Swimming Adventures at the Auckland Arrow 24 Hour Race

We have finally done all our washing and thawed out enough to let you know how we got on at the infamous Auckland Arrow 24 hour race.

It was a chilly start as we plunged into the Manukau harbour at 7.00am for what was supposed to be a “coasteering” leg (this means the occasional short swim and running on rocks normally). After a 5km swim / fight for survival from Titirangi to the Auckland Airport, which was made easier by our flippers, foam cell kick boards, Ally’s well honed pie eating skills paying off with the extra body fat and woollen socks, we arrived at transition sodden but relieved to have survived. Anne’s nasty ten cm oyster gash left a bloody trial.  Luckily, thanks to Ally’s cool head Anne was unaware that the Manukau harbour was a shark breeding ground!

The next leg was a kayak, which took competitors across the Manukau into a raging outgoing tide and a headwind and up the Waiuku  river to Waiuku township. Anne struggled to keep awake battling the urge to stop paddling and rest. However, with Ally belting out songs at the top of her lungs she had no choice but to keep digging deep. After 5 hours of paddling and not much water left we limped into transition tired but proud, still within the top 3rd of the field.

Transition was a godsend. Our support crew were awesome, greeting us with hot towels and warm foot baths. To overcome the cold we doned our Pearl Izumi fleecy tights and arm warmers, our Marmot Essence jackets and headed off into the elements for the short bike to Hoods Landing on the banks of the Waikato river. The ‘fanger sisters’ were in full flight, fanging it to the next transition 10 minutes before our support crew, which allowed Anne to sneak a quick nap before the next leg. We later found out the support crew made a wee detour to the wrong beach on the way!

Back into the kayaks, feeling invigorated by a quick nap, we nailed the navigation through islands and channels to find the only control on this leg, and then powered down river with the tide this time to the next transition at Port Waikato.

The next leg was a trek along the coast with some tricky navigation needed to locate controls in the dark. We then headed inland up a stream to the base of a stunning waterfall and scrambled around 70 meter high boulders in search of further controls. The scenery was awesome even though it was pitch black. The trek took us longer than expected (11 hours in total) but we were determined to find as many controls as possible to improve our ranking. We then headed across country to transition five, always mindful of the time penalties given to those who used the roads. As we walked into transition five, up and over Waikaretu farmland, both the sun and our support crew welcomed us and warmed us up. The fried bagels eaten at this transition tasted like French toast but only better… Thank God for Abes Real Bagels and our ingenius cook Howard. 

Back on the bike leg to Raglan we managed to hunt down three more controls, before we were taken off the course, almost 29 hours later. No teams finished the course completely and more than half the field pulled out of the race. We finished a creditable 7th overall (27 teams started) and were one of the few teams to collect nearly all the controls.  A result we were both proud of.

Thanks to our support crew and all our sponsors.

Anne and Ally - Team Sunlatte GOT.

Girls On Top Go Bush at Whakatane

The Whakatane 24 hour adventure race has a reputation for being a tough race and the pre race information promised some real adventures for our team.  For the first time in the season all of our team members (Ally, Anne, Debbie and I) were in the country and available to race at the same time.  Excited by this prospect we all headed to Whakatane on Friday evening to find out what the race organisers had in store for us.

The first leg of the race was a long ocean paddle out over the Whakatane bar and down the coast to Opotiki and initially it appeared to be unlikely that this leg would be on.  The night before the race word was that there was an 8 foot swell and the bar was closed to all vessels.  With the nerve wracking first paddle at the ARC still relatively fresh in our minds we prayed to the sea gods to be kind to us and not supply us with leg quivering conditions that would give us all personal best high readings on our Polar HRM's.

Race morning dawned with a very light breeze and thankfully a manageable swell, at the last minute the paddle was declared on. We scrambled into decks and vests while our support crew dashed off with our boats to the kayak put in.  The start gun went outside the Whakatane Great Outdoors shop and the racing began.  To the surprise of our competitors we took a short cut out the back door of the shop and were leading the dash to the kayaks for a short time.  We were soon overtaken by team Subaru and we were somewhat horrified to discover they had implemented a 'don't follow us' race strategy by wearing pornographic see through shorts.  At that point we decided it was prudent to can our race strategy to stick with them all the way to the finish and decided due to the risk of future vision issues we should to go it alone at our own pace.

