Kohaihai and Oparara Caves

With heavy rain overnight the river was high, dirty, and unfishable, so we decided to head up the coast north of Karamea.

The first stop was at Kohaihai - as far north as the road goes. Kohaihai marks the southern-most end of the Heaphy track, but we were just here to eat our lunch and have a look around.

After lunch we drove back down the road to Oparara. The turn off is only about 5 minutes drive down the road from Kohaihai, but the 14km in to the carpark takes a long time on the narrow, winding, unsealed road. With kids in tow we did just one of the two arches and the two readily-accessible caves - photos below.

Kohaihai

Kohaihai River mouth.

Kohaihai Shelter at the end of the Heaphy track

A Nikau palm just across the swingbridge.

Looking south along the beach.

Moria Gate Archway

Moria Gate Arch

Stalactites on the roof of the arch.

Patterned limestone underfoot.

Heading back up out of the arch.

Forest on the way to the arch.

Crazy Paving

First view of the tesselated floor of Crazy Paving

Cave weta. We saw only one of these.

The large cave spider, spelungula cavernicola.
We also only saw one of these.

White egg sack of the cave spider hanging over the
tesselated floor.

Box Canyon

Inside Box Canyon

Formations at the side of Box Canyon. These are
side passages easily large enough to walk into.

Looking back at the entrance to Box Canyon, with
people to show the scale.

Water streaming from moss beside the entrance to
the caves.

Jump from the Edge of Space

A very early morning this morning - up at 1:15am to watch history being made as Felix Baumgartner did a skydive jump from footage of the jump. This has nothing at all to do with my exercise, but it is such an historically important occasion I thought I would at least make a record that I watched it on live TV.

Two clips are shown below: first the full footage of the jump, including part of the slow preparations for exit from the capsule; and the redbull highlights package for the mission.




There's a few hairy moments on the jump as Felix goes into a flat spin, but he managed to get out of that and resume a controlled fall. Apparently the "live" broadcast was actually delayed by 20 seconds just in case something did go badly wrong. The broadcast does break away from the flat spin, but then returns to Baumgartner.

The RedBull Stratos website lists the scientific contribution and the records set by the mission as:

SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTION FOCUS
Red Bull Stratos aims to provide information that will further the progression of aerospace safety. The key benefits for the science community are as follows:

- To aid development of a new generation of space suits - including enhanced mobility and visual clarity - and other systems to lead toward passenger/crew exit from space.

- To aid development of protocols for exposure to high altitude/high acceleration.

- To aid exploration of the effects on the human body of supersonic acceleration and deceleration, including development of the latest innovations in parachute systems.

BENCHMARKS

- Reaching supersonic speed in freefall:First person to achieve the speed of sound in freefall without mechanical assistance. Felix's speed in freefall on Oct. 14, 2012 is estimated at 833.9 mph, Mach 1.24 (previous record: 614 miles per hour, Mach 0.9).

- Freefall from highest altitude:Felix jumped from 128,100 feet Oct. 14, 2012 (previous record: 102,800 feet).

- Longest freefall time:Felix was in freefall for 4 minutes and 22 seconds Oct. 14, 2012, making Joe Kittinger untouchable in that category (previous record: 4 minutes, 36 seconds).

- Highest manned balloon flight: Felix's float altitude was approximately 128,100 feet (previous record: 113,740 feet).

All figures are approximate based on atmospheric conditions.

It is certainly a remarkable achievement, with incredibly advanced and sophisticated systems. Most remarkable, though, is that this appears to have been privately-funded, with the payoff not to come until the technologies are actually used for space missions.

Eels

Just a casual walk today. After the heavy rains of the last day there were 13 eels in the shallow water beside the boardwalk at the Bethlehem Floodway. Presumably they were taking advantage of the feeding available on grass that is usually above water. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, so no photos.

Seddonville

The Mokihinui Valley should perhaps be called the Valley of Unrequited Dreams: the river sparkles with Fools' Gold, and at the right time of year there is an influx of whitebaiters hoping to catch the delicacy that sells for over $100/kg in North Island shops. The old timers will tell you of days past when the "spotters" in the river used to go black as the huge shoals of whitebait swum past, but those days are long gone.

At the head of the valley lies the township of Seddonville, once the base for logging and coal mining operations. Coal mining was centred particularly around Chasm Creek, Coal Creek, and Charming Creek - the latter being one of the longest lived mines in New Zealand.¹ Even those activities have an element of unrequited dreams: Seddonville was the site of the first state-owned coal mine in 1893, but that struggled and closed after just 21 years; and private mining ceased in the 1990s as the high sulphur coal became difficult to sell.²

The Grader works on one of the side streets

Nowdays Seddonville no longer has any particular reason for continued existence, and like many small New Zealand settlements continues to exist solely because it was established at some point in history when there was more work to be done.

