Clare's injured and after weeks of asking past teammates, friends, acquantainces and random strangers, Helen was my teammate for the Kawerau Adventure Race. We'd met before, once, for about 10 seconds in the Vet Clinic car park. It makes for a great blind date, staying away overnight, then spending 6 hours navigating, decision-making, biking, running, wading through streams.... etc etc.
It turns out Helen is a bit of a keeper. Low maintenance, good nav, enough confidence to keep me in check, AND she knows native trees. Bingo. She rode and ran consistently.
Our day started straight onto our bikes, heading for a large open area for the obligatory "run through the blackberries hunting for random letters nailed to trees" word unscramble. Our nav is immediately good on this leg, with lots of teams heading off on the wrong road and turning up five mins later.
I nearly amputated my foot, stepping on a blackberry branch with my left foot and the dragging my right ankle through the loop I'd made. Another pair of blood stained socks. I'm considering getting some gimpy orienteering socks.....
We tacked some nice riding, a little disappointed to miss a nice downhill loop but counting on not having time for the uphill first! There are some nice forestry sections, a little bit of single track, and fairly fluid nav the whole way. From this we head into "ride and tie" where we have to share a bike and take turns sprinting downt he road, staying within 100m of each other. We see lots of teams dithering at intersections, even yelling out, trying to work out which way to go. :)
We quickly race through axe throwing and map building with a minimum of fuss and maximum of points, and head out on the trek. We're pushing our time limits tight, and need to make some big calls here. We decide to skip the easy loop and head straight to intermediate, where the points are beckoning us. Obviously this is an unusual choice as the marshalls are very surprised to have us pop out behind them. A quick discussion, and we're reassured that it's good running, and we have time for this loop. There's a fun wade up a stream counting trout, one of this thigh bursting hill climbs and we run all the way out. Coming back towards transition I make a stuff up and take us around the slightly longer route to collect one last checkpoint, without looking at those contour line thingies and picking the steep hill. ##$$#.
Into transition with only 40 mins to make it to the finish, we drag our transition bags to the drop crew and haul ass. The trails from Tarawera into Kawerau are groomed more for walking than cycling, which is not a problem, unless you're one of 300 people in a rush to get back to Kawerau. A variety of cycling experience was on display, with a couple of crashes seen. Some polite but persistent "can we come past in the next space please?" was required, as I definitely didn't have the patience (or the points) to sit behind the newbies and come in late.
All done, and feeling pretty good really. I comment to Helen that I think we should be in the top 5/6 based on the fact we had solid navigation and I felt I'd worked fairly consistently. Obviously, you never know how anyone else is doing, but based on previous years competitors, I thought we'd done ok. The thing I love about adventure racing, is that you have no idea what anyone else is doing, so you have to race as if you could beat someone else at any point. Prizegiving time and a second place for a new pairing on our first time out. Come again, Helen? :)
