Another month, another world champs

New Zealand has obviously shown up on the radar of international sports organisations all of a sudden - the world rowing and single speed champs last month, rogaine worlds this month and the small matter of the rugby world cup within the next 12 months.
So having survived rotorua and the single speed worlds, Rach and I are now on for the significantly more painful (24h in Cheviot) Rogaine worlds.

This is what it's all about ...

World single speed champs in Rotorua.
I single speeded Rach' Flash 29er and she rode her Kona Unit.
We both did 2 laps and drank 4 beers (the maximum allowed).
Given they only record the top 5, and neither of us were in that, that's about all the results I can give you.
And now, after the winners (Garth Weinberg and Heather Logie) have had their 'World Champion 2010' tattoos done, it's time for the real point of the weekend - the after party!

Just rewards

Half past midnight on saturday morning, a Wild Bean cafe in Lower Hutt, and plenty of freaks annd weirdoes are about.
The gaggle of taxi drivers with the biggest coffees they can find, the bedraggled woman in white tights and black stilletoes trying to borrow the phone to make a _really_ important call, a couple of Hutt chicks taking a sip from their takeaway coffees before heading out into the rain storm, and a couple of Adventure Racers looking for pies to reward themselves for a 6.5 hour training tramp to start the weekend.

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!

A long report from a long race

I still stick by my initial 1 word report of 'Brutal', but if you want
a few more details, then grab a long drink and load this whopper up :

http://elsidee.com/_Sport/_Adventure_Racing/index.php?fname=20100519-9-XPDCairns

*

All over!

Well rachel and I are at Cairns airport waiting for NZ172, mark and mike
are already back in NZ.

A fun couple of days relaxing in port douglas and then going round a
crocodile farm (rachel was pleased she did this AFTER she'd spent her time
in the bush) have started the recovery process off, so hopefully we'll be
capable of work tomorrow ... If the temperature shock of going from 27 to 7
deg. C doesn't get us!

Thanks for watching, report should be up in a couple of days.

Sufferage

Well the first night's sleep in a proper bed was interrupted by rowdy
germans and their (often naked) drinking games. Luckily for the one that
wandered into our room at 3am he was light on his feet, as my temper was
shall we say 'short' ;-)

We all woke up and felt massively beaten up - that last 20K of mainly
bitumen walking was equivalent to taking a baseball bat to our feet, a real
shame that the race ended that way and it will take a few days before we
are walking properly, though at least the hobbling is getting better with
practise.

Having just had THE BEST feed at Lilly something cafe, Rach is off to bed
annd Mark and I will try and finish organising stuff, making sure we
haven't lost anything etc. So a slow day leading into the drinks tonight!

BRUTAL!

That's my 1 word report on XPD 5th edition, Cairns. Rachel, Mark and I
hobbled across the finish line at about 12:30 am, apparently in about
11th place!

Almost on the way..

> So prep's all done, boxes in, just got to try and sleep tonight and
> we're on our way at 6am tomorrow ( on the bus!)
>
> Days 1&2 look good, bit of snorkeling and paddling to start, big bike,
> raft and trek, then another big bike to midcamp where we have to stop
> for 6h. After that it gets tough.. 20h or so of remote paddling, a
> nasty 30h or so trek again remote then a mere 130k bike, 15k paddle
> and 47 or so trek to finish...
>
> I'm pretty nervous now, nothing specific just the enormity of it
> all.. Hope i've put everything in the right boxes etc... Hope the
> body (& mind) hold up ;-)

> Look forward to letting you know I'm done!

Learning how to use the spot tracker

Mark & Liam listening intently to instructions.. Spot device on table..

Next up... Maps!

1 day to go

Mon night in cairns... Today was spent meeting the teams, signing in,
competency checking and getting a safety briefing, mixed in with more
packing and sorting..

We're pretty well under control now, and it's time for the nerves to
start kicking in.. Safety briefing didn't help on that front.. Know
how Aussie has all these horrible creatures that want to kill you..
Well sounds like we're likely to find them all.. And to top it off
they also have trees that poison you as well.. At least 10% of us will
come in contact with those apparently...

Wonder how I'm going to sleep now???

Competent!

Well we're starting to get moving now, we've had the race bibs handed out,
had a bit of a yarn to the rest of the kiwi teams and some acquaintances
from previous races on this side of the ditch. We've been introduced to the
"kayaks" (very definitely in inverted commas) that we'll be paddling, swum
a couple of lengths of the pool, and been deemed competent in first aid and
navigation.

Hah!

Hopefully we won't get to prove the truth in the first aid department.

The smack talk has already started between Orion and BlackHeart. Let's hope
the kiwis come out with the world champs slot at the end of the day!

It's overcast today, but still shorts only weather, here's hoping it stays
reasonably civilised!

Hopefully no-one wants to play table tennis today ... Or tomorrow, when
this table will spend most of the day covered in maps.

Home from home

We organised our accommodation a bit late, after the Rydges (race HQ) had
run out of apartments, so rather than cram into their rooms, we booked in
at <a href="http://www.jjsbackpackers.com/">JJ's backpackers</a>.

Tracy and Simon have been awesome, sourcing the boxes we need for the race,
helping out with transport and ideas, and letting us use all sorts of
extras like their freezer and cool bags.

