Arohaki Lagoon with the girls

I love that my girls have developed into full on bush walkers.  They hardly even bother to pretend they don't like it any more.  We left the car park with my day pack carrying supplied for the walk of about 2-3 hours, but they wanted to try out their new tramping packs so we re-distributed the gear and they both added their puffer jackets to their loads to flesh out the packs a little.  It makes me chuckle to hear them make plans, that everyone needs some water and food in case they get lost, and a survival blanket.  Obviously they've watched Tom and I pack for adventures on the lounge floor regularly. 

The forest around Whirinaki is so lush, and so...... big.  Our girls were interested in some of the history of this area, where native logging was taking place until the 1970s, when protests took place and there was violence between the greenies and local forestry workers reliant on the milling for employment.  

 After crossing a big puddle, our track became much smaller and less distinct, crossing with other trails.  The girls quickly picked up that the track felt different, and we hadn't seen a marker for a while.  It was great to be able to show them in real life, how important it is to be able to track back to where you last saw a marker, what features you've seen to navigate from.  It turned out we had only gone a couple of hundred metres wrong from the puddle, where our trail turned and disappeared knee deep in the lagoon!  So much rain recently saw the lagoon expanding it's banks by about 50 metres.  Piggy backs required to sit on the seat islands of the viewing platform for lunch! 

Night Riding - Segment Stealing

We must look ridiculous, my cycling partner John and I.....

we head out on the Papamoa Waterway reserves, where the toddlers ride their bikes and the residents walk their fluffy handbag dogs.  But John and I go in the dark, in our lycra, with our headlights.  And go Segment Stealing.........

We target a Strava segment, and in the blink of an eye we go from a gently chatty roll, to all out demons.  Legs screaming, gravel spinning, lungs gasping.

Two grown adults pretending to be in a race...

All for the sake of an imaginary Strava Crown.

Adventure Race Coromandel - Midnight Express

Today I'm likening Adventure Racing to childbirth - 24 hours later you have quite a different perspective on it! The 2017 ARC Long Course duathlon was  tough day out, I think one of the toughest I've had physically and mentally in a race.  It's only afterwards that the struggle becomes a positive challenge overcome.

Thursday, Tom got called up for Godzone and ditched me for the better offer!  So my race partner Jen had all of 12 hours to prepare for this race, and had to do a day's work in there too. 

Race briefing, maps distributed.  I've entered a 12 (for winners) -18 (slower teams) hour race, and first doubts set in when the notes say 14-23 hours.  That's quite a big difference!   

 

A Looooong Way

MIDNIGHT
Race start at midnight is full of intensity, excitement, mood, and a great chance for some navigation practise in the dark.  Being awake for 18 hours before race start, and 36 hours straight for race finish has a huge impact on mental capabilities!!  I realise now, that this drastically affected my attitude in the hours of the early afternoon - when the pedalling just became monotonous and the brain cycle slowed and I felt particularly whingy.

MAP SNOB
The early nav went pretty well, negotiating through to the Harray Track and for the most part staying out of the clusters of other teams pondering a number of off shoot trails not showing on the maps.  Extra and/or invisible tracks became a bit of a theme of the race.  I took up orienteering to improve my navigation for adventure racing, but orienteers are notorious map snobs and spend hundreds of hours making sure maps are up to date and accurate.  That's just not possible on a large scale adventure race map and if I learn to navigate REALLY well I will not be so thrown by invisible trails or small tributary streams not shown on the map.

WASPS
The first real adventure hits when we are just finishing the Harray Track, running with a large group of 15-20 people when someone at the front yells "Wasps - RUN"  I'm good at following instructions, take off and can feel them hitting my body, instantly burning on shin, thigh and tummy.  Unfortunately I shouldn't have presumed that Jen had also heard the call, and when I took off, she hesitated before following suit.  Perhaps due to this, she got a good dosing, and by the time she made it to me had about 8 of them clinging to her clothes.  The map bag got unintended use to knock the little buggers off and we luckily had antihistamines in the first aid kit, but boy those stings hurt viciously all day!  

Stung by wasps, stalked by a giant gorilla, terrified now at the slightest noise...

SCARED
It is really stressful and scary to one minute be amongst a lot of teams struggling to find CP2 and get out of the stream, and nek minnut be standing in the stream on your own with everyone gone and still unsure where to go.  It was a long, scary time before we found our way out, thinking we were last.  We found out at prizegiving that a few teams had given up and headed back to the road up the hill instead.

