Ho Hum

Well the first 20 or so hours of Geoquest went absolutely spot on according
to plan.

We hit or beat our time estimates for the first 4 legs, and were going
strongly, swapping the lead back and forth with the Mexicans. We spent most
of the 5th and 6th legs - the long tramp - with the Mexicans, and got onto
the bikes for stage 7 in the lead, at about 2230.

Unfortunately the temperature plummeted to around -2 overnight, and Peri
ended her race lying between Luke and I under emergency blankets at about
04:00 as she succumbed to hypothermia ;-(

Obviously a real shame, as we were racing strongly and looking for agood
win, but at least she's fine now and we're all fit to race again ;-)

Geoquest

This weekend I'm racing Geoquest as a part of team CBD cycles with 3 australians - Luke Haines, Andrew Connolly and Peri Gray.

We start at 0800 Saturday, east coast aussie time, and you can follow us live via the website.

Magic beer!

After a very long and frustrating amble around karori - I can't really call it a run when my GPS only recorded 14.6K in 4:28:53 - we got home to find a couple of very nice looking bottles of beer waiting for us, and no note explaining why!
So last year Rachel and I did the Rogaine option at the <a href="http://www.winterclassic.co.nz/">Winter Classic</a> orienteering event, and this year we decided to take on the open mens and open womens events respectively. This is hard out orienteering, and I only came 4th because most of the rest of the competitors dropped out - I was less than 2 minutes inside the cut off, and over 2 hours behind the winner!
Rachel was similarly 4th, and similarly far behind the winner, and similarly pleased with her performance as my winner was only an Oceania champion whereas hers was an ex world champ ;-)
Anyway, we should do that more often if we come home to free beer!

O for the Prince of Wales

Apparently we are better at MTBO than foot orienteering!

Participating in WOC's Prince of Wales park event today, the GPS measured
my distance as 4.73 K, 18.25% more than the 4 K optimal, so that doesn't
explain why I was 27.1% slower than the winner ;-(

Another great event run by a local club, with much better attendance than
yesterday's, it's just a shame that the logistics required mean they are
invariably in the middle of the day.

MTBO junkies

Well this is the 3rd weekend out of the last 4 that we've been out MTBOing, and they keep getting closer to home.
Despite the appalling weather in Wellington, the Hutt was actually quite pleasant, warm enough, pretty windy but only the odd spit of rain.
The course took us down some pretty steep tracks that might as well have been teflon coated given the clay substrate and the continuous rain over recent weeks ... Wicked fun ;-)
Unfortunately the weather in town obviously put plenty of people off, allowing Rach and I to take out open men's and open womens ... I guess we'd better turn up to the final round now!