Whangamata Adventure Race - 6 hour

Rochelle and I headed out for Take 2 of our quest to take over the world of Adventure Racing, 1st women and 7th out of 70 teams overall.  Did I mention last time, that Rochelle is a completely talented runner.  Me, not so much.  I love to ride mountain bikes.  Rochelle doesn't even own one.  Luckily, I own three!  My point is, our strengths are completely different.

Leg 1: Straight into a tough soft sand beach run - I'm puffing and lagging, while Rochelle is loping like a long limbed gazelle and schooling me to stand in her footprints where the sand is already partly compacted.

Leg 2:  After a short ride through some open forest, we're pushing our bikes along the same soft sand while I'm internally crying in frustration Rochelle is rapt to have every excuse to be pushing her bike already.  

I've got Tom's old XTC with no suspension and one part working brake - I wasn't taking the Anthem on the beach!

Leg 3: The Race Director has unleashed his particular liking for streams and we spend hours rock hopping while I wait to break an ankle or a wrist and ruin my plans for joining an NZ representative hockey team in just two weeks.  (I can hear you ask = Why am I doing a risky adventure race just a few weeks out for a major event?   Well, because Rochelle's a beginner cyclist so it's not like I'll be tearing up a technical downhill and breaking a collarbone is it?  What can go wrong on a run leg?  Duh!) 



Leg 4: Back on the bikes and Rochelle is consistently on my back wheel, with a view of my backside for over an hour.  She said it in the most positive way, a compliment, I can't quite remember the wording but it was something along the lines of "Look at the size of your legs, no wonder you find it so much easier to pedal than I do". 




 Leg 5:  We get to the finish line with about 30 seconds to spare, to be told that there is a Mystery Activity they have neglected to mention at briefing or include in any of the race notes.   I'm tired, I've timed it perfectly, they're going to give me a time penalty for some daft activity they didn't let me allow for; I settle myself in for a good legal argument about it but good old Runner Rochelle is already speeding off towards the Mystery Activity. 

It turns out, we were REALLY good at the mystery activity - other teams were experiencing carnage!

One of the activities was to take a selfie - so we just joined someone elses.........

So much fun to be had!

Xterra - wedding anniversary

So - in the six weeks between National Hockey Tournament and the Trans-Tasman Challenge in Melbourne, I have two adventure races, a hockey camp, a family holiday, and blimmen Xterra!  My head is in hockey, very focussed, and all other training has fallen off the wagon.  All those races were pre-booked and paid for, team mates expectant, so I'm having to soldier on. 

Xterra doesn't have a teammate as such, it has a husband whom I'm celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary with a weekend away and racing at Xterra.  Normal people go out to a restaurant or stay at a flash hotel and go shopping for extravagant gifts for each other.  We book Nana to babysit and work out how many adventure activities we can cram into a weekend.  This year it's Xterra. 

Xterra has a fantastic MTB, a lovely trail run - I could handle it without specific training if we didn't have to wetsuit up and swim.  I pack a sad pre-race about my complete lack of competence, which is exaggerated by the fact that Tom is now completely triathlon specific and lots of his tri club mates will be racing, all part of this elite group that makes me feel quite inadequate.  But I can't exactly bail from my wedding anniversary (I did contemplate it) so I picked up my bottom lip and went for it.

The swim was not as painful as I expected - being a crap swimmer it actually doesn't make that much difference that I'd done NO swim training - it's just something to get through.

  The bike was on a new course and heavy rain combined with recent logging became an uphill mudbath that was completely unrideable and nearly unwalkable.  This doesn't help my impatience with being back of the pack after the swim, and having to negotiate my was past the road triathletes who are packing themselves on the technical single tracks.  People would get off to walk around a corner, creating the ripple effect where everyone behind them has to get off due to lost momentum, then they'd get back on their bike and ride to the next corner, and down the dominoes would go again.  Blah!!!!!!! 

My success in the run was mostly that I finally managed to own a ridiculous jumping photo.  Nothing else really matters?

2015

Out of 12 women in my age group, 11th in the swim, 6th in the MTB and 7th for the run.  My swim was only a minute slower than last year (I did about ten training swims last year!) and my run was a minute faster (bloody should be after the amount of running I've done this summer.)