Back home

Arrived back in the UK early this morning, and enjoyed a beautiful sunrise over a very frosty (-3degC) Royston Heath on our drive back from Heathrow to Cambridge.
We've now scanned in some of the official event photos (plus one by Sean), which you can view by clicking the new slideshow at the top of the left-hand column of this blog.
This is our last post to the blog, so a chance to say a very big thank you to all who have supported us, whether through donations (not to late to do that!), blog comments or e-mails and texts of encouragement.
...mmmmm, now what next???

Fame

Probably our last post from NZ. Looks like we may have to wait until we're back in the UK to scan and publish the official photos. On the fame front, "The Press" newspaper used a picture of us celebrating the finish of the kayak leg yesterday, so hope to get a copy of that too.

Just off for a two-day jaunt to Mt Cook, including a boat trip up to the foot of the Tasman Glacier. More importantly a chance to try out the built-in DVD player that came with our camper van!!

So keep watching for those final pics (likely up by 17 Feb), but otherwise over and out for now.

That was easy (yeah, right!)

Title is borrowed from a NZ advert series for Tui beer. How nice it is not to have to get up at 5am and face 10 or more hours of strenuous exercise! Still enjoying the feeling of success as we finish some bacon butties for breakfast. But the food that kept us going, and provided the antidote to litre upon litre of sweet energy drink, was Marmite (My Mate in NZ) sarnies.

The event was even tougher than we expected – The mountain run is more akin to fell running than anything else – all but maybe 7 or 8km of the 33km course is stepping/clambering over boulders, rocky flood plains or tree-root-strewn paths, while climbing 2,500ft. We had a horrible hour-and-half in the middle of the section, after two officials had indicated the cut-off at the highest point, Goat Pass was 3pm and not the 4pm we were relying on. We were very, very, very relieved when the official at Goat Pass said we were 50mins inside the cut off!

The 67km paddle was tough on physical endurance, but also mentally, as you cannot afford to stop concentrating on the right lines through braids, or round bluffs. However, it was made far more survivable by the excellent tips we had been given by Gaz, our Kayak coach and guide during our final training, who also acted as our assistant for the kayak section of the race.

After that, the final 70km cycle to the finish at Sumner beach (on the coast east of Christchurch proper) was the least of our worries, though hard on tired legs, backs and shoulders.

Now we are off to the Town Hall for the event brunch and hopefully to collect some official action photos of us on the course – should include Hamilton Rapid and some on the mountain course. If we can get these electronically, we’ll put them on the blog, but may have to wait until home with a scanner.

This is a good time to say a huge thanks to Sean Kisby, who has been a fantastic assistant, looking after our every need, being a cheery face at the transitions, and cooking up some fabulous and nourishing ‘jollop’ for Friday evening between the two days. Thanks Sean!

We dun it!

More later - we're going for a pizza

Half way

Very happy to have completed day one including the gruelling mountain run. Got to the highest point at Goat Pass 50 minutes before the cutoff time. We will sleep well tonight before the river kayak and final cycle to Sumner tomorrow.

Probably our last blog post before starting the event. We hope to get some news posted as we go along, so do keep watching.
This morning we attended a special Mayor’s reception for ‘international’ competitors, and were interviewed for radio and also got our picture taken with Steve Gurney – eight-times winner of the one-day event.
Have collected the campervan (occurs to us would be much easier to drive across the island) and, more importantly, Sean, our English but NZ-resident friend from Auckland, who will be our main assistant for the event (ie helping swap bikes, kayaks etc at transitions, and acting agony-aunt/uncle regarding our aches and pains.
Weather forecast for the event is good, though hot, so we will be drinking plenty of fresh water in advance and especially from the Deception and Mingha Rivers during the mountain run (refreshing and safe).
Thanks for all your comments on the blog – keep them coming – Here we go!!!

What a difference two years make...

(Midday, Monday in NZ) Yesterday, we did our much awaited (and feared) kayak run down the Waimakariri river. As we did two years ago, the plan was to do the top 55 km of the 67 km Coast to Coast course, beginning at the Mt White Bridge get in and covering all the difficult bits before getting out at Woodstock.

My memory of the trip two years ago was one of total terror – lots of big scary rapids and high bluffs in the gorge, at which the water throws you in an totally uncontrolled way, whilst you paddle for your life…… Okay, perhaps a little over-dramatised, but that’s how it appeared in my nightmares. And you wonder why we’re doing this again?

This year, the water is really low – the consequence is that the whole trip will be slower, the rapids will be worse with respect to exposed rocks, so less easy to paddle over. The positive side is that the lower flow, will mean the bluffs are less aggressive.

We began at Mt White Bridge on what was an absolutely gorgeous day, and butterflies were quickly banished as we began the first few kilometres of braided river. The challenge of the braided section is to choose the deepest channel, which is often difficult to do effectively. However, it’s a nice way to ease yourself into the paddle, as the worst that can happen is that you have to shuffle rather inelegantly over gravel if you get it wrong. As you’ll see from the new video, the scenery is absolutely breath-taking. (Video is top of the 4 on the left - if you only see 3 videos, YouTube have not yet finished processing - try again later today and it should have appeared.)

After about 8-9k we hit a series of rapids called the rock gardens – the video shows how bumpy they are. This was where we really began to believe that we had really moved on in two years, as we were able to ride them quite comfortably, and were actually really beginning to enjoy the trip.

The rock gardens set the scene for the rest of the trip - a long one, with often challenging features including bluffs, rapids and long standing wave trains. The scariest have names and have gone down in the history of the event, like Hamilton Rapids and Carnage Corner. The whole trip was hard work but absolutely fantastic; at the end of the day we were able to stay focussed and handle all that the Waimak could throw at us, without either of us swimming…… at least until the end when David got a bit hot and decided it was a good time to cool off in the glacial waters. I’m afraid I missed the actual event as I was ahead and around the corner, but apparently it was very, very, very dramatic, and involved huge whirlpools and life-threatening sea monsters. Luckily David was big and brave, and we got to the end tired, but still smiling.

So, here we are at the end of our training for C2C. All that remains is for us to relax for the next few days before heading over to the West Coast on Thursday. We’re as well prepared as we can be, but neither of us expect it to be a doddle. The Waimak may be manageable as it is, but on race day we’ll have the added hazard of hundreds of other competitors paddling (and swimming) around us, so we both expect that we will swim in the race. However, we know that once we’re on the river section, we just need to keep heading down river until we get to our bikes……..and then it’s just a gentle 43 mile pedal to the finish line in Sumner!!