With my new programme-with-a-run-focus.

If that’s not going to stoke the fire in my belly, nothing will. 

What a weirdo week it feels.  My main event for the season is ticked off, and I’m on the last week of my programme, which has been predominantly rest days and/or easy sessions.  I’m feeling a bit rudderless as I hold out to see what’s waiting for me around the corner training-wise.

My entry for the Motatapu Marathon on 13 March 2010 is in, and the accommodation in Wanaka is booked (which was a bit of a mish in itself given that 10 million MTBers converge on the area for their event on the same day).  The night I entered, I felt I could almost become a serial event enterer.  Never before have I gleefully gone off and entered an event as willingly as I did that night.  Almost 10 foot tall and bullet proof I was. 

Anyhoo, now that I’ve put to bed my main tri for the season, it’s time to turn my attention to a bit of running.  My run time at Ashburton was so abysmally crappy, that I’m determined to get better.  Although I do concede that the long, steady training required for a marathon is very unlikely to make me a racing whippet.  A look-see at a run programme for three months should leave me with a better running base, which hopefully will enable me to give my 2010 ‘A Race’ a better nudge than what I achieved in Ashburton.  The secret A race. 

So here I am in my wee hiatus, waiting to see just what Paul has planned for me over the next three months.  Having said that, I’m going to continue with a smidgeon of swimming in my spare time and for a start, Graham has me booked to do some OW swimming with him over the next few weeks.

I could pour over results and analyse them until the cows come home.  Especially for multisport-type events, because you don’t just get an overall time to reflect on, but lots of little ones.  Ahhh, I’m in heaven today.

Anyhoo, the results are in from yesterday.  Despite having electronic timing for the first time yesterday, I’m disappointed to see that they don’t separate out the transitions, but here goes anyway:

• Swim – 38.28 minutes, which includes a short run from the water’s edge to the first transponder mat by the Restaurant.
• Cycle – 3:00.59 minutes, which includes the run from the first transponder mat, into T1, onto the cycle, then back into T2 and all the prep before embarking on the run (ie two full transitions) – this could be a LONG time for numpties like me!!  I hit my lap button when I entered T1 (not including the run from the Restaurant) and when I jumped on the bike, it was just over four minutes.
• Run – 2:00.03 hours (no transition time included)

There were 40 women entered, and 10 in my age group.

• Swim – 24th overall, 7th in age group
• Cycle – 9th overall, 1st in age group
• Run – 18th overall, 6th in age group

My overall time was 5:39.30 hours, which gave me 14th overall, and 4th in my age group.  I was 39 seconds off 3rd place – 1st place was won in 5:26.36.

Graham wasn’t overly excited with his 3rd place AG result, as he thinks triathlon age groups are ridiculous (he doesn’t buy into the squitty five year age bands).  He’ll always say “But what was I overall??”  So just to keep him happy, he was 16th overall out of 79 – 64th in the swim (ouch!!), 14th in the cycle, and 5th in the run.  I’ve just told him his overall swim ranking, and he laughed and told me to piss off. 

Right analysing over.  Time to move on.

The Race Report

Okay, the build-up didn’t go quite according to plan for the Harris Gang, when Graham cut his foot during our last scheduled OW swim yesterday.  The rocks at Cass Bay are volcanic (read “bloody sharp”) so when he came out with blood dripping from the sole of his foot, it didn’t omen well.  Being the good wife that I am, I almost fainted, so I left him to do the cleaning out while I made a dash to the chemist to buy whatever I could to patch it up.  It appeared quite deep, but fortunately the cut went into the foot on an angle rather than directly in, so with some oinkment and some strapping tape keeping it closed, it was a matter of crossing fingers for today.  If it all turned to custard, the plan was he’d do the swim and cycle, and DNF at T2 before the run.

We headed down to Ashburton after the kids got home from school, dropping Louis off at Mum and Dad’s on the way through.  Registration done, it was off to the motel to trash the place with all our crap.  The NW wind on the way down was wicked – I was watching the bikes flexing up on the car roof through the wing mirrors, grateful that I wasn’t doing Teva this weekend and trying to get a kayak up to Methven yesterday!  I know what it’s like to have a kayak shunted sideways off the roof in strong winds – very stressful.

I had a piss poor sleep last night.  Mental note – don’t stay at a motel on State Highway One, with a railway line across the road.  But it did mean I was wide awake when the alarm went off.  My stomach started churning as soon as I got up, but it was nice to be able to key off Graham who remains outwardly pretty calm before events.

