Training Log Archive: Wally80In the 7 days ending Mar 15, 2014:
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Friday Mar 14, 2014 #
Adventure Race race (Godzone) 21:00:00 [3]
Thursday Mar 13, 2014 #
Adventure Race race (Godzone) 24:00:00 [3]
Wednesday Mar 12, 2014 #
Note
(rest day)
Feeling better today so I was back out on the course to TA6 waiting for team 3 Back Country to come in. No reception out there so we had no idea where they were which made for a loooong wait. Based on fastest times they could have been in around sunrise, in the end they only just beat sunset.
Adventure Race race (Godzone) 2:00:00 [3]
Take 2: Back on the course!
After a very quick introduction to team 3 we got out on the water. I managed to convince the TA staff that I was allowed to inflate the boats before they came in so all we had to do was top them up and launch. This theoretically was only a 10 minute bonus but I think the motivation to get out there made the difference between making the short course cut off, or missing it like some teams that were in TA at the same time.
Canoe leg: 25:45, 101km
Our 5 minute team meeting decided I would team up with Mike for the paddle, this gave us a bit of an advantage and we were the faster boat. Since we launched at around 6pm we were racing the cut off for the grade 3 rapids in Maori Gully (7:30) that would then give us an extra hours paddling time down the valley.
The thought of the cut off was pretty close to our minds but in the end we made it with a fair bit of time and another team even snuck through after us. Since I had been hanging out at TA for a day I had seen videos of the rapids and had a good idea what to expect so they were no problem. Instead I include these photos of Grant and Rachel having a bit more trouble that we did:
Once through the valley we got hit by a stoking head wind so we pushed on for a while but we were just killing ourselves. The focus then changed to finding a nice camping spot and a bit after 8 we found a great place. It cost us a bit of time on the water but we were burning a lot of energy for not much benefit. Our 11 hour break was nice after a whole 2 hours racing for me, I think the other guys were more appreciative. Except for the one who was channelling his inner Dolf and pulled out a can of whipped cream to go with his dehydrated apple pie. Well, that was his excuse anyway. Given that we then all squeezed into the team 2 man tent after that things were always going to get familiar.
The next morning we shuffled the paddle order and I had Jane in the front of my boat which made the pairings a bit more even. And I appreciated the effort of doing all my training with a Janet and then trading her in for a Jane on race day. I think she was happy too since we stayed upright and had a good laugh at the boys swinning at a fairly innocuous rapid.
Today was just long. Water levels were dropping (common them in races I do) so were ran aground a few times and had to put a lot of effort into chasing the deep water. The river today was mainly braided flow over shallow loose rock. Generally there was enough flow to push us along with no long pools like the Avon. We were pretty happy to make the short course cutoff with 1.5 hours to spare but it made us realise how unlikely it was for anyone else to make it if they were only starting that morning. Turns out the Sheepeaters missed by 12 minutes which sucked.
The rest of the paddle after the cutoff was less spectacular, and less enjoyable. There was some nice scenery through the coastal range but I missed racing with our resident geologist giving a run down of how they were formed. Otherwise it was just a slog. We were all pretty happy to see the end of it. My left wrist has started hurting at around the 30km mark which meant that I did most of the paddling on the right, and poor Jane had to do most on the left. She took it well.
Note for anyone going to this race. One of the good things I did at the start was shift my seating pontoon forward, one of the keys to keeping these barges straight is getting them bow down and when I was much heavier that the front paddler the change made a big difference. Also there are two ages of boats, the ones with the Hyside logo’s are older, but they have got higher bows which pick up a lot less water in the waves. Oh, and the wooden paddles are much nicer for the rear paddler who is trying to do J-strokes and other silliness.
Ride 3 - 02:45, 25km
This was a pretty simple mainly road ride between TA’s. Mike was struggling a bit after the paddle so we cruised this section. My legs still felt pretty good so I had to focus on keeping the pace low, a fairly rare thing for me in a race.
Trek 4: 14:00, 25km
My first real navigational challenge of the race, and ooooh boy. This was always billed as the hard nav leg of the race and since the guy missing from my new team was one of their navigators they were happy to give me one of the maps. Sadly I had left my good compass with declination adjust in my life jacket so I was using the older one and trying to do the maths in my head..
