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! :)
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