New Beginings

It's been a while since I last posted. On the 12th of December, Rachel and I welcomed Luke Andrew John Ingham into our family. He's great! Although he's still struggling to let us get enough sleep overnight, Lukey is a delight to look after! He's already showing signs of having some very strong legs. and is very restless, so it looks as though he may well be on his way to becoming a runner... I have the mountain buggy all ready for when he's old enough to get out in it to hit the trails :-)

One thing has made itself more obvious over the past two and a half weeks though: I was never under any illusions that either training for a 100km race or caring for a newborn child were going to be easy. Trying to combine the two has proven to be even worse, predictably. I have been getting out for a few runs, though at a much lower frequency than I would have liked. The first time I ran over an hour after Luke's birth was an unbearable hot and humid day, I almost killed myself from overexertion! Things are getting a little better, and I remain on track for Tarawera at the moment. I have been toying with the idea of switching to the 60km race, but will continue training for 100km at the moment and make the decision closer to the time.

One place I have enjoyed running recently is the Manawatu Gorge. It has long been my opinion that this is some of the finest native forest in the lower North Island, and if it were any bigger, would probably be a much more popular destination! The western side of the gorge, which is also the steeper end, is a tall, old forest of natives, with a quite spectacular undergrowth comprising of tree ferns and nikau palms. On a warm day, with high humidity, it is very easy to imagine yourself in more tropical climes, rather than 20 minutes drive from one of New Zealand's most maligned cities! Around 18 months ago a large slip closed off the road through the Maawatu Gorge for well over a year, and to try clearing it, contractors had to make a new dirt road in to the top of the slip through the forest reserve. At the time I felt this was a great shame, as it took away some of the natural betuyy and feelings of isolation in that area. However, now the Department of Conservation have taken advantage of this to create a new track, looping up to the slip. I first ran this track on Boxing Day, and it's a beauty! At first, a gentle climb  gradually steepening with a few staircases  before plateauing into a more meandering, undulating, winding path at the top. Underfoot it is soft, easy to wear my Vibrams on, which is a huge positive for me as there aren't too many tracks in the area on which I can. And on the way down, the meandering downhill single track is a delight! I'll be headed back there soon! Its a short loop track ( I estimate a couple of kilometres to the top of the slip), but combined with other tracks you can get a run up to 20km or so if you want/

There are mutterings that the local mountain bike club are wanting to put another track over the gorge, more suitable for biking, but open to runners as well... if this happens I think the gorge is going to become much much more popular as a trail running destination.

Running in the Family

Today is the due date for our new arrival in the family. Obviously, I'm writing tonight, so the little one has not yet arrived. Any day now I'll be trying to fit runs around our firstborn as well as work, and although we have bought a pram which should allow for my impending son to come with me on runs, we're still likely a few months away from being able to use it for such a purpose.

So this weekend, I've had a bit of waiting time to fill up. My little sister, and New Zealand's top ranked orienteerer, Lizzie was visiting for the weekend, which gave opportunity to go running with company. Here's a picture of Lizzie trying to teach a swan to orienteer.

We started the weekend with a quick mountain bike ride along the Turitea-Green Road track. Having not biked for a long time, a few of the steeper and longer hills took a bit of getting used to. On Saturday afternoon we went for a run up to Harding's Park, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. This time, we started at a brisk pace along the Kahutarewa Stream, before tackling the steep climb up The Elevation. THis is where Lizzie's superior training paid off: about half way up she let me known that she's been training with a guy who recently ran a 5:45 Kepler Challenge: not too shabby. The run left me a little dispirited in a way, as she ran away from me a few times, but Lizzie does estimate she's at the fittest she's been in a long time, which can only bode well for her Orienteering World Cup races in January, where she hopes to use her 'game face' like she is doing here:


Today Lizzie went off orienteering up the coast, whilst I stayed around near a phone, waiting for baby to pop out. He didn't of course, so I took my phone and went running in a pine plantation up the Pahiatua Track form our home. It was a very warm day, my legs were sore from yesterday, and the hills were steep, but again I had a great time, and even found some mud and an old bulldozer.

One thing has become apparent this weekend, and that is that I should try running some longer distances prior to Tarawera in March. I'm giving some serious thought to running the Hutt River Ultramarthon next month, 60km from the Wairarapa, over the Rimutaka Incline, and down to Petone. It's mostly on 4WD tracks, with some on road, and with minimal climb, but should be good for some training miles. Maybe even pushing a mountainbuggy for a while!

