Whakatane Adv Race - Coasteering and Jet Boats

Whakatane Adventure Race

This year the Whakatane Race is held in February - to highlight some of Whakatanes coastal gems in the warmer weather.  Unfortunately a storm in the days beforehand resulted in a flooded river and high seas, and a significant portion of the coasteering section had to be shortened.  Still, great fun to be had!

To start with, Rochelle had to spend 5 minutes memorising things in the Stirling Sports Store, then answer a quiz; followed by chaos as we had one of Neil Jones' favourite - find-all-the-letters-on-the-trees scrambles.  After finding only a few letters we had a good guess and were off on foot.  Early nav was good, as many teams stopped and hunted for the checkpoint hidden "under the blue slide" but at the wrong playground.  We were able to keep running and skip in front of a number of people.

We hit the coastline and settled in for the sand slog.  In hindsight, we reckon these early beach sections are really taxing - and may be best cut short.  It's risky to miss checkpoints early in the race though - if you get everything else you can't come back to pick them up.  No problems navving through the tidal islands, picking good routes we got back to the river crossing.  Due to the risk of being wiped out by a passing tree, this had been 'downgraded' from a boogie board swim to a very cool speed ride on the tiniest tin jet boat I've ever seen!  Definitely a highlight!

Back on the South side of the river, we had to wear bike helmets and life jackets for the remainder of the 14km run.  It was hot; and I've added a lightweight life vest to my list of required equipment.  Early on we hit a steep bush climb to hit the Toi's trail and my summer of no-training became apparent as I tried to keep my heart under control and chased Chelle up the cliff face.  From here we hit some fun coasteering, working our way around the cliffs, in places jumping off reefs between the surging waves.  Some of the CPs in caves and outcrops had been cut due to the high seas; they must have been brilliant as the course organisers were pretty disappointed.

Hitting the swim checkpoint, we had planned to skip this - but the buoy wasn't far off and others seemed to be swimming without their life jackets, which we had thought would be really slow to wear.  A quick check with the coastguard confirmed I could leave it on the beach, I reckoned I had a swim in me so headed off to cool down.  I hadn't carried my goggles all this way for nothing!  Another steep climb up to the transition and we needed to decide whether to carry on for the last few kms of road running up to the trig for CPs.  Tough call, I could see Chelle was keen, but her gazelle legs would carry her way faster than mine!  Our plan when racing together is to do more of the run and keep her out of trouble on the bike - but.........I felt there were more points to be gained on the bike and didn't want to be short of time to complete the 'intermediate' loop. I called it and we headed straight to the bikes.  

I'm not sure there is anything as nerve racking as being a maths teacher and having to solve a maths problem in an adventure race.  Pressure!  Solved and sorted, we headed out on bikes.  After getting off the road on to the farmland, there was a little bit of nav to be done and the maps not very detailed.  At one CP there was a crew of people searching the wrong side of a stream and I was able to sneak in and out unnoticed with an evil laugh.  That become swear words when I completely lost any advantage on the next CP, hunting way too early in the wrong stand of poplar trees.  *&^*&*

Off through the gravel roads, down a nice cut track and into the woolsheds where Aucklander Rochelle made quick work of flipping a sheep at the mystery activity.  I was desperate to get to the orienteering loop and try my skills out and Rochelle was quiet but still smiling - we made quick work of the 5 checkpoints and raked in the points.  At this point we were likely to be late into the finish; but on checking the time penalites and doing some maths I thought the final bike loop was well worth the time, as we picked up another handful of points and enjoyed a cool downhill into the school, hitting 24km in total on the bikes.  Even though everyone else was finished, we headed to the beach and waded for the final two checkpoints, again earning more points than we lost in penalties. 

A solid enough race - no major problems unless a major lack of fitness in the navigator counts?  Rochelle keeps gaining strength on the bike - gamely hanging on and passing people with more cycling pedigree than she has.  Crikey, she never rides a bike at all!  Pretty rapt in amongst the tough Whakatane crowd to pick up second, though I had to grin at our "run strong" race philosophy with our points card showing we were one of the highest scoring teams on the bike section............. sorry Chelle!  :) 

TUM Pacing

My friend Jade ran Tarawera Ultra Marathon 60km in 2014 during Cyclone Lusi.  The following year I did the 60km in perfect conditions.  2016 is her year for 100km - and while it's not technically a cyclone, in some ways the weather conditions are even more difficult.