CIVILISATION
After over an hour in the dark with no one around, it's amazing (and reassuring) to find civilisation at the top of a hill.  We could hear that small city of teams hunting for a mine shaft WAY before we got there, and our relief at catching up again is probably what pulled us into the melee of racers on the wrong pink ribbon line.

Team work

GOOD SORTS
Opotiki Possums.  Once we had checked the pink ribbon line for ourselves, and also deduced we were all on the wrong line, we headed back to our last known mapped spot.  We were tracking behind Adv Race legends Opotiki Possums, who many years ago loaned me a track pump at a race in Kawerau, and whose philosophy to get the most out of every race I admire.  I mentioned that we were pretty unhappy to end up in the stream on our own, and didn't want that to happen again.  As they peeled off from the main group in the hunt for the mine, I was happier with their nav choice than where most teams went, so we stuck behind them to check that option.  Ten minutes later, my battery died and we had to stop to hunt out my headtorch, and the Possums continued into the night as possums tend to do..........  but after a minute one of those Possums, turned back and came to check we were ok, and even offered to wait until we were sorted.  That's a good sort and it was much appreciated.

GORILLAS IN THE MIST
Scrambling through a mine, I can hear an odd groaning sound I think is wind whistling through the shaft.  I've turned around to help Jen through an awkward vertical hole.  I take a step back and look to my right and nearly fill my pants as a full sized Gorilla steps out of a mine shaft beside me.  My lasting impression will be of Race Director Andy sitting behind his mate in the very professional gorilla suit, chuckling like a school boy.

End of the First Trek

BROTHERS
Having been fairly confident that CP5 wasn't where it was mapped, and not being game to bush bash night nav to 6 - some quick decision making saw us quickly move ahead of other teams still getting a grips on the situation and get an advantage towards the transition.   We reach the farm road at the same time as men's team "Brothers from another Mother" who have negotiated the slippery track more quickly.  It was nice to have some company as they joined us out to CP 7, sharing stories and discussing the course so far.  Over the course of the day we saw them a number of times, they always cheered us on and congratulated us on our progress.  It's a highlight of adventure racing, meeting teams and support crews out on the course and enjoying some camaraderie in the shared challenge.

GUILT
We had a chuckle with the "Brothers" team as another men's pair turned up and we pretended to look for the checkpoint we had already found, in what we knew was the wrong place.  The sort of  gamesmanship that keeps me entertained in a long race.  A minute later we came across two more blokes, only to realise it was actually half of the Possums team we'd been foxing!  Oops. 

JUST KEEP PEDALLING
So, Stage 2 was a LONG ride.  A really long ride, with lots of climbing and I started to suffer keeping up with my fitter and faster teammate and the effects of mental fatigue as well.  Although Jen's never done an adventure race before, she's done a lot of endurance cycling, and has "Just keep pedalling" inscribed on her headset.  At times, that's all I could do, just keep pedalling, but it definitely became a struggle.  We tried to focus on positives - like riding trails in beautiful places where I had never been before - but I really was in a right funk.  I love adventure racing and have been excited to have the chance to move up to the longer events, however I'm finding they usually have a lot of kms for not an equal amount more adventure.  Actually not being a talented athlete or that keen on any training, I'm not sure that the long course events are really my thing!

CLOSE ENCOUNTER
Jen called "That's a steep one"  as I followed her into a stream on a little switchback corner, like many we'd already ridden.  Fatigued, not pushing down through my arms and heels, I floated the tyres to have a close encounter with sharp rocks and find myself with a throbbing elbow and leg, stuck to my pedals lying in the stream.  I shredded the arm of my good riding jacket($$!)  and struggled to get even pressure on the handlebars for the rest of the day through a stiffening arm.

MUD
Ew.  Oh.  Sigh.  Yuck.  Grouch.  It's drizzled on and off during the day which hasn't been a problem, only wore my jacket for about half an hour (the half an hour when I happened to fall off.....).  But, as a result or 3 days of rain, the trails are pretty sloshy, and on the farm at the top of the peninsula we hit so much mud our bikes are barely functioning.  Literally handfuls of mud all through the drive train, clumped around the forks, filling all the tread, and our bikes were toast.  We spend 20+ minutes trying to wash them off in a stream then later at a campground hose.  The sort of mud that makes a bike mechanic rub his hands together and make "cha-ching" sounds and the person paying the bill cry.  This did not add positively to my mood.

