Epic Camp NZ '08 Day 5

Epic NZ ’08 Day 5 – Still in Wanaka

For those following along from afar you may know some of the campers either in person or from their race results over the last few years.
There’s no one here who wouldn’t be one of the strongest guys in their hometowns.
Everyone here has ridden well under 5:30 in an IM and is as tough as hell.
Yet after 4 days of smashing themselves to bits and being smashed by the group even these guys start to get humbled when the intensity really gets amped up as it does at some point every day.
A good example of that was today’s uphill TT up the Crown Range from the Queenstown. I’m putting the results here to help with perspective and no other reason The TT came at the 100km point of the ride and most of us had already swam and ran this morning as well as rode very steady to get to the base of the climb with quite a few hills enroute up through the Kuwara Gorge. We figured it would take approx. 40+ minutes for the fast guys to get up it and that everyone would spend considerable time in their easiest gear no matter what gear they brought.
We set off at 30-second intervals with the leaders on the KOM points going off at the end. Here are the times:
Beven James-Eyles 36:37
Chris MacAteer (support crew) 37:58
Paul Westwood 38:49
Me 39:31
Newsom 39:54
G-Man 40:23 (got a bloody nose doing it!)
Albert 41:10
Douglas Scott (age 47) 42:07
Tara 42:19
John Drury (age 47) 43:10
Mike Gilbert (age 42) 43:22
Elliott Drake 44:04
Toby Radcliffe 44:45
Rob Creasy (support crew) 44:55
Clive Asplen 45:17
Kevin Farley 47:41
Ron Tribendis 49:01
Mark Petrofesa 49:14
Andrew Charles 51:23
Rob Chance 56:41 (just happy to get up that damn thing!)
Anthony DeMarco 58:06
Andrew Chirnside (aerobars came loose and nearly came off)
Brandon (knee is dodgy so didn’t do it)

Everyone has my full respect for doing it at all. It was damn hot and sunny again and hardly a breath of wind on that climb.
I’m sure some of the guys really didn’t appreciate prior to the camp just how much intensity there would be. When you look at the distances involved its safe to assume it all must be getting done at a very moderate pace but if you talk to them now I’m pretty sure everyone will agree that we’ve been going damn hard at some point every day and usually for a hell of a long time.

At dinner tonight G-Man read off the points and Albert is still in Yellow with Newsom and Tara now within range, but they’ll have to pull out something pretty special to take Yellow from Albert. He tacked on to total 180km for the day on the bike and still had his run to do. Since he swan another 6km this morning he didn’t have time to run unless he would have started out with some of us at 6am.
Tara also tacked on the bike and then ran another 50 minutes! so is fully into playing the game now. She swam 6km in the pool with me this morning so had about 10 hours of training today.

When we pulled into Wanaka near the end of the ride a lot of treats were gobbled up! I think I might have had a 10,000 Calorie day today. Seemed like I was drinking thick carb drinks or stuffing my face with food all day. And then another scrumptious dinner!
Toffee Pops all around tonight and well-deserved.

Tomorrow is another massive day. The ride is approx 180km goes back over the Crown Range, the back way to Queenstown for lunch and then out to Glenorchy and back. That section is 90km of the slowest road in the world! And my guess is that it will take the quickest guys approx 3:20 to ride that section alone.

Lots of laughs at all of this silliness tonight as I sign off……….
Newsom had said he wasn't going to be part of any tackon-a-thon.

Sure Johnny. Sure :-)