Building and racing

Lots of races to pick from in NZ recently, which is awesome to see. Whilst still in a build phase of my training, I love throwing in a race or two as part of the plan. If nothing else, it serves a great role as a weekend long run with race kit & fuelling prep.

I am feeling fitter week by week and the garmin/strava charts seem to be heading in the right direction (though take that with a large pinch of salt)

The main thing for me to be cautious with is not doing too much around late shifts and poor sleep. Overtraining with a few bad nights sleep and not enough recovery is a recipe for injury. I try to stick within my capacity. Again, metrics such as HRV & RHR can help, but a lot of this is down to feel. I know to go for an easy trail run after a PM shift on call as I usually feel pretty wrecked, and save the harder workouts for a day when I feel the body can handle it. A lot of runners look at what the pros are doing and try to emulate that, or think more is better, but everyone has their limits in mileage & load individual to them, which can vary week by week based on life commitments and work.

The wellington region has some absolutely world class trails, and a lot of variability. I decided to stay close to home over April to get a good training block in, and use 3 local races to test different things for myself.

1) Porirua grand traverse - 12th April

22Km, ~900m vert, 1hr50m. 1st place 🥇

A fantastic new course for this long established event through Porirua river paths, up Colonial knob stairs, through private farm land, along rocky shoreline, a gnarly bush scramble, and slippery descent back into town to finish. Lots of rain in the lead up made for some muddy conditions, but the race itself was quite nice with just a cool drizzle. Awesome to see a lot of people out in force on the trails, including the wider multisport festival. The body felt great, though did highlight the lack of downhill running with DOMS the next day or two. There are definitely ways to bulletproof the legs to prevent this, showing me something to work on.

2) Kaukau Skyline Traverse -18th April

13km, ~650m vert, 1.01:18. 8th overall, 2nd >35 NZ mountain champs, 1st >35 Wellington mountain champs

I had the option to do Routeburn or Waitomo trail run this same weekend. I had previously done both of those events in the past, so thought throwing myself into a new for me super competitive shorter distance race would be fun. Also hard to turn down, as much of the course was on trails I run regularly from my house. Again another very windy & rainy period in the lead up and on event day. It made for some interesting moments on the skyline turning a corner into a 100kph gust, but didn’t affect racing too much and everyone took it in their stride. An awesome event that I really enjoyed. My legs felt rubbish from the warm up and throughout the race unfortunately. Not entirely sure what I did to cause this. Too many late shifts in the lead up? Poor tapering? Flu vaccine 2 days out? Not enough caffeine on race morning? Something I have reflected on and took some learnings from. When the field is that competitive, you can’t afford to give away even 1%, which may be something as simple as taking in some more caffeine in the morning, or for me swapping out of a late shift before the event to allow the body to be fully primed to give an hour of maximum effort. I have done a few shorter all out races in the past and had variable performances. Something I will work on and definitely throw myself into in the future.

3) Faultline Ultra – 26/4/26

53km, ~1800m vert, 4hr21m - 2nd🥈

This event is a celebration of the urban trail network in and around Wellington with many distances on offer for runners & mountain-bikers. Such a cool event weekend, topped off by excellent weather and a prime finish location on the wellington waterfront. The 53k started in Otari Wilson, climbing up to the Skyline, hitting some of the best Makara trails, up to Wrights Hill, around Zealandia, down through Waimapihi, then winding through the city parks, over Mt albert and Mt Victoria to descend to to waterfront for the last few kms flat to the finish. In contrast to the previous few races, the conditions were excellent the entire weekend! Game on.

The first two hours flew by, running comfortably, enjoying the trails and the sporadic support along the course, maintaining a roughly 2 minute lead at all the time checks. Knowing that Dan Jones was in the race and would likely catch me up at some point, I was running within myself and saving energy to pick up the pace in the last 15km. The last few hills still pack a punch and you want to be hitting them fresh & in good form. The race plan was going good until around 33km in where I get knocked over as I was descending down Waimapihi reserve. I round a corner and see two people bent over looking at the ground on the single trail. There was just enough room to sneak past on the left. The classic "on your left" shout, but then they move to the left suddenly and made contact at a pretty quick pace on the downhill gradient. I came down like a sack of potatoes, winding me, and really hurting my left hip. I limped for a minute or two, giving up the lead I had. Around 4km later Dan came past and I was barely running. I have since been diagnosed with a psoas muscle strain on ultrasound scan. The muscle has been tight for a while, but the sudden awkward fall made it super angry. The remainding 15km of the race was painful, and it was a real struggle to get to the end still resembling a run. I lost around 20second/km to Dan from then on, coming in 4 and a half minutes behind. I’m not sure the result would have changed, but it would have been a lot closer and more enjoyable on my part. However, despite this I am feeling happy and proud that I persevered and got it done. I've DNF'd twice before in my life and it is always a horrible feeling. This one felt OK to keep going without doing any further damage (I hope). Muscle strains I can bounce back from with the right rehab. Overall, a really positive test of where the fitness is at, as the rest of the body felt great during and after, and shows me I am building that form back for Ultra events.

Whats next? -> Some racing overseas. Fingers crossed the current wars and fuel crises allow things to run smoothly :)