Timing

This is going to be a screwy race report, because while I was something like 5.25 minutes quicker than last year (5:39.32 hours this year by my watch), I can’t quite account for where the improvements were made.  When taking off my wetsuit at T1, I changed modes on my watch (a mode I’ve never seen or used before!!) so I was a little blind with my times.  All I know was that I was (I think!) four minutes quicker on the swim this year, and I thought I was quicker on the cycle and run, but the times don’t add up (unless I stuffed around for FAR too long in transition – highly probable!).   I was also hitting my lap button wherever I could, but I wasn’t terribly consistent with where exactly I pressed it each time (or where the organisers considered transitions stopped and started etc).

Swim

Roughly 37.40 minutes – last year 41 minutes-something.

I entered the mosh pit!  Yes I did!!  While I was reluctant to start too far back, I was also mindful that the thought of being in the mosh pit is pretty bloody terrifying to me!  But it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  Graham and I got separated at the start, but partway up the first leg, I realised we were swimming side by side.  We swim at the same pace, so it was good to ‘catch up’.  He only clouted me a few times – I’ll get him with my rolling pin later.

My damn goggles got rather fogged up so sighting was quite difficult.  I was going off course a number of times – I’d look up to see nothing but clear water, only to realise all the swimmers were heading in the opposite direction!  I wasted a bit of time and energy getting back on course, but on the last lap, I found a woman to draft off and she was excellent at keeping on track.  She towed me all the way in to the swim finish without my having to sight once.

Graham had got away on me because of my wayward tendencies, but he was still in T1 when I arrived. He then cleared out and I got myself organised.

Cycle

Somewhere between 2.54 and 2.58 hours – last year 2.57 hours.

I didn’t feel quite as gung ho to start with on the bike as I did last year.  I glanced down at my computer to find it wasn’t working.  Bugger bugger.  I’m firmly of the view of “What you can’t monitor you can’t manage” so this was a real blow.  I never toyed with the idea of stopping because that would have just wasted time, but decided instead to go with Paul’s “comfortably hard” recommendation without being able to monitor what this meant speed-wise.  My HRM wasn’t visible in this mode either, so for the whole race, I didn’t know what the bod was doing.  In hindsight, I think I’d do that again – instead of holding myself back, I just went with how I felt.

Once I got going, I felt pretty strong.  As I exited Lake Hood on the bike, I saw Nadia go past at the end – she’d just completed the 3.5km down to the first turnaround and back before heading off on the 40 or so kilometres of the first lap.  I still had that 3.5km to do, so I knew she’d had a good swim when I saw her there!

I was disappointed this year that they’d changed the cycle course from 3 x 30km out and back laps, to 2 x 45km blocks.  The only time you’d see other cyclists (to key off) was back at Lake Hood at the main turnaround, and the small 3.5km out and back dog leg they got us to complete to make up the 90km distance.  Instead, it was just a matter of picking people off one by one up ahead.  I passed lots of people like I did last year, which was satisfying, but in the second lap, it got harder and harder to pass people as they were better cyclists up that end of the field!!  At the first turnaround at Lake Hood, I didn’t make the tight u-turn and “fell off” my bike.  Well, I rode up a shingle bank, quickly unclipped and remained standing while my bike went arse over kite.  I was more concerned about picking up all my nutrition (oh, and the fact that several people I’d passed got past me again!).

Until the official results are out, I can’t work out what my average pace was on the bike.  I felt pretty strong, even into the head wind we copped on a couple of longish straights.  I was able to stay comfortably in my biggest gear at a low cadence throughout – thanks to Paul’s muscular endurance training philosophies for that!  But the only idea of my pace I had was  a) passing people;  and b) looking at the trees, fences etc at the side of the road to see how quickly I was going past them – very scientific it was!

Run

Tentative time of 2 hours – last year 2.01 hours

I so dreaded getting off the bike.  The swim and cycle felt good, whereas running off the bike is something I generally feel really uncomfortable doing.  However, I surprised myself and headed off at a reasonable pace for me.  I ran to the first 1km marker in 5.30 mins, although I suspect the distance was a bit short.  I’d taken a couple of Neurofen and a caffeine tablet near the end of the cycle – I didn’t feel them kick in like I did last year, although I felt steady throughout the run.  I walked briefly at two aid stations, as the Coke at those stations was still carbonated and it was a bit of an effort to drink it.  I’d headed out with a Slingshot bottle of gels, but tossed it to Ella after the first lap as I decided to switch to the Coke – it worked a treat.

