Training Log Archive: Bash

Pouring rain today, and I couldn't convince myself to go out and enjoy it. Tomorrow it's supposed to be freezing rain, and we've got to drive to Toronto - yuck.

While I was stuck indoors, I tested the new vacuum cleaner. It sucks.

Trail run around Palgrave West, including Charlevoix Loop, at a fast pace (for me). I could really feel the sore muscles from Monday's core-fest, which is probably a good thing, since it means that I'm using those muscles when I run. But it's also a reminder to get my act together and get back into shape!

On Hammer's recommendation, I tried uphill bounding with ski poles to simulate the weight shift for classic skiing, exercise the arms, and (of course) climb a few hills. Today was just a test to see which hills and which ski poles might work best. I did 3 hill repeats, with two of them off-trail, and it was definitely a high intensity workout. The hills have to be steep to use the poles properly. I'm thinking of going next door to Humongous Hill, continuing up to Poison Ivy Plateau. The baskets on my ski poles are an annoyance, so I'll switch to Leki trekking poles at the proper length.

While watching the Daily Show. Jon Stewart's birthday was yesterday - same as 'Bent.

Hard Core Mondays are back!

Thomass winter orienteering race #1 - Blithe Hill

It was great to get back to orienteering after a break, although my legs felt heavy because I haven't been running much lately - not to mention the extra 1.5 kg I brought back from NZ. Or maybe it's because of yesterday's run - or because there were some good hill climbs and areas of recent logging that required a lot of leg lifting. Anyway, it was a very physical race, and I felt like my feet were in molasses. 'Bent saw me a few times and said I wasn't moving all that slowly, so perhaps it wasn't as bad as it felt.

I enjoyed the terrain, and the navigation went almost 100% smoothly, which may be a side benefit of my lower speed. I think I finished 5th overall, with the first six all finishing close together. After that, people trickled in slowly, and the 2nd place woman arrived 28 minutes after I did. She didn't do badly either - there were still guys behind her.

Nice to see newlyweds Mick and Laura out for their first post-wedding Thomass!

When I do overnight races, my favourite time of day is the first light of morning when you realize that you can just start to make out the trees, and you know that the warmth of sunrise will be coming shortly.

In real life, I like to sleep right through this time of day.

But today is 'Ben'ts birthday celebration (even though his B-day is Tuesday), and he voted to do an early morning trail run, so I set the alarm to go off in the middle of the night (OK, it was 6:15). I figured it would be good for me, like wheat germ or TVO. It actually *was* fun to get together with K/O and the Saturday morning gang for a hilly run in Glen Haffy. Now I know which hill is K2 (Bruce Trail west of Centreville Creek), and it is a good long, steady climb to use for hill intervals. BulletDog had a fantastic time herding 'Bent and me like a sheepdog. After our 3-week disappearance, she is not letting us out of her sight again if she can help it! The rest of the gang continued north of Hwy 9, but I didn't want to overdo it in my 3rd run in a month.

In just one more week, K/O finds out if she's been accepted into the BIG ultra-trail run in California - exciting!!

DVD - Power Yoga for Endurance Athletes. Haven't done this for a long time, but it's good for flexibility and balance, so I should do it more often. I can't imagine that I'll ever be strong enough to do those yoga push-ups though! I can do the high plank position, and I can go down to the low plank and hold for a few seconds. But when I'm supposed to go back up to the high plank, I hit the floor on the way, which is *definitely* cheating.

Around Palgrave West, including a run up Lookout Hill on the K-Bash property (no relation). Great view of west Caledon and the Escarpment! After being away for 3 weeks, I'm still getting used to the fact that all the leaves are off the trees. I keep expecting someone to fix that problem before the next time I go outside.

I didn't count my warm-up trek with ThunderDog, but I could have called it "Orienteering, Level 1". At home, she put on this act like she's an old dog with stiff joints who just wants to sit by the fire and get fed the occasional MilkBone. Then out in the woods today, she had me jogging between trees and leaping over logs to keep up on her chosen route. Nice to see it, and I know she'll feel another few years younger when the snow flies.

While watching the Daily Show. It's been far too long, but there wasn't space to do core or leg strength exercises in our campervan in NZ, and I'm not quite brave enough to do sit-ups out on the lawn.

