Spring Challenge 2008

The Spring Challenge this year was held in Kaikoura, on the East Coast of the South Island. Kaikoura is famous for whale watching, and Koura or Crayfish Kaikoura means to eat crayfish.
We left at 5 am on Friday morning, we were flying out of Auckland, direct to Christchurch. We only just made it on the plane, as we were detoured following a major car vs truck crash.
We had three bikes, all our gear, and lots of nervousness!

We arrived in Christchurch at 8.30, collected our bikes and found Tony, with our rental vehicle. We needed a four-wheel drive, with bike racks.
Our support person, Andria, has a sister in Christchurch, her brother-in-law collected our bikes and helped to put them back together. We grabbed some breakfast and headed north.

What an awesome day - the sun was out, and the scenery was amazing!

We arrived at registration. As we were warned, the course had been changed. Lots of hot weather (26 degrees C) had meant the snow was melting, and some of the rivers we were meant to cross were too dangerous.


We booked into our accomodation.

We had a quick look around Kaikoura, grabbed a bite to eat, then sorted out our gear. We had compulsory gear we needed to take, after such a hot day it seemed weird packing thermals, survival blankets and sleeping bags (little did we know!)

The teams starting at 6 am, left the place we were staying at 4.30 am. I slept well, and didn't hear them.

We were up around 5.30, got sorted and left for the start at 7.30. It was quite a drive to the Clarence river, where we started. As we got closer, we saw the leading 6 hour team - they were going for it along SH1 - they ended up winning with a margin of an hour!

We got into our wetsuits, and lined up at the start. Everyone else had purple number bibs, ours were pink. I had to explain ALL day why we were pink, no we didn't sleep in - this was our third event, and I'd asked the organiser whether we could keep our original number 11. I think it was his revenge to give it to us!

The event started with a 2.5 km run to the raft. I had a camelpack with water, good shoes and bike helmet on.

Once we got to the raft it was bibs off, lifejackets on, bibs back on, grab another team of three, and go! Only this time, we only had 5 paddles - the earlier teams must have lost some!

The river was reasonably high, and dirty from the snow melt. Our guide, Simon was great, we told him we weren't super competitive, but we wanted to finish somewhere in the middle. The other team had no rafting experience, so didn't have gloves or anything GRR!

Tammy is our strongest paddler, so we put her up front. I ended up having to tell her to slow down, as the others couldn't keep up with her!

The rapids were great - not as tame as Hanmer or Taupo. The raft went through one set of rapids, I must have closed my eyes, cause it ended up full of water, and Simon told us we almost flipped! We managed to stay clear of rocks, other rafts ended up stuck on them.

After about an hour - 11 km, we clambered out, over stones, up a steep bank to TA1. We were soaked. Tammy's only thermal top was saturated. I changed completely (no room for modesty).

It was quite a long TA, as Tammy was really cold, so we got warmed up and set off for what was meant to be a 48 km bike ride - my odo said 55 by the time we finished!

28 km was on SH1, along the georgous Kaikoura coast. Lots of seals and supporters, but no time for photos. One of my team members (informed me later) had never ridden on the road, I stayed at the back to make sure everyone was OK.

We had to wait for ages to cross the road to go through farmland. This ended up being an exercise of carrying bikes across streams, and pushing them up hills.

We arrived at a supportless TA, Em fromEm's powerbars gave us free samples - boy I needed that power cookie! We then got some questions we had to answer along the way. (We were still on our bikes)

We arrived at TA3 at about 1.30, absolutely starving. We stocked up on food and water, and took our bikes a further 2 km to the start of the Mt Fyffe walk.

I'm so pleased I'd invested in a good pair of hiking shoes. Mt Fyffe was STEEEEEEP. On map my run, it goes for 3 km, and gains 1000 m in altitude. I'm sure it was even steeper than that. The only way I made it was tell myself to walk to that tree/boulder/tussock, have a quick rest, then make another target.

To make matter worse, it started sleeting, I told my other team mates to go ahead to the hut, they were faster than me, and getting cold. I met up with Rachey and Fetish of sportzhub, and climbed with them for a while.

It was freezing at the hut. Tammy was in a bad way, but not as bad as another lady who was hyperthermic! I quickly got changed into warmer clothes, and charged down the mountain. I forgot to mention - I have never had problems with my knees, but had to take neurofen half way up as they were aching! We all needed it. Tammy and Janie's knees feared worse downhill. I think adrenaline kicked in for me, I loved going downhill! I lost my good biking glasses in the hut, I'd imagine they got smashed, it was so crowded up there.

It started snowing, which was actually warmer than the sleet! It was still snowing at 500m. The locals told us later it was the coldest afternoon they'd had all year! It had gone from sun to snow in a very short time!

We got down and back on our bikes. After 2 kms, Tammy stopped, and told us she couldn't go any further, the jarring of the gravel road was hurting her knees. We tried walking for another 2kms, then all got really cold. It was time to pull the plug. Janie and I would have loved to carry on, but it was 'all of us or none of us'.

We were only about 9 km from the finish, and it was all downhill!!!

We rang Nathan to say we were finished, and Andria to pick us up. We wrapped Tammy in a sleeping bag (part of the compulsory gear) and headed back for a hot shower.

Tammy took ages to warm up. I felt quite good, but tired.

We went out for dinner, had a few laughs, and too much wine, and went to bed.

The next morning we went for the lunch, but left before prizegiving. We wanted to get back to Christchurch and have a rest. I hope our number didn't get pulled out for any spot prizes, because there were heaps of them!

We flew back to Auckland on Monday afternoon. I was reluctant to sit down, as standing back up was not easy.

My muscles are feeling back to normal now, so back into training!!!

The next Spring Challenge is in Queenstown - I've already entered the Autumn Challenge - There's unfinished business!

We'd been going for 9 and a half hours by the time we pulled out. The winning time for our division was close to 8 hours.