Em passed me on the second lap, at around the 10km mark.  She was running at a great pace so I could only watch her disappear off into the distance.  I think she said she ran around 1.39 and that was with a loo stop – stunning!

The last lap was HARD.  Well that’s not quite true – I felt really good on that last lap and was able to pick the pace up a bit, but with around 4km to go, I really put the pressure on myself.  I was looking at my watch to see what I was going to have to run in order to achieve a sub 5.40.  I started kicking myself for having fluffed around in transition – all three triathlons I’ve done now, I’ve ended up putting pressure on myself to achieve a certain time, whereas the times have been pretty darn tight.  I gave the last few kilometres everything I had – my HR (as I later found out) was sitting at 170, which is pretty high for me on a run.  My breathing was okay, but legs were running on empty.  I came in with 22 seconds to spare (for a sub 5.40) – last year I came in with 7 seconds to spare under 5.45.  I must stop doing that to myself – it hurts something wicked!

Conclusion

On reflection, I’m now quite disappointed with my time.  I saved four minutes on the swim, but only 5 minutes-something overall.  When I was on the bike and reflecting on the swim, I was hoping for around 5.35 hours, because the bike felt pretty good, and I feel like I’ve been running better this year than I did last year.  Perhaps that’s good enough in itself, that while I wasn’t necessarily faster, I felt more together and stronger.  Hmmm, I don’t quite buy that, but until I see the results, I’ll reserve judgement.

I went into the event with a strong desire to beat last year’s time, but I had no idea if it was possible.  It didn’t feel like I’d done much ‘real’ cycling, because a lot of it had been on the indoor trainer.  I also wondered if my endurance would be up to it, as my longest session was four hours.  But YET AGAIN I needed to show more faith in Coachie!!

Nutrition

• Gel before the swim plus a couple of electrolyte tablets
• Gel in T1
• Three hours of Perpetuem during cycle – divided into two Slingshot bottles
• Two bottles of water during cycle
• Two Neurofen and one caffeine before the run
• One gel in T2
• One gel 25 minutes into run
• Coke at every aid station
• Six electrolyte tablets during run – three each hour

The Boy

Graham went into today just wanting to go under five hours.  His swim time was 37 minutes-something (half a minute or so quicker than me), around a 2.35 cycle, and a 1.26 hour run, for a total of 4.44 hours.  While he was initially pretty pleased with that, he was disappointed at prizegiving to hear some of the swim times.  He likes to ‘compete’, but he’s a bit down that the guys are swimming in the mid-20s and he’s churning out 37 minutes!!  It’s just something he’ll need to suck up and I guess it’s par for the course when you only start swimming in the year that you do your first triathlon!  But I know how he feels.

After a wedding drought of several years, suddenly we’ve had two weddings in two weeks.  One for a C2C training buddy, and the other a C2C team mate – how’s that for a themed wedding season.  Very, very cool. 

So my heartiest congratulations to Megan and Brendan, and to Emma and Joe, on marrying their soul mates, and sincerest thanks for letting us share in the specialness of it all.

PS  No polyprops were to be seen at either wedding, despite Emma becoming mildy hypothermic during their ceremony.  Oh, and it’s also coincidental that multisport women marry bald men.

All that’s left now for 2009, is to rid my brain of the Half IM in less than two weeks, so I can begin planning my next adventure.  Actually, my key event for 2010 is decided on (not that Paul knows that yet!).  Hmmm “rid my brain” does sound rather negative and it’s really not like that, but as previously mentioned, the Half has always felt like a bit of a filler of an event, or a ‘Claytons’ A race – the A race when you’re not really having an A race.  It’s given me a goal to work towards and that’s all I ever really want in my world, so for the timebeing, it’ll do.  My plans for 2010 involve a change in scenery and with that comes new experiences.  Yay for the stimulation of new experiences.  And best of all, the Becster is coming along for the ride.

