Training Log Archive: jennycas

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).

Oh dear, 14th today. I kinda knew this would happen, because steep slippery hillsides with big cliffy rocks on them are not my forte; also the competition was a stronger field than the previous races, but I still didn't expect to be quite so far down...mind you, if I hadn't decided to go through a gate rather than over it, and then wasted at least half a minute trying to get it closed again, I could have been a couple of places higher up. Navigationally I really struggled, taking a long time to get my head around the 1: 7500 scale - still don't know how I completely overran one side gully too far on 5; I simply never saw the first gully - and also not reading the difference between gully & sinkhole very well on the map, because the rocks overshadowed everything. They were quite imposing on the ground, too! When my arches finally stopped hurting and I was able to concentrate properly, my navigation started to improve, but by then the course was nearly over. Still don't know how the Estonian lady took 23 minutes?

Running 2nd in a W35-44 team with Rachel West & Anna Fitzgerald on a day when the forecast showers turned out to mean "prepare to get drenched at 10-minutely intervals". Thankfully I had sent my hunter-gatherer spouse forth in search of a groundsheet/tarpaulin yesterday! Of course, this meant that I managed to keep my gear dry until such time as it was necessary to pack up everything and trudge back up the hill to the cars in the rain...

Anyway, Rachel had a good solid run first up, and I felt like I was running fairly well physically although this pace was at the edges of my navigational ability; drifted too far right on 5 although corrected ok, and then after crossing between the lakes for the 2nd time I thought I'd go right around the hill then up & over the saddle into the little gully but somehow overshot and emerged into the paddock with the "party tent" and had to sneak back up the hill, which wasted another couple of minutes. Anna had a blinder, easily 5 min faster than me (although there was the unfortunate matter of her not actually punching the 2nd last control, but oh well).

Managed to get WMOC accreditation done at Queens Wharf this afternoon, so that's one less task for next Sat, and then caught the ferry back to Devonport (with Blair who was joining us for dinner) - nice harbour views.

Long race, except that it wasn't really very long because of the perks of running W40 - some elite middle distances I've done lately took me longer than this. And some of the top W40s (good work Jo!) are still running and winning elites...

Anyway, I was excited to finally run at Woodhill forest although not particularly enthused about the thought of the pampas grass, which is why I took the track around to the first control, and had a good attack point on the mound, although then the little gully with the control in it seemed to be a little further on than expected, subtleties in the contours being easily disguised by clumps of pampas grass. But I enjoy the challenge of having to infer the terrain from the map; otherwise what's a map for?

2,3,4 in the low-vis slow-run stuff went well, then I was so proud of myself for seeing a fast track option towards 5 (thinking like a European, I am) but wary that I didn't have a good attack point for coming in off the track at the end if I didn't read the edges of the clearing correctly. And so it proved, plus it would have helped if I'd realised that the 'knoll' was part of a line of junky logpiles. Think I lost a couple min here, but I did also catch up to Anna Fitzgerald, who must have lost time earlier also because she can certainly run faster than me, as evidenced by the way she then took off towards the 'escarpment' which involved scrambling about 5 contours straight up, leading on to a shallow plateau where it was best to follow the deer paths among the clumps of pampas (I actually saw 2 small deer) and although I was slow through this section I didn't get too confused.

After coming down off the 'plateau' there was a transport leg across open pine (reminding me somewhat of WMOC in Gothenburg - and actually those maps, despite being granite, had reminded me quite a bit of sand dune terrain) and then up the hill into manuka tea-tree with not much undergrowth but lots of little lumps and bumps. Somewhere in here I saw Anna again, and then I saw her on-and-off for the next few controls then we pretty much chased each other through the last 4 controls although I led us both the wrong way around the bush into the last control, something which I was rather ashamed of until I saw many many people doing the same thing later in the day!

Anyway, the outcome of this was that I somehow scraped into 3rd and was well satisfied because I know I'm fairly good at sand dune navigation, even if the Tas NOL results didn't bear this out. It really is all about managing to retain focus though - looking away from the map for a few seconds can lead to becoming horribly unstuck, as many many people found out today. While waiting for the presentations, I paddled in the beautiful lake below the arena with Ana, envious of Zara actually going for a swim! It was a grand day out, but by the time G had picked me up from Steve's and we got back to our motel, I'd been away from 'home' for nearly 10 hours and was exhausted...this too is practice for WMOC, I guess.

