Wild Wellington Mountain Bike Relay

Well this was my last weekend in Wellington and what better way to celebrate than to do another race. This one was a little different than the previous few however as it was a 12hr team event on Mt Vic in Welly. It is a first for Wellington and was a great event though very taxing.

The team was entered in the open men's category and I knew we would have some stiff competition as the pros were also in this category because there was no separate class for them. Our team name was the "Mainland Munters". Since the one thing we all have in common is we are from down south. I like to think that Joe, the man responible for the name is the only one giving truth to the Munters part of the name :-)

It all started out really well. Joe spearheaded our effort and on the first lap did a wicked job. He came through in 3rd. An enormous effort. We held onto this position for a long while. Getting into 2nd or very close to it at one stage. We trailed 2nd place for most of the race and were always close to them. After 12hrs of pain and 9 laps each, 1800m climbing each and 64km of sprint speed mountain biking we finished 3rd in the open men's out of 42 and 4th overall out of 100 teams.

The weather was incredible. We only get 5 days like this in Welly a year and it really made the event. People were having a great time and I was also well impressed with the setup. Having our site inside the velodrome was pretty cool as was biking around it during the laps. The music with a live band was also great, as was the company by a few visitors throughout the day. (Bridget, Fran, John, Suri Etc.) Not too mention the team we were camped with made up by Jabez, Matt, G and Dan.

The track itself, well I was worried that it would be too easy. I was well impressed by the few techy bits they had in it. Lots of great bits to hit full noise and many drifting corners. I have never had so much fun in a race with 2 wheels sliding sideways. However the track was a killer. So many uphills. I think we would have spent on an 18min lap about 15min climbing. Still it was a challenge, especially on the latter laps when the legs wanted to seize up. My last lap in the dark was heaps of fun though it was my slowest lap, though it did feel fast.

On the Sunday I spend the day with the Chch lot that came up for the event and we went for a nice walk in Belmont Regional Park in the Hutt. Had some great lunch and found a lovely old tree to climb. On the Sunday evening before they all flew out to Chch a curry was had for dinner down at Masala to see off a fun weekend. Just like old times.

After an insane morning on Monday, packing, moving, cleaning, blood tests I got to the airport to fly to Timaz only to notice that my flights had been booked the wrong way round. To cut a long story short it has cost me all up now $570 to see the folks for a few days before I leave for Asia on Thurs. The views out of the plane though nice still made little consolation to my wallet. I will never do that again. Bugger