Training Log Archive: Georgia

Top Misery to Branch Biv. Very cruisy walk. Lots of food. Campfire.

With Pat into the Raglan range via Bullock Creek Hut to Top Misery.

Tailbone still very sore and still sick from GZ. Bloody adventure racing.

Generally feeling sorry for myself.

C • Surely you can work on maki... 1

Went for a bit of a mission with Pat and Matt up Gomorrah in Kahurangi. Fell on the way down and smashed my tail bone into some roots. Very sore and very slow down from there. Hope no lasting damage but will stop me doing anything for a few days at least.

Walk with Megan around the gramps

Trying out a Rockstar in the Haven. Pretty calm conditions but felt quite noticeably more stable than my ski in the boat wakes etc. Should be good I think. Horribly sweaty with a spray deck on though!

Monday evening social paddle with Gilbert the gossip.

Too much too soon. Feeling very tired after this paddle. Sad times.

An easy cruise around the orange course. Death still likely.

Supposed to be a downwinder. No wind. Put a hole in my ski :(

Yep definitely on the way out.

C • Is this your way of saying ... 1

Probably dying

C • I sure hope not! 3

We stopped for 2.5hrs sleep at Freeman Burn hut. On reflection we probably should have just gambled and had less. But we really hadnt slept properly since the last darkzone and felt we had to. The hut was warm and the sleep glorious. We heard Yealands arrive and leave after about 60min of sleep and probably could have got up then and gone...maybe.... Hard to know, maybe we would have fallen to pieces.

Anyway got into the last trek which was pretty hard going a good proper trek with no track again. Awesome. Slow slow travel into the bush and very tiring mentally for the leader and physically for everyone. I had pretty sore feet, a few blisters and very sore tendon in front of ankles.

Made it through the whole trek ok although I don't think we ever picked super awesome ways through the bush on this one. Maybe there werent any. We found out at Lake Herries that Yealands were about 90min in front of us which was less than I thought (negative state of mind) but still pretty much uncatchable.

I felt pretty rubbish on the down hill with my ankles and hand hurting lots. I was feeling like I was slowing us down a bit and we made it out to the lake about 2hrs behind Yealands.

The kayak to the finish was good. I tried hard to be happy and chatty and keep everyone awake which worked well, and we paddled strongly. We finished 2nd, 2 and a bit hrs down and 8hrs in front of Tiki Tour.

We had a bit of refuel stop in TA3 (maybe we should have had a sleep....) and got going after about an hour of flaffing about and eating. Too slow in TA for no sleep.

The ride was a bit of a nightmare nav wise with forestry roads doing their standard disappearing thing. It was the middle of the night and raining and it would have been much better to be sleeping now than when we had slept at Port Craig. I was near asleep on the bike and I think Stu was struggling a bit too.

We did a good job on the first bash but ended up taking the wrong bashing route on the second one (totally random choice though) and went into the gully of bushbashing doom for about an hour. Got out eventually and then made a proper nav mistake going up the wrong hill. Should have put a map on my bike as I was more awake and probably would have been more active backing up. O well, fixed the mistake well once we realised what was going on and headed out onto the main road. Probably lost 90min - 2hrs all up in here.

Road ride was good and then I was pretty smashed feeling for most of the Percy Pass section but what an awesome ride! Got some help from Stu up the hill which helped Yealands passed us on the bike carry with the slowest passing maneuver in the history of adventure racing. This got to me a bit as I was pretty keen to get onto the next trek in front of them. I think we were just too tired to move any faster. Chris was a freak going up here carrying everyones bikes past us.

Down into TA, well overdue a sleep but nowhere to sleep so pushed onto the kayak to sleep at the hut.

Paddled well and were very confused to find that we were infront of Yealands at the hut at the end of the kayak. We were convinced they were playing games with us and had snuck off to sleep on a beach somewhere or even just pretended to launch (about 10min infront of us). I certainly never believed they could have made a big nav error and we were in fact in front again!

