Wiki Factory Racing

The inaugural Salmon Run multisport race was held on the 10th of October. Due to a change in work requirements, I was able to put in a last minute entry. I was super excited to be able to do a multisport race again as my last one was the Motatapu multisport race in March 2013! The event comprised of a 36k cycle, 1.5k run, 14k kayak and a 9.5k run to the finish. Despite the last minute entry, my gear was quite possibly the most prepared I have ever been for an event, with the boys at Torpedo 7 Christchurch helping to get my bike race ready. Another bonus with the last minute entry was it allowed me to just relax and have fun racing as I hadn't specifically targeted it as a must do build up event. A few treats with some Pic's Peanut Butter and some Chocolate Milk is always a good start to the day as well ;) The ride was overall slow but reasonably aggressive in nature, with the bunch seeming to never settle into a consistent pace as no one wanted to do too much work. Alex Nis...

The Bivouac Night Nav Series was made up of 3 events held at Vic Park, Spencer Park and Halswell Quarry. I went in to the first event expecting to do well due to my recent results at rogaines and my improvement in running form over the last few months. But man did I get a wake up call! I struggled to find check points accurately and wasted a lot of time not taking direct routes. In the end I finished in a very average 12th place with a 20 point penalty for returning late. The second event was held at Spencer Park and I knew this would be a tough event for me as I had never done any navigation in a forest before and the organisers had decided to give us an orienteering map (which I had never looked at before) instead of the standard topo map. It actually started reasonably well for me, finding the first 10 check points fairly quickly and easily, it was after this that I got mega disorientated and began wasting lots of time. By the time I worked out where I wa...

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...

The event this week was based in Hansen Park with a sprint loop around the streets and then a loop up Mt Vernon. Unlike the previous weeks, I finally had a chance to do the rogaine alone and see what I was capable of since breaking my ribs. It started off great, with me leading around one half of the sprint loop, then once up on the hill I was navigating well just like the previous week. I made the decision to head out to a lone 70 pointer expecting it to be relatively easy to find due to the location on a fence line. However, once getting there with a small group of others it became apparent that the check point wasn’t where it was supposed to be. While the others made the decision to not waste any more time and head back to find other points, I made the decision to traverse along the hill to the next fence line as I had a suspicion it had simply been placed on the wrong one. Sure enough the check point was right there and I quickly continued up the hill to grab more points. U...

The difference between this series and the previous one was the fact that instead of finishing just as it was getting dark, we would instead be starting in the dark making navigation a more important component than outright speed. Another bonus was the fact that it was based in the Bowenvale Valley, a place where I have spent many hours exploring and mountain biking around so I knew it like the back of my hand. I think my sister was expecting us to do quite badly due to it being dark, but my navigation seemed to be going pretty good with us navigating directly to each checkpoint and not wasting any time searching around for them. Once finished, I wished we had have done the 2 hour event since my navigation had been going well and there were a lot of teams out there that seemed to be struggling.

This week the event was based out of the Sumnervale Reserve in Sumner. I wasn’t really looking forward to this event as I knew it would include a lot of steep tracks and rough terrain which we would struggle to move quickly over. Despite this, the map did have quite a few navigational options which would make up for our overall lack of speed. However I made the mistake of being too optimistic of our speed due to the previous week which ultimately resulted in us getting a penalty due to returning late.

This week the event was based at Halswell Quarry and despite knowing the trails around the quarry reasonably well, I still had no expectations of being competitive and was just approaching the series as a way to get out and about, and get my sister interested in rogaining. After seeing the map my sister and I made a super conservative plan just looping around the flats to ensure we got back to the finish in time. However once started, we were moving much faster than expected and ended up collecting almost 3 times the amount of points we had originally planned on. I was pretty happy with the way we moved around the course, I just need to convince my sister to do the 2 hour event instead of the 1 hour so I get more nav practise and so our score seems a bit more competitive.

It was great to get out last week for the first event of the wicked rogaine series and my first event since breaking my ribs almost 6 weeks prior. It was based around the sugarloaf reserve on the Port hills. I had no plan to be competitive, I was just happy to be out doing something after several weeks spent on the couch recovering. My sister joined me at the event to ensure I wouldn't go crazy and push myself too hard.  The result isn't great but then again I wasn't expecting anything since we were mainly walking around. The positive from the event is I'm now capable to start training again!

As many of you know I unfortunately broke my ribs in the weekend before Coast to Coast in a momentary lapse of concentration while kayaking. While it was obviously disappointing to be injured and forced to pull out of Coast and GODZone, at the same time I was relieved as it could have been a lot worse. I'm beginning to think Coast just isn't my race since this is now the third time I have had to pull out due to injury in five attempts at the race. My dad ended up racing for me at last minutes notice with a little persuasion and despite no training and having not paddled in 2 years, he finished a very credible 3rd place in Open Men, proving that anyone is capable of not only completing but also being competitive at Coast if they put their mind to it. Thanks to the support of many people over the years, I know what I'm capable of achieving at this race, its just going to be a case of making my own luck and building on my current fitness to be as prepared as possible. I lo...

Pic's Peanut Butter have come on board to support me with their delicious products for the upcoming GODZone adventure race. Based on the trials I have had already, the shots of peanut butter will be a perfect boost through out the event and will certainly be used during training missions as well! I have already had a lot of people staring in envy as I devour my peanut butter in the middle of the gorge while they are struggling away on their leppins or dry muesli bars. Check out their website if you haven't tried the best peanut butter on the market yet! www.picspeanutbutter.com/

Better late than never! This year I was fortunate enough to be given permission to compete at the Rasdex Classic River Race, a 70km kayak race, rather than do safety like I have in the past few years. It was good timing as well, with having just received a brand new Flow kayaks Rush to try out. Although I didn't get a chance to paddle the new boat down the river before the race, I had paddled the river several times in other boats in the weeks leading up to the event, so I knew the river like the back of my hand. To increase the excitement of getting to race again I was named as someone to watch out for in the pre race predictions. www.sportzhub.com/news/rasdex-classic-river-race3 I was (fortunate) enough to still be in the junior category so I knew there was little chance of getting any competition from other juniors, so my main goal going into the event was to try and get into the top 10 overall and not have the open men catch me who were starting 15 minute...