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alt-ctrl-zb

2024s

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    Training hill - back o' CF

    An unmaintained track at the back of Coronet Forest recreational reserve, part guerilla downhill MTB trail, part desire lines created by local recreational users and trappers. Becomes greasy in the colder months with the silty soil. Canters and narrow sections between Matagouri (NZ native) and broom (pest plant) keeps me on my toes (or off), well scratched up and muddy.

    With an average 24% gradient, its up there for steepness.

    There’s a trig station at the top (A3KE) and great views of Arrowtown to Queenstown with Remarkables in the backdrop. In the other direction Coronet and Brow Peaks.

    From the trig beyond, on the southern face, Coronet Forest has just had all the wilding pines removed as part of a long term revegetation project so it is looking very bare at the moment. Revegetation is on its way with recreational improvements not long after. I’m sure that will eventually have an affect on this little backside of the reserve.

    It can be fun in the rain often ending with a muddy arse. Because of the canters, narrow and often greasy terrain this is a great one to put stability, ankles and knees to the test. I find gloves handy as I brush through the prickly stuff, or grab onto a tree or branch if I’ve completely fallen off the track (…it happens).

    I’ve seen less than 10 people in ~100 visits so its relatively quiet, which is great for those hard sessions where I become a heaving, snotty, muddy and sometimes bloody mess.

    Some of my favourite sessions here:

    • Trot to the top
    • 3x reps, progressing efforts each rep
    • Fartlek

    Some variations:

    • Scramble the ridge to the end and loop back onto Bush Creek Trail (tip: duck into southern side of Coronet Forest for the first few hundred metres to avoid the dead wildings which are impenetrable (trust me) - there was some blue marker tape last time I did this)
    • Add Feehly Hill for another little climb and flat rest between hills.
    • Add anything on the other side of Bush Creek.
    • Include it in a ridiculous vert challenge.

    A3KE: Views of Arrowtown and Feehly Hill down below: Wilding removals looking west on the southern face of Coronet (no-longer) Forest: Views of Brow Peak looking north:

    #trailrunning #trainingground

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    10,000m in 24 hours

    • Distance: 79.96km
    • Elevation: 10,099m
    • Elapsed Time: 23:38:43

    For my birthday back in 2022 I treated myself to a wee challenge - Go up and down some hills for 24 hours and snag 10,000m of vert. Similar to Everesting where the target is 8,848m, though I couldn’t claim an Everest because I used two peaks. I’m usually pretty tuned in to my limits, and I was fairly certain I could bag this one if I didn’t injure myself. I had never done more than 5,000m in one outing though so I was still stepping into unknown territory, as I like to do with DIY adventures.

    The Route

    I chose this spot out the back of Arrowtown (20 minutes from home) because I could park my car pretty much at the base of the two climbs and use the boot as an aid station.

    Peak 1 - Brow Peak (1,456m)

    This is a regular for me. I’ve bagged this one probably 50 times from multiple directions. Given my car is parked at around 420m elevation I get just over 1,000m over a 7.6km round trip.

    Peak 2 - A3KE (876m)

    This is another regular where I do my grunty hill sessions up to the trig station. Although smaller, its still steep. This one gets me 430m over a 3.6km round trip.

    The plan

    My crude plan:

    • Trot the easier gradients, hike the rest.
    • Regular fueling, mix of gels, bars, powdered electrolytes, lollies, pizza and noodles for the cold parts of the night.
    • Use poles.
    • Just a waist pack on the smaller hill.
    • When I want to pull the pin, accept that is a pretty normal feeling, and keep going.

    How it went

    Great! Everything went swell. It was brisk in the mornings and evenings, but relatively comfortable. The cold kept me moving. I started at 8am, and around 3am the next morning when fatigue was hitting me the cold kept me moving.

    Dad was in town and he paid me a visit around 6pm, 10 hours in. He rode my bike to come see me! Bloody trooper. That’s about a 30km round trip. Not bad for 70 years old. He was a bit drained though, 15k in. Luckily I had a boot full of snacks. We shared some electrolytes, had a laugh and went on our ways. Poor fella got a bit lost on the way back in the dark so had some stories himself the next day.

    I hit the anticipated thought of quitting, laughed it off as planned, and kept on. 10 minutes later the thought had passed. The cold pizza was amazing (I made sure it lasted), as were the warm noodles. Having the boot was very handy.

    The body held up well. Surprisingly not a single issue. I am however writing this now, 2 years later, injured with poor knees. Go figure.

    Views from Brow Peak showing the change in conditions.
    09:08 11:54 14:55 18:12 22:04

    Comments

    #trailrunning #bigslog

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    micro.blog is working for me

    Since April I’ve farted around with a few setups for a website and started dipping my toes into blogging. I went with a fail-fast, learn-fast approach, signed up to a heap of services, downloaded a bunch of git thingos, and posted a bunch of crap to figure out what works for me.

    For now, I’ve landed on micro.blog with a customised Tiny Theme. It’s the most frictionless and well-rounded tool I’ve used so far. I like simplicity, with out of the box design and ability to customise. I never tried Pika, but I reckon I’d be happy with that too.

    I’ve just done a digital cleanse and deleted my published websites and accounts with services I tinkered with. In the end the setups just gave me the shits. It’s nice and refreshing to just have one main online space now.

