Land of the Long White Cloud

I had a fantastic holiday - Christmas with the family, touring with a friend from Christchurch to Auckland, HUNDREDS of photos (thank god for digital), and only three (or was it four) days of sub-optimal weather.

But as this blog is about running, I'll stick to the running, and not bore you with the scenery.

Day 0: 60 min Score event, Woodhill. The course description read "open undulating farmland". Okay, I thought, I can do undulating. Forgetting, of course, the Kiwi art of the understatement...

Picture a hill. No, bigger than that. Bigger. Now add some thick manuka scrub over half of it, and a layer of sand to some of the slopes. "Undulating" my arse... bloody hard work more like! Came in late (63 minutes) after getting seriously snarled up in a very steep sandy slope trying to fight my way through the manuka.

Got a giggle out of some of the kids trying to "surf" the sandunes (these suckers are HUGE) after their event.

Day 1: course W21AS, Stillwater. Should have been warned after Day 0. Course notes read "relatively moderately angled slopes". HAH. Pine forest indispersed with inpenetrable native bush. I finished my course (eventually) in 2 hrs 41 min, completely shattered.

Day 2: course W21AS, Stillwater. DNF'd. F*** this for a joke. After two hours I was still only halfway around, and it still took half an hour to walk back to the finish.

Check out the Gallery in the official website here. The stuff in photo #5 is what killed me, and photo #6 is the "road" - soft squelchy clay up to mid calf. Not much fun.

Day 3: course W21AS, Woodhill. Finished in 2 hrs 4 min. No sand, not much bush, quite a nice run, even though the time wasn't great.

Day 4: course W35A, Waioneke. I don't know what possessed me to run an A course. Something about the Oceanic Championship not having AS courses? I dunno - but I was stuck with it. And I was absolutely NOT going to DNF again. The area is nice to run in: more of those sand dune things - fun to run down, a real killer to crawl back up again - with plenty of open(ish) pine forest. Finished in 3 hours 24 min, and still beat a teammate who took 3 hrs 40min on a shorter course. :-)

Day 5: course W21AS, Waioneke. Yay, 1 hr 22 mins. About bloody time I finished with a respectable time. Same map as Day 4. And if I'd bothered to check my map after the last control I would have come second! (damn those 40 seconds!)

Flew home last night, back at work today...