Heat, Hills and Hammering! R&R Sport Otago Peninsula Challenge - Sunday 6th February 2011

Photo of me heading up the Karetai Track for the first hill climb.

Well the annual Peninsula Challenge MTB race has been for this year and what a day Dunedin turned on! This was my 4th year racing in this event, an outstanding course that challenges everyone with the grunty climbs and rewards all with some super terrain and views from the tops of the climbs. This year it started out as a very warm morning and was around 24 degrees at about 8.30am! so by the time the race started at 10am it was really starting to cook up. The race starts off with a quick spin around a paddock before getting into the first climb to the top of the Karetai track and road. I took off at the start to ensure i was in a good place with out too much congestion for this hill climb. By the time i was nearing the top of this i was starting to wonder how the body was going to hang on for the remaining course fo 43km in the heat. Anyway a careful descent down the buskin track avoiding any crashes and it was into another climb back up, the race continues with climbs and descents all the way out to Tairoa Heads. It was on one of the hill climbs mid race another rider told me the temperature was 38 degrees!! this explained a lot about the way i was feeling - pretty cooked and heat blown. Anyway I kept on pedaling hard and made the most of the flat sections to spin out hard and the downs to take rest from the taxing up hill stages. I reached the end at Tairoa Heads in 3hours13minutes - around 45minutes slower than my best time for the same course. I finished 18th open man and 33rd from a field of around 200 riders.

A fantastic event the has grown in popularity - a good challenge and one to put on the list of events for the year, If you haven’t done this one it is definitely worth a look if you are up for the challenge of it.

Lake Wanaka Half Ironman 16th Jan 2011

Well the Lake Wanaka half has well been and gone. We went up to Wanaka for a few days around this race to soak up the atmosphere and have a good break in Wanaka. We were lucky to strike some good weather so managed to squeeze in a couple of missions on the MTB while we were up there too.
I swam the swim course on the Wednesday before Saturdays Race. There were about 250 swimmers there to splash around the course. It was good to get out and have a swim in nice clear waters> I am not a super fast swimmer but am strong enough to hold things together ok. I knocked the 1.9km swim out in 36min which I was happy with.
Anyway race day was Saturday and through the night prior the NW wind really started to pump things up. The Lake Wanaka Half Ironman race started at 7.30 for individuals, we had a deep water start and were all off for the swim leg in a bit of a choppy lake – this didn’t bother me the, the rough chop keeps you working hard and makes for a good challenge. I exited the swim into T1 in 39min, a quick transition with bike gear and I was off for the 90km ride on my Giant Trinity bike – A good set up on the bike made for a good comfy ride into and with the winds that were pumping around. The first part of the ride was settling into a good rhythm, a bit of a grind out to Hawea into a head wind was then rewarded with some super quick spinning for about 20km or so down to Luggate, A great feeling when you are cranking along in top gear and spinning it out like you are in a low gear. From the 70km mark at Luggate it was a grind back up towards Wanaka before a quick blast back down to the end of the bike stage, I had a good ride taking about 10minutes off last years time here and coming in at 2hr58 for the bike.
From the bike it was through transition and onto the 21km run. I enjoy ed the course that followed the lake side around and then down the outlet track to Albert town before returning via a few streets/roads to Wanaka and the finish. My build up of running training for this race was a little low due to a bout of the flu and sinus infection over the Christmas break, however that is no excuse really for too much. The run got a bit tough feeling from about the 14-15km mark and I went from running my ideal 5min kms to a slower pace and came in off the run to the finish in a slower than desired run time of 2hours.
All up I finished in 5hr49min feeling pretty well spent but satisfied with the efforts I made– 7minutesd down of my previous effort in this race. Perhaps time lost on the run was my downfall. All in all a great race and a great atmosphere. It is always a highlight seeing all those competitors in the full distance course doing it tough and coming in later into the night down town in Wanaka. A crack at the full distance still rattles through my mind?? Maybe? One to think about over the next while…