Toby in the top image and Kate in the bottom image-Pakuranga x-country race.Last Saturday (23rd May), Toby and I competed in a cross-country event covering a series of races over this years season, the Grand Prix series, this weekend been was held in Pakuranga. Toby and I recently joined the Auckland City Athletics Club(ACA) and we are hoping to do a number of this years coming cross country events in Auckland in order to help us with our speed and strength building for running fast in Orienteering races, especially in Italy. I will only manage to do three actual races before I go to JWOC, but I hope it will boost my confidence in racing with lots of top speedy athletes and gaining that extra bit of speed work whilst running in these races.
I have not done a cross country event in a very long time, and this was sure to be a tough one. I arrived at the event feeling rather nervous, there were many serious looking athletes and was rather suprised by how many people turned up (well compared to races back in Hastings). I bought a club singlet and chucked it on ready to warm up. It felt quite cool warming up around the course with lots of other top runners. My legs felt very dead and cold, and i found it rather hard to get properly warmed up. Earlier that week I had a bit of a cold, so the remains of it were still lingering on. I did a few stretches and then put on my spikes that had new 12mm spikes in them which felt amazingly grippy and ready for those muddy corners! I then realised the start line was all lined up and ready to go, I jogged over and got ready to start this running race. My heart was beating quite fast, but i managed to just keep my nerves under control. Then as we started I got a feel of how it is to run a running race again. The pace at the start was rather fast and i was able to keep up with the main pack for the first lap. The last two laps felt a bit harder as i could feel that cold coming back to haunt me and my quads were becoming very heavy and sore, but i managed to keep pushing and tried to stick with two other girls from ACA. We were cheered on by other club members and told to "stick together!", it felt really motivating as they were cheering for ACA, which I then realised was me! Near the end, the two ACA girls managed to get away from me as i tried hard to keep up, but it was not enough to beat them. Up the small hills i managed to get a bit of an advantage on them, must have been all the orienteering hill training and forcing myself to push up them. Anyway, I sprinted into the finish with a reasonable feeling of a good first race especially being the longest one I have ever done, 6.5km.
When I was warming down, I thought to myself, this was my first race and I have achieved a pretty big challenge of 6.5km running race. So i planned out that for the next race, where it will be around 4km, which i am more used to for x-country, I will definitely try to stick with those girls and push myself so I can beat them. I thought this could be a very reasonable goal for my next race as I hopefully wont be sick and I will be used to the distance.
Over this years season, I am looking forward to improving my km rate as I become stronger from my new strength programme and as my amount of speed training becomes more consistent.
Overall was a good race and am already looking forward to the next one(last one before I go to Italy) on the 13th June which will be held in Manakau City for the Grand Prix series number 3.
There is a club event on the 6th of June that Toby and I hope to do, this is called the "King of the Mountain" which is a race up One Tree Hill and down. This could be quite a challenge and good to see how our hill training is going.
Cross country running is a good source of training for Orienteering as it is very similar without the map reading. We can study maps and endure long hours of orienteering training, but the main thing for orienteering fast is to have speed and strength in order to control your rate in which you run through the forest so you can have more energy for reading the map and orienteering perfectly. I hope as this speed training gives me that little bit extra, I will have more concentration for when it comes to orienteering as I will not have to worry about the speed I am running at all the time, as I know it will come naturally from the amount of hardwork being put in.
It is now the 27th of May, that means only 26 days left till I go. It is becoming very close now and i am looking forward to it! Especially with all the training and hard work being put in and I know it will pay off, but these next few weeks are a very vital in order to get some well based training in. My peak is definitely JWOC, so I will not be holding off or tapering before this weekends Orienteering events in Hamilton as I am using this as more training and practice before we leave for Italia!
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