SUPPORT CREW
Wow.  Completely humbled that a friend who I don't even really know that well, answered a Facebook plea and offered to give up a (rare) child free weekend to drive in circles around the Coromandel, shove food at smelly racers, refill drink bottles, and scrape up our manky dirty gear to put in dry bags.  Wow.   I still don't really know why she did it but she was very good at it.

Showing off my bike injuries

RAFT
Relieved to (finally) be off the bike and have some respite for my dead legs, I developed a new race strategy.  Having made a number of ARC rafts before, I knew they would give us sticks, tubes, rope and a couple of paddles to construct our raft.  I also knew I was crap at it, with my tube usually falling off and collapsing the vessel.  So I sat down, chatted with the marshalls and left Jen to it as I was really pretty over it!  Sorry Jen, I don't usually get in that state, but you made a wicked raft!!

MARSHALLS AND VOLUNTEERS
I think the marshalls and volunteers at the ARC actually inhibit my ability to have a fast race.  They are just all such interesting and entertaining characters, I'd rather hang out with them than keep moving.  The guys at the rafting had no sympathy for my over dramatic claims of exhaustion and enjoyed hassling us about  how muddy us and our bikes were and expressing concern that we might have been planning to strip off more than just our shoes and socks to take to the raft.  Keith told us we should have done more training so the marshalls could get home at a reasonable hour, and the safety kayak had the patience of a saint following our snails pace out to the checkpoint.  He did have a good chuckle when we were trying to commit the CP number to memory "1722, 17 is my birthday and 22 is how old I'll be" I said.   If the gentleman at the rifle range doesn't already have a crew of kids, I'd be happy to be adopted by him - he waited so patiently when I lay my head on the shooting table for a little nap, then talked my through body position so carefully I got 5/5 ducks for the first time ever!!  He probably didn't realise that I've been haunted by letting my previous teams down in the shooting in not getting the bonus minutes for 100%. 

Heading to the finish line - top of the last hill!

TOUGH DAY
As I said to Christine "Take the slowest expected time, add a couple of hours to it, and that's when you can expect us in transition."  We missed a lot of checkpoints, and the Race Organisers cut the whole final stage for the long course, a 35km mountain bike with the winners still only just finishing in the expected winning time.  I spent a large portion of the day pushing my limits past having 'fun' but after a hot shower, a good sleep, and some real food, it all comes into perspective.

I went to places I'd never been before, and places hardly anyone has ever been to before, and that's why I race.  I met and enjoyed the company of new people, and that's why I join in.  I didn't think I could move forward for 18 hours on rough terrain and big hills, but my race partner taught me to "just keep pedalling" and that's why I have a team.  I got frightened half to death by a giant gorilla in a mine shaft at 3am in the morning, and that's why I keep going back.  Better work stories. 

Rameka Two Days in a Row

Day 1:  A bit nervous, short of time, unsure how South Island trail grades will compare.  They are tougher!  Rockier, more exposed, more natural, less constructed.  It makes me conscious of how artificial the Redwoods are when it comes to off-road cycling.  There are a new series of tracks constructed below the Rameka, and at times I felt I was clinging to the handelbars by my fingertips.



Day 2:  Up for the challenge - determined to conquer!  This time I made it up through the full Rameka, enjoying the beautiful bush and the achievement of hitting the tops at Canaan Downs.  There are also a whole lot of new tracks there which I didn't have time to explore - another time!

No wonder I'm a bit scared!

The Klicks were really beyond my capability - but I had a bloody good time riding what I could!

Summit at Canaan. 

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The photo doesn't do justice to the green of the Rameka

Great Expectations Track - great open fun through forestry, popping out to overlook the valley

Part of the Rameka  - last time I rode this was on a hardtail!

Big country

First Family overnight tramp - Abel Tasman National Park - Whariwharangi Hut

Here starts a new era in the 12 Trigs blog.  The first family overnight tramp!!

The only problem with this tramp is, it was SO perfect, will our kids just be disappointed with family tramping in the future??


