Running, volleyball and more running.
Time for another update.
Two weeks ago I went up to Palmerston North for the National Road Rely Champs. I originally wsn't going to go up but the nice people at Scottish talked me into it. Turned out to be really good.
A road relay is about the only time a runner really gets to be part of a team. Given how upbeat most runners are it makes for quite an experience. The relay itself started at Manfeild Park in Feilding and, for seniors, had 7 legs of about 10km each. The course stretched up around the rural roads up to and round Halcombe.
I was in Scottish Mens D. To give you and idea of the pecking order we had a Scottish Mens A, B, C, a P, and then D. The P team were in our division and the P stands for a 4 letter word to do with drinking...
We started out pretty well. Our illustrious leader, Adrian, got us off for a very good start and we continued that quite well. There was quite some inter-team competition. The Mens P team were fighting it out with the Womens A team with quite some honour on the line. We were fighting it out amongst the Scottish Womens B team and the Mens 50+. For my leg I was up against a friend, Jasmine Brown. I knew she was faster than me across 5km but I had the lead at the start.
Everytime I glanced behind I could see two yellow singlets behind me (yellow being Scottish colours) which I thought included Jasmine. Eventually those two singlets caught up and turned out to be a Bays girl and one of the Scottish Mens 50+. Not Jasmine. As it happened, Jas caught up a huge amount but not quite enough to get past me.
The run by the next runner caught us up some more time but from that point we went downhill. The runner on leg 6 injured his hamstring and had to walk much of it. Our last run used to be an extremely good runner but had been off with injury. He'd done a 10km in 65min so he did very well to do his leg in 55min.
In the end, well, we were dead last. Someone has to be...
Scottish did quite well. Our women's veteran team won, we got second in all the mens divisions and the other teams did well too. We ended up being the first equal team. Full results here.
After that we all relaxed. Being kiwis that meant drinking and eating. Good crowd to hang out with.
The next day I went for a 32km run in Palmie. The final very long run in my schedule and I got to go around much of Palmie. It's quite a nice town, leafy suburbs, riverside trails, and the course I laid out worked quite well - except for a long boring jaunt across the north of the town on Tremaine Rd.
Then I hung out with my lovely sister Cat and her flatmates for a little while before driving back.
Last week, we had the business games volleyball tournament. For whatever reason we were seeded in a pool of death. Any one of 5 teams in our pool could have one the other pools, and therefore moved into the semis, but we all ended up in one pool. Our team even had the winner from 2004 up as our very first opposition.
It was a tough tournament. We lost the first game against Statistics New Zealand and thought we were out. Strangely enough it ended up that Wellington City Council beat them, by one point, and that we beat WCC reasonably well. Coming into the last game there were 3 teams, including us, who were in first equal position. It was rather amusing, Stats completely whipped their opposition by something like 43-20 (because the points difference might matter) but we lost to Te Puni Kokiri by 3 points. Because WCC beat Stats they got to go through.
It was all a bit unfair really. WCC ended up winning the tournament but Stats deserved a second chance. Because the organisers didn't seed the pool properly and because the progression system had no second chances the result was rather warped.
In other news, my PB for the 5km is finally coming down after all this training. Took about 37 seconds out of it to get to 21:35 in the Scottish series. Very happy!
Two weeks ago I went up to Palmerston North for the National Road Rely Champs. I originally wsn't going to go up but the nice people at Scottish talked me into it. Turned out to be really good.
A road relay is about the only time a runner really gets to be part of a team. Given how upbeat most runners are it makes for quite an experience. The relay itself started at Manfeild Park in Feilding and, for seniors, had 7 legs of about 10km each. The course stretched up around the rural roads up to and round Halcombe.
I was in Scottish Mens D. To give you and idea of the pecking order we had a Scottish Mens A, B, C, a P, and then D. The P team were in our division and the P stands for a 4 letter word to do with drinking...
We started out pretty well. Our illustrious leader, Adrian, got us off for a very good start and we continued that quite well. There was quite some inter-team competition. The Mens P team were fighting it out with the Womens A team with quite some honour on the line. We were fighting it out amongst the Scottish Womens B team and the Mens 50+. For my leg I was up against a friend, Jasmine Brown. I knew she was faster than me across 5km but I had the lead at the start.
Everytime I glanced behind I could see two yellow singlets behind me (yellow being Scottish colours) which I thought included Jasmine. Eventually those two singlets caught up and turned out to be a Bays girl and one of the Scottish Mens 50+. Not Jasmine. As it happened, Jas caught up a huge amount but not quite enough to get past me.
The run by the next runner caught us up some more time but from that point we went downhill. The runner on leg 6 injured his hamstring and had to walk much of it. Our last run used to be an extremely good runner but had been off with injury. He'd done a 10km in 65min so he did very well to do his leg in 55min.
In the end, well, we were dead last. Someone has to be...
Scottish did quite well. Our women's veteran team won, we got second in all the mens divisions and the other teams did well too. We ended up being the first equal team. Full results here.
After that we all relaxed. Being kiwis that meant drinking and eating. Good crowd to hang out with.
The next day I went for a 32km run in Palmie. The final very long run in my schedule and I got to go around much of Palmie. It's quite a nice town, leafy suburbs, riverside trails, and the course I laid out worked quite well - except for a long boring jaunt across the north of the town on Tremaine Rd.
Then I hung out with my lovely sister Cat and her flatmates for a little while before driving back.
Last week, we had the business games volleyball tournament. For whatever reason we were seeded in a pool of death. Any one of 5 teams in our pool could have one the other pools, and therefore moved into the semis, but we all ended up in one pool. Our team even had the winner from 2004 up as our very first opposition.
It was a tough tournament. We lost the first game against Statistics New Zealand and thought we were out. Strangely enough it ended up that Wellington City Council beat them, by one point, and that we beat WCC reasonably well. Coming into the last game there were 3 teams, including us, who were in first equal position. It was rather amusing, Stats completely whipped their opposition by something like 43-20 (because the points difference might matter) but we lost to Te Puni Kokiri by 3 points. Because WCC beat Stats they got to go through.
It was all a bit unfair really. WCC ended up winning the tournament but Stats deserved a second chance. Because the organisers didn't seed the pool properly and because the progression system had no second chances the result was rather warped.
In other news, my PB for the 5km is finally coming down after all this training. Took about 37 seconds out of it to get to 21:35 in the Scottish series. Very happy!
posted by Edward Sargisson at 7:34 pm
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