We jumped into our boats and paddled out over the Whakatane bar in the general direction of Opotiki.  Thankfully the kayak leg was fairly uneventful however someone had told us that the surf was flat at Opotiki and the inevitable surf landing would not be a problem.  I am not sure what happened between this report and the time we eventually go there but amongst some decent sized breakers Ally and I hurled ourselves at the beach, slightly miss-timed a wave and ended up taking a refreshing dip.  We were still a fair way out from shore, but with some surf life saving assistance for me from Ally we got to shore intact still attached to both our paddles and thankfully our Rudy Project sunglasses.  Our support crew demonstrated their fantastic commitment to us, Craig stripped off (mostly) and dived in to rescue our boat while Zahra strode out fully clothed neck deep to help Ally and I get to shore.  Luckily Deb and Anne had pulled off a text book surf landing so the carnage was restricted to only half the team! 

Dry, fed and in our new stylish Girls On Top outfits we set off on an 80k MTB up the Motu Road.  There were some fairly sizeable hills on this leg but mostly they had a friendly gradient that did not require the utilisation of our granny gears. At race briefing we wondered about the evil giggle the race organizer slipped out whilst describing the last major hill on the bike.  We found out when we got there and had to carry our bikes up a steep, rutted, scrub clad piece of ground which could have been referred to as a track in a former life.  What goes up must go down however, the ride down through farmland was fun and some entertainment was kindly provided by other teams who tried to ride through bottomless sections of bog.  Just one or two more hills and we were at the next transition.

Again our support crew had outdone themselves with our transition set up.  Not only did we have a hot meal waiting for us but hot towels and warmed clothes!  Dry, fed and warmed again off we went out into the dark on the 30 odd K tramp leg.  A cunning shortcut down a ridge saw us arrive quickly at the stream we needed to walk down for the next few k's.  Unfortunately a slight topographical oversight resulted in us getting some extra stream time for our money.  The next checkpoint was a hut where we were greeted with offers of hot coffee.  (Just what you need when you have just had 3 extra hours in a stream and still have a whole night of tramping ahead of you).  Up and over a sizeable hill to the next hut where even better, lamb stew was produced!  After a quick rest to revive the bods we were off again down another stream to the next track junction.  At this point there was a route choice, option one offered a long flat boring gravel road with a one hour time penalty and option two an up and over hill climb on an uncut track to Pakihi Hut.

Word was that the latter option was the much faster way if you could find the track and Ally's hawk like navigation eyes spotted the track in from 50 paces.  We thought we had struck the jackpot and took to the seemingly vertical climb with a vengeance.  A quick look at the map promised a steep uphill followed by another steep uphill then down to the hut, but with the track not marked on the map it was anyone's guess.  By the time we got to the 5th or sixth steep uphill in a row (I had lost count of the 'ups' as I was too busy trying to convince my team mates that it was a lake I could see down below us, not fog like they were telling me) we decided the track was leading us on a wild goose chase.  When the track markers started to become few and far between we suspected we might have missed a turn off and we should assess our options.

By now it was mid morning the following day, prize giving would be almost over and our support crew might be wondering what had become of us.  We decided it was prudent to turn around and go back the way we came as we were not sure the track we were on would ever take us to Pakihi hut.  Back we went and by now our minds had become very creative and degenerated to the point where everything was hilariously funny, and we were starting to see strange men pop out of the bush from time to time.  An altercation with a possum, a hut mirage in the bush and a savage toitoi bush attack later we arrived at Te Waiti Hut.  We thought that the two marshals in the hut (attired in their search and rescue vests, were those for us?) were going to kiss us they seemed so pleased that we had appeared.  Apparently the fact that no-one had seen any sign of us for 11 odd hours was cause for concern and search and rescue were just minutes away from being deployed.  Needless to say, our race was over but luckily for us the helicopter was already booked and we got a 5 min helicopter special stage instead of another 3 or 4 hours walking to the last transition.  Our poor support crew were still patiently waiting for us in the otherwise empty transition paddock.

We still managed to have a good time out there despite the fact we had a few unexpected issues, but that is what adventure racing is all about.  Thanks heaps to our fantastic support crew who showed extreme commitment and patience by waiting for us for such a long time.  We each now owe Craig and Tilly 30 hours baby sitting and when back into racing they plan to go really fast so they can get the most racing they can from their invested support crew time.  Apologies to support crew extraordinaire Zahra whose first exposure to adventure racing was less than ideal, but I guess it means that she will be pleasantly surprised next time round!