*Highlights

1.  Tramping in Abel Tasman National Park, where Tom cut his teeth tramping.  This family heritage really appeals to me.
2.  Tramping off the north end of the park, where it is quieter, gave us enough people to be interesting, but few enough to still be wild.
3.  The kids' attitudes.  After years of whinging through bush walks; either we have helped them get strong, or they just know it's no use whinging.  Regardless, we went through a lot of lollies but enjoyed positive attitudes from everyone.
4.  The variety - beach, bush, gold sand, streams.  Every hill climb lead to a downhill trundle to a beautiful beach for a rest and a swim to rejuvenate.
5.  The weather - gloriously perfect to bring out the blues, greens and golds of this area; warm enough to want a dip but not melt while walking over the hills.
6.  Whariwharangi Hut - wow - this is an historic homestead and we arrived in time to get the cutest attic 4 bed bunkroom to ourselves.  Complete with an old ladder fire escape that the kids turned into their personal playground.  Nothing like climbing up the outside of a two story building to ensure the parental philosophy of not wrapping the children in cotton wool while tramping is fully engrained.
7.  Finding another family with two girls for gymnastics, tag, hide and go seek tramping goodness.
8.  A detour to see the seals on the rocks.  

*Lowlight
1.  Dirty cheeky Wekas stealing our bag of marshmallows off a bench and ruining our plan to toast marshmallows by the fire.

Spring Challenge

Spring Challenge is an all-girls adventure race.  I don't really do all-girls races.  I don't need the camaraderie, support and 'frills' supplied with female only events, which tend to be much more expensive than a comparative mixed event.  But Spring Challenge is run by Nathan Fa'avae, an off the planet amazing adventure racer, and he has brought it to the North Island for the first time in years, so Taryn and I convinced Tilly to race with us.  The key goal (for me) really was to give it a good competitive shot - knowing that we'll be not amongst the fastest teams, but to see just how close we could get.

Friday afternoon I get chills and shakes, teeth chattering ones, my bones start aching, my skin hurts, and I don't eat dinner.  Registration and getting the maps busts me out of the doldrums and I cope ok over the rest of the evening getting everything prepped.  I sleep ok, although I've been hydrating all day and every time I get up to go to the bathroom I come back shuddering and freezing.

6:30 sees us on the start line at the Tarawera Outlet, being informed that the inset maps we've been given don't match our main maps so to rely on the main maps for navigation.  Helpful those inset maps then?  We plan to protect Taryn a little on the bike, as our least experienced rider, making sure she has space to ride freely, and to draft behind us to make the going a bit easier.  From the start gun she takes off and I can't keep up.

The 5km to the bike drop goes fast, we hand over bikes to Tom and Squid, and charge down a muddy bush bash path to the river.  We hope in the boat with our guide, Manu, and team #214 join us as paddlers.  A few instructions and we start our journey.

The rafting was amazing.  The sun was coming up, mist was swirling, the bush there is just SO green, and it felt a million miles away from civilisation.  Funny how I scorned Grade 2 rafting last week, but when approaching rocks with fast flowing water gushing over them I made sure I was well wedged into the raft.  We had some fun moments, swinging a little wide at times so the paddlers at the back (me!) brushed through the trees and overhanging branches.  I developed a good Emu - "head in the sand" impression, which basically involved turning my back to the approaching obstacle, and putting my head into the bottom of the boat.

The support crew extraordinaire had our gear set out perfectly for us, helping us make a quick transition on to bikes, and telling us we were the fourth boat off the river, so in 7th/8th.  The other team left transition shortly in front of us, but we caught them quickly and headed off road onto single track trying to stop them following us.  And here the problem happened.  At the right (estimated) distance, in the right direction, a road appeared, and we took it.   We hesitated as the curve on the trail didn't seem quite right - but we didn't want the team behind to follow us "Shall we back ourselves?"  "Yes" and we biked up the wrong road.  I wasn't happy with my compass reading - we seemed to be heading too much North, but on a wiggly road, topo map with poor details maybe those curves just aren't showing up?  Another team came down, but we pressed on, just a bit further.  Eventually, this cost us over 40 minutes.  It was absolutely defeating to hit the correct road and be behind all the last teams from the raft, ladies having a great time chatting and pushing their bikes up hills.  It was embarrassing that they were impressed as we rode strongly past, knowing that in adv racing, it doesn't matter how fast you go if you've been going in  the wrong direction!

Hit:  Low point

Tilly reminds us to make sure we are eating as we've now been going for a couple of hours, and I admit I just haven't felt hungry.  I usually try to eat a mouthful of something every 15 minutes, so by this stage I'm probably already in deficit.  Over the next part of the race, this develops into me retching every time I put something into my mouth.  I can't stomach any of my food, or even my rehydration fluid - I start to get chills again and my body hits the wall.

