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LATEST REPORT - 9 June 2005

Lake Tekapo mountain bike 90kms

Myself and Lachlan (noel) traveled down to compete in the around Lake Tekapo mountain race on which was to be held on Sunday of Queens birthday weekend. With recent snowfall the several river crossings at the top were going to be very cold!

The day dawned white with frost and a flat tyre. My problems from last week had already returned. I had already taken the trye off and checked the rim but obviously there was still something small in there. I had no option but to put another tube in and hope for the best!

That didn’t last long. I was going not too bad in the race until about 30kn into the race on a rocky section it went flat again. As I had no spare I borrowed one and got going again. At this point I hurt myself for a while until to my despair it was slowly leaking…… again! I decided to pump it up again and see what happened. I did it about 3 times and got to the finish! The scenery was amazing and I got to see quite a lot as I decided to ease the last hour or so.

I ended up finishing with noel which was fun and we got on the road and headed home back to Christchurch smartly. It was a good event and about 1200 people completed it! Still having major problems with my hip so might be having a MRI scan shortly. If all goes well my next big race will be the peak to peak in Queenstown on July 9th.

Thanks for reading.

Mt Isobel Challenge Double Header Weekend - 1 June

Well hello to all. I have been getting a bit of stick for not updating this but to be honest there hasn’t been much to report. I had 4 weeks off which was great and Rebecca and I purchased some land which was very exciting! Also I have been having prolotherapy on my left hip which is still causing me trouble since the Tour of Southland in which I hit the deck very hard! They inject glucose which is suppose to help the healing process but this takes a while so it is very frustrating!!

Anyway enough waffle. This weekend was going to hurt. A 1000 meter climb up Mt Isobel then a 25km mountain bike all on about 2 training runs and 2 rides! I had been doing heaps in the kayak because of my injury so was confident about the 16km kayak race on the mighty Waiau river gorge on Sunday. This is a great stretch of water with plenty of white water!

Saturday was very windy so the run was shortened a little because it was too dangerous to go right to the top. I struggled up the berg but then was feeling really great on the bike until I punctured! Then my spare buggered as well! So I had to wait until somebody gave me their one. I got going but that also had a slow leak but I managed to nurse it home on the rim. So all in all it really was a shocker!

After a sleepless night in Hanmer because of huge winds and rain the kayak race was next up. It was pouring with rain but the river had only come up a little. I was confident about this stretch of water because in the past I had raced it in the jet boat and also had 2 paddles prior to the race. I finished 6th overall and lost about 3.40 to Gurney. So I was reasonably happy with that.

Overall a good weekend racing that blew the cobwebs out and got me back into the groove. Also good to see that there were over 400 in the Mt Isobel race on Saturday. This weekend is around Lake Tekapo mountain bike race which already has over 1000 entries in it. So we will keep ya posted….maybe haha.

More pics up soon of kayak race.

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