Innehållsförteckning för August - September 2018 från Trail Run

I owe a debt of thanks to Fiona and Gregor for giving me this opportunity to hold the reins at Trail Runner. I believe that I have made marked change and we’ve delivered a magazine that is not only inclusive, entertaining and fun, but thought-provoking, challenging and put together with care and a sincere love for the trails. Henry Rollins often discusses how he sees himself in the service industry. Rollins, who was the lead singer in Black Flag from 1981 until their break-up and then went on to a successful solo career with Rollins Band, is also as a spoken-word artist, author, and actor. He clearly isn’t working for minimum wage, nor is he scooping ice cream at Häagen-Dazs like he did in Washington DC prior to joining Black…

Where: 12km south of Port Douglas Distance: 12km return Degree of difficulty: Moderate. The first 2 kilometres feature some brutal climbs, which will get your heart pumping. What goes up must come down though, and it can be tough on those legs venturing downhill. Access: You can access the bottom of Bump Track from Mowbray River Road, 8 kilometres south of Port Douglas. Cross the river, then take the right-hand fork onto Connelly Road. The Bump Track starts on your left about 3.5km from the highway. Alternatively, you can reach the top of the track by turning onto Euluma Creek Road from Julatten. Then take the turn-off down Black Mountain Road where you will find the top of the Bump Track about 5.5km along this dirt road. Why: The Bump…

Poor Pheidippides, the Greek messenger who dashed to tell the Athenians of their victory over the Persians at Marathon, then promptly died, thereby engraving his name into running lore. I say ‘poor’ not just because he died – though obviously that qualifies him of being worthy of no small measure of pity, the poor sod. Not just because he likely had to run the 40 kilometres in what was, no doubt, chafing attire. And not because he’d run about 240 kilometres in the previous couple of days to fetch help. No, I feel sorry for him because I’ve got a hypothesis about why he died. It would be easy to think he collapsed from exhaustion. But the bloke was clearly a decent endurance man or they would never have given…

The event starts at the base of Mount Kaukau in the suburb of Khandallah, and circumnavigates the outskirts of the city via a network of tasty single track, ripping descents and a tonne of climbing. In the three years that the WUU-2K has been held, it has gone from strength to strength. Grassroots and with a resolutely Wellington feel, this event is quickly carving itself a place in the Australasian race calendar as being one not to miss. Wellington native Gareth Thomas returned home in 2012 after a lengthy absence spent travelling and then living in Melbourne. An avid road runner, Gareth quickly had his head turned by the many trail running options provided by his home city. Thanks to the Wellington Organised Running Meetup (WoRM) he quickly realised that…

NORTH ISLAND August 4 Hoka ONE ONE Taupo Marathon, 42k, 21k, 10k, kids 5k, road 12 Kaitaia Run/Walk, 12.5k, 4.6k, road 19 Petone Club 5 Bridges Marathon and Fun Runs, Lower Hutt, 42k, 21k, 10k, 5k, kids 1k, road 19 XTERRA Auckland: Totara Park, 21k, 17.5k, 11k, 6k, off-road 25 Mount Maunganui Half Marathon, 21k, 10k, 5k, road 25 The North Range Trio, Manawatu, 50k, 25k, 12.5k, off-road 26Kapiti Harriers Winter Off-Road Series, Waikanae, 6k, 3k, 1.5k, off-road September 1 Hoka One One Kinloch Off Road Challenge, Taupo, 42k, 21k, 10k, 5k, kids 1 mile, off-road 1 North Shore Marathon, Auckland, 42k, 21k, 10k, 5k, kids 2k, road 8 Whangamata Run/Walk Festival, 21k, 10k, 5k, road 9 The Moa Experience, Papamoa, 15k, off-road 9 XTERRA Auckland: Riverhead Forest, 20.7k, 17.9k,…

1. Rehydrate There is no getting away from the core tenet of all heavy physical activity – you have to nail your hydration. It’s not strictly true, yet it is not strictly untrue either that if you keep your body well hydrated before, during and after training, you are giving yourself an excellent chance to achieve your running goals. There’s all sorts of different theories and ideas out there, but the most sensible advice would be drink water regularly at all times, don’t allow yourself to become thirsty and avoid alcohol. If you really have pushed your physical boundaries, consider taking electrolyte drinks or coconut water. 2. Warm down Sometimes when you finish training, the last thing you feel like doing is stretching or keeping your body active. But it…

The magical landscape around the ancient city of Petra make the Petra Desert Marathon one of the most spectacular races imaginable. The almost lunar landscape in the region and the desert heat combine to create a challenging but ultimately rewarding event. A lone runner enjoys a watery break from the rocky terrain of the inaugural Ring of Fire ultramarathon in April 2018. The event, which takes place in Tongariro National Park, traverses one of the North Island’s still active volcanoes, Mount Ruapehu.…

