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.