Skip to main content

Tekapo 10 Hour 2017

One year ago I was in hospital and was honestly starting to believe that I would never race again. I can't describe how much it means to me to be able to line up again and have zero doubts on whether my heart would play up again. I've been fortunate enough to have so much support over the years and I'm finally in a position where, with some time and focused training, I will finally be able to perform to the best of my abilities.


My plan was simple. Start fast, get some breathing room, then settle into my desired power zones for the rest of the race. What I didn't expect was an 8 hour battle, pushing well above my desired levels (both perceived and based on recent lactate testing) before finally consolidating 2nd place in the last two hours. Add to that the consistent rain, cold temperatures and constantly evolving trail conditions, and you get the idea that it was a brutal race from start to finish.


I was hurting from the 4 hour mark. My legs were flat and a silly wee crash where I unceremoniously punched a tree left me struggling to hold the bars for the rest of the race. Fortunately I haven't broken anything, but my wrist will be strapped up for the next week. This race was certainly a test for my mental strength as I was digging extremely deep just to finish. To finish in 2nd place in testing conditions was a great outcome and a nice result after the months of focus. Certainly having my parents there pushing food into my mouth every lap helped keep up the consistency and allowed me to have no stops through out the race.


Now for a bit of humour to finish things off... for those of you who are multisporters, you'll know that when nature calls we don't stop to let things happen... that's especially true when you've been fighting for position for 8 hours and you aren't prepared to let things go now... possibly that's why the guy suddenly dropped off? It certainly allowed me to know that I had a lot of chaffing in the land down under!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
1 comment
Read more

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
1 comment
Read more

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
1 comment
Read more