But back to the Half, I’m amazed that Graham has been seeking my advice on ‘what to do’.  Ha ha, this veteran of two triathlons is giving advice to the ‘newbie’.  If that’s not the blind leading the blind, I don’t know what is.  Anyway, he did the Gorges on Saturday for his long ride, fuelled solely on Perpetuem – he liked it!  So the more complicated nutritional plan he had in his head of sandwiches, muesli bars, gels, electrolyte drink etc etc has gone out the window, and he has cottoned on to what’s simple – Perp, electrolyte tabs and water.  It’s been a mission to get him to even enter Ashburton because he really doesn’t want to do it as part of his build-up to Wanaka (gee, where did that attitude come from?!), but he’s entered now, and we’ve booked a motel in Ashburton for the night before to save hitting the road at 5.45am.  The only issue was childcare and I think we’ve almost got that nailed – Ella desperately wants to go down to watch, and hopefully Louis can stay with my parents.  So while there’ll be an unsupervised 11 year old roaming around Lake Hood for several hours, at least the 8 year old won’t be discovered floating face down in the Lake.

It’s my last ‘big’ week this week, with another swim/bike/run simulation tomorrow, then I start ticking off how many more swims I need to do.    And after Ashburton?  WHATEVER I WANT BABY!!  Ahem, actually no, I’ll just continue to do whatever Paul tells me to do.  But I’ve had a hairbrained idea of doing Avalanche Peak as a reccie on Christmas Day as a way of deciding whether I’d like to do that as my next goal event (in early March).  I did four days in a row last week of running up Kennedys Bush Track (and will be back up there today) (I’m sure ‘Steady’ really means ‘Hills’ when reading my training plan), and I’m longing to do a grunty run event.  Graham is already pointing out very steep sections of hill around the Port Hills (read “rocky bluffs”) which I’m to tackle in training if I choose to do Avalanche Peak.  Gee, Christmas Day is going to be a hummer!

Ta-ra.

I’ve never been to Addington on Cup Day, and people struggle to understand how that can be.  Whereas I struggle with why anyone would want to go.  Willingly, like.  I’d rather poke my eyes out with needles.

So I don’t consider myself an oddity that I fail to want to surround myself with skanky young inebriated women, or their loud obnoxious boyfriends who get louder and more obnoxious as the day progresses.  I don’t like horse racing, and I don’t like crowds.  I don’t want to sit at a corporate table talking to people I have nothing in common with.  Most of all, I loathe drunkeness.

I think this shot of the classy girl in red says it all really.

Pheeee-ew.  What a bloody awesome weekend, after what was a very average lead-up.

After spending a couple of days in Nelson last week, with a good lurgy in tow, I arrived home at 7.30pm Thursday night feeling pretty darn knackered.  I’d just spent a long day in mediation, which strangely enough, I don’t enjoy.  Still, it’s good to get those sorts of challenges in my work, even if they are rather negative.

So I had three rest days in my week – Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, despite taking my running gear to Nelson with good intentions.  On Friday, I did my long ride and a 3km swim, but I decided to take myself off to the doc, as I was really chesty.  I felt reasonably good in myself, but I just knew things were taking a bit longer than expected to come right.  I have an awesome GP – she’s very understanding and respectful of what I get up to.  She’s not one of those docs who don’t appreciate endurance-type training.  I remember when I ended up in her room in tears during my training for the C2C.  I was self-coached at the time and had basically run myself into the ground.  That was the only time when she has told me to have a complete rest – I guess under the circumstances, she would have been irresponsible not to have!

Anyhoo, she detected a bit of a rattle in the chest and gave me a script for some druggies.  Bless.

Saturday

Then what was I to do…  on Saturday, I had both Em and Megan’s hen parties in the diary.  I had sort of apologised for Megan’s, as I didn’t know how long Em’s was going to go for, but I’d left the door open for me to catch them up in the evening.  But that was the plan while I was healthy.

I decided to err on the side of caution – 1)  I didn’t think Em and her athletic brood would be too impressed to catch anything off me.  At the very least, Em has the Half IM in a month and I know I wouldn’t have been impressed if someone sickish had turned up to share the love;  and  2)  I was definitely not going to risk sharing bugs with Megan, one week out from her wedding day.

So Saturday had suddenly gone from being socially very full, to nothingness.  And I’d had three rest days from training, so not a lot to show for anything really!

Oh dear, that’s when Graham had his brainwave…  that he was going to do Mt Thomas.  The fourth and last of the mounts in the Oxford area - one we hadn’t done before.  Okay, he told me to stay home as he was going off to do it with the kids.  WHATEVER!  I was coming.

So Mt Thomas it was (1023m).  It was my fave out of the four – just gorgeous.  A good grunt up to the top (aren’t they all), but a lovely area at the top where the trig is, and what a beautifully warm, still day it was up there.  As long as I kept the intensity reasonable, I didn’t suffer too many coughing fits (actually, it was worse when I stopped, so it was best I kept going!).  It took Ella and I 1.23 hours up to the top, and just 24 minutes to come down, so just shy of two hours.  That took care of the 90 minute hill run I couldn’t get done on Wednesday night.