A definite highly recommended from the Tough Like Jelly crew!

And that's a team!

Mark flew in this evening, the food is all bagged, and we've hit the
Woolshed pub to show off the team shirts, eat, and get reminded of where we
used to hang out all the time as students ... Including beer in plastics!

Nice Halo!

I got to mount up and check out the new nitelights.co.nz on my helmet last
night, and i have to say I'm really impressed by the light so far - a nice
tight beam for decent penetration and a wide halo for decent near field
vision, and most importantly for me, to throw a nice usable level of light
on the map, rather than wash it out and blind me!

And then there were 3

After a morning getting out for a spin on the local trails, and tracking
down Danielle and a box full of Liam's gear that has been living in
Australia for a couple of years now, we headed into town in search of food,
fins and tick removal tools.

We found food, fins, tea tree oil to spray on the ticks that apparently
encourages them to vacate, and our 3rd team member Mike (and his cairns
based mate Matt). Mike flew in last night, and we managed to run into him
just before he doubled up on a couple of things we'd bought and forgotten
to tell him about.

OK, back to the hostel now to bag up a load of food and then maybe another
swim to test out the fins!

The temperature reached 29 yesterday, and is supposed to do the same today,
so we'd better spend a bit of time by the pool getting used to the humidity
;-)

Shopping

One of the biggest logistical issues of these races is sorting out the
food, so after a couple of hours walking round coles laughing at the coon
cheese, and trying to find all the highest calorie food we could, this is
the resulting pile - feeding a family of four for a week for the bargain
price of 645.71 aussie.

Now to begin the labourious process of splitting it all up into 3 hour
portions.

Acclimatising

Well we made it!

All the bikes got loaded, we got upgraded to business class - our last bit
of luxury for a couple of weeks - the plane didn't crash and air NZ didn't
manage to lose any of our gear.

We checked into JJ's backpackers, the bikes have been put together and seem
to work fine, and we've done our first lap of Cairns (it didn't take long
and we've met our first drunks) and located the site of race HQ (a 5 min
walk from JJs) and a gelateria ;-)

Will they make it?

Bike boxes awaiting loading, apparently the luggage hold is already a bit
full!

NZ adventure racers slumming it

Thankfully the 3 Wellington teams have got enough frequent flyers between
us that we're getting to celebrate mr rudge's 50th in auckland koru lounge
before heading off on a 5 hr trip to some serious heat and humidity!

Osprey Packs/nitelights.co.nz

we're proud to announce that not only will be using fantastic packs from Osprey, world leaders in pack technology, but we'll also be using the awesome 900 Lumen dimmable bike lights from nitelights.co.nz. Not to be confused with Nightlightning from Christchurch, these high quality, low cost no nonsense LED lights are a new product shipping out of Auckland, and we'll be spearheading their first major foray into Australia, the home of Ay-Ups.

New Name? New Logo!

XPD is being raced as (Osprey packs/???) Tough Like Jelly, and as
we've invested in the logo, 'One Night Stand' may be retired in favour
of 'Tough Like Jelly'.

Boxes done!

Apparently it takes 2 people about 4 hours to cover 2 boxes in Duraseal,
strengthen the handles, number/ name them, and hopefully make them
distinctive enough to stand out in transitions.

Shame they'll probably only last 1 race ;-(

Thankyou Osprey packs!

we're currently going into XPD as Osprey packs/ tough like jelly (though
we're hoping to announce a joint naming sponsor very soon), and were very
pleased to take delivery of a box of very nice Osprey Talon packs from New
Zealand distributor southernapproach.co.nz today. With tow rope loops and
shoulder holsters already built in, these could be the first packs I've
been able to take straight out of the box and race with!

The insect repellent, gaiters and potable aqua water purifying tablets will
hopefully keep us pretty safe in the harsh environment that we'll be racing
in.

Well apparently it's not too bad

Despite trying to ruin XPD 2 weeks out by having a reasonably big off at
the crazyman on saturday, my wonderful physio reckons that keeping up with
the compression and a bit of gentle massage should see it right by the time
we head off to Cairns in less than 2 weeks time!

Another trophy for the collection ;-)

Despite serious pre-race jitters, and the horrible weather forecast, the
hutt valley turned on a stunning morning, with the weather deteriorating
while 'local adventure racing standout' rachel demolished the women's field
to bring another trophy home.

I think I might have been part of the winning mixed team with a mana
paddler called Kayla setting jamie stewart up for the run, before I limped
home on the bike.

home again ;-)

A year after we had to hand the trophy back, she's been returned to us
after we managed to make less mistakes than all the other mixed teams at
the moonshine24, the 2010 silva national rogaine championships.

That's right, One Night Stand are 2010 NZ champions, after 24 hours where
Rachel showed that her XPD training is really paying off, and Liam showed
that a cold and a few hard sessions in the week leading up to an event of
this size can leave you feeling a touch flat!

Oh dear

Well i have a history of annoying little injuries just before coast, so
this little disaster ahould comme as no surprise .... Not the crocs, but
the burn from where i managed to drop solder on my foot!

Oh well, nearly 3 days for it to heal, so here's hoping!