Out of TA and I was immediately struggling to maintain map contact. Kris was leading the team and I was just trying to get my head around the scale of the map. Detailed nav on 1:50,000 maps with 20m contours is not my speciality. It didn’t help that the first section went straight up a big hill so the legs and lungs were firing already. Just before the first control I managed to get my head in it’s happy place and I was confident I knew where we were, just in time for Kris to dart off down the hillside earlier than I thought we should to get the control. After some fruitless searching I suggested we go further but that it easier said than done in this terrain. Contouring around the hill was bloody hard with very steep terrain and thickets of impenetrable Matagouri blocking the way. I was trying to take back bearings off the nearby hills but it was dark, I was tired and I really struggled with the declination maths. We gave up and bailed back to the track. We blew over an hour here until we went back to the last landmark, pace counted out to where we were sure we were above the control and then dropped straight onto it. Sounds so easy when I write it out in daylight…….. less so at the time. It also doesn’t help that the first CP’s were hung on “distinctive tree’s” in true AR headfuck fashion.
After finding the first CP I took over the nav on the way to the second, and pooched it spectacularly. Crossing through the major creek beds was near on impossible unless you found an unmapped track, there was about 100m of thick vegetation either side of the creek and by the time a track wove its way through and along this we would pop out on the other side and then have to relocate. I managed it this time but then simply overshot the ridge that we were meant to follow down onto the next control. I picked it up with about 30 mins lost, but it shook my confidence. Once we got back to the right ridge we were trying to follow it down but kept getting blocked by thick scrub. (Side note, it took 6 weeks to get all of the thorns out from this leg.) By now it was 1am and I was shattered. The team was happy for a stop so I lay down amongst some tussock grass and had the best hours sleep of my life. It was comfortable, warm and cosy and the team had to come and kick me awake since I slept through my alarm.
Back up and moving I still had no idea how to get down to the control so in desperation I agreed to go with Jane’s idea of taking a goat track that dropped off the wrong side of the ridge to see where it took us. Loh and behold it went down into the wrong valley, then looped around and led back up to just below the control. Bastards. Soooo much time wasted.
From here it was another twisty creek crossing, this time I did not relocate correctly and led us over the wrong ridge, which resulted in a fairly sketchy descent of a cliff in the dark in order to get down to the main river mouth. Whoops. At least the nav got easier from here on as the sun rose when we were crossing the bloody cold river. We may have taken advantage of our unranked status here. And the unning planned worked out by Taranki Hardcore, the unsung hero's of the race. Once the sun was up the nav was trivial. We could see CP’s across valleys, it might take us an hour from when we first saw them until when we punched them but that was much better than our night time efforts. We could also see the unmapped tracks a lot better which saved heaps of time crossing creeks vie paths rather than bashing through the bush.
It still took as half the day to do the second half of the leg but since the nav was easy it felt like we were making much better time. There was an awesome creek bash to get down to the beach, really beautiful (and tough) stuff. 5km’s down the beach didn’t help the feet much though and I was happy for the canyon bash out. The final km into TA was a perfect example of the difficulties of the leg where TA was on one side of a ravine, an in the dark some teams missed the road that cut through straight to it and went the whole way inland to get around it. In daylight Kris saw the road from 500m’s away and we walked straight in.
Ride 4: 44km
Nathan summed this up at the presos as the “high security poo farm” leg and he was pretty spot on.
It started with some leg sapping ravine crossings on road and I was starting to feel pretty crook. Similar gut cramps to the start of the race were taking hold so I had to stop the team for a run into the bushes and I started taking Imodium again.
At about the 2/3rds point of the leg (by distance) we waved goodbye to the roads and took off into paddocks. The last third of the leg took well over half the time with steep paddock climbs and random paths between gates to be found. Even though we were way back in the field there were lots of sections where the leaders tracks were indistinct, or went in completely the wrong direction so we had to be on our game. Well, Kris did since I was feeling pretty average and just doing all I could to hang on. We stopped at one point for a lie down and so I could get some food in which was great. But as soon as we started moving it started coming back up again.
One memory of this race will always be pushing my bike up paddocks that were as scary as hell to ride down. I almost hit a cow at one stage since we had so little control on the descents, and they certainly weren’t going to get out of our way.
The final insult from the leg was on the last 2 km road stretch to the TA, We were sitting in a pace line and a huge glob of shit flew off Jane’s tyre, and hit me fair in the face. That summed up exactly how I was feeling at this point.
Paddle 3 13km
I was pretty concerned about this leg as when we were trekking along the coast the ocean looked pretty rough but it had calmed down nicely by the time we launched.
I was paired with Jane again which was fine for at least half the way. After a fairly slow transition I had a good rest and we were easily pacing the boys until the cramps started again. Jane claimed she could see the skin on the back of my neck slowly go white, then green as I started feeling worse and worse. Other than feeling terrible the leg was pretty uneventful. We dragged ourselves into an improvised TA due some random short course that never got explained to me however since this TA had a toilet I was the happiest man in the world.