BURNING MAN ULTRA  Costumes! Fun! Dust! Naked people! The Burning Man Ultra takes place every year at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada Desert. For the ultimate utopian, inclusive, radically accepting and self-reliant experience check out this race. You need a Burning Man ticket to enter, but the race itself is free, however they do rely on a gifting economy. So bring something to contribute. And some goggles for the dust. 28 August 2018 www.burningman50k.com Born To Run Festival Another for the books, Born to Run festival is run by Luis Escobar, one of the main characters in Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run. Escobar now holds a running festival in May each year. It looks as wild as Burning Man and when the bio simply states: “Yep, this is the…

1 Quitting isn’t always a bad thing. Unlike a lot of people, it wasn’t an injury that made me stop running. I realised that spending hours forcing myself to run around my local bush tracks so that I could pay to go run around other bush tracks in the weekend was boring the bejesus out of me. I tried to change it up and run in other places. I added more swimming to my training. I cut back on the number of events I was doing. In the end, it became clear that there was only one thing for it – stone-cold quitting. To a lot of people, that makes me a quitter. And I’m good with that. Maybe that’s because one of the key guiding lights in my life…

I had a dream that I could be a mountain runner. I would run over hills and up mountain slopes with ease. I would rise each morning at the light of dawn and step triumphantly into the rising sun – ready to tackle any challenge in my way. I would get stronger each day and go further, higher than ever before. I would make my home in the mountains of Fiordland, my favourite landscape, and traverse its difficult, steep terrain with grace. I would find inspiration with each sunrise and every new vista. I would be unstoppable. This dream came to me while running across the Heaphy Track in winter, unavoidably in a heavy downpour. I needed a bit of inspiration and all-of-a-sudden there it was: a vision that propelled…

Mountains, trails and food – lots of food. Check, check and check. All the classic ingredients for any trail-chasing escapade, stirred vigorously with loose plans, a hearty dose of naïve optimism and a touch of love for pushing the ticker into the red. With these elements in peak supply in the Himalaya, it was with trail-junkie enthusiasm that I reasoned with my girlfriend, 'Nepal is the best place to get high into the mountains.’ We could train big days into our legs and 'knock the bugger off’. The cost, never much of a consideration for an illustriously unemployed gentleman, was cheap as chips, chips ambiguous enough to allude even the savviest of penny snobs. There is no point in hoarding currency these days, the fear of missing out and not…

Ultra-studs are soooo 2017. The real heroes of trail running are those who battle it out at the back of the pack. These people epitomise the grit, spit and stick-to-it-iveness of the endurance athlete and deserve to be recognised as such. There are a million different reasons why we love running and maybe a few reasons more why we decide to enter races. My personal preference is for the longer stuff. I figured out long ago I was no sprinter and I enjoy testing myself and pushing to find the limits of my endurance. I’m still no world beater *cough Aotearoa 24-hour champ cough* and there is usually daylight between myself and those phenoms that challenge for the win. The reality though is that there is maybe just a handful…

Assisting mindfulness I want to break it down so you can easily apply mindfulness techniques in your day. Being present in your task at hand will allow you to move towards being the best you can be in life and in running. Here are some tips to help be more mindful or present: 1 Organise your day Work out what you need to do in order to allow smooth transition from role to role. This could be anything from establishing better communication with the family to ensure that there is no confusion over roles each day, to sending a reminder text out, or just ensuring your favourite running shorts are ready to go for your morning run. 2 Get a standing desk Sitting for any more than three hours a…

If you were to ask any runner what the two most important metrics in regards to racing or training were, most of them would answer time and distance, right? When it comes to trail running, I would argue that they are, in fact, time and intensity. If we were to focus on time and distance, a week spent running 100 kilometres on trails in muddy forest is going to be very different from a week spent running 100 kilometres in the mountains, which again would be different from a week spent running 100 kilometres on flat, manicured, well-drained soil. If we bear this in mind, time and distance tells us very little. What we actually need to know about is time and intensity. This is not exclusive to trail running,…

Do you consider yourself a runner? I don’t consider myself a runner per se, but I love the outdoors, whether that is tramping, swimming, running, kayaking or whatever. How much do you run? Three or four times a week in the bush or up the hill or along the coast. I have had a few issues with my back, so I don’t like to run on the road and try not to. We live rurally so a typical run is jump over the fence, as there is 90 hectares of bush on our doorstep, and go up the top of the Bombay Hills from the bottom. I like to run for about an hour, an hour and a half, and there is about 600 metres elevation in that, too. I…

Where: 111km north of Kaitaia Distance: 24.5km one way Degree of difficulty: Moderate. This point-to-point undulating trail is moderately challenging. Access: The starting point for this run is the Cape Reinga lighthouse. Park at the main carpark there and follow the footpath towards the lighthouse. About halfway along the footpath, there is a track heading east – take this to Spirits Bay. The track is well marked from there. Note: There is a campground at the eastern end of Spirits Bay which has Department of Conservation (DoC) toilets and facilities. You will need to organise a car to pick you up from here if you decide to do the point-to-point run. Why: Te Rerenga Wairua means the leaping-off place of spirits, while reinga means the underworld, In Maoritanga, the spirits…

IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST LOVED OR MOST HATED PARTS OF SPORTS AT SCHOOL FOR NEARLY ALL OF US, SO BRAD DIXON DELVES INTO THE JOY THAT IS CROSS-COUNTRY. For most of my life, I’ve had a love–hate relationship with running cross-country. I can vividly remember my first national event running for Burnside High School. It was the first time I felt physically sick during an event (running up the muddy hill for the second lap) and I finished the race feeling dizzy, ill, and completely short of oxygen. My school coach said before the race that I was a dark horse – more like a sick pony! I placed 122nd and at that moment knew that I could do better. (For interest’s sake, the senior boys results in…

Reverse the Trend If you have a favourite go-to run, a route that you may run at least once if not twice a week, how about occasionally doing it in reverse? You will be amazed at how much easier/harder/different the same route can be when run in the opposite direction. Need for speed The natural inclination is to think running longer is running harder. Sometimes that is true, but an intense, short, speed session can be a killer and really make a difference to your ability to finish events strongly. Speed sessions can be done anywhere really, but why not go to your local track and see if there is a group you can join who regularly do interval training or discover a session or a number of sessions that…

Western Australia August 4 Truth or Consequences Trail Run, Serpentine Falls National Park, 50k, 25k, 10k, off-road 5 Bunbury Runners Club Women’s Fun Run, 10k, 5k, road 5 Perth Half Marathon, 21k, 5k, road 11 Track Ultra WA, Bunbury, 100k, 24hrs solo/relay, 12hrs, 6hrs, 3hrs, track 19 Lake Joondalup 5km and 10km, Waneroo, road September 9 Busselton Marathon, 42k, 21k, 10k, 5k, road 9 Perth Kilt Run, Armadale, 5km, 2.5km, road 16 Fremantle Running Festival, 21k, 10k, 5k, road 22 Waterous Trail On Foot, Dwellingup, 100mile, 50mile, off-road October 7 Wally Cairns Pancake Run, Perth, 15k, 10k, 5k, road 20 Moon Shadow Night Run, Perth, 12k at night, off-road 21 Rottnest Running Festival, Rottnest Island, 42k, 21k, 10k, 5k, road 28 RunningWorks Ultra Marathon, Perth, 50k, 21.1k, 12k, 6k, road…

1) Take it slowly It may be tempting to book a Jeep to travel up the valley and miss those long, hot days bonding with your body-bag. However, if you ascend too eagerly you may be awarded with a throbbing brain, loose plumbing and general disorientation, only solved with a rapid return to go without collecting $200. A slow approach gives your body time to acclimatise and lets you soak up the ecological changes of the valley as you climb. 2) Facilities, food... but seriously, facilities? We had visions of mud huts and thatched roofs, sitting cross-legged around fires, drinking tea. Things are a little more modern than that on the circuit, with many guest houses offering solar and even gas showers, Wi-Fi and an interpretation of electricity. Don’t worry,…

Back in May, I spent a couple of days in Taupo with Total Sport’s Aaron Carter. Our goal was to familiarise me with the trail that runners will be taking on at the Taupo Ultramarathon in October. Having run the Kinloch Marathon a few times, I was familiar with that part of the Great Lake Trail, but wanted to experience the rest of this amazing 100-kilometre trail. Along for the run was another Total Sporter Kareem Kaddouri. The reason for our mission is that I’m coaching a group of runners from Northpower, edenfx HSE recruitment and Hard Hats Recruits to complete the event. In all 120 employees have signed up to take on this awesome event as part of their corporate wellness initiative. That’s an amazing commitment on the part…

Along with New Year, the beginning of winter is the time of year where running shoes, gym memberships and yoga-mat sales soar. A panic sets in; we fear the notion of inactivity and developing what is euphemistically called ‘a winter coat’. Deals are made with the self and with others – some reasonable, others less so. The focus on the endpoint, not the process itself, becomes paramount, and can dramatically affect our motivation and wellbeing in a negative manner. Winter was the time of year where traditionally our hunter-gatherer ancestors, replete with fat from the fish and fowl that they gorged themselves on in times of warm plenty, would hunker down to ride out the long, dark nights. This was the time when the rhythm of their life would slow…

When it comes to runners and our bodies, most of us are more concerned about what is happening with our legs, rather than worrying about how defined our six pack is looking. If we do take time out for any stretching or strengthening work, we are more likely to focus on our lower limbs rather than considering our core area. During the cooler and darker months of the year, our running adventures are often constrained, which makes it a great time to build core strength so that we are ready to blast off in the spring. Let’s look more closely at why we need abdominal strength from a running perspective and consider which yoga poses can help to build strength in this area. In yoga we are primarily focused on…