Epic NZ 2007 Day 12

Epic NZ 2007 Day 12 - ride 85km to Wanaka, run, swim

We’ll have to ride up the other side of the Crown Range next year as well as Coronet Peak. We were a little short on mountains on this camp! The route for the ride today was a gentle 85 km to Cromwell and then along Lake Dunstan. We had a stiff headwind that slowed things down a lot and the ride took about 40 minutes longer than I anticipated. We still got to the pre-race briefing by 10am though and the race director Matt Tuck promptly put most of us to sleep with his marathon soliloquy. Which was fine with me because all I could think of for the last hour of the ride was getting back to bed.

Our motel wasn’t’ ready for check-in yet so Montgomery and I went looking for pizza.
He’s still feeling pretty good, and isn’t sick or injured which is a testament to his constitution. After 2 consecutive camp yellow jerseys he’s feeling pretty positive about his camps and his ability to pace himself through his training in general.
I hope he joins us for more camps in the future because he helps every one to lift their game including me.

Some people went back out to lengthen their rides for points and because it would be the last chance to ride on the camp. We said a quick good-bye to Clive who had a flight from Queenstown this afternoon.

The sun was blazing by now so I had a couple of cold ones and a short rest before heading over to the pool. I needed to swim and run today to finish off my goal of running every day and also to keep pushing the guys in the camp points competition. Young Toby seemed very determined to take 3rd over-all for the camp so I had to swim a set of 20 x 100 on the 1:25 to get a couple of more points to keep the pressure on him. Unfortunately I had to swim over and maim a couple of small children playing in the public lane to stay on pace. The parents of those kids didn’t seem to mind much though as no one said anything to me. Perhaps the veins bulging out of my neck and temples and my belching, dragon-fire like breathing at the end of the pool for my 5-seconds breaks between 100’s had something to do with that. Andrew Charles was aqua-running in the lane next to me and running interference, trying to keep my lane clear for me. He’s got a big job ahead of him now to get his achilles healed before IM Malaysia which is approaching pretty quickly.


A lot of us ran in the heat of the day to finish off the training for the day and the camp. I had already decided to not race tomorrow as my right knee has deteriorated significantly all week, but a 50-minute run seemed possible and I’d done too damn much suffering for 2 weeks to let that 10-point bonus slip away so I ambled out and caught some 12+ UV rays as well. It was a balmy 85 degrees when I got back at just after 6pm. Gotta love summer in central Otago. Blissfully roasting in the hot sun on a nice trail along the lake is a great way to ease the pain in this ol’ carcass.

This evening it seemed like every one was ready to let the guard down a bit. Although some are taking part in the event tomorrow in one way or another only David Craig really seems set on putting together a solid swim/bike. He’s paced himself through the camp remarkably well. The others seem less committed to the effort.