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.


    Wednesday, November 30, 2011

    Tongariro Summit

    Final snow slope
    The final snow slope up to the summit
    Back to Tongariro again, in much better conditions than last time. A time of 4h:03m for a return trip to the summit via the new standard route.

    Heather and I jogged a lot of the trail up to the Devil's Staircase. At the bottom of Devil's Staircase was the first of the school groups that we would encounter for the day. No problems here though as they were putting on helmets to prepare for some rock climbing.

    We hiked up the new route to South Crater, catching and then passing through a group of school girls from Auckland along the way. As we arrived at South Crater there was a large group of people, possibly several groups, all resting up. More people than I had ever seen up there!

    We jogged off across South Crater to find a clear spot behind a rock and sat down for a bite to eat. After that we continued across South Crater and climbed up to the rim. We passed through another school group along the way. We smiled as we heard that the group had been underway for 4 hours, as we had been underway for only about 90 minutes.

    Emerald Lake
    Looking across towards one of the Emerald Lakes
    Having made the crater rim we took a few photos and then jogged and hiked around towards the summit. It was not until the last slope up to the first summit that we encountered a snow slope. The slopes and ridges that had been covered in snow when we did the crossing and summit in October 2010 were now almost entirely clear.

    We stopped for lunch at the summit, and then started back down. We jogged as much as we could around the rim, but the route down to South Crater is sufficiently steep and slippery with loose scree that there was no chance of running. Our legs were feeling fairly tired by then so we walked back across South Crater.

    The new Devil's Staircase is easily runnable, so we ran all the way down to the valley. We also ran most of the way back down the valley to the car, mainly stopping to walk at the more technical sections where the track drops down around the end of a lava flow.
    Posted by Andrew Shelley
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