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.


    Tuesday, January 18, 2011

    4x1km Repeats

    After a light week of training my legs should have been fresh for today's set of repeats, but my legs felt a bit sluggish and the first two repeats were a little slow. I dropped my car off at the mechanic's and then walked the 5k to my training circuit. That provided a good warm up so it was straight into the repeats, 4 x 1km with 500m recovery. The first was 5:59 and the second was 5:57, both of them a good 15s slower than what I wanted. Then I managed to pull out a 5:34, followed by a 5:42 (checked briefly by a car, so still happy with that). From there it was a 500m recovery and then 5km back home.

    The 7 days had started with a 10k recovery on Wednesday after the previous set of repeats. Thursday was a 10k tempo session, structured as a 3k warmup, 4k tempo, 1k recovery, and then 2k warmdown. That ended up being the best 10k time I have recorded on that course for many months.

    The Whakatiki River. The stream we explored was just out of shot
    on the left.
    Friday was a rest day, so I went exploring a local stream with my boys. Just 3.3km, but 90 minutes! Saturday was a 9.4km run up to the Birchville Dam and return.

    Sunday was intended to be a 21km, but that never happened as I spent the afternoon working on a document instead. Monday my quads were still a bit sore from Saturday's run, but after a 10k recovery session on the Hutt River Trail were feeling quite a bit better.

    This coming weekend is the Hutt River Trail 60km ultramarathon, so the rest of this week will be relatively light. Whether my legs are in any sort of shape for any speed training next week remains to be seen.
    Posted by Andrew Shelley
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    1 comments:

    nyle said...

    Well done Andrew...they are great times for you 1km reps. Sounds like Friday was the best day of the week. :)

    January 19, 2011 at 9:47 PM

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