It's time to get training again - in fact, this is probably Day 1 of my 2007 season. 'Bent and I are always off-kilter because we spend so much time skiing, snowshoeing and winter orienteering that we end up getting stronger through the winter and peaking in early spring, then after a lull, we try to push our performance back up for a month or so in the Aug/Sept timeframe, but that's always been a challenge for me. It has generally meant better race results in spring than in summer, but hey, it's worth it. Bring on the snow!!

And home at last. What a fun few weeks that was! :-)

If you get the choice, take Air New Zealand instead of Air Canada. We got two flights on each airline, and there was no comparison. My favourite part was when Air Canada woke us up at 5 a.m. today, just before landing in Toronto, to offer us the chance to purchase dinner. They were out of breakfast foods like muffins. Why? Because we got on the plane at 10 p.m. in San Francisco, so it was a "dinner flight".

This was the heavy-duty winch grinding portion of our 2-hour sail in Auckland on an America's Cup yacht. Awesome!! The main sail weighed 180 kg and took a couple of minutes for eight of us to raise, working hard on the winches. Then we had various other sails to raise, drop and rearrange during the sail. Nasty weather, but that gave us a taste of what real ocean racing would be like. 'Bent took a shift at the helm. He looks like a real sailor these days, now that he's grown a beard. He'd better not start smoking a pipe.

Courtesy of the International Date Line, we were able to spend Saturday sailing around Auckland's harbour, including a tight squeeze under their big harbour bridge, then we spent an hour at their Maritime Museum and went to a seafood restaurant at the harbourfront.

Then we flew to San Francisco, where it was Saturday morning all over again. We couldn't find a sailboat to go out on, so we took a harbour cruise that passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, then we visited the Fisherman's Wharf Maritime Museum and went to a seafood restaurant at the harbourfront.

Thus we spent our two Saturdays in two different hemispheres in virtually identical ways. Great symmetry!

Our time in Christchurch was all about Antarctica. We spent a couple of hours in the visitor wing of the International Antarctic Centre. Most scientists travelling to Antarctica pass through the Centre, which is adjacent to the airport. Lots of good info on the international stations, current research, and issues in the deep south.

Then we spent a couple of hours in the Antarctic Hall of the Canterbury Museum, where they have exhibits on Antarctic history. Some of the cooler stuff was gear and clothing from famous expeditions - Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton.

Hmmm... I may have to start posting my weight in my training log when I get home. Tonight we pigged out on excellent Indian food (for the 3rd time in two weeks). Last night it was awesome Japanese food. The night before, it was fresh seafood...

Brilliant sunshine, so we had to make a run for Mt. Cook, the highest mountain in NZ (3750 m or so). I was here years ago as part of a business trip, and I didn't see a darned thing due to clouds, so there was unfinished business! ;-)

We couldn't have asked for a more perfect day - sunny, crystal clear views of mountains, glaciers, and thunderous rivers after the previous day's storm. We hiked up the Hooker Valley - not the most strenuous trek we've done, but one of the most scenic. In the Mt. Cook area, you really can't go too far unless you have technical mountain climbing equipment, but that's OK, because the valleys are stunning. We hiked up to Hooker Lake, then back again, with lots of agility training as we leapt from stone to stone to hill to stone, trying to keep our feet dry as a stream came down the middle of some parts of the trail.

There were two places where the trail crossed the Hooker River on a swing bridge (somewhat unstable pedestrian suspension bridge), and the wind gusts funnelled through there so hard that some hikers would just grab the side of the bridge, frozen in fear. We clutched our hats, cameras and the side of the bridge as we walked across, and I really don't think I've ever felt such a strong wind - except maybe those 80 knot gusts on Milford Sound a few days ago (although 'Bent thinks the gusts were stronger today).

Huge storm last night! We were thinking that it was typical NZ rain, but it turns out that it was the biggest rainfall in the Mt. Cook area in 3 years. They got 25 cm (not a typo) in a day, and there was a tonne of flooding downstream. Also there were 150 kph wind gusts that ripped roofs off houses and downed trees. But we didn't get a newspaper, so we were blissfully unaware. And then the sun came out, so we had a good afternoon.