Here are the pics.

I felt really good after that, and I was further inspired when we saw Gina Crawford (Ferguson) out on her bike just near the Mt Thomas turn-off.

I had a 60 minute cycle and 20 minute brick to do on Saturday, which I was going to flag.  But I felt so good in the evening, that I just jumped on the mag trainer for an hour, then took off for the 20 minute run.  Ella joined me on the run and kindly told me I was on fire – so nice of her!  What is it about mag trainers though, that you simply don’t seem to be able to simulate the road when it comes to running off the bike?  Despite having a good solid 60 minute session on the trainer, I never had that disjointed feeling in the legs that you get when riding on the road.  Oh well, it gave my confidence a boost to feel so damn good on the run.

Sunday

Sarah emailed me while I was in Nelson to advise that I was to look after the Tri Devils at the junior training this morning in Hagley Park.  Oh dear, that wasn’t on the coaching roster so it took me by surprise a bit, and I was supposed to come up with a coaching plan.  Fortunately the group was to be in good hands with Will and Rob also down to take the two groups, so I tended to just tag along this morning and help out where required.  It was a really good session and I’m sure the kids are getting a lot out of it.

We were back home by around 11am, had a quick bite to eat, then it was off down to Ashburton to do a run and swim at Lake Hood.  Wow, it was really warm down there, and the place was humming (okay, not such a good thing).  There were boats and people for Africa, and there’s a paintball operation at the back of the lake now too, so there were lots of dropkicks driving fast around the back of the lake where I was running.  A good stiff nor’wester helped to simulate the running and swimming conditions that might exist in four weeks, so it was good stuff.  I did a loop of the lake and Huntingdon Park plus a bit more for a total run of 45 minutes, then the swim.  The water was pretty frigid to begin with, but it didn’t take long to get used to it.  Everytime we popped up onto the pontoon however, our shoulders were covered in weed, which we don’t remember from last year as being such an issue at the swimming end of the lake.  Graham wants to go back in a fortnight for another swim – the plan is to run up Little Mt Peel in the morning with a swim to end with.  Should be good.

So despite having a crappy crappy week where I had two unintentional rest days, I was only down a swim by the end of the week (which I partially did at Lake Hood).  And best of all, I’m feeling pretty darn good, all things considered.

I’m getting in before the next Croc-like fad kicks in…

I will NEVER buy a pair of these shoes.  Never, ever, ever.  The Skechers designers should be ashamed of themselves – what were they thinking of?  Are they not every podiatrist’s worst nightmare??  They’re supposed to simulate walking on sand and therefore will strengthen muscles…  And they’re being marketed as the latest in “getting fit”.  Oh puhleeeese!

<Shakes head in disbelief>

Every once and a while, a whingy post is needed, and this is one.

It’s mid-evening, and I’ve only just really surfaced in the last couple of hours thanks to the gunk that is filling my head and lungs.  This cold is a doozy, and unfortuntely I’ve probably made it worse thanks to my various antics, but I haven’t been able to let life pass me by this weekend.

Doing Mt Oxford on Saturday, and a TH interval cycle yesterday, actually made me feel better at the time, but I pay for it as soon as I’m back in chill-mode.  The writing was on the wall yesterday when I was doing my cycle – the highest I could get my HR to was 159.  So much for threshold intensity.  Well at least I know my legs couldn’t have gone any harder.  Did it help that my quads were also sore from Mt Oxford?  Not overly, but all things considered, I haven’t come off too badly this time around compared with Mt Somers.

As I’m sitting here, I’m weighing up the week to come.  I can’t see myself going to work tomorrow, but I’ll see how I feel when the alarm goes off.  I’m mindful that I have Wednesday and Thursday out of town this week, with two potentially chewy mediations on the Thursday which I need to be switched on for.  The last time I flew with a cold, I suffered wicked earache for the rest of that day.  I can do without that so figure an extra day to recover may well pay off later in the week.

