Clare's 50km ultra training

I hate to run.  Yes I've said it before.  But, I love to plan routes, to navigate, to be a tour guide.  So I piggybacked  Clare's run training for Tarawera 50km.  She gave me the brief, distance, technicality, climb and I designed the courses.  Of course I had to run them with her, and quadrupled my run distance with no warning!  Bloody pleased the body help up, although towards the end of these runs, she was still sprightly and I was struggling. 

Whangamata 12 hour

Even though ARC in February wasn't Jen's favourite introduction to the new sport of AR, I somehow convinced her to give it a shot at Whangamata.  Christine was our support crew at ARC; a friend from orienteering, I'm in awe of her nav and have managed to swing her along to this one also.  Christine expressed some concern over 12 hours vs 6, but I've assured her we will be fine.............

Boom, we are off.  Fairly hectic start, lots of bikes moving fast, a couple of crashes.  Someone breaks a chain and the 30 seconds that it takes me to find a chain link and throw it to them, sees our team near the back of the bottleneck heading into the narrow, clay single track.  We've discussed this the evening before.  It's so dodgy to miss checkpoints early, and run the risk of finishing early and allowing teams behind you to continue collecting points and finish ahead even if moving more slowly.  But, Jen and I were burned taking our bikes into a mud pit at ARC, and we really don't want it to happen again.  So, we head straight up the road and miss the nasty push bike grind.  A decision I'll stand behind!   It was also fun to be in the very front, and have the speedy teams come back past us 20 minutes or so later!

Stage 2 trek was fast, tricky and fun.  It was great working alongside Christine, hearing her take on the map, and having a solid navigator alongside.  Christine was finding the maps a struggle as they are so indistinct and lacking in detail compared to orienteering maps, but she was better than me at using the topography and ignoring everything else.  We got CPs on high points, trees, tunnels!

Heading up towards the far end of the loop, Tom's (much faster) team came racing down.  Owen was having chafing issues and Tom had told him that if they could find me, I was bound to have some anti-chafe with me.  He looked super relieved, as I fished it out of an easily accessible pocket of my Sport Billy bag. 

Stage 3 = Ride bikes on Forestry Roads.

  

 Stage 4 - the mammoth trek.  Winners and Losers.  It's not often we get a good off-track trek like this to have a punt at.  Our nav was really solid, I loved the reassurance of Christine's confidence, it takes so much pressure off the responsibility.  Coming back across to the farmland towards the end, we were alongside a competitive kayaking team with a good navigator, and made loads of time over them as they wandered off their bearing further up the hill doing unnecessary climbing. Unfortunately, it was also a bit of a loser, as the trek was so long, and with so few points, we also  lost the race here.  There were also two CPs incorrectly placed which many teams spent AGES looking for to no avail, stretching it out even further.  Good old Clare and her team correctly judged the trek as really long, missed it completely and won the race.  Pleased for her, am I gutted for us?  I don't like to lose, but I wouldn't have liked to miss the opportunity to take on the monster either.

Starting the final MTB in the dark wasn't what we were expecting.  We only had about an hour, and had to choose between going West for two checkpoints and finishing early, or going East for three checkpoints and having to push hard back up a hill.  Of course we went East, but on getting to the bottom of the hill we found we were too fatigued to push out bikes up narrow tricky trails, so we just rode back up the big hill again and went East.  Better value for money though!

Learning:
It's so much less stressful when you're not the most experienced navigator.
Always consider how long a leg will take and if it's worth it - do you take the gamble and miss it out?

Daly's hut - no fire!!!

Entering the bush after the poopy farmland access.

We wanted to try out the kids brand new Macpac sleeping bags.  After much discussion about the expense, the practicalities, the safety aspects, current financial constraints...... we couldn't look past the fact that both Tom and I have top notch Macpac sleeping bags and have never been cold.  Safety and comfort won out, we bit the bullet and purchased Macpac Latitude 500s.