The Post Night-Shift Malaise

I've done a reasonable amount of running this weekend after a week off due to work: last weekend I was working two 14 hour shifts, and then four overnight shifts during the week. I never get much quality running time in when I'm working nights, despite best intentions: the pattern usually goes work overnight, come home, sleep, get up, sit on the couch, eat tea, go to work, and repeat. This means by the time of the weekend I'm chomping at the bit to get out, usually with, at least initially, some disappointing results.

Yesterday I headed back out to Kahutarewa Recreational Hub, to run up the Back Track. This starts with a thirty minute climb up an old road through mature native forest, curving in and out of a big valley as it makes its way up the hillside. The track is also open to mountain bikes, and is one of the more popular rides in the Palmerston North area. Unfortunately, having just emerged from a nocturnal existance for the previous five days I struggled a little with the climb to start off with, but managed to keep going, despite two mountain bikers parking right behind me for fifteen minutes, and not overtaking me until we reached a slight downhill! Up towards the top of the track, the forest turns into predominantly tree ferns, before opening out into felled pine plantation.

After yesterday feeling a bit lethargic through 90 minutes, I was hoping for a decent blow out today. Unfortunately it was two hours through the town paths around Palmerston North of misery. The weather was muggy, wind was up, and I couldn't really fet into a decent stride.

Despite my problems this weekend, it could have been worse... Last week I was bemoaning being unable to enter the Goat Alpine Adventure Race. This took place yesterday, however given the risk of eruption on Mt Ruapehu, and more s[specifically I assume of lahars down the western slopes, the course unfortunately had to be changed to 19km up the Ohakune Mountain Road. Having had to run the last kilometre of last year's race up this road, I could not think of a worse way to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday morning! The Kepler Challenge was also this weekend, however, and the pictures on TV3 news of helicopters soaring along behing runners along the main ridge were simply spectacular!  Definitely a race for the years to come.

Back to normal work hours tomorrow, and hopefully this will allow for some more reasonable running behaviour during the week. Of course, I imagine my whole training schedule will go out the window at some point in the next couple of weeks, when the new arrival/support crew member arrives!

Will the Goat go ahead?

A good post-work run today. I'm having to savor these runs, as I know they could get less frequent in the near future with impending fatherhood. Today's run was a little shorter than  I would have ideally liked, having been held up at work talking to a patient's family, but I got a good hour along an old farm path out the back of Palmerston North: again another one of those little known tracks through native bush, for the most part along a pretty little stream, then up a gravel road through farmland. At one point a Kereru flew right in front of me, gave me a bit of a fright!

The big running news out of today though, I assume, is with the eruption of Tongariro, and how that might effect the Goat Alpine Adventure Race next weekend, especially in light of the increased eruption risk on Ruapehu. I ran this race last year, and it's a great experience! Harsh volcanic landscape, mud up to your knees (and I was an early starter!), cold river crossings, I thoroughly enjoyed the first 18 km of it! I felt I was flying, but of course reality bit when I hit a section of climb, a hundred or so vertical metres straight up a waterfall! I never before this moment had realised the harsh possibilities of getting cramps in four opposing muscle groups at once, and the last 3km were a struggle to keep one foot in front of the other. I was delighted to finally scrape home just under three hours, and headed (of course) straight to the beer tent for rehydration needs! Needless to say I was delighted to find that former All Black legend Ian Jones had had exactly the same experience with unfortunately timed cramps as me, with a very similar time.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) I have been unable to enter this year. The timing of a major life event has meant that my aim of beating my time by a good 15-20 minutes will have to wait another year at least. Hopefully 300 others will get the chance to try and achieve their aims (and maybe Mark Richardson and Ian Jones) in 10 days time. And I hope to be back again next year, this time with an extra supporter to wait to greet me at the end!

A hidden gem of a run

I;ve always struggled a bit with motivation to get out running. Which is strange, because once out running, I tend to not like stopping. An exception is when I haven't been running for several days. Today was such a day. I hadn't run in four days due to a combination of fifteen hour shifts at work, and the wedding of a good friend. So on arriving back in Palmerston North I was keen to get out for a couple of hours on the trails.

Harding's Park is one of the lesser known areas of the Palmerston North area, situated above the Kahutawera Recreation Hub right at the northern tip of the Tararua ranges. It takes around forty-five minutes, at first along a [retty boulder-strewn stream for twenty minutes, followed by a brutal climb, to get to the Platinum Ridge, the main loop track in the park. Today was the first time I had run there in several months, and it would seem that the City Council have been moving to upgrade the track up to the top of the ridge. Unfortunately, only half way threre at the moment, it has made the track a slippery muddy mess... hopefully improvements will be on the way, particularly over the summer months.

