Running, not running

I see it's almost a month since I last posted something. What have I been doing with my time? Not so much of interest it seems. Though I did run the last two races of the Wellington xterra trail running series.

The third race of the series was held out at Belmont regional park over a nice trail which climbed to an open ridge, descended a reasonably steep & rocky track then followed the Horokiwi stream (I think) for a bit to give the event a real off-road feel (and some chilly wet feet) before a final climb near the finish. This was the only race from the series with good weather. The sun on the top sections of the course and the views over Wellington harbour made it hard not to pause and admire the scenery --- maybe I can attribute my place of 6th to too much atching the views and not enough running; though I placed 3rd in the open men's division which sounds more respectable.

I'd been increasingly slack about training for these races, which, given that I started them without much training in the first place, means not much training at all. Training for the Belmont run consisted of a single trip to Central Park in Brooklyn and running up the hill there a couple of times. Still, that's one more run than I did in the three weeks between the third race and the final race, last Sunday.

The series finished with a (not-very-much-) starlight run at the Wainuiomata mountain bike park. The trail there was supposed to be pretty much the same as the Wainui Mountain run which Erich and I started with in May. A gale warning, and heavy rain meant the course was changed at the last minute, replacing 5km of exposed trails on top of the hill for an extra 5km loop of the mountain bike park. The track was slippery enough the first time round when I was only about the fifth person running on it, but for the second loop, once runners from both the short and the long courses had been over once each, things were slick enough that it was impossible to run up some of the steeper slopes. I had a couple of good falls. Both of the probably due to the fact that my head torch was pretty feeble. I'll blame those falls for loosing at least one of the two places I lost over the course of the race. I was happy enough with my final placing of 8th. The appalling weather meant there were fewer runners than races earlier in the series, but the medium and long races had been combined so I feel that I was running against some people who were used to running double the distance of the course, and doing it quickly.

The real test is now in three week's time: the mukamuka munter. I know I told Erich that I wouldn't do any, but perhaps I should do some training for this one.