Rented mountain bikes in Wanaka and headed out along the lakefront trail, then climbed into a local MTB play area. It turned out to be a dark tamarack forest, and after about 45 minutes of climbing and descending on single track, I really wanted to see some mountain views again. So we did some route-finding back to the lake (almost trespassed on a REALLY expensive property, but found a legal way around). Then we continued on the lakefront trail, which was more of an ATV trail that turned into a rolling double-track trail as it started to follow the Clutha River. We could have done that for hours, but we needed to get the bikes back by 6 p.m.

Probably the 2nd most popular backpacking trip in NZ is the Routeburn Track. (The Milford Track is the most well-known.) We decided to hike from the eastern end of the track up to the highest point, Harris Saddle, then go back down again in the same day. This meant hiking past two huts that some people were spending the night in. That's something to put on our to-do list for the future - more time in a beautiful place.

The Routeburn Track is quite varied over a relatively short distance. We started in lush native beech forest, and had several swing bridge crossings of fast-moving streams. In this section, we saw several parakeets, who seemed quite interested in us. The trail followed the wall of a river gorge for awhile, with azure blue water spilling over large rocks.

After the first 90 minutes, there was a stiff climb to the Routeburn Falls Hut, just above the tree line ("bush line" in NZ). After walking past a cool series of waterfalls, we were in an alpine amphitheatre surrounded by large peaks. After skirting it and climbing steadily, we followed a narrow path along the side of a cliff above Lake Harris, emerging at Harris Saddle. On another day, we would have had a stunning view over the Hollyford Valley, where the road to Milford Sound runs. (We'd driven it a few days earlier.) However, today the snow was flying, and we only saw the views on the east side of the pass where we had come from.

The Routeburn is one of NZ's Great Walks, and it offers guided and unguided facilities. So it was kind of weird to be at this alpine saddle, far from the road, and there were two shelters right beside each other. They looked almost the same from the outside, but one of them had a numbered keypad to get into it. That was for the guided groups. We went into the adjacent shelter for the riff raff, and enjoyed a snack before heading back down. The sun came out, and then it really was a Great Walk! Hmmm... now that we've done two Great Half-Walks, I wonder if that counts as doing one Great Walk. ;-)

Event: Raid the Hammer
 

The Tree Huggers haven't missed a GHO adventure run since 2002. I'm sorry not to be at Raid The Hammer today, even though we're having a great time in NZ. Hope everyone has an awesome time today!

Wanted to take advantage of the clear, sunny weather this afternoon, so we took a gondola up to the bushline to get into the alpine area as quickly as possible. This gondola goes up almost vertically - definitely not an excursion that Hammer would enjoy! We trekked the Ben Lomond Track to Ben Lomond Saddle, where we had a spectacular view of the Remarkables (mountain range) in one direction and back to Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu in the other direction. We decided to get creative on our return route, following a long, narrow ridgeline that got a bit dodgy in places. Now I know why it wasn't on our trail map! Views were excellent (when I dared to look up from where I was carefully placing my feet), and we eventually arrived at the place above the gondola where the paragliders take off. 'Bent is keen to try it, but the paragliders weren't out today because of the wind.

We'd hoped to kayak on Doubtful Sound, but the weather didn't look promising, so we decided to head up to Milford Sound instead, since we could see the ocean before making a decision. The driving rain was discouraging, but gale force winds in the marine forecast finalized our choice to go out on a relatively small tour boat instead. Fantastic scenery with a million waterfalls pouring down the 1000 m walls of the fjord after all the rain - and new waterfalls springing up all the time. At the narrowest point of the fjord, Windy Point, the skipper said we had gusts of up to 80 knots. We were out on the bow in full rain gear, and I've never experienced anything like it. It was beyond whitecaps - the high wind flattened the waves. Wow! We couldn't keep our eyes open in places like that because the rain really hurt when it hit our faces. It gave me a little taste of what sailors must experience as they travel through the roaring forties. They are amazingly tough!

