Veronica's blog: March racing

March is the month of generally settled weather and that is the reason why most running events are held during this month.

Three years in a row we have done the "Mt Terako extreme challenge" which takes place in the surrounings of Mt Lyford north west of Christhurch. During the winter this is a skiing area and during the summer you can come and enjoy lots of gravel, rocks and more rocks. The race takes you about 20 km with some grunty hills that add up to almost 2000 m elevation in total. This race is different from most other races here in that it doesn't follow any particular tracks. This makes it the most interesting race of them all, I think.

It is a bit of a drive up to Mt Lyford but we insisted to sleeping at home the night before the race and we set off from home allowing 1.5 hr to drive. After about 1 hr, we had this strong sense that we wouldn't get to the race start on time since the drive turned out to be more like 2 - 2.5 hrs. I was pretty tense and we didn't eat anything during the journey, but we made it to the start line with 10 minutes spare before the start of the race. Once we set off, I realised that I was immensely hungry. I tried to eat a few of my ginger nuts, power gels and other horrible things, but nothing was filling my empty hole.

The entire race I was focused on food. I was thinking of hamburgers, lasagna, mum's greenpepercorn sauce with wedges...you name it.

I thought I had a chance to catch up to the girl who was first along the rough section. I did well and passed Ric Barber about where I usually pass him every year in the race :-). When I came to the bottom of Lottory Creek and the race followed up a side creek a further 500 m up bush bashing), I pretty much hit the wall. Ginger nuts didn't really give me any energy any longer. it was just down to pain now. Ric passed me..even more painful.

I never caught up with the leading woman. She finished 20 min ahead of me I think... Bloody blog site. I had just spent 30 min writing a much longer post and when I tried to publish it, it wouldn't work and nothing was saved either.

Stuff it!! I am not writing more...only pics this time. Below is Charlie running down the last big downhill section of the race. The weekend after Terako, we went up to Golden Bay for another cool race. When I did the Croeser's crossing race in January and won as a spot price a free entry to "the Escape from Tane's forest". The race is intended to change location each year and 2010 it took us over the Kaituna track which we happened to have scouted out during our Xmas holiday.
I forgot my shorts and had to borrow some from a kind man I just met ( a bit embarrassing). They look great on me eh?