Wiki Factory Racing

The South Canterbury Adventure Race Club have a reputation of putting on awesome events and this years 12 hour AR was no exception. After placing 4th at last years event, I was hoping for another good result despite being in a different team, this time with my GODZone 2016 team. The event didn't start great with Blake being unable to attend last moment after collapsing in his driveway just before driving down, and my dad was also run down with flu, but chose to attempt to push through. 23 teams braved the challenging conditions for this years 12hr AR at Blue Mountain and Lochaber stations. Teams had the choice to either bike or run first, with 14 teams choosing to do the bike leg first. I made the decision during the night to do the bike first, thinking it would be easier on my dad to maintain a decent pace on the bike, then we could assess the situation and he could pull out if need be. We woke up in the morning to a decent frost, confirming that biking first was a good idea, ...

After breaking my ribs just before Coast to Coast I decided to change my focus for the rest of year and do a few running events. The first event I signed up for was the Captain Cook's Landing run, a 26km run along the stunning Queen Charlotte track from Camp Bay to Ship Cove. Its a race of 2 halves, with the first half being reasonably flat, and the second half including 2 reasonable sized hills to make a total elevation of around 800m (some watches were saying as high as 1200m). The event had a staggered start based on your half marathon time, which considering I've never done a half marathon, I made a guess based on what my dad did a few years ago (1.41). This placed me in the 11th start wave out of 13, my dad was in start wave 10.     Waiting around at the start was the worst part of the whole event, with my group starting an hour and a half after the first one. I had no nerves, I was just eager to finally race again. My game plan was to attack the ...

After my win the previous week, I was pretty confident that I could back it up with another win this week. Half of the controls were based around the houses on Mt Pleasant which meant It would hopefully be easy to travel around the course quickly while also finding the controls accurately. As the event started I took off in a group with eventual 2 hour winner Tim Farrant and Nick Ross. We flowed through the first few controls quickly and soon made a large gap to everyone else trying to follow us. From here we then parted ways as they continued up the hill and I started my way around the lower loop of controls. From here it was just a case of running along the roads as fast as I could to ensure I got all the points I planned. I'm quite happy with the way my running form is coming along and I felt like I was moving around the course well. In the end I finished with time to spare despite collecting all the points I had planned (which I thought may have been overly optimist...

After the Victoria Park rogaine and my win in the last 1 hour rogaine I did, I had huge expectations of a good result again. It was a nice warm clear night and the map looked like a great course. As the event started, I ran off in completely the opposite direction to everyone else. While I would normally be worried by this, I was confident in my plan and my navigation despite it being completely dark. I grabbed my first set of points and then somehow managed to rejoin everyone else at the front of the field. I quickly found the next few points then continued off on my plan. Despite the map looking deceptively easy, the terrain had some interesting features and made for some fun navigation. There were a lot of people who were struggling to find the checkpoints while I was flowing around the course accurately and fast. The only mistake I made was running past one checkpoint I had planned to get at the end before my time ran out. Despite this I still finished with 540 points whi...

The Victoria Park rogaine on the 7th of June was a good opportunity for me to swap out my long training run for an event which could also double as some nav practise for the upcoming adventure races. I went into the event fairly confident of a good result due to my running form coming along quite nicely and my navigation being fairly accurate these past few months at the 1 hour rogaine series. I also had a good plan which I felt, despite missing a few points, would still result in a good score which would place me highly in the event. I flowed around the course well and only made a couple of wee mistakes which cost minimal time. I finished with 1430 points which I was pretty happy with. When the results came out I was surprised to see I was 11th Open men (5th individual), not exactly the result I expected after what I felt was a fairly good performance.

Due to breaking my ribs and having a fun time at the 2014 edition of this race, I decided to go along again this year to help out with the running of the event. Held in Murchison and organised by Nathan Faavae, it is a great a wee race with options for beginners through to experienced adventure racers with 3, 6 and 12 hour categories. The race starts with a raft section then goes into a combination of trekking or mountain bike sections depending on which length race you are in. I was lucky enough this year to be able to go on the raft due to a team not turning up to the start line. Due to the super low river levels in the area, what should have been a relatively simple but splashy paddle down the Granity section of the Buller River, turned into a very tight and technical raft with lots of boulders and gravel sections exposed.          After the raft section I quickly went down the road to assist on a road crossing that transferred the com...

Last night was my first mountain bike race since breaking my ribs in February. Unlike previous years where I have taken this event seriously (3 rd place overall 2009, 2 nd place overall 2012), my approach last night was just to see where my fitness was at after the last 12 weeks off the bike (and most of the summer due to kayaking commitments) but at least having the last 5 weeks getting some running training most days. As it turns out my fitness seemed pretty good with my breathing and heart rate well under control. However, my actual power output was low… very low in fact, with me struggling to stay in contact with the first group despite feeling like I wasn’t working hard, I just couldn’t push the pedals any harder. I was soon dropped from the back of the first group part way round the first lap and settled into the middle of the next group for the rest of the race. I guess I shouldn’t have had any expectations of a good result after so long off the bike and some people ma...