Training Log Archive: GM

Oceania Sprint Champs at Wellington College. M55A 1st place! Not a perfect run and lost about 30 seconds with some hesitations and a backtrack on one control, but I was going for it. First time I can ever remember beating Geoff Lawford in a major event. Paul Pacque was 12 secs up at 11 but he stuffed 12 and lost 30 secs and the race. Beat all the M50s but would only have been 5th in M16 - those kids run a lot faster than me. Lucky for me the course had lots of downhill and Acejase reckons that's my forte on Cockies Sunday runs.

Sprint Champs - C4b - Splits

Wellington Harbour foreshore. An easy run from the Motorhome Park south along the dockside, dodging all the walkers, cyclists, and other runners. Stopped for a minute to watch the local youth bombing off the 8.5m platform and seeing who could make the biggest splash. Around to Oriental Bay then up the Southern Walkway towards the summit of Mt Victoria. Didn't go all the way to the top and headed back down to try and find the 'Red Dog' where we were meeting a big group of Australians for dinner. Ran numerous streets without luck, having seen a big red dog in the distance which turned out to be a golden hippo closer up! Turns out we were going to the 'One Red Dog' which was about 150m from where we were camping.

Dinner at 'One Red Dog' was great - huge platters of anti pasti, pizza, and chocolate fondue. Pints of beer too.

Oceania Middle Champs.

Middle Champs C 5b - Splits

Oceania Carnival day 2. Worst orienteering in a very long time :(

Event 2 C 5 - Splits

Event: 2013 Oceania Carnival & WC Races
 

Oceania Carnival day 1. Finished 5th in the M55A class. Lovely open/fast pine forest on not too complex sand dune terrain. Very flat in most places with just small knolls and depressions. Only complex bit was where the visibility was low but I just read the larger contours and had no problems. Made a bit of a mess of 2 by not following a good direction out of the control and ran off at a 45 degree angle and then started making a parallel error. When things didn't line up I relocated quickly but still lost over a minute. A couple of poor route choices where I should have run straight rather than out to the track-along-back in. Only other poor control was 14 where I ran past the control but just didn't see the knoll which was about 1 metre high, and got sucked into some larger knolls further on, so lost 2 minutes. GL was first in 40, then Paul in 44 and Ted in 45. A clean run would have had me at about 48 so would have had to run a lot harder to challenge. Good first hit out in the NZ terrain.

Event 1 C 5 - Splits

From our campsite at Scoutlands just south of Wanganui. Out along the road around the lake and then followed a dead-end road to the end past some nice houses and back. Very quiet - only saw one car the entire time.

Waitomo Caves. Along the walking track from our campsite to the Two Dogs cave parking area. This followed the river and went through forest and farmland and was very pleasant. Met MaryMac and we ran around the Short Walk through rainforest, past the caves, up and down numerous stairs, across high platforms, and even a couple of short dark tunnels.

Went back and walked it after our run.

Pizza and beer for tea.