Also playing on my mind is how close the Half IM is now – just five weeks.  Funny, I’ve been challenged by people lately, as they’ve asked me what I’m training for at the moment.  I normally reply “Just a Half Ironman”, and they chip me about the “just” bit.  But that’s all it is to me.  Having said that, with the way I’m feeling at the moment, I’m struggling to feel sufficiently prepared for it.  I need to have trust in the plan, and accept that Paul *is* preparing me sufficiently for it.  I had the same doubts last year about Wanaka, but this time, I’m only just doing sufficient training to cover the half distance whereas last year, my A race was much larger, so the Half IM was just a blip in the training calendar.  This time, the Half *is* my A race and it feels like a real anticlimax that my whole year has culminated in “just” a Half IM. 

When I was driving up the Old West Coast Road on Saturday to pick Graham up from his ride, I had The Feelers playing full blast (The Feelers have huge sentimental value to me, as they are the backing music on the DVD for the 2006 C2C , which became my favourite viewing when training for the 2007 C2C), it was a gorgeous day, and I kept glancing across at the Waimak.  I felt really lost, like my interests were totally messed up.  I know where I’d rather be, but circumstances are such that I’m having to keep my training simple for the sake of the family.  I can’t see myself hopping back in a kayak anytime soon, and it does make me really sad, as much as I didn’t enjoy that part of my training.  Sometimes you have to do the stuff you don’t enjoy to round yourself out as a person, to challenge yourself, and to test your drive and discipline.  I haven’t forgotten that Megan said she’d go back to the Coast one day, once she has had kiddlies and they’re a little older.  I think there exists a gentleman’s agreement to tottering back as a couple of seasoned vets to once again tackle it.  Maybe that will be the shining light at the end of a very long tunnel for me.

To that end, yes, I’m already thinking about what life is going to hold for me after Ashburton.  Well, you have to don’t you.  To not have a goal of some sort is to have a rudderless life.  I’ve thought about another Half IM but maybe up north somewhere, just to give me another goal that is easy to train for while Graham is still working towards Wanaka.  It still feels like padding to me though – just training for something… anything… to fill in some time.

In the meantime, I need to knock this damn lurgy on the head, consume every supplement under the sun to get some energy/iron back into the bod, and have faith that I’m doing everything I can to knock the Half off at the end of November.

End of whinge.

 Today the Harris clan took to North Canterbury to rike up Mt Oxford.  It’s a 13km return trip, with a total elevation of 1371m.

The weather was forecast to be near perfect, and Graham and I both found a slot in our respective training diaries to knock it off.  We were supposed to have done Mt Oxford back on my birthday in February, but the weather was crap that day and it’s taken us six months to get back to it!

Despite Graham trying to talk me out of going seeing as I wasn’t feeling very flash, I convinced him otherwise.  He had to get a 90 minute cycle done today, so he left home before 7am and we picked him up near the Waimak Gorge Bridge on our way through.  I had rejigged my programme so I’d be doing a 90 minute hill run today.  Well, today’s outing was a tad longer than 90 minutes as it turned out but close enough!

We started from the Coopers Creek Carpark.  The route goes in a short way on farmland, before it starts rising steadily.  But it was all runnable which was a bonus.  Around half way up the track, it starts rising pretty steeply – comparable to Mt Somers at the Sharplin Falls carpark end, however we didn’t have to walk up that way at Mt Somers so we developed an appreciation today of how tough that direction is!

Ella and I pretty much left Graham to look after Louis, although we did stop every so often to make sure they were okay.  Where the track rises steeply, it goes from a mixture of bush with tree roots, to bush with rocks, to tussock and rocks, to tussock and slippery shale pieces.  We came into snow around three quarters of the way up, and it didn’t take too long before the navigation got pretty dodgy.  You could see the poled route, but where the actual track was to get between the poles was anyone’s guess!

It was a real grunt up to the top, and I ended up leaving Ella to go at her pace while I went off ahead.  That didn’t stop the little tike from running past me at the last minute to get to the trig before me.  Cheat.  We stopped for lunch at the top and took in the views, which were gorgeous.

It took Ella and me 1.42 hours to get to the top.  The recommended time to the top is four hours, or 7-8 hours return.  Ella and I did the return trip in just over an hour, for a total of 2.47 hours.  That quite surprised me – it was around 3.5km shorter than Mt Somers, but it was only around eight minutes quicker time-wise, which I think shows how tough it was.  Mt Somers had a lot more runnable sections whereas today was slower going, even going down.

Tonight Graham is wanting to know when we’re going to attempt his Four Peaks Challenge – Mts Grey, Thomas, Richardson and Oxford in one day.  I suggested that would be tougher than Goat Pass, to which he nodded and grinned like a madman.

Here are the pics.