Once on the top though, you get to what I think is some of the most magical single track running around Palmerston North. I suppose the slog up the hill must put off a lot of walkers, as I have very seldom seen anyone else up there, which is a shame. The ridge is covered with toe-toe, flax, and sub-alpine scrub, with a few old, taller podocarps here and there. The track is narrow, winding, reasonably solid underfoot, passes several old long abandoned platinum mineshafts, and is great fun. Turns out there are some wild animals up there, too, as I frightened something very large sounding today! And after hooning around, you then get to take the plunge back down the steep climb back to the carpark! A great two hour run, and only 20 minutes drive from town.

Ideally I would have liked to run up the other side of the Kahutawera Valley, on the Back Track through more established, mature native bush up to pine plantations on Scott's Road. Unfortunately I couldn't quite afford another hour, so that will have to wait for another day...

Getting Started

Having intended to start a running blog for some time, mostly as a motivation for my training. The idea, of course being, that even if no-one reads this blog, that my promises to train and my aims for upcoming races will be floating around in cables and tubes somewhere on the interweb, and having the potential to fill me with shame should I fail to do justice to my self-set goals.

So without further ado....
I am entered in the Tarawera Ultra 100km (http://taraweraultra.co.nz/) on March 16th. Baring injury or Mayan apocalypse, I will be running this race. I aim to complete it in 13 hours.

No backing out now.

I've run 2 ultramarathons now. The first was this year's edition of the above Tarawera Ultra, where I ran the 85km race. The day before Rachel and I attended a talk by Stu Mills, an ultramarathoner originally from the Hutt Valley, now resident in south England. Last year he represented the United Kingdom at the World Ultramarathon Championships in Ireland. I took two things away from his talk:

The first was to start a blog, then all your promises to train and aims for upcoming races will be floating around the internet, and fill you with shame if you fail to do yourself justice.

The second was the concept of positive race energy. It's far too hard for me to explaing, but essentially it was the concept of mental preparation being just as important as physical preparation. Go into a race knowing what to expect, full of positive focus, you are far more likely to come out of the race happy with your result than if you go in counting the kilometres down and waiting for the end... A far more eloquent explanation can be found on his blog http://ultrastu.blogspot.co.nz/.

I went into the race the next day trying my best to adapt to this strategy... for the first 60km I had the time of my life, loved it etc... then things started to fall apart. Fortunately at 70km my beautiful wife and pacer for the day Rachel turned up, and had the grace to torture me through the next 14km, before complaining when I tried to leave her behind with 1km to run until the finish! But more about that race later.

My second ultramarathon was the two day Round the Island 69 mile race around the Isle of Wight in June/July of this year. This race I found a lot harder: it wasn't as scenic, the weather wasn't as nice, on the second day my legs hurt, and I found it especially hard to keep up my positive race energy. However, on the night between the two stages, again I attended a talk by Russel Secker. This man is seriously impressive: he had recently run the Trans-Europe footrace, essentially a race that does what it says on the tin, starting in Bari in south Italy, and finishing at the North Cape of Norway, lasting 64 days. With no rest days. His talk left me with two messages:

The first was to start a blog, then all your promises to train and aims for upcoming races will be floating around the internet, and fill you with shame if you fail to do yourself justice.

The second is no matter how tired you are, try and look on the positive side. Even when you've been running 61 days in a row, you are above the Arctic circle, it's just started snowing, and you are wearing a stolen rubish bag to try and stay warm.

I also bought his book, Running Across Countries (http://www.amazon.com/Running-Across-Countries-Russell-Secker/dp/1448668123). It's a really good read if you like reading about people pushing themselves to the edge of their physical limits.

Anyway, all this leads me to saying that I'm starting a blog, so that my promises to train and my aims for upcoming races are floating around online. Maybe if someone reads this, you can try and hold me to those promises and aims!

But before Tarawera, Rachel and I are due to finish another ultramarathon... in three weeks time Rachel is due to finish 9 months of enduring another lifeform living inside of her, and we will become parents for the first time. I'm very excited! So I'll be fitting my training around a new set of responsibilities as a dad on one hand, but will have an extra crew hand/pacer on the other... I'm really looking forward to it!