On arriving at the hut to find it didn't have a fire, on a night when it snowed in Rotorua, we felt totally justified!!

And, our last tramp in sneakers.  A number of hours of boggy trail, and looking at the extra energy used in trying to hop over and around bogs, we will be moving to waterproof boots for future tramps.  Jess is also often rolling an ankle, so we'll try a bit of ankle support for her. 

2:15 in from Franklin Road over the hill, 5.5 km.   1:45 out along the river, 4.5km.

Kids thoughts:
Kate (12)
I really enjoyed dailys hut, one thing I noticed is it was really slippery on the way back, also the toilet was very far away from the hut.


Jess (9)

Waihi Training Mission

Good times with Clare!!! 

Cycle Hauraki Rail Trail - Waihi to Kauaeranga.  Nice, sociable, warm up.

Run - Mt Karangahake and get no views due to the grey clouds.

Run - back to bikes and look at Mt Karangahake against a blue sky backdrop!

Ride back to car. 

Must do this again some time!

Kawerau Adventure Race 2018

Ride and Tie is an old horse race, where two riders take turns riding the horse.  One person rides for a while, ties the horse up and starts running.  The second person comes along, finds the horse, and rides it back past their teammate.

Neil Jones, course setter for Kawerau obviously enjoys carnage that ensues with a couple of hundred excited adventure racers racing around on bikes and on foot, trying to find bikes, communicating poorly, and generally stuffing it up.

Rochelle, my teammate today, can run faster than she can ride a bike, and in fact faster than I can ride a bike.  So I'm all about a bit of Ride and Tie, as I get to do more riding!  We made it through this leg unscathed, although I saw a number of headless chickens unable to find team bikes. and two nasty collisions!

The trek leg was a very special climb up Maungawhakamana, a local mountain held sacred by iwi, so I was rapt to be exploring somewhere new.  We bought some tactics into play here, at the mystery activity at the base of the mountain.  Basically, you chose what size bag of sand you wanted to carry half way up the mountain, and got bonus points depending on the weight carried.  This has led to quite some discussion in our pre-race planning the night before.  The thing with AR is, if you let someone else get points ahead early in the race, even if you finish in front of them, you have no way to make those points back up, so you'll be beaten.  Rochelle and I like to race fairly competitively - we back ourselves as a women's team, and I don't like missing points early.  In the end though, common sense won out.  We do adventure racing for the fun, and carrying a bag of sand up a hill just didn't seem like much fun!!!

So, we backed ourselves to move fast instead, and had a few chuckles at those labouring under the sandbags.  Karma got me for that one though, racing straight past the first CP and having to scramble back down the hill to get it.  The way back down the mountain I had the opposite trouble, slowing down and looking too hard for CPs which you couldn't miss once in the right place!!

Off the end of the trek were a couple of tricky off track CPs without clear features - I was pretty rapt to nail these and reduce climbing by going around some small rises, still managing to stay on route.

The bike leg nav was fairly straightforward, although apparently one of the school teams ended up enroute to Murupara........ an inset foot rogaine was loads of fun on the compass, again tight nav and good distance measuring got us through this fast, dodging other teams and dropping fast over ridgelines to stay out of sight of others not so sure of their compass.

CP 16.  Ah CP 16. Stuffed it up properly!!!!  Classic case of relying on single man made nav features.  The map was maybe a little off, with the track heading mag north after 15 a bit later than shown on the map.  So, when I followed a gravel road around to the right, with a small track heading off straight ahead, I thought I was on the road coming around to spot height  147..... but actually I was still well west of CP 18.  If I had paid any attention to the topography I would have been able to pick the hills, but obviously I was being a bit lazy!

The only good thing that came out of this, was finding a school team also lost on the wrong trail, with a broken chain they were having problems with.  Super proud to say that with the help of a very capable young man who had stronger hands than I did, we managed to fix the chain and get them back on bikes.  I've been practising chan links, so I was rapt to nail one in a race! ('Nail one' being relative, it did take nearly 10 minutes, but anyway!)