Bonus final trek
By the time I resurfaced the boats were packed away and the team had laid out my running gear for a quick transition for a surprise run around the headland to TA. I think since it was too rough for some teams to paddle around they decided to short course all teams this way. I wasn’t too upset given how I felt in the boats and it was starting to get dark, which would have made threading through the rocks around the headland interesting.
This leg was the reverse of the first run leg, but on top of the headland instead of coasteering. Kris pushed the pace from the start and I was struggling to keep up. Thankfully it wasn’t too obvious where to go so I could take a breather whilst they looked for the almost nonexistent trail markers. We got to within 1 km of the finish before my guts decided they needed one last cameo role and off into the bushes I went. We finally rocked into transition to a big crowd and some not really appreciated beer and pies. And a chance to sit down thankfully.
Summary
Well, what a shemozzle. After all the time and expense to get back into expedition AR coming down sick before the race started was devastating. I was glad to get back out there and given I fell apart again even with three days between stints it validated my decision to pull out the first time. I was pretty miserable on the first bike leg but there is always the nagging doubt that pulling out was the wrong call.
I think I got pretty lucky with the restart though. Jane and Mike were great team mates and even though I clashed with Kris a bit we all got to the finish with smiles on out faces. (Well, his face. I had a smile-like clenched grimace on mine) I did get to do all of the paddle legs which was what I was there for as well.
I normally write some notes for future races here, but since it is going to be a long time until I pull the boots on again I wonder how useful they will be. However:
Big dry bags with back pack straps – so worth it even for little portages
No matter how much Godzone talk up their kayaks they are still just as shit as every other race.
Get the weight forward in inflatable boats. Especially when out normal combo is the small girl in the front and me in the back.
There is no excuse for having a heavy bike.
No really, none at all.
Inflatable Thermorests that pack down to a fist size are awesome
Green is a bad colour for dry bags, especially small ones. You are very likely to leave them lying on the grass somewhere
That is all I can remember
After a very quick introduction to team 3 we got out on the water. I managed to convince the TA staff that I was allowed to inflate the boats before they came in so all we had to do was top them up and launch. This theoretically was only a 10 minute bonus but I think the motivation to get out there made the difference between making the short course cut off, or missing it like some teams that were in TA at the same time.
Canoe leg: 25:45, 101km
Our 5 minute team meeting decided I would team up with Mike for the paddle, this gave us a bit of an advantage and we were the faster boat. Since we launched at around 6pm we were racing the cut off for the grade 3 rapids in Maori Gully (7:30) that would then give us an extra hours paddling time down the valley.
The thought of the cut off was pretty close to our minds but in the end we made it with a fair bit of time and another team even snuck through after us. Since I had been hanging out at TA for a day I had seen videos of the rapids and had a good idea what to expect so they were no problem. Instead I include these photos of Grant and Rachel having a bit more trouble that we did:
Once through the valley we got hit by a stoking head wind so we pushed on for a while but we were just killing ourselves. The focus then changed to finding a nice camping spot and a bit after 8 we found a great place. It cost us a bit of time on the water but we were burning a lot of energy for not much benefit. Our 11 hour break was nice after a whole 2 hours racing for me, I think the other guys were more appreciative. Except for the one who was channelling his inner Dolf and pulled out a can of whipped cream to go with his dehydrated apple pie. Well, that was his excuse anyway. Given that we then all squeezed into the team 2 man tent after that things were always going to get familiar.
The next morning we shuffled the paddle order and I had Jane in the front of my boat which made the pairings a bit more even. And I appreciated the effort of doing all my training with a Janet and then trading her in for a Jane on race day. I think she was happy too since we stayed upright and had a good laugh at the boys swinning at a fairly innocuous rapid.
Today was just long. Water levels were dropping (common them in races I do) so were ran aground a few times and had to put a lot of effort into chasing the deep water. The river today was mainly braided flow over shallow loose rock. Generally there was enough flow to push us along with no long pools like the Avon. We were pretty happy to make the short course cutoff with 1.5 hours to spare but it made us realise how unlikely it was for anyone else to make it if they were only starting that morning. Turns out the Sheepeaters missed by 12 minutes which sucked.
The rest of the paddle after the cutoff was less spectacular, and less enjoyable. There was some nice scenery through the coastal range but I missed racing with our resident geologist giving a run down of how they were formed. Otherwise it was just a slog. We were all pretty happy to see the end of it. My left wrist has started hurting at around the 30km mark which meant that I did most of the paddling on the right, and poor Jane had to do most on the left. She took it well.
