Manawahe Adventure Race Reunion - Mad Hatters (Take 2)

Early morning Saturday 27 June, at a small country hall in rural Bay of Plenty, sees us take the start line with a couple of hundred other racers.  Actually it doesn't.  We were running a tad late, Clare had been appointed team captain by some reverse military coup, so she had raced straight across to the race briefing.  The rest of us wandered across mere minutes before the start hooter went and realised Clare's race gear was now all locked in the truck in the car park.  Over there. ------------------------------->

So we stood on the race line and watched everyone else race off into the distance.

We are not in this start line photo.....

Never mind, we have great fortitude and resilience and a few minutes later set ourselves to the challenge of minimising the damage.  We make it about a hundred and fifty metres before we realise that that 'sound' is the contents of Sally's pack emptying as she runs down the road, and we have to back track collecting glasses case and various food items. 

For me, this race is a holiday.  An experienced team and the chance to not have to be captain.  The others know I'm actually a bit OCD and love to be captain even thought I get tired, so they enjoy winding me up about it.  The night before, when all the important work is done on the navigation and course choices....

So, I had no maps, clues, map bags or information about what's happening.  I was determined to not be a bossy britches and take over, so I had left my map board at home.  This mostly worked pretty well for me, although I was at times sent off to pick up a checkpoint and meet the others in the far corner of the field.  (I did make an exception for a lovely tricky checkpoint "175 degrees, 45metres"  which I added the magnetic north variance to and completely owned.  I know it's not nice to blow your own trumpet, but using a compass is a bit of an achievement for me, so I just did.)

I really can't remember much of the race!  We had a hideous road climb on the bikes, then a lot of farm riding, which is really not my favourite use of a mountain bike.  I sucked at beach golf but strokes weren't counted so I ran it like a hockey player.  I discovered that a motocross track is quite tricky on a bike without a motor.  We did end up descending a cliff face and I thought I was going to die, but my lasting impression is of a group of young girls in a team, with poor bike set up, in tears, who practically fell on some food I shared with them.  I looked around my experienced, resilient team, and wouldn't have swapped them that day for the world.  xx

Manawahe Adventure Race with the Mad Hatters

Five years ago, it all started here:

Manu (left) was the undisputed adventure racing queen and the one who knew which way up a map and a bike went.  Sal (right) had been a sponsored athlete in the Spring Challenge Adventure race, and had the hi-vis PakNSave jacket to prove it.  Clare had just got the trainer wheels off her mountain bike, and it's pretty clear that I bought the MAD into the Mad Hatters, which is our team name.

Clare still has post-traumatic stress disorder and nightmares about the huge hill in the Rawhiti MTB park.  Manu's partner has never offered to crew for us again after we were dead last out of the second leg.  I missed the archery target by so much they never found the arrow again.  Someone, (who was that?) got stuck waist deep in the estuary mud and we had to go back and haul them out.  We were late to registration so the only shirts left were size XL so we had to adapt them to actually make them suitable for exercise.  Except Clare who still wears hers for PJs.  I chopped mine in half and still had enough left for that mask I'm wearing.  Thinking back, I think this was the most fun and laughs I've ever had racing.  Especially when Manu fell off her bike on the flat grass.

 

I've got completely sidetracked from the point of this post, which is the 2016 Mad Hatters reunion for the Manawahe Adventure Race.  But I don't want it to cloud these fond memories so I'll start a new post for that one.  :)

Hockey and my Silver Fern

While trying to get in my run training for TUM, I've also been regularly making the two hour drive to Hamilton to train with the Waikato 35s Masters Team for National Tournament.  This group of ladies has some serious talent, and play the best hockey I've ever been part of.  Long story short - we came home with a silver medal, and I got a call up to the NZ 35s team to play against Australia in the Trans Tasman Challenge.

This was all really a bit crazy.  I've not come through representative or age grade hockey - I didn't even get to play on an artificial turf until I was at university - I'm a good player but not a great one.  At the National Tournament, I added my name to the list available for selection for the NZ team, thinking that I should at least get my name out there, and nastily hope that over the next few years lots of better players succumb to age and poor knees.  Considering my advanced age, my body is in pretty good knick, with remarkably few injury issues - I figured that as long as I could hold it together longer than others, eventually I'd have a better chance of making a national team.  Added to this, the Waikato ladies play a lovely structure of hockey and a fast paced passing game and I look good just by association with them. 

Anyway, after deciding that getting a Silver Fern has been my dream since a child and was therefore worth paying for the trip on the mortgage - I headed off to Melbourne.

