EC NZ '09 - Day 5 - Collingwood and Heaphy track

Day 5 in Collingwood

One of the main reasons we've come up this far is to run on the Heaphy Track which is one of th eSouth Islands "Great Walks" Along with the Milford track, the Greenstone, The Keplar, the Routeburn and Abel Tasman there is a hell of a lot of incredible scenery to be seen on this little island. I look forward to enjoying these at a leisurely pace at some point in the future.

The plan for today was:
1) 3km swim race inGolden Bay followed by breakfast
2) Drive to the Heaphy Track for a 2 hour run, drive back for lunch
3) ride a minimum of 60km on yoru own or with others as you like.
A cruisy day with only 5.25 hours of scheduled training!

The swim was pretty funny as the tide wasnt' quite fulland the water here is super shallow (2-3 feet deep) until you get about 800m off shore. so there was a ton of dolphin diving in the race today.
Heath won handily with Steven, John and Chris towing me and Tara staying in range by dolphin diving like she's been doing it all her life.
Bevan swam about 400m off course before he stood up to check out where he was! What a crack up to see him about 600m from the beach walking along out there.

The road to the Heaphy is shingle for the last 10km so we had to drive.
The trail itself is a little rockier than I had imagined and we needed to focus on footing the entire time. It was a gradual 2,000ft. climb up to the turn-around and thank goodness it was mostly in the shade as it was getting pretty balmy ou there.
Mike and I were bringing up the rear on the way up and not too unhappy about it.
The trip back down was faster but the already sore quads took a hammering.
Tara stumbled and in catching herself from going down strained her hamstring badly and could barely manage to walk out. She wasn't a happy camper!!!
She had a few tears, iced it, had some celebrex, some massage from John and after a nap did manage to spin her 60km but it wasn't looking too good for tomorrow.
Piet tacked on to the end of that run as did Lou (without quite realizing it at the time) and later Steven did another run - get this - a 2.5 hour run!!!as well as his 60km ride. Jo did 150km and seems to be over the worst of her knee prblem
Some people went out to tswim to get the make-up swim of 3km done.

I on ther other hand was content to bake under the brilliant sun and drink beer and eat.
Perfect day! :-)
There was only a light breeze this afternoon so I did get out for my easy 60km ride with some others and still had an hour before dinner. Seemed like we had so much time to cruise today.
It was too nice outside and the company too good to get caught up on my blog so true to form I'm a little late.....

No change in the jerseys - Steven in Yellow, Chris in the polka-dots.
Hopefully John will update the points on his blog but it looks like Tara will be the big mover downwards and Jo will be rocketing back upwards in the standings.

Another great dinner from our support crew which included anothr top job by Daniel McDonald on the BBQ this evening. Nice to have him out riding again and getting the dust off of his bike!
But man was he tortuing the lycra in those bike shorts..........