I have a mission.
My mission is to run all of the trails in the Waitakere Ranges, in West Auckland, New Zealand. I've heard there is 250 km of trail running goodness to be had, and I intend to have it all! And in true scientific style, I intend to document it.
This idea was spawned after an amazing trail run in the Waitakeres with two good running friends while training for the 2011 T42 off-road marathon. It was rekindled while dozing in bed one night when I realised I would have a bit of spare time this summer to knock off this dream. I am currently training for 2011 The Goat, a 21.1 km alpine adventure run around Mt Ruapehu in National Park, and I intend to do more training in the Waitakere Ranges, but where? Searching for a comprehensive listing of the nature of the trails available, I found it lacking somewhat, thus my inspiration was found, perhaps I could contribute something here?
I initially started with the intention to photograph all of the trail signs that I encountered en-route but my scientific background led me down the obsessive path of data collection and I wondered what further data I could acquire? This began a frantic searching for some sort of GPS device that does altitude and heart rates with all the bells, and that can generate pretty graphs. In the end I settled on a Garmin eTrex 30 with a heart rate strap. Its a stunning unit, with so many functions! It has a barometric altitude meter (measures air pressure with height) however the altitude readings can be affected by temperature and weather systems so the elevation data I am obtaining its not as accurate as I would like. Despite this, a general picture of the elevation is obtained and displayed, using Garmins Basecamp software, in each of the blog entries.
So what follows is my adventure: to run (and at times probably walk) all of the trails in the Waitakere Ranges. I hope you find something useful in the posts that will follow.