Note for anyone going to this race. One of the good things I did at the start was shift my seating pontoon forward, one of the keys to keeping these barges straight is getting them bow down and when I was much heavier that the front paddler the change made a big difference. Also there are two ages of boats, the ones with the Hyside logo’s are older, but they have got higher bows which pick up a lot less water in the waves. Oh, and the wooden paddles are much nicer for the rear paddler who is trying to do J-strokes and other silliness.
Ride 3 - 02:45, 25km
This was a pretty simple mainly road ride between TA’s. Mike was struggling a bit after the paddle so we cruised this section. My legs still felt pretty good so I had to focus on keeping the pace low, a fairly rare thing for me in a race.
Trek 4: 14:00, 25km
My first real navigational challenge of the race, and ooooh boy. This was always billed as the hard nav leg of the race and since the guy missing from my new team was one of their navigators they were happy to give me one of the maps. Sadly I had left my good compass with declination adjust in my life jacket so I was using the older one and trying to do the maths in my head..
Out of TA and I was immediately struggling to maintain map contact. Kris was leading the team and I was just trying to get my head around the scale of the map. Detailed nav on 1:50,000 maps with 20m contours is not my speciality. It didn’t help that the first section went straight up a big hill so the legs and lungs were firing already. Just before the first control I managed to get my head in it’s happy place and I was confident I knew where we were, just in time for Kris to dart off down the hillside earlier than I thought we should to get the control. After some fruitless searching I suggested we go further but that it easier said than done in this terrain. Contouring around the hill was bloody hard with very steep terrain and thickets of impenetrable Matagouri blocking the way. I was trying to take back bearings off the nearby hills but it was dark, I was tired and I really struggled with the declination maths. We gave up and bailed back to the track. We blew over an hour here until we went back to the last landmark, pace counted out to where we were sure we were above the control and then dropped straight onto it. Sounds so easy when I write it out in daylight…….. less so at the time. It also doesn’t help that the first CP’s were hung on “distinctive tree’s” in true AR headfuck fashion.
After finding the first CP I took over the nav on the way to the second, and pooched it spectacularly. Crossing through the major creek beds was near on impossible unless you found an unmapped track, there was about 100m of thick vegetation either side of the creek and by the time a track wove its way through and along this we would pop out on the other side and then have to relocate. I managed it this time but then simply overshot the ridge that we were meant to follow down onto the next control. I picked it up with about 30 mins lost, but it shook my confidence. Once we got back to the right ridge we were trying to follow it down but kept getting blocked by thick scrub. (Side note, it took 6 weeks to get all of the thorns out from this leg.) By now it was 1am and I was shattered. The team was happy for a stop so I lay down amongst some tussock grass and had the best hours sleep of my life. It was comfortable, warm and cosy and the team had to come and kick me awake since I slept through my alarm.
Back up and moving I still had no idea how to get down to the control so in desperation I agreed to go with Jane’s idea of taking a goat track that dropped off the wrong side of the ridge to see where it took us. Loh and behold it went down into the wrong valley, then looped around and led back up to just below the control. Bastards. Soooo much time wasted.
From here it was another twisty creek crossing, this time I did not relocate correctly and led us over the wrong ridge, which resulted in a fairly sketchy descent of a cliff in the dark in order to get down to the main river mouth. Whoops. At least the nav got easier from here on as the sun rose when we were crossing the bloody cold river. We may have taken advantage of our unranked status here. And the unning planned worked out by Taranki Hardcore, the unsung hero's of the race. Once the sun was up the nav was trivial. We could see CP’s across valleys, it might take us an hour from when we first saw them until when we punched them but that was much better than our night time efforts. We could also see the unmapped tracks a lot better which saved heaps of time crossing creeks vie paths rather than bashing through the bush.
It still took as half the day to do the second half of the leg but since the nav was easy it felt like we were making much better time. There was an awesome creek bash to get down to the beach, really beautiful (and tough) stuff. 5km’s down the beach didn’t help the feet much though and I was happy for the canyon bash out. The final km into TA was a perfect example of the difficulties of the leg where TA was on one side of a ravine, an in the dark some teams missed the road that cut through straight to it and went the whole way inland to get around it. In daylight Kris saw the road from 500m’s away and we walked straight in.
Ride 4: 44km
Nathan summed this up at the presos as the “high security poo farm” leg and he was pretty spot on.
It started with some leg sapping ravine crossings on road and I was starting to feel pretty crook. Similar gut cramps to the start of the race were taking hold so I had to stop the team for a run into the bushes and I started taking Imodium again.