New Zealand has designated some of its backpacking trips as "Great Walks". Today 'Bent and I did a Great Mini-Walk on the Kepler Track, since we didn't have time to do the whole thing. We were inspired by learning about the Kepler Challenge, an annual event where people run the 60 km trail with a winning time of just over 4.5 hrs. Backpackers normally take 3-4 days to go around. Because of the large elevation gain, we decided not to try running, but we did an extended day hike from Brod Bay, past the Luxmore Hut, where most people spend their first night on the trek. From there, we climbed Mt. Luxmore, then continued on to the Forest Burn Shelter, about halfway to the Day 2 hut. Views over Fiordland National Park were stunning in every direction. This was the first time I've ever been out in such a strong wind that I actually worried about being blown off a mountain ridge! We would have gone further, but the cold wind made the beautiful native beech forest seem really attractive, so we headed back.

Trail running around Lake Te Anau, from the village to the control gates. Awesome weather (at last!) with excellent views of mountains covered by yesterday's unusually late snowfall. Stopped for a break at the Te Anau Wildlife Centre where they keep rare or injured native birds in special enclosures, including - inexplicably - a Canada Goose, "New Zealand's only truly wild goose, introduced in the late 19th century".

Pedalling with 'Bent on Lake Te Anau - he just couldn't resist. These Seacycles look funny, but they sure fly, and they're really stable.

Hiking on the Otago Peninsula with a biologist guide. Saw Royal albatrosses, yellow-eyed penguins, Hooker sea lions, New Zealand fur seals, and a rare Southern Right whale.

Today we were planning to hike up Avalanche Peak at Arthur's Pass, but it was not meant to be. There is a heavy rain warning, which means no visibility at any level and lots of snow up high. Even if we wanted to hike in the cold, driving rain, a couple of the main trails have been closed due to avalanche risk or landslide. The next couple of days don't look like good weather for the mountains, so we made a long dash to the southeast part of the South Island, where the main attraction is wildlife. We visited a yellow-eyed penguin colony, then watched after dark as 200 blue penguins came ashore to their colony after a long day at sea. Cool!

Yesterday was a recovery day in Wellington, mostly spent at the amazing Te Papa museum, followed by an overly abundant seafood feast. Today was a long travel day, starting with the ferry to the South Island, then a rainy cross-country drive to Punakaikas, including the "most spectacular coastal drive in the world", according to local literature. It was pretty impressive.

Two additional comments on the rogaine:

1) Control descriptions were provided in English, which is usually helpful - except that these descriptions were written in Kiwi English! We were OK for most, but there were a couple of controls like "Macrocarpas" (a tree, apparently) and "Bivy (how many poles?)" (a skeleton of a tent with poles made of branches) that weren't entirely clear to us.

2) One fellow told us that rogaining came to NZ by way of Canada! It started in Australia, but didn't come over here. Then a few Kiwis went to Alberta in 1990 to the Most Awesome Rogaine (?). They liked it so much that they came back and got it started in NZ. There have been 160 rogaines here since, many of them only 3 hours long. They have them on Wednesday nights occasionally.

Guy Fawkes 12-Hr Rogaine - Reikorangi, New Zealand

Wow... we are both *so* wiped out after this. This was an interesting rogaine - 3, 6 and 12 hr events, 80 controls (compared to 50-60 at most 24-hr events), huge area, 1000 m of elevation difference between the highest and lowest controls. Choosing a route was interesting, because it was obvious that even the top teams would be lucky to get to half the controls, and the terrain appeared to be very different across the map.

'Bent and I decided that we were tourists, so we should definitely plan to hit the highest point - a trig station on top of a mountain. We were surprised that most of the controls were close to trails - or on them, and we planned a moderately ambitious route that followed high ridges for 2/3 of the time, then dropped to the valley to grab some high-pointers near the end. Boy, did we overestimate what we would be able to do!! The map was a 1:50,000 topo blown up to 1:30,000, with no enhancements for rogaining purposes, other than the addition of a couple of tracks. The so-called "tracks", which looked like big ATV trails on the map, would not even qualify as wildlife trails in Ontario, and they would *never* be marked on a map! Luckily, some of the ridges were very narrow, so we would often stumble across the track after losing it (which happened all the time), but it was very easy to blunder down the wrong spur a short distance, and I needed to watch my compass all the time. You might ask... why depend on the trails at all, in that case? Well, this wasn't a place where you would do a lot of bushwhacking. The forest was often thick and littered, and there were spaghetti masses of twig-like vines called supplejack draped everywhere, just waiting to tangle us up. We could understand why there weren't a lot of controls off-trail. It was more than enough of a challenge to stay anywhere near the track. The forest was beautiful - big moss-draped trees, tall fern trees and knee-high plants that looked like something you would grow as an ornamental plant at home.

