Bring on February 2015

It has been an exciting few weeks around here with entries submitted for the Speight's Coast to Coast and also GODZone, New Zealand's leading multiday adventure race.

Due to my usual busy schedule over summer with guiding down the Waimak for Topsport Kayaking, and the fact that I haven't raced in a multisport event for over a year, I have entered Coast in a team for 2015 with Timur Kibar. With the combination of my cycling and kayaking ability/knowledge of the course, and his running and cycling ability, we are hoping to do quite well overall.

Just 2 weeks after Coast, I will then be down in Wanaka for GODZone 2015. After wanting to do this event since the first chapter in 2012, the opportunity to race in 2015 was too hard to refuse. My team mates, Alastair McDowell, Ben Gibson and Isla Smith have all competed in this race before, and despite our young age, I believe we have the skills between us to be competitive at chapter 4 of GODZone.

With the training sessions planned over the next few months, the process of getting ready for these events is going to be just as fun as the racing itself.

Catch you all out there soon...

Comments

Topsport Prologue Series #1

With my K2 partner heading to South Africa to see family and do some racing (lucky bastard), I finally lined up at a major race as a solo competitor. With hand surgery in a couple of weeks potentially wiping out the next few months of races, I wasn't sure whether I'd even bother to enter this race but the racing bug bit hard! While it was a warm morning, the wind was blowing hard! It was enough to make me slightly concerned about parts of the course, so I felt pretty bad for the novices, they were certainly in for a wake up call on what the Waimak can be like on race day! In the wind storm that was the 2011 Coast to Coast, I had managed to get to Woodstock dry, before swimming many many times in this final 15km due to the wind. There's really only two strategies for wind, paddle at the speed of it (or faster) so it doesn't impact you, or be at the heavier end of the scale so it doesn't affect you as badly. Unfortunately most of the time both of these strategies ar

Kayak Krazy 10km Series- Arawa

After spotting this event on the CRNZ website I knew I had to add it to the calendar. While paddlers (especially multisporters) seem to avoid any form of flatwater racing, they are a brilliant way to track your performance over time as there is typically less external factors that can impact results such as flow rate or different line choices like on a river. While the Avon isn’t exactly the best example of this due to being tidal, timed efforts can still be performed reasonably consistently on an out and back course. Adding in tactical elements and the lost art of wash riding, and flatwater racing is actually quite fun and provides an interesting challenge compared to river racing. I’m always disappointed to see paddlers pull out or not enter events because it’s a flatwater race or the B course is on flatwater. You were going to be racing that day anyway, get out there and race! While talking about things that are disappointing, it’s pretty disappointing that a national series has

Racing, Life, and Rediscovering Passions 2.0

Funnily enough I started off the last post on here with the following passage; “As most of you will have noticed, I’ve been rather quiet on the race/blog front recently. In typical me fashion, I got injured. Again! But this update is going to be a wee bit different to anything I have done in the past. It is going to be a review of the last year, relating to work, racing, life, and rediscovering my passions. I apologise in advance if any of you fall asleep while reading this, I have discovered that putting my thoughts on paper (or in this case online document) is a valuable tool to remind myself of lessons learnt through either success or failure, and ensure I keep moving forward. As someone far wiser than me once said, “don’t bury your failures, let them inspire you!” Annnnnnnd guess what… I did get injured… again. And just like the last post, I started a new job a year ago as well. This time though I finally followed my heart and took a step towards my dream of working on a rescue

Wiki Factory Racing

Search This Blog