16 January 2007

Epic NZ 2007 Day 8 - Wanaka

We spent the whole day in Wanaka today. What a neat little town.
Some of us are taking part in some way or another in the new IM distance race here on Saturday - Challenge Wanaka.
What a dramatic, challenging course they've put together here.
We did the swim course as a camp event this morning along with quite a few others already in town for the event. The water here is crystal clear and about 16 degrees C so very pleasant. Its also surprisingly shallow the whole way on the swim course so its easy to see the bottom as well as the feet in front of you. Gorgeous lake for swimming.
We had no swell today for te race so it went pretty quick.
I followed the pack content in the draft for the first 1km until they veared off course after one of the turns. I shouted out to the lead kayaker to see if she was gonna lead us in a straight line on the course and she yelled back "yes, follow me!" so I hit it hard over towards her and got a good gap until the others realized their mistake.
We had Belinda and Justin Granger in our bunch today so nice to have a few others to race other than ourselves.
I hobbled up the beach sorta wrecked from yesterdays aquathon, and ended up first just a toe ahead of G-Man and then Albert but Scott Davis and Mark P were also right there in the pack at 51+ minutes.

After breakfst people had the rst of the day to do as they wanted. I chose to to the minimum camp daily of 60km ride and 50 minute run. Mike Montogomery rode to Queenstown and back! Holy shit! That was huge.
Quite a few long runs were done too which surprised me. It was a sunny, hot 85 degrees most of the day so nice to get some heat. KP if you're reading this you'll be glad to hear this DLTT member was boiling all day and I'm now a nice shade of purple.
Good to see Toby passing me on the points table today. He went to the pool as well this afternoon to do another swim and 1km of that included the bands only. The guy is hanging in there! Andrew Charles still has an inflamed achilles so he went to do his run in the pool but its not really deep enough to water run so he got quite a few funny looks from the kids in the pool! HA!

A few beers were drunk and a big trough of guacamole was eaten with a barrel of chips this afternoon prior to dinner. The guys were generally making pigs of themselves when not training - a sure sign of deep fatigue. Funny to watch and fun to be a part of!

Gordo's been egging me on to blog more and better and he does have a good point, but I just havent' been up to it or had the time. His massive blogging effort came on a day when he was snuggled up in bed all day (no bike or run!!!) with his duvet in Moana when I was leading the charge up Arthurs Pass!
Johnno has just arrived at the internet place now (at 8:50pm) and it closes in 10 minutes so I know he won't be doing a hell of a lot more than sending off some photos.........
More tomorrow. Cheers! Scott