The philosophy regarding controls was different from other rogaines we've done. It wasn't just a matter of finding the place where the control should be. The feature was seldom on the map, and sometimes it was quite a challenge to locate it, e.g. "dead tree" on a large foggy spur covered with dead trees.

About halfway through the day, we realized that our progress along the ridges was much slower than expected, so we needed to head down to the valley and get some last controls before the 7 p.m. deadline. We had some bad luck down there - trails that weren't as good as they appeared on the map and a long, steep climb up a marked route (not a trail) where we looked in vain for a "grassy knoll" that was apparently found by a few teams, but caused trouble for other teams as well.

Because of that, we ended up in a rush to get to the finish on time - something I'd promised would never happen again after the mad dash that Sherpa and I had to make in the 2005 North Am Rogaine Champs. The Kiwis weren't familiar with towing, so they burst out laughing as 'Bent and I ran by. With less than half an hour to go, we found ourselves clinging by our fingernails as we climbed a steep embankment by a creek. At that point, we abandoned our ethics about avoiding private property and followed another team through someone's back yard to get to the final stretch of forest, farmland and road. Phew - finished with 12 minutes to spare.

I think we finished around midpack. Several teams were disqualified for finishing more than 30 minutes late, including the search and rescue team, who were also competing! At the time we went to bed, three of the organizers had headed up the mountain in search of a team who had called from their cell phone saying that they were going to try to start a fire, but then their cell phone batteries ran out, so no one was 100% sure where they were. We didn't hear how that turned out, but I can certainly see how people could get stuck out there and be uncertain about how to get off a mountain safely.

We were thinking that New Zealanders must be exceptionally tough - and they are! But we heard a number of people saying that this was one of the toughest, trickiest rogaines that they've done - largely because of the unforgiving terrain (steep slopes and cliffs forcing you to commit to ridges for long periods of time, difficult bushwhacking) and the inability to make good plans with the limited information on the map. Anyway, that made for a great challenge, and it was fun to sit at the BBQ afterward with a bunch of like-minded locals, rather than hanging out with other tourists. For 'Bent and me, it was quite an adventure, even though we had some frustrating moments out there. Well organized event by the Wellington orienteering club, with lots of hard work to set such a large and challenging course.

Caving and blackwater rafting (in an inner tube) through Ruakiri Cave in the Waitomo Caves area. Wow - amazing glow worms, cave formations and huge eels. Jumped off a waterfall, navigated without headlamps using only the light of glow worms, and did lots of wading in cold water! Finished by paddling our tubes 500 m through a river through a lush native forest. Awesome!

Tongariro Crossing - This is a spectacular day hike that attracts a lot of people, so 'Bent and I caught the 6 a.m. shuttle to be among the first on the trail. We started with a steady climb up a valley filled with old lava flows and fragile vegetation, then we had a steep climb to the saddle between Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngaaruhoe (the conical Mt. Doom from Lord of the Rings). Then we crossed South Crater, then climbed the far side to the steaming vents of Red Crater. From there, we took a detour to climb Mt. Tongariro. Great views, and a nice slide down the snow when we came back down! Back at the main trail, we checked out the very deep Red Crater, then did a steep descent to the Emerald Lakes for lunch. It was cold, so we looked around until we found a nice steamy vent. It smelled like sulphur, but the rock was nice and warm for our lunch break.

There has been increased seismic activity in the area lately, and they're expecting another major event in the next year when Crater Lake is expected to break open and cause a mudslide. They have a siren warning system, and when the lake goes, they have a plan in place to close the section of major highway that will get the brunt of the avalanche of mud. Wow, that's living on the edge!

After lunch, we climbed up to Blue Lake, then it was a long descent to the Ketatahi road end. At first, it was an open mountainside with great views of Lake Taupo, then we spent the last 45 minutes in lush native forest beside a rushing stream - beautiful!

Exploring Waiotapu Thermal Area - bee-yoo-ti-full!