Thank you very much to the race organisers for the special stage and to all the marshals and helpers who were also forced to wait for us to re-appear.  Thanks very much also for all the support from our sponsors, thanks to you all it meant we had warm clothes and plenty of food despite the extra race time we got for our investment.  We will keep you posted about our next adventure.

Girls On Top Conquer the ARC

This year we set out on the ARC 24 hour adventure race with a mission.  To have fun and prove that a) girls can in fact read maps, and b) that our pre race ranking of 11/12 teams was an underestimation.  Mission accomplished!

In the absence of our illustrious leader (who was last seen in Barcelona), we recruited legendary multisporter Jo Gosse to join myself, Anne and Debbie in the Sun Latte Girls On Top Team.  The pending race was a great excuse to get together at Easter time for some team training in which we carefully balanced tramping, MTB and kayaking with other important team building activities such as boogie boarding and cafe-ing.  With these activities under our respective belts we came away feeling prepared and excited about what the ARC would offer this year.

The first leg of the race was an 'exciting' ocean paddle starting from the Whangamata Surf club.  The swell was sitting at 2 meters and from the beach we did wonder how it was going to be possible to get out through the break while remaining in the boats and attached to our paddles.  Somehow we made it out with only a few face washes to show for it and off we went to deal with the swell.  The plan was to collect a few rogaine checkpoints then paddle down the coast to a surf landing at Onemana beach.  Unfortunately the conditions were more than my heart rate monitor and quivering legs could handle, so in the interests of keeping our borrowed kayak in one piece we elected to paddle into whangamata harbour and ride around to Onemana, accruing a small time penalty in the process.

Upon arriving in Onemana this proved to be a very good choice, boats and people were parting company and there was kayak carnage as far as the eye could see.  We were very relieved to not be in amongst it all and set out on the coasteering leg north from Onemana around the peninsular.  This leg proved to be quite challenging, but equally spectacular as there were a couple of swims, one which involved a leap of faith into the break with fingers crossed that you had got your timing right and you would be facing the right way when you got washed onto the rocks!  With all the checkpoints collected we headed off on our mountain bikes for a 3hr ish ride that included some very sharp nav from the map reading girls (Anne and Deb) ending at the Wentworth valley camp.
 
Next on the agenda was a long tramp that started with an awesome abseil down the Wentworth Falls.  None of us were particularly enthused about the forecast dunk into the freezing cold pool at the bottom of the abseil but the kayaker in the pool took pity on us and joy of joy we stayed dry by landing straight into the kayak!  Off we went on the tramp on some awesome unmarked tracks that led to another freezing dunk (thanks Deb, you legend for volunteering for that one) and to the golden cross mine.  After some more sharp nav from the girls (we were now in the dark and we seemed to be overtaking a large string of teams who were very happy to sit behind us and follow our directional lead) we found the forecast lake and circle of stones that were part of the race mystery.

Down to Maratoto we went and into an old gold mine (the tunnel seemed to stretch for miles), another cold dunk and we collected the seventh stone that would be the last part of the mystery.  Then we climbed up to Maratoto rock up a seemingly vertical track (I wish we had been there in daylight, I am sure the view was awesome) and back down for some rifle shooting.  After some crack shooting and we were off on our bikes again towards the Waihou river for a long night paddle.
 
By now it was really the dark hour and a couple of un-named team members were reported to be nodding off whilst paddling in the tranquility of the calm star lit night.  Several hours of paddling later and we were out the river mouth and up another river to the Thames racecourse.  The final leg was a MTB up the Kaueranga valley with a wee rogaine towards the end (which the girls navigated fantastically given the state of mind by that stage).  25.5 hours after starting the race we finished at the Kaueranga Education center.

We ended up a very credible 6th out of 12 teams, achieving our goals while most importantly having quite a few laughs along the way.  Thanks very much to Graeme, Mark and Sally who were an awesome support crew.  Our transition set up definitely generated some envy from the other teams in the race.  Thanks very much also to all our sponsors who keep us racing while nutritionally sated, fully equipped and clothed in functional, stylish clothing for the duration of the race.
 
Looking forward to the next race for Girls On Top, the Whakatane 24 hour race on the 7th of May.