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!