Hit:  Real low point

I can't really race report the next few hours, besides saying that I handed over the maps and compass, then settled in to endure.  It was like some blurry vortex of internal discomfort.  That was the unhappiest that I've ever been in a race.  With no idea how far it was to go, and rapidly hitting the wall with no nutrition, I kept sneaking peeks at the maps and trying to work out where I could skip out to access the support crew.  Somehow Tilly and Taryn kept me going, sharing some food, riding patiently behind me, while nailing the nav and being remarkably calm about the disasters that we'd hit.  I told them that if they had been sick I'd be really pissed off as the race was just so important to me.  They laughed at me, said I was a b***h and kept me pointing in the right direction.  I do have to say - they made the most of the situation to really enjoy the chance to navigate - and they owned it!  The trickiest foot section we passed at least a couple of teams, and although Taryn complained that she didn't understand how my flash back of hand compass worked, you wouldn't have thought so. 

Anyway, eventually Taryn got an anti-nausea pill off a passing doctor, and over the next hour or two of slow grinding uphill I gave up on all my nutrition plans and just did whatever Tilly said.  Obviously at this stage I had nothing to offer to the team but liabilities so I was just doing what I was told.  And somehow, as the tablet kicked in and I started to get some fuel in me; the biggest negative of the day became my biggest positive.  Team captain; founder; organiser; navigator; mother hen; motivator was a complete liability and with total potential to ruin the day for everyone.  Instead, these young ladies who I have introduced to adv racing, knew exactly what to do.  They navigated, force fed the weak link, encouraged, maintained positive attitudes, cajoled, planned, admired the views, and somehow managed to still be enjoying themselves.


So, I ate that humble pie and decided that it tasted not too bad, given that I was bloody proud of them.  And lucky they hadn't throttled me.  


At transition in the safety of Tom's hugs I was shedded a few tears and used the portaloo twice.  I wasn't retching any more, but was apparently still suffering some gastric distress.......... 
Taryn's partner commented that "You girls are good with the runs" (bad joke) "so go knock this one off in two and a half hours aye?".  2.5 hours was the given 'fast' time in the logistics planner for this leg, so quite unlikely for us!


The final run leg was a teensy bit of an anti-climax given the drama's that we'd had so far, and that Taryn and I had run exactly the same loop in an adventure race just a few months before.  It was a steep hike up a dry canyon, with lots of scrambling over rocks and trees, up a bush bash path and onto a hill top.  However, we steadily made progress, passed a few teams, the nav was smooth and we made the hut at the top in good time.  I had to make a couple of bush stops with tummy gripes but was mostly feeling the best I had all day.  I made the mistake of asking if the (new) navigators thought we could actually make it in the 2.5 hour goal - and they said we could, if we picked it up.  So we picked it up!  We didn't muck around down the roped descent, hit the lake and tried to keep a steady jog for the last couple of kms to the finish line.  That was a long 2km; I'm really familiar with that trail and kept thinking we were nearly at the jetty; it was like running on a treadmill.

Anyway, we hit the jetty, turn a couple of corners, and see a flash of a white bib not far in front of us.  "Go!" I gasped, and Taryn went.  We hit the Outlet bridge, where spectators clapping for the team in front saw us coming and started yelling "You can catch them!"  We'd caught them by the end of the bridge but couldn't get past in the narrow pedestrian gate, and all spilled onto the open grass leading into the finish chute.  The finish line announcer was pretty loud and excited about a sprint finish, people were yelling, I was too tired to even look behind and see if we were ahead.  I was vaguely wondering whether the first person across the line would be placed next, or the first whole team, or the person with the transponder...... turns out it didn't matter, Taryn and Tilly were right with me and we crossed together, that little effort moving us from 10th to 9th for our days work in 9:50ish.  

The support crew heard the sprint finish action over the loudspeaker from the comfort of the car.......

Learning Points
Don't put all your eggs in one basket.  This race was beyond my budget and so the pressure I put on myself was too great - I wasn't in it for the adventure.
If your compass says you're going the wrong way, trust it.
Have a 'marker' when you're not sure - if we've gone 200m and it's not 100%, come back and check, rather than throwing good money after bad.
Don't make things harder than they need to be.
Have nutrition communication times set up from early in the race - I was off my game and wasn't taking responsibility for my own fueling - but I was off my game and not really thinking through the consequences of this!  It may not have made any difference with a viral bug - but I should have worked harder, earlier, to get something in me.

Successes
Pre-setting the maps with Mag North arrows and scales in convenient places - no rearrangements needed during the race
New Vapro control description holder on forearm with control descriptions ready to go.  In the end having these handy was the only real positive contribution I was able to make during the event!  :)
Good choice of teammates - when the going gets tough, the tough get going!