Let me start this post by saying that Hawkes Bay in general have been the most welcoming so far on my road to 52 in 52. The people of the Hawkes Bay BNI have sponsored me generously and Cranford Hospice have attended races, kept in touch and even sent me wine!
This continued when I was given free entry to the Norsewood to Takapau Fun Challenge, a road half marathon between these small Central Hawkes Bay towns. Lizzie from Sports Hawkes Bay, who were organizing the event, bent over backwards to help and get me coverage... to the point where I found myself stopping in Taupo on Saturday morning in transit for a radio interview.
I had a great chat for more than a few minutes with the Saurday announcers and continued my trip. I was aware that the weather hadn't been great in the area, but that had happened before with the race eventually starting in fine weather - take Wellington who started 2 days after the worst downpour since the Wahine storm.So I finished my 3 and a half hour drive to Waipukarau late morning and set about waiting for Lainy who was arriving on the bus from Wellington where she had been at a funeral. The bus was on time and I was able to greet her with the news that the race had just been postponed for a week... bummer!
I had hopped on Chris Hope's fabulous NZ Running Calendar site to see what options I had
So, back to Rotorua, with a nice stop for lunch in Napier.Lainy would have come with me on Sunday but was not very well and we had an Open Home that day, so I left her sleeping as I set off from Rotorua at 4:30am! I like to get to all of my races an hour early at least, it is the way I work and with Sri Chinmoy starting at 8am....
First thing that struck me, the Sri Chinmoy people are fabulous, friendly, warm and genuinely interested in what I was doing. Funnily enough, the same Chris Hope mentioned above was there looking for a cruisy half. Michael Dall - who seems to be everywhere was there, and Jason Buckley who I had met on Facebook (as you do) and got to meet in person for the first time.
I also met Madeleine Collins, definitely Shaun Collins from Lactic Turkey's better half! Also there was the lovely Anna Longdill visiting from the other end of the country for a run with a friend. Everyone seemed happy and friendly and eager to please - they even gave me number 52!I travelled through rain most of the way to Auckland, but
as so often happens, the weather cleared about 20 minutes before run time into a lovely, if chilly, morning.
We started off our 8 and a bit laps of the Auckland Domain by heading off in the wrong direction for a little 'out and back' to make the distance up to 21.1km at the end. This was ok as we got to see everybody else in the race as they found their pace.
The first lap was quite pleasant, the second was ok, by lap 3 I was not impressed and when we got to lap 6, 7 and 8 I just wanted it to end. The Garmin figures show that you have only done 164m of vertical climbing, but by the end you have had enough.
A nature stop in the middle showed how 'un-serious' we were taking it, as we plodded out the laps.
It was an interesting experience, but not one that I will hurry to repeat (unless another race in cancelled). The plus part of it was a great run chatting with Chris, who is a neat bloke and enabled me to keep my sanity running around in circles. I guess 9 and a half hours (793km) of driving to get there may have contributed to my lack of enthusiasm as well.
After the race, the fantastic Sri Chinmoy people lay on breakfast, porridge, fruit, chippies... a lovely energy replacer. In the end Chris and I battled around in 1:49 for my second slowest road half ever and I was happy to have been able to tick off number 11... but not in a hurry to see Auckland domain again... for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment