Wiki Factory Racing

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.