Days and days of heavy rain see the trails absolutely sodden, race reports abound of the difficulty of running the boggy slippery trails.  In the days after the event we learn that it was the lowest success rate of any TUM year, and they ran out of 65km medals due to the number of people downgrading to the shorter distance after not making their goals.

Heading into TUM 'we' are feeling strong.  I feel like there is definitely a 'we' in this.  This event has focussed my run training and given me a goal - hers is to get to the finish line.  Mine is to get her there.  We've trained hard, worked out our required pace to make cut off and ran our training on race specific trails to stay within the cut off times.  We have had very clear discussions over our hours of travelling and training.  She IS to get to the finish line, through all pain and hurts and injuries.  I've checked with her husband who is also adamant that finishing is the only option.

As I wait in the persistent rain at the Tarawera Outlet, time creeps along.  Jade has been running, drenched, since before the sun came up.  She comes through with a smile, and I set off with her on my 45km adventure to her 100km finish line in Kawerau.  The trails through to Tarawera Falls are lovely, and I'm trying to gauge Jade's day so far, her energy levels, motivation and the toll the mudfest has taken on her so far.  I'm also calculating the pace we need to get to Titoki before the cut off - or we get short coursed on to the 85km.  Through all our training, we pushed to meet cut off pace, but I never thought we'd be racing for it.  I realise as we approach the Falls, that we need to race for it, and Jade and I have a frank conversation.  Having refuelled just 5km earlier, changed socks and had a brief rest, she has no plans to waste time at this aide station.  This is where the 65km runners finish, so there are lots of spectators and quite an atmosphere.  However, we ignore it all, take the chute for the 85 and 100 km runners, and with Jade leading the way and me on her tail we head straight back out onto the road. 

(Jade tells me later that as we ran through here, the announcer called her name over the loudspeaker saying that her pacer obviously had the cutoff in mind and was keeping her going.  I didn't hear a thing, as I was so focussed on pace calculations and working out how best to increase our speed when Jade had worked so hard for so long already.)

That 12kms I'll always remember as one of the hardest things I've done.  That's quite hilarious when I wasn't the one who had run through 60km of bogfest!   But in front of me was a friend, exhausted and in pain, and every time she slowed down I told her to speed up.  When she walked up a hill I made her start running again as soon as it flattened.  Every time she faltered I slapped her with that cutoff reminder and made her life hell.  I'm not sure that pacing really fits with my life philosophy, as I ran behind her with tears on my cheeks just wanting to say "You've done brilliantly, this is way too hard, in these conditions 85km would still be a great achievement." 

She chatted for a while with another runner who was really struggling on their own.  When we were separated from them for a bit, I wondered if we should encourage them to stick with us to the cut off.  "I don't need friends right now" was the gist of her reply.   Focussed!

12km later, with a few minutes to spare, we ran out of Titoki Aid Station and had our own mini celebration.  It's funny how the race can feel won with 28km still to run.  Jade is so strong, I knew there was no stopping her now. We made our way through the "Loop of Despair", we made our way along the forestry roads, we ran into the darkness and on through the darkness.  Relentless forward motion and now Jade was hunting people down.  As we saw headlights in the distance, her pace would pick up just slightly until we had caught, passed them and left them behind. 

102 km to Kawerau and as Jade ran through to the finish line with a decent amount of form, I was able to slip around the outside of the finish chute.  Standing in the dark, watching her hug her husband and greet friends, I was overwhelmed with what she had achieved in the toughest TUM yet.  My presumption had been that pacing would be a natural progression to signing up for the 102km myself the following year.  She is so strong, so balanced in her strength, so determined - it made me consider my knee pains during my 60km, and doubt the likelihood that 100km would be within my body's limits.