At the end of a side road that leads up the valley from the main road through to Karamea, the main reasons for visiting Seddonville would seem to be to walk the Chasm Creek walkway, walk the Charming Creek walkway, or to fish for whitebait when it is in season. The Mokihinui is a good river for trout fishing, but will never draw the same numbers as flock to the Tongariro River and Lake Taupo.

Seddonville Hotel

Any visitors must surely visit the Seddonville Hotel, which is also the local cafe, restaurant, dairy, and motels. We never sampled the fair from the cafe, but the meals were very good, and the newly refurbushed motels were excellent. It also appears to be a place to visit in its own right - three middle aged motorcyclists were observed arriving, then after some refreshments tinkering with their bikes for about half an hour or so before riding back out to the main road.

A testament to more prosperous and populous times, the old school has been converted into a Holiday Park. Rates are reasonable, both for caravans and the (very tidy) bunk rooms. The toilets and showers are very clean, and the kitchen and common room are very welcoming. For my money, the Seddonville Holiday Park is a better standard than the larger holiday parks in more popular locations.

View from the section

Just past the old school, where Gladstone Street becomes Charming Creek Road, an unsealed driveway climbs steeply up a low hill to a 1 acre section. At the top of the driveway is a decrepit old caravan and piles of old wood, iron, and other assorted items. The driveway turns left into a flat site, cleared a year ago, but now being reclaimed by gorse. We are told that the section was bought 5 years ago by someone on Waiheke Island who wanted to "live the dream", but is now being sold as the dream slips further away. There would be extensive views of the valley with a little bit of clearing, but the price was more than a little steep for a section with no utility services - no power or phone. The owner will be hoping for another gold rush perhaps!

Regardless of the above, or more likely because of it, Seddonville is a remarkable place to visit. The pace of life slows and one can really relax. I hope to be back again in the not too far distant future.

Notes:
[1] New Zealand History online: Charming Creek
[2] New Zealand History online: Seddonville

Links:

• Seddonville Hotel

MP3 Conversion

I never been one to run with music but a number of my running friends swear by it, particularly when the going gets tough on ultras. And top athletes like Kilian Jornet do it, so perhaps it is worth trying...

When the going does get tough I'd like to be able to select a playlist based on the type of music that appeals, rather than just having to endlessly skip through tracks. I had an old MP3 player, but that didn't let me use playlists. So I was talked into buying a Sony Walkman NWZ-B152F. It was an end-of-line item and I got it at a good discount.

A nice little unit, but apparently somewhat out-of-date. Heather could download m4a files on to her Walkman and they would play just fine, but mine kept coming up with 'file error'. A search on the net, and the data sheet said that it should be able to play m4a files. A search on the player itself, and the operations guide on there said only mp3 and wma files. Hmmmm, clearly an old version of the player.

Not to worry, the net is a repository of all things useful (as well as many things not). A post on Microsoft Answers pointed to a useful tool and a post on eHow detailing how to convert m4a to mp3. The conversion software is from maniac tools and is super-simple to use... instructions in the eHow article. By default the mp3 files are even written into the directory that holds the m4a source files.

Taking A Break

Due to health reasons I will not be doing the Taupo 100k on this coming weekend, 19 February. I will also likely avoid doing shorter races for a while too. It's possible I might get back to 5k races by the end of March, but we'll see how that goes.

I the mean time, there are posts to be written for:

• Tussock Traverse, 29 January;
• Wellington Waterfront 5k, 1 February;
• A hike in the Kaimais, 5 February; and
• Trentham United 5k, 9 February.

I will endeavour to get these up as soon as I am able.

Sport Tracks

The Mt Hawtrey map

A number of my posts included detailed rogaine maps or topo maps with my route plotted on them. Some examples from this year include the Wild West Rogaine, the City Safari, and Mt Hawtrey (a topo map). I also used the City Safari map for the Harbour Capital Marathon and the Scottish Harriers' Three Peaks "Out West" event.

These maps are all generated by some software called "Sport Tracks", which provides very convenient and easy-to-use place to store and analyse workout information recorded on a GPS, and can then plot the recorded route on any map that the user uploads. Sport Tracks is available free from Zone Five Software, although users are encouraged to donate. Sport Tracks has lots of "plugins" which allow it to be customised for individual sports and preferences.

The default maps available on Sport Tracks are those available on Google. The ability to upload custom maps is provided by the "OziExplorer" plugin from a developer called "Old Man Biking". Again the OziExplorer plugin is available free, but regular users are encouraged to donate. I think it's a fantastic little piece of software, so I have donated.

I have organised the discussion into an introduction into some of the basic Sport Tracks information and a closer look at custom maps.