 Our final bit of strategy came into play, opting to come in late and complete the advanced loop to  finish the course.  We reckoned that we would earn more points than we lost in time penalties.

The last 5 or so kms home, heading up near 6 and a half hours, we were getting pretty fatigued, and Chelle was feeling the effects of being a runner rather than a cyclist.  I've always wanted to tow someone, so we popped her on the tow and I can safely say I don't want to do that again.  We moved really quickly, knowing that every minute was further penalities, but crikey my quads were just screaming and I had tears in my eyes.  It turns out the couple of times earlier in the race when I'd thrown her the tow, she'd actually sped up so I wasn't actually towing her! 

Cool prizes too!  1st women's pair, with a really good score that would have placed us in top 5 in any category, men's or mixed.  And we didn't carry the sandbag!!!

Prizes!

Learning:
Use all the features - don't get lazy if the map looks clear and give yourself a single attack point or feature to work from.  How many times will I have to learn this?
Trust yourself - if the CP is shown on the track, estimate a distance and move fast until you are nearby, don't stop and check the back of every tree that might be hiding a CP.
Tow ropes are great motivators.  During phase 1, they encourage teammates to pick up the pace a little.  During phase 2, when said teammate can't pick up the pace a little and you actually TOW them, it hurts.

Opotiki 12 Hour

Team Destination Unknown

The 'usual' crew - Tui and Taryn; rejoined by 'if you love something, set it free' Tilly; and completed by 'new recruit' Laura.  

We may not have known our destinations, but we sure had some adventures getting there!

The first activity was a sprint race to collect a written puzzle, which then had to be completed.  The New Recruit started as we meant for her to continue, utilising that youthful enthusiasm to be back fast with the puzzle.  Then good team organisation meant that we had a number of pencils available and were all able to contribute to the Sudoku.  "The girls have it!" someone shouted, as we handed in our completed work and raced out of the start zone.  First.  On discussion later, it appears Laura was the only one who actually managed to write more than a few numbers in, her hand was flashing and filling boxes like lightning.  We'll add Sudoku to her list of team assets!

After a solid road run our first activity was to find 7 letters in a maze of tracks in a private garden.  It took a few minutes to work out that some letters were repeated and make sure we had them all, but we split, then rejoined and stayed together fairly efficiently to move off with all 7.

L  P  O  D  N  H  I  - Can you work it out?  While running and navigating?  :) 

 Trek one we settled into solid Nav - putting the time into getting a good compass bearing and making sure we were hitting the right gullies and ridges in a fairly nondescript area.  We weren't moving fast but were consistently moving in the right direction.  Taryn and Laura slid down a 30m bank on their bums to pick up CPs with a considerable amount of speed if not stealth due to all the squealing.  CP16 to CP17 was the silly nav mistake of the day - not taking a compass bearing and searching for 25 mins in the wrong area of bush. 

Stage 2 MTB had the excitement of rifle shooting - that always adds to the atmosphere!  From CP4 we followed a clear trail, knowing we were heading towards the road we could see in the distance.  Mistake #2 - I didn't take a bearing again, and wasn't sure which ridgeline we were going down.  This became a major as CP5 was actually set on the back of a gate, presuming we would be on the track, rather than coming up the road.  15 minutes of cycling up and down the road and we realised we WERE where we thought we were - and the CP was on the back of the gate we'd checked twice already. 

The second part of the MTB was a beefy climb, gut wrenching.  Some fabulous views over the moody coast with patches of sun on the green hills was tempered by a chilly wind.  After the long hard slog, was the long hard slog along the gas line, rough as guts, overgrown, pushing our bikes and sometimes having to carry them.  Tilly's legs were obviously still cycle strong even though she's been under an injury cloud, and Laura was able to share some strength to keep the team rolling through.  After this was a glorious farm downhill - the sort that makes you smile.