C • Nice result 3

Long - Course Course 11 - Splits

Event: Oceania Championships 2017
 

Nice uni campus, fairly open except for the 'maze' of tiny transportables near the end, but still with some good micro route choices. Had a comparatively early start before it rained - running W40 for the A-NZ Challenge - and felt I did ok to come equal 4th with Rachel, although I wasn't able to run particularly fast, having tired legs from having focused more on running up hills than on speed this past week.

On my way towards the 'maze' I saw someone come down an embankment and made a note of that route choice for later, figuring there must be stairs or something. Basically, it was a flat lawn with an uncrossable hedge/thicket marked 70% of the way around, an impassable cliff marked 25% of the way around, and a tiny gap which looked like stairs because of the contour line running through the middle of it, but which, when I started to go down, turned out to have no stairs and in fact to be an olive green garden bed which I backed up out of as hastily as I could, wondering why on earth they had bothered to map the tiny bit where the hedge had obviously been chopped down as being any different from the rest given that the whole embankment was forbidden/impassable anyway!

Stood around in the mud for a while waiting for the results displays to function properly but after a couple of soaking showers had come through, decided to go home and look the results up online, but I can't even find a results page/tab/link from the Oceania website...

Anyway, during the sunnier parts of the day G & I walked up Mt Victoria (this morning) behind our accommodation to take great photos of the view back towards the city and out to Rangitoto, and up Mt Eden (this afternoon) to admire the grassy volcanic crater as dozens of other people were doing. I hadn't realised you can't drive to the top; I ran up there last time so wouldn't have been aware of this. On the way down we heard a sound like a broken lyrebird and there turned out to be a Tui in the tree above us, puffing out his white throat feathers and making extraordinary noises :)

C • Results 3

Sprint - Course - 6 - Splits

We left the Coromandel Peninsula fairly early, before the rain started again, because I'd been spooked by the number of locals who'd said yesterday "I don't think you'll make it out of here tomorrow"; the accommodation owners had even suggested we stay another night (tempting, because Flaxmill Bay Hideaway is rather luxurious). Streams and inlets along the coast road were all really full but I think that was partly because of it being high tide at 9am. Mind you, low-lying areas of coastal towns including Cooks Beach were precautionarily evacuated this afternoon...

Anyway, the drive back to Auckland was uneventful, the northbound traffic jam which we hit at about the point where the highways divide rather frustrating but after 30km of bumper-to-bumper, the traffic miraculously opened up beautifully on the harbour bridge. We got to our accommodation in Devonport on the north shore about lunchtime and I consumed the best seafood chowder I've eaten since Jan 2nd, 2013 - and I remembered the right restaurant!

Since the weather didn't seem to be crapping out after all, I went for a run out to and around North Head, the old defence station with tunnels into the hillside and the "disappearing gun" then down to Cheltenham beach, and on the way back, slogged up (the tiny) Mt Victoria from where the views back to Auckland CBD and the harbour bridge, plus out towards Rangitoto Island, were magnificent.

By the time I'd finished breakfast, it was raining. But it wasn't cold yet, so I went out anyway. Explored the walking tracks up to the clifftop lookout in the Shakespeare's Cliff headland just down the road from our accommodation, then went down the steps to tiny Lonely Bay & back up again, across the bridge into Cooks Beach township (rain was coming sideways as I ran along the beach itself) as far as the monument to Cook's observation of the transit of Mercury in 1769 then back to Flaxmill Bay including one hard 4-minute hill up the gravel track to the lookout.

Came back to our cosy dry unit, had a drink and a banana, looked at the weather forecast and decided to do tomorrow's planned run today also - up the washed out slippery steps to the lookout above Ferry Landing, down the very rough path to the landing and back along the beach road to Flaxmill Bay.

Plan for the day had been to go to Cathedral Cove, but a) the walking track to the beach is closed due to washouts after last week's rains, and b) the water taxi from Hahei wouldn't have been taking passengers to the cove in this weather. So we crossed on the tiny little passenger ferry to Whitianga instead, getting completely wet in the process of walking down the main street, and then sheltering & dripping in various galleries & coffee shops for the afternoon. To drive around the harbour to Whitianga would be over 40km, but the ferry takes only 2 minutes. Given the amount of rain which is likely to fall overnight, I'm not sure that staying at the furthest point of a dead-end road, with a couple of streams to ford between here and the highway, was the smartest of ideas but it has been a beautiful spot and we will definitely have to come back to see everything else the Coromandel Peninsula has to offer.