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.


    Sunday, July 18, 2010

    Sometimes Running is Slower

    Fog at Silverstream
    Hutt 5 Bridges Marathon

    Well that's not quite true, it would be more accurate to say that a walk/run when you haven't trained properly and are just out there to have fun can be slower than a focussed walk.

    I was doing this marathon as a walk/run with Heather Andrews, with a planned schedule of run 10 minutes / walk 5 minutes right from the start. I hadn't done enough running to hope to run the entire marathon, and she hadn't done much training in the last six weeks.

    A brilliant calm, clear morning as we started, and by 10km it was hot enough to leave jackets at the drink station. As we reached Upper Hutt we moved from sun to fog. Runners and other River Trail users would appear as shapes in the fog before materialising as they came closer. Many of the walkers (who had started an hour earlier) and runners had turned by this point and we saw numerous people that we knew: Malcolm Gray (walk), Ingrid Frost, Patricia Stitchbury, Norman Chan, Kathy Walker (walk), Chris Leahy (walk), Vivian Cheng, Bill Barclay, and Richard Wall (walk).

    Through the turn in 2h:22m, if we could keep this up our time would be quite reasonable. Heading back down the river the fog had cleared and we were now running in humid sunshine.

    Even though we were now on a gentle downhill the going became quite tough. We kept up with the run 10 / walk 5 schedule through to about 31km. The drink station at 10.5km to go was a welcome sight: the sky had clouded up and it was getting cold, so I was pleased to be able to put my jacket on to provide protection against the southerly.

    From here we dropped to something approximating a run 5 / walk 5 schedule, although some segments of both were shorter than that. I was starting to calculate our possible finish time. Sub-5 hours remained possible, but it all depended on how much we slowed over the last few km. Through the 5km drink station and it was still close. My lack of running training was showing, as I was feeling much the same as I did in the later stages of some of the ultras that I have run.

    The 2.5km drink station, along the stop bank through the Shandon golf course, then back on to the streets. We ran most of this, but both the running sections and the walk breaks were much shorter than 5 minutes. Before long we were at Udy Street and it was a short trot down to the finish. 4h:58m:09s, slower than my recent walk of 4h:51m:28s, but good training and quite pleasing given my lack of running training.
    Posted by Andrew Shelley
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