 A quick swap into running shoes and the remote trek was underway through the pine forest.   Some quick estimations and we decided to still keep collecting all checkpoints even though we might run out of time for the later ones.  Laura and I tackled the scramble down the hill from CP7 to 8 - heading off on a different compass bearing to most of the footprints we could see, and picking up the CP on the first pass.  I'm loving the new thumb compass for taking a proper bearing!

After another hour walking knee deep in a cold stream, we hit transition right on dark, all starting to get cold.  Racing downhill towards Ohiwa, the dark seemed to amplify the speed and I was nervous we'd miss CPS but picked them up with a minimum of fuss.  Maximum speed of 51km hr, at some stage we heard an immense snarl rush out at us from the left, as a large dog lunged out at Tilly in the lead then had a good snap at my wheel as we blurred past.  With visions of Laura on my rear wheel going over the handlebars and then being mauled, I was pretty relieved that all four of us were through unscathed. 

 Yes, that was one of the last 4 maps.  No scale, no contours, no markings, just good old Google Earth Satellite pictures.  Highlight of my day - we nailed it!  Solid movement, great hunting, picking up those faint landmarks and clear on compass bearings.  Not fast, but not lost!!  Laura sang us a little song about not being able to feel her cold feet, Taryn seemed to be gaining energy rather than losing it, and Tilly was thinking on her feet, suggesting with time running short we did all of this trek and skipped the next rather than transition twice more and waste time.

The marshall was still full of good grace although it was 7:30 and freezing, she shared her potato chips and sent us on our merry way, deciding we had time to for a small detour to pickup the final MTB checkpoints.  I asked the girls how long it would take us to get back, Tilly reckoned 15 mins, which I quietly thought was a bit ambitious..... but as we entered the transition to the final trek, I couldn't resist heading out for just one CP that I could see on the map, only a couple of minutes from the transition.

Back on the bikes and it was like a Tour de France Peleton - we were pumping back to the finish line.  Thirteen minutes - full credit to Tilly on that one!!

Learning
*Always take a bearing!
*Keep spare socks in your pack
*Do the maths of the time penalties - I think we could have cleared the last trek and lost less points than we gained.
*Ask how time penalties for mystery activities work - it might make the difference

One of my favourite races ever.  Nice variety in terrain and stages.  Challenging, tough, but not demoralising.  Not a lot of route choices, but enough navigation involved to add that mental dimension.  (Surprisingly, having four of us on maps went really smoothly and everyone was able to contribute positively at various stages.)  Mostly - this was a great team.  Bloody hardworking, determined, tough chicks; but out to enjoy the adventure and explore.  Teamwork A+.

PS - Surprised but pleased to get 1st - the results show we were the only women's 4; when we'd been passed early by four strong ladies and didn't manage to catch them again.  They showed in the results in the women's 3 person teams, and somehow we'd managed to get ahead by just a single checkpoint. 

That time I thought I'd get a PB without any training

After some recent health issues, and with surgery pending later this year, in late March a wrote a melodramatic Bucket List of goals for April.  One of them was a Sub 2hour half marathon.

The reason I aimed for a sub 2 hour PB was just because anything starting with a 1 is SO much faster than something starting with a 2.  A whole hour faster really.  There was no basis in talent, form, training.......... it was  just a number I wanted.

Unfortunately, the Post It note on the wall above the computer didn't do it's magic and motivate me to actually run.  Remember, I hate running - I had hoped the post it would exude some magic motivation, but maybe I need a pink one. 

So I went out to run a half marathon, having run over 10kms all of four times in the last four months. I had said I'd do it (stupidly) to two people, so I was bloody well going to give it my best shot. 

I was on track (just) until the half way turn around point; at which stage my pace consistently drops from on track, to coping, to not coping, to shuffling, to demoralised, in pain, knowing-it's-a-stupid-idea-and-heading-for-injury.

2:04:40.  Still a PB for me - but only about a minute faster than a hillier Rotorua trail course.  I've only actually ever run a half marathon twice before.  I guess I'll need to run at least one more.....