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, January 22, 2011

    Hutt River Trail Ultra 2011

    Approaching the end of the Rimutaka Incline.
    Photo courtesy Richard Wall.
    Weather conditions this year were generally good: for the first 8k to the Rimutaka Incline summit it was heavily overcast with pleasantly cool temperatures. After the summit tunnel there was a patch of drizzle, and conditions remained good (overcast) through Tunnel Gully. The weather then started to clear and temperatures warmed up considerably. It remained warm for most of the way down the valley, but I do recall a few cooler patches at times.

    This year's event confirmed what I had suspected for a while: my endurance is fine, but my leg speed is not. To be fair, my time this year (7:29:39) was a smidgen faster than in 2008 (7:32:14) or 2009 (7:30:42), but it was well short of my PB (7:14:49) last year. As the only walker in the ultra I still took the win, but I was hoping for a quicker time ahead of the Taupo 100k in four weeks time.

    There's a few factors that might each individually account for a minute or so in time, but I was losing time (compared to last year) at every split for the first 40km. Possibly the biggest factor was not being in the right place mentally to race. I have four weeks to fix that, less when recovery from the weekend and taper for the 100km are factored in. Time to ditch the repeats that I've done for the last three weeks in training and start doing a few 5km races. A 10k or Half Marathon would also be good, but there doesn't appear to be any at a convenient location in the next two-three weeks.

    Posted by Andrew Shelley
    Labels: , , ,

    0 comments:

    Post a Comment

    Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)