At about the 2/3rds point of the leg (by distance) we waved goodbye to the roads and took off into paddocks. The last third of the leg took well over half the time with steep paddock climbs and random paths between gates to be found. Even though we were way back in the field there were lots of sections where the leaders tracks were indistinct, or went in completely the wrong direction so we had to be on our game. Well, Kris did since I was feeling pretty average and just doing all I could to hang on. We stopped at one point for a lie down and so I could get some food in which was great. But as soon as we started moving it started coming back up again.
One memory of this race will always be pushing my bike up paddocks that were as scary as hell to ride down. I almost hit a cow at one stage since we had so little control on the descents, and they certainly weren’t going to get out of our way.
The final insult from the leg was on the last 2 km road stretch to the TA, We were sitting in a pace line and a huge glob of shit flew off Jane’s tyre, and hit me fair in the face. That summed up exactly how I was feeling at this point.
Paddle 3 13km
I was pretty concerned about this leg as when we were trekking along the coast the ocean looked pretty rough but it had calmed down nicely by the time we launched.
I was paired with Jane again which was fine for at least half the way. After a fairly slow transition I had a good rest and we were easily pacing the boys until the cramps started again. Jane claimed she could see the skin on the back of my neck slowly go white, then green as I started feeling worse and worse. Other than feeling terrible the leg was pretty uneventful. We dragged ourselves into an improvised TA due some random short course that never got explained to me however since this TA had a toilet I was the happiest man in the world.
Bonus final trek
By the time I resurfaced the boats were packed away and the team had laid out my running gear for a quick transition for a surprise run around the headland to TA. I think since it was too rough for some teams to paddle around they decided to short course all teams this way. I wasn’t too upset given how I felt in the boats and it was starting to get dark, which would have made threading through the rocks around the headland interesting.
This leg was the reverse of the first run leg, but on top of the headland instead of coasteering. Kris pushed the pace from the start and I was struggling to keep up. Thankfully it wasn’t too obvious where to go so I could take a breather whilst they looked for the almost nonexistent trail markers. We got to within 1 km of the finish before my guts decided they needed one last cameo role and off into the bushes I went. We finally rocked into transition to a big crowd and some not really appreciated beer and pies. And a chance to sit down thankfully.
Summary
Well, what a shemozzle. After all the time and expense to get back into expedition AR coming down sick before the race started was devastating. I was glad to get back out there and given I fell apart again even with three days between stints it validated my decision to pull out the first time. I was pretty miserable on the first bike leg but there is always the nagging doubt that pulling out was the wrong call.
I think I got pretty lucky with the restart though. Jane and Mike were great team mates and even though I clashed with Kris a bit we all got to the finish with smiles on out faces. (Well, his face. I had a smile-like clenched grimace on mine) I did get to do all of the paddle legs which was what I was there for as well.
I normally write some notes for future races here, but since it is going to be a long time until I pull the boots on again I wonder how useful they will be. However:
Tuesday Mar 11, 2014 #
Note
(rest day)
eat, sleep, repeat.
Monday Mar 10, 2014 #
Note
(rest day)
eat, sleep, repeat.
Feet looked fine but were quite bruised from all the rock hopping in bike shoes, the bike shoes didn't look good with the toes splitting apart on both.
Feet looked fine but were quite bruised from all the rock hopping in bike shoes, the bike shoes didn't look good with the toes splitting apart on both.
Sunday Mar 9, 2014 #
Note
(sick)
After a supposed three hours sleep which I spent most of lying awake with cold sweats I formally pulled the pin from the race. Given the next trek was a monster that had lots of cold river crossings and went up above the snow line on risky exposed tracks I really was in no condition to attempt it. The team was really disappointed and tried to talk me into continuing but even weeks later I am still convinced I made the right call. Looking back at the photo Trina took I apparently look really happy!
I notified the organisers I was out then sat around and waited for a lift back. Whilst doing that I saw Andre come back after doing his “dances with rocks” impression but my lift then came so I didn’t get a chance to speak to him.
After I got back into town I let the organisers know htat I wanted to rejoin the team so that they had 4 for the big paddle leg then I went and booked into the closest accommodation to HQ.
I notified the organisers I was out then sat around and waited for a lift back. Whilst doing that I saw Andre come back after doing his “dances with rocks” impression but my lift then came so I didn’t get a chance to speak to him.
After I got back into town I let the organisers know htat I wanted to rejoin the team so that they had 4 for the big paddle leg then I went and booked into the closest accommodation to HQ.