Basic Sport Tracks Information

Activity Summary and Aerial Photo (“Satellite”) View

The screenshot below shows some of the basic workout information that is captured by Sport Tracks. The top panel contains a daily list of activities for the week, and below that is a summary of information from the workout (left) and the route plotted on the google "satellite" map (right). Workout information includes basics such as time and distance (automatically generated from the GPS data), but also user-specfied data such as comments on the workout. Depending on how you want to use the software, under “equipment” you can record the specific bike, tyres, shoes, etc that you were using.

Elevation and Options

The screenshot below shows the elevation chart, with the summary of ascent and descent for the selected workout, and a different view of the route (this time using the Google street map). Also shown by the elevation chart is the list of workout-specific information available: an overall summary including user-entered comments, splits, pace, elevation, and three further options that I never use (workout, cadence, and power - the last two being cycling related).

Elevation and Pace Chart

A different view this time: just an example of how different charts look. On the left is the pace chart, on the right is the elevation chart included in the previous example. Because I have very little smoothing specified the pace is a bit erratic. When I’ve stopped but left the GPS running I get a big spike (but if I was using speed rather than pace in those places it would just drop to zero).

Custom Maps

Mt Wainui to Battle Hill

The screenshot below shows a partial view of the map for this trip. Part of the map is from a local mountain bike rogaine (the "Akattack" - I purchased the map, but didn’t do the event), and part from an official topo map. The OziExplorer plugin allows you to take a scanned copy of any map, identify 4 points on it, and then the software scales it to fit.

I could have selected prettier examples showing a route fitting nicely within a single scanned map, but my existing posts already do that. The examples below show how Sport Tracks allows multiple overlapping maps to be used, so that when one map runs out you can move on to the next. And in this instance my selection of the anchor points was sufficiently good that the tracks run smoothly from one map to the next!

One of the things I like best about the ability to import maps is that the rogaine maps have lots of tracks marked that aren't on topo maps, and which I I didn’t take. Once I've uploaded my route I can see where those other tracks went (but from an aerial photo I can’t). And that suggests possibilities for further exploration...

And here’s another screenshot showing how the workout information can be hidden to get a wider view of the map. This time we have a composite of the Akattack map (where available), a topo map, and the aerial photo. The section between Mt Wainui (the little 3 in a yellow diamond) and the little 4 in a diamond is a marked track, but appears on no maps that I am aware of. The Orienteering people knew it existed, but no one had any idea where it came out. We speculated that it could go either in the direction it does, or south east to point 650. So now we know, and it can be added to future maps.

More Historical Marathon Reports

I've finished transferring my historical marathon reports across to this blog:

• The first marathon I ran, the Rotorua Marathon in April 2000
• Wairarapa Country Marathon, October 2000
• Rotorua Marathon, April 2001
• My first walking marathon, the Great Forest Marathon, April 2002
• The Aurora Marathon, June 2002, for which I switched between running and walking every 5 minutes
• Back to running at the inaugural Hutt River Trail Marathon, March 2003
• Running the Rotorua Marathon, May 2003
• Running the Hutt River Trail Marathon, March 2005
• Back to walking at the Wanganui 3 Bridges Marathon, December 2005

Historical Marathon Reports

While my peers were off running or walking the Rotorua Marathon this weekend, or even the inaugural T42 Marathon, I was at home, still forcing myself to “recover” from the season of ultras that was my summer. Aside from the cross country race on Saturday, and a 30km training walk on Sunday, I thought I’d also take the opportunity to add a number of marathon reports that were on my old site, but had not yet made it on to this blog: Great Forest Marathon 2006, Rotorua Marathon 2006, Harbour Capital Marathon 2006, Great Forest Marathon 2007, and Rotorua Marathon 2007.

Time for Some History

Today I've added an old race report for the Tararua Mountain Race (TMR) back in March 2001 and a One-Day Southern Crossing of the Tararuas (same route as the TMR) from a month prior.

The Tararua Mountain Race was my inspiration to start running as an adult. I had collected the odd entry form over the years and thought it would be a great event to do "some day". Eventually after 10 years on the couch I started running in September 1999 with the ultimate goal of completing the TMR. 18 months later I achieved that goal.

New Marton-Wanganui Ultra Site

Created a new blog today with all the stats, etc for the Marton-Wanganui ultra. This replaces the old geocities site (www.geocities.com/asmartwang).The blog has the same features as the old site:

• event history
• all comers list (updated)
• roll of honour (updated)
• links to maps on mapmyrun
• elevation profile (updated)
• links to race reports

All the stats have been updated to include the latest running of the event (12 Sept 2009).

If anyone else has a race report lurking somewhere on the web let me know and I'll add a link.

The First Post

Geocities is closing down its free websites at the end of October, so all my existing websites will disappear (www.geocities.com/asrunner, www.geocities.com/aswalking, etc), so I figured it was about time I started a blog.  So here it is.