This day sort of felt like it didn't happen! All we did was walk the South Coast track.....I wish it had never happened.

At Westies Y stopped and we decided to keep going, so no sleep on Saturday night, given we had got such good sleeps Thursday and Friday. All I had left to eat from this point was 3 AB meals and a few snacks (until I got some lollies and bars off another team at the lodge, phew)

The plan we decided on was to try and push through all of Sunday along the south coast track and sleep early on the bike or in TA. I found the south coast track mentally pretty hard. 60k of track was just too far to cope with and I started to get soggy foot about 20k in. Ended up having to stop for a rest and a sleep at Port Craig for 3hrs at about 6pm. Y went past while we were sleeping. Stu didnt sleep at all and I think I only got about an hour but at least our feet were able to dry out.

After the rest the walk out didnt feel like such a death march and we made ok progress all the way to TA arriving about 1am.

C • What happened? 2

Stage 3 - packrafting epic continues

Camp and sleep for maybe 7hrs. Good to have two tents for this camp. Nice and comfy and warm.

Paddled down the Wairaurahiri in the early morning. Dark zone lifted at 6:45am which was way too early. Pitch dark for the first bit of the river. Quite scary starting off onto it out of the forest as it was fair rushing past our camp. Caught Yealands and Tiki in about 30min who had camped just downstream of us. Both had had swims! Uneventful trip down the river for us, self bailer would have been nice.

Started the trek from Waiuta Lodge just in front of Yealands and Tiki, didn't take the best line over to the river and ended up behind both of them I think. We headed up the river getting into some solid bush bashing for the first time, had the usual confusion around the S-bend in the river and eventually found the control. The rest of the treking/lake rafting part of this leg went well and was probably my favourite section ever in a race. Brent was onto it with the nav and route finding and I was backing up nav (but not needing to do much until he lost it a bit finding the one one the high point). Most of the time we were along but near Yealands and we see-sawed the lead several times. We did the hardest of the nav in the dark and probably hit the coast at about 5am.

Stage 2 - Starting mid morning of day 2. Bike and caving.

Easy road ride to the caves then a bizaar 2hr stop at the caving. Maybe 40min in the cave and then sitting around in the sun for the rest eating food, drying feet and talking to other teams. Loads of teams there because of the dark zone in varying states of tiredness. Good heckling and banter.

Second part of the ride was through forestry roads towards Hauroko. A bit chaotic with Yealands, us, T7 and Tiki tour all together and making it harder than it needed to be. Bunch ride to finish which Id been training for so no worries. A bit unnecessary though given the next dark zone looming.


Stage 3 - The pack rafting epic.

First part on Friday afternoon. Paddling Hauroko and the short walk down the river to camp.

Event: GODZone - Chapter 7 Fiordland
 

Godzone 2018

Stage 1 - Packrafting Waiau-Borland

Really three stages pretending to be one.
1a - Paddle Te Anau-Waiau-Manapouri.
Went well. Paddled with Stu and we were the same speed as A and B. Didn't have to try that hard and managed to get a small lead over Yealands.

1b - Trek over Titaroa and abseil
Went into this with a small lead and made good time through the harder controls in the bush then took the high right route over Titaroa. Came out into the Borland and met Yealands there so their way must have been slightly quicker. Probably pushed a bit hard over the hill for no good reason (although we didn't know about the dark zone). Abseil was a bit scary but got down ok. Got the the end of this trek at maybe 10pm in the lead by maybe 10min to find there was now a dark zone on the Waiau. Don't really know what the organisers were thinking. They made it sound like they didnt think we would get there in the dark!

1c - Paddle down the Monowai in the dark then a nice sleep in a carport in Monowai for maybe 5hrs. Lots of teams there by morning, felt like 20, probably less. Paddle down the Waiau with a mass start that quickly turned into the Swordfox, Yealands race again with T7 around for a bit of it this time.

C • Darkzone 2