    Websites I deleted

    …and a snapshot of the workflow I tried.

    • z - Obsidian->Digital Garden Plugin->GitHub->Vercel (website)->RSS->EchoFeed/MastoFeed/IFTTT->Mastodon
    • alt.ctrl.zb (2) - Obsidian->Digital Garden Plugin->GitHub->Vercel (website)->RSS
    • Crispy-octo-train - Obsidian->Jekyll->GitHub Pages (website)
    • Octo-waddle - Obsidian->Quartz 2.0->GitHub Pages (website)
    • zb.logs - Obsidian->GitHub Publisher plugin->GitHub->Jekyll Now static site generator->GitHub Pages->RSS->EchoFeed/MastoFeed/IFTTT->Mastodon

    I also removed some old sites I had from way back which I didn’t tinker with any further:

    • Dig Deep - WordPress
    • alt.ctrl.zb (1) - Blogger.com

    Services and tools I tried

    I am not saying any of these are bad - in fact, most of them are really good. They just don’t fit my needs right now, or more that micro.blog just does it all for me.

    • EchoFeed
    • GitHub
    • IFTTT
    • MastoFeed
    • Quartz
    • Vercel

    I have kept a Neocities account where I can tinker with HTML and CSS and use back in micro.blog.

    Of note there is the micro.publish plugin where I can push notes out to micro.blog from Obsidian and the RSS Reader plugin where I can pull published posts back into Obsidian via the RSS. I sometimes use these, but my desire to push all my notes from Obsidian has dwindled. If they get the image attachments working I may look at using micro.publish more frequently.

    Resources

    #TechNotes

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    Snow report from errand duties: Yeah nah.

    #RemarkablesSkiField

    North face of the Remarkables range showing little snow.
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    Why is linen always so freakin difficult to navigate?

    Linen on shop shelves in no particular order. Silk satin mixed with bamboo cotton mixed with loft mixed with 500TC...
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    This leafless bronze canopy of willows caught my eye on a walk today as the afternoon sun shone on it.

    View from above of a 10m wide canopy of willows running alongside a winding river.

    #walking

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    Weeknote 2024-W24

    • 🏃‍♂️ Went to the physio and confirmed I’ve got runner’s knees. No surprise, but good to put a name to it. To be specific, it is patellofemoral pain syndrome. Knees were strapped up for 3 days and I’ve got some light exercises to work on my vastus medialis (inner quads). I will see the physio again on Wednesday. Looking forward to implementing a long-term programme of strengthening exercises. It’s definitely something that’s been missing. Hoping to be running again soon.

    • ❤️‍🩹 Since I got COVID on 26 March, and these injuries popping up I have been putting on a little weight. I have wiggle-room, but I am a bit concerned I don’t have a handle on it. At 185cm (6'1") I find my sweet spot around 77kg (170lbs). Lately I’ve been hovering around 81kg so there’s a bit of work to do.

    • ☕ Limiting my coffee to two cups a day is going well. Tracked it while I was at it. I’ll try and throw in more single-cup days.

      • 2024-06-10 06:30 aeropress
      • 2024-06-10 09:00 instant
      • 2024-06-11 07:30 stovetop
      • 2024-06-12 06:25 z servo
      • 2024-06-12 10:00 instant
      • 2024-06-13 06:31 stovetop
      • 2024-06-13 11:40 stovetop
      • 2024-06-14 07:05 aeropress
      • 2024-06-14 10:05 aeropress
      • 2024-06-15 08:43 stovetop
      • 2024-06-15 12:39 cafe
      • 2024-06-16 10:32 stovetop

    • 💻 Played around with the dark mode colours in my website’s CSS. I’ve always liked green text on a dark background. I haven’t played with the light mode much yet, but when I get the time I’m thinking of going down the path of an oldschool yellow notepad coloured theme.

    • 📚 Been reading a lot of Junited blogs recommended by folk on Mastodon. There’s been some crackers and I’ve been updating my RSS feed accordingly, which is forming up nicely. That said, I haven’t been reading much in the way of physical books lately. I pick up The Data Storyteller’s Handbook by Kat Greenbook every now and again but it’s not drawing me in much.

    • 🏢 At work we have kicked off six sigma green belt training. It’s great to be going through this in some formal (online) classes. It is pretty fast paced and with topics like statistical analysis it requires a bit of brain power to stay on top of it. I might do some posts on certain topics to help me retain the knowledge.

    • 🌱 Things have well and truly slowed down in the garden with the colder weather rolling through. I am still harvesting plenty of rocket, silverbeet and carrot. The garlic is starting to show itself, and I’ve mulched the garlic and broad beans. The winter solstice (shortest day) is this Friday so I need to get my fruit trees pruned (and a couple more planted).

    Broad beans mulched

    #weeknotes

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    Remarkables ski field opened today (conveyors only). I won’t be forking out $1k for a season pass but might try and get up for a few skins this year.

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    Stone circles, roundabouts and digitial places 🤔
    I’ve just updated my #Junited2024 list.
    zakb.micro.blog/junited/

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    Runners knee it is. Can’t say I’m surprised. Physio strapped them up and sent me off with some roller and easy inner quad (he gave me the technical name but I don’t remember these things) strengthening exercises.

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