Introduction

Welcome to my blog. The title originates when my primary athletic activity was competitive walking, but now that I am back to running it also includes that.

Not all content is accessible from the main page: for example, the rogaines, racewalking, and ultramarathon pages all include content that is only accessible from those pages.

Ultramarathons

Ultramarathons are any event longer than the standard marathon distance of 26.2 miles / 42.195km. Standard distances for ultras are 50km, 50 miles, 100km, and 100 miles. There are also 12 hour and 24 hour track runs, and multi-day "stage races".

I have currently (September 2012) completed 30 ultramarathons, plus 1 DNF at about 66km at the Molesworth Run. Reports for most events are provided below.

See also

Rogaines

Rogaining is the sport of long distance cross-country navigation. Events can be as short as 2-3 hours or the standard 24 hours. Teamwork, endurance, competition and an appreciation for the natural environment are features of the sport. Rogaining involves both route planning and navigation between checkpoints using a variety of map types.

GN Phillips and RJ Phillips, Rogaining, 3rd ed, 2000



The two main umbrella organisations for rogaining in New Zealand are: My reports for selected events are provided below.


Hiking and Mountains

The Hiking, Trail Running, and Mountains pages are all inter-related, but with some subtle differences:
  • Hiking is not an organised race, and may include Coastal Adventures, activities in the Mountains, and hiking in other locations;
  • Trail Running covers organised events, some in the mountains, but others on local hills and trails; and
  • The Mountains category covers both events and hiking in various places that can be classed as mountains.


  • Racewalking

    Racewalking only has to meet two technical requirements:
    • no loss of contact, as judged by the human eye; and
    • the leg has to be straight from the moment of first contact until it is upright.
    More detailed rules are here.

    I'm not particularly good at racewalking, often falling foul of the straight leg rule. But I still give it a go and here are the results of my endeavours.


    Running

    This blog is primarily about my walking activities, but sometimes I do run. Here are reports for events where I have run.

    Shorter Races

    I classify events as ultramarathons, marathons, rogaines, and "shorter events". So a "shorter event" is just something that is shorter than a marathon and is not a rogaine. Consequently there's a mixed bag in here: running, racewalking, half marathons, 10k and 5k races, , etc.


    Saturday, February 18, 2006

    Tararua 24

    P2180019
    Control #71 was at the southern edge of this pond.
    From the start we set off down the road to quickly pick up control #23 at a stream junction, and then followed the farm track to pick up controls #42 and #94. The course notes indicated that there was a patch of supple jack along the direct SW line between #94 and where we wanted to go, so from the control we went west and crossed over to a small spur with easy travel in the bush. Travel along this section was a little slow but we eventually picked up controls #71 and #20.

    P2180021
    Jan heading up Carrington Creek.
    From control #20 it was out to the Mangatarere Valley Rd and along to Carrington Creek. The obvious entry to the creek was private land, so we had to use the direct route up the creek. There was supposed to be a track on the back to our left (the true right of the stream), but we couldn't find it and instead followed the stream all the way up to control #90. From there it was up to the stream bend and junction that marked the exit for control #53. The course notes warned of "easy but steep travel up to #53". It was certainly steep, but we somehow missed the easy part and instead found a lot of supplejack. We lost a lot of time on this climb, by the time we had collected control #53 and #93 it was getting dark and we were running low on time.

    Although we had entered the 12 hour rogaine it was being run as 2 x 6 hours, and the clock was running down to when we needed to be back. We abandoned our plan of heading down to Totara Flats and instead decided to take the more direct route following the old track along the ridge. As soon as it got dark our travel slowed to a crawl as with our low powered lights we had to be very careful to ensure we picked up the track markers. We eventually picked up control #92, and by some miracle control #89 - we were not at all sure that we would have found #89 coming from the other direction. It was back onto the main track after #89, but we were already overdue.

    We had a tired climb up to the Mt Holdsworth / Gentle Annie track and then a fast walk all the way down to the start / finish area. We could have looked for #32 on the way down but instead decided that we shouldn't waste any more time and should get back as soon as possible. When we finally made it back we were 4 hours overdue! We had some hot food from the hash tent then retired to the tent for a few hours sleep.

    P2190024
    Sunrise on day 2 as we were on our way to #83.
    We were up again at about 5:30am for the 6am start on the second 6 hour rogaine. We were a little slow in starting, and were also feeling quite tired. Note wanting a repeat of the previous day's efforts we adopted a deliberately short route for the morning. Starting out along the Atiwhakatu track we made the strange decision to bypass #55 and #22 and continued along the track to #83 which was in a side stream. From there we climbed the track leading up to Mountain House and picked up #102.

    P2190028
    Jan by Mountain House shelter.
    Coming back down the Gentle Annie track (again), we took the side track at the top of Carrington Ridge to pick up #82 on Point 801. Back out to the Gentle Annie track and back down again. We were never quite sure where #32 should be, so again bypassed it.

    Reaching the bottom of the Gentle Annie track we crossed Donnelly Flat and the Atiwhakatu Stream and picked up #55. Back down the track towards the start/finish area we still had plenty of time so we collected #41 from Gentle Annie Creek. There was only 25 minutes left so rather than risking being late again we went back to the finish.

    Total points zero for the first day's debacle, and just 350 for our tired wanderings on the second day.

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