 7 before 6 because I didn't climb high enough before dropping - lost at least 5 min on that leg and another 2-3 throughout the course; also exited 8 badly. A bit annoyed to be 13th, but it was probably deserved, and at least being 11th overall after 2 days of qualifying means I don't have to wear an additional yellow number.

I'm happier with the way I was running physically today compared to yesterday but I don't think that 1 min start intervals are a good idea; I'm perfectly certain that a number of people got tows on one or other of the days...

C • 2nd chance qualifiers 5

Long - Qualification 2 - Women 40 Heat 1 - Splits

Still not feeling great today, and struggled to get into the map a bit, misreading up & down contours in the pines so the Swedish woman had already caught me 1 min by the first control, then I didn't think I could run hard on the track so took the cross-country route across the rough 'open' - slow, but not terrible, but I stuffed up the end of this leg because a sand blow is really not a good attack point. Was passed by Jo going into 2 but she was out of sight fairly quickly; another couple of women caught me also, who were running faster than me but not necessarily navigating cleanly and so I saw them a couple more times. Took the cross-country route again on the next longer leg (hoping I'll be up to hard track running by Sat though) and this would have been ok except that I was too far right at the end and lost a minute or two. The rest of the course was ok although I had to walk up hills. Also, there was more pampas grass on the ground than on the map but I don't mind that sort of low visibility too much.

Ended up 11th, but aiming for 9th tomorrow - could easily have been 5 min faster on a good day.

We had heard about Auckland traffic, so left at 7am and allowed 2 hours to get there, and needed all but 5 min of it - and then there was still the 2km walk to the assembly area. The plan was to leave the event early enough to be home before traffic time but since the drug-testers became John's new best friend and we had to wait around a couple of hours for the consequences, we ended up getting home @5:30pm...

Long - Qualification 1 - Women 40 Heat 1 - Splits