52 in 52 Race #6 - Lactic Turkey Double Rainbow

One thing about Shaun Collins from Lactic Turkey Events, he is always on for an interesting new event... another thing is that he is not very good at measuring distance - but more on that later!

photo by Lorraine Thorne

It was a cold frosty morning at Lake Okaro near Rainbow Mountain for the first ever running of the Double Rainbow Trail Run. Seeing the white frosty grass on the way out for the very reasonable 10am start, I was very happy that I was not in the marathon as they started at 8am!

As usual with a new event, the numbers were ok at 120 over the 3 events, but with plenty of room for growth... and from everyones glowing reports, that will happen. This was also the first event of a weekend Double-Header and so I was determined not to 'overdo' it.

After catching up with a few of the usual suspects and sharing running lies, the race kicked off with about one and a half km's around to the back of the lake where we climbed through the fence and into the neighbouring dairy farm. Wet feet through the puddles in the paddock and onto the dairy race (left) for some hard fast running... through the underpass to the other side of the highway and then some more dairy race, a bit more paddock (dry this time). Then around the roads at the back of the quarry and into the trail!
 
And what wonderful trail, I have run on Rainbow Mountain a couple of times before and walked parts of it with family. However the first bit from the Murupara Road through to SH5 (right) was a section I had not run... but will in the future! Nice and flowing through the bush with gentle ups and downs it was great.

photo by Lorraine Thorne

Then you pop out (left) by the carpark on SH5 (to be greeted by partner Lorraine and my daughter Kate) and then back onto the trail and the climbing starts. Gentle at first for a couple of km's to the turn... the turn up the hill for the first time.

photo by Michael Rodliffe

It is amazing the difference that race mode brings - even when you are 'taking it easy'. I ran far more of the uphill than I have ever done in other runs on the mountain... although no-one that I saw was running the last few hundred metres... that was just plain steep! Whether it was because I had run more than usual or because of the company I was chatting to on the way up, but the top came a lot quicker than I had expected (right).

Then we reached the "Aid Station at the Top of the World" (left) with amazing views over the fog covered Reporoa Valley all the way to Taupo and around. A quick turnaround here and down we went, onto the relatively new MTB trail and this was a great free-wheeling gallop, left, right, ups and downs... but mainly down. Had to watch the footing with plenty of roots and slippery bits, but it was awesome.

The trail then spat us out next to Kerosene Creek, I resisted the temptation to go and have a quick soak and stayed on the trail that winds around the mountain back to the start of the uphill again. This was a really fun and testing bit of trail with lots of rolling ups and downs. At this stage I was feeling pretty ok and going a bit faster than I had planned.

photo by Michael Rodliffe

Back onto the hill for the second time and my time was only 1 minute slower than the first ascent (right)... so that was pretty good. I had my own drink in my Inov-8 waist pack... so I just grabbed a handful of jet planes at the top and back down again... this time down the road - which sucked, well not really, but after the MTB trail a road will always come a very, very poor second. At the bottom onto a bit of forestry road and before we knew it we were back onto the farmland.

photo by Lorraine Thorne

Funny thing but everyone seemed to find the dairy races a lot longer heading back than on the way out, I wonder why! I certainly did and was starting to wane. Seeing someone closing in on me back across the paddock gave me the necessary incentive for a final push and I reached the gold at the end of the 'Double Rainbow' in just under 3 hours (the pot of gold was a pot of Crunchie bars by the way). The 24km had come in at about 26km and the marathon runners finished up running a massive 47km's!!

At the finish was a wonderful bottle of Crouchers Pilsner and a great lunch and lots of pats on the back and a load more runners lies!

The temperature was dropping and a few spits of rain, so we popped around to Kerosene Creek for me to have a soak. The rain started and the temperature dropped further so I took my family home and missed the prizegiving as they had already given fantastic support without giving them pneumonia!

The pretty much unanimous response on Facebook from the runners has been that this is one event you do not want to miss in the future! So watch out on the Lactic Turkey website for next years date.