It was a crazy week for me.  Excited, nervous, emotional.  Living, training, competing = we had some down time but the focus was definitely on producing the hockey required to win.  My fitness was high, and I had worked really hard on my skills in the months prior.  I'm proud to have been in the best hockey form of my life, but these ladies were largely in a different realm of hockey talent to me and I was pushing hard constantly just to feel able to take the field as part of the team. 

Distinct moments

Being presented with our playing shirts by the team captain, an ex-NZ international, and given a rousing speech from the coach about the importance of representing our country.

Taking the field, facing the NZ flag and getting ready to cry for the National Anthem, as a defining moment in my life.  Then the bl****y Aussies played the worst 1970s screechy skipping record rendition of God Defend New Zealand that I have EVER heard.

 Gold.  I can tell you, that being one of the few Kiwis wearing a gold medal at the prizegiving dinner was as close as I've come to feeling famous.  I wasn't one of the starting, or core players, but I ran my arse off and gave it everything when I was on the field.  It was probably only when Tauranga friends playing in other age grade teams came to give their congratulations and comment on the games they'd seen, that I realised the achievement of even being there. 

Anyway - I made it through the week.  Learned a lot - in awe of playing the hockey that I see others are capable of.  Unsure if hockey will take up more of my focus or other racing is my thing.............. 

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.) 

ARC 8 Hour

ARC - Adventure Race Coromandel 8 hour

THaT'Z US headed back to the Coromandel to take on the 8 hour ARC race, after a successful day at the 6 hour previously.  Taryn, Zoe, Helen and I knew we had the basis of a good team - which actually just adds to the pressure.

ARC 8 started at Waihi Beach with a raft to be made and paddled.  Despite our best intentions we were once again last to the equipment and got shoddy tubes!  Mental note: work on knot tying and paddling arms - definitely not my strength.  We weren't well placed after a slow transition, and headed out on the bike to make up some ground.

Most of what followed was a course along the Nugget Multisport and the Hauraki Rail Trail - which I've done before so didn't have that 'adventurous' feel to me.  We ran to Orokawa Beach, hiked up that bloody steep hill, and rode on to Waihi.  The only real mountainbiking was a small section at Waihi Township, which was unmapped except for a clue stating to stay on the one way track and collect seven checkpoints.  The trail wove in and out so we were sometimes quite close to other teams on different loops, so to keep things interesting I would call out a random count number to confuse the other teams.

From Waihi we headed on the Rail Trail through the Karangahake Gorge.  Route options were minimal, so it really did have the feel of a multisport rather than adventure race, which I was finding pretty tiring.  Our nav had been pretty tight, just one up at the old kiln which I misread but Helen persisted and tracked it down.  Other teams were struggling also, including two blokes who had been on our tail during this stage.  After grabbing the checkpoint, we headed back towards the main trail, where we saw them poring over their map.  "It must be over in these buildings" I yelled, and watched as they pulled up and followed us in the wrong direction.  Small things amuse small minds....

On to the last leg, I was gutted to get blocked by a closed tunnel which wasn't marked on the map, and which I'd walked through only a few weeks previously.  This became a 10 minute dead end and one of those nav mistakes that if frustratingly bad luck.

After racing on Autopilot for most of the day, things suddenly got interesting at a checkpoint near the end.  After an uncomfortable 'ropes' activity which involved dropping off a cliff and nearly ripping my arm off, the girls were quick to drop their bags and head off up the track.  I was tired, faffed around a bit, dropped my helmet and picked up the maps, Taryn also stayed and grabbed her clue cards which was our saving grace.  The final checkpoint was on a rock midstream but it was no where to be found.  In my opinion ;) it was in the wrong place on the map.  Downstream of the bridge was a pretty obvious landmark........  We did hear other teams say the checkpoint wasn't there after the race, so obviously others had struggled as well.  After some circling, Taryn checked her clues and found a note which described EXACTLY where to go!  So, we dropped the other teams, stealthily slid into the water and headed downstream for some canyoning.

While I could say that most of the race wasn't very adventurous, this bit was nearly too adventurous for my liking!  We swam across pools, clambered on rocks, dragged each other out of swirling eddies, and jumped off banks into unknown waters, eventually spotting the checkpoint midstream.  No safety crews or marshalls on this section, in some fast flowing water had me pretty nervous, but also made for the highlight of the day, clambering through a downhill tunnel slide towards the end.

1st women's team - actually beating all the men's teams, mixed teams, and pairs - EXCEPT for one Dad and his ten year old kid.  It's not quite as good as being able to say 'first overall', is it? 

National Master's Hockey Tournament

I don't have a photo of my actually playing hockey in Napier at the Nationals.  Tom reckons it was just a drinking trip.  I reckon these ladies are the best hockey players I know.  Silver medals for us lot.

It might make sense to jump from here straight to here to read about how this crazy crew in flapper dresses got me to Australia playing hockey.....