Hi blog followers and welcome to another blog published under Coach Ray’s Website of www.coachray.nz, As indicated in my previous blog, my time in Wellington has come to an end, a move within my career means a move from location to the Manawatu Region, how great is this place to train in…
Swimming – In this location I am spoiled for choice. Palmerston North has an outdoor 50 metre pool (Lido Pool), which is available in the summer months for a bit of outdoor swimming and a pool with extra length. The Camp Pool where I am posted is 25 metres, with less patrons depending on what time you arrive, so almost guaranteed a lane to ones self. The only problem is the shallow end is over my head (the joys of being a shorty). It must make it entertaining when the lifeguards watch me trying to put on my short training fins for when Coach Ray has me doing swimming drills pool.
Cycling – Manawatu like Wellington is windy no doubt about it, this means it is great for training on a bike. A ‘head-wind’ will give you strength training, a back wind always seems to turn and become a head wind, side winds, well they might as well be head winds. Camp has a heavy vehicle road inside going around its outskirts of approx 5 Km’s. With limited traffic this is excellent to do multiple laps all hours of the day and night, particularly if work gets in the way (I have no excuses Coach Ray). I have also sourced locations in the rural areas of Manawatu for a change of scenery and extra long distance cycling (multiple laps would probably do my head in after about 100km lol. A further recce is coming up to find some decent hills for hill training.
Running – I have a quantity of routes to run on. Inside Camp I can run on the heavy vehicle road just mentioned, or around the Fitness Testing Loop of 2.4km. Outside of camp is also a couple of options, a block known as Whitmore which is about 9 Km’s around, so chuck in the heavy vehicle road as well and the two combined is getting the distance up. Also outside of camp is a new Trail Run which goes from camp to Palmerston North City over the Manawatu River. I enjoy trail running so this is a great change of scenery and will be several km one way.
So from here now that I have arrived in Manawatu and sorted or refreshed myself with the training resources, I will see what events I can find it that location and further afield to beast me… Take care team, regards John Humphries (Aka Humps, Aka UltraHumps).
UltraHumps will be writing weekly blogs as he continues his journey and raising funds for Charitable causes.
Read Humps article from last week here:
All his previous articles are stored here: