Crazyman - Saturday 7 May 2011

http://www.crazyman.co.nz/
Although the Crazyman is quite a huge event, and I had decided to do it long before the event date, I still somehow managed to have so much to do and then it was suddenly there, two weeks away. I had done some training, but nowhere near as much as I had hoped to get in. This was my first big race on my new Orange that I had only recently acquired. There was no way that I would have been able to do the whole thing alone, so I was in a duathlon team with my brother Jony. He was doing the hilly 18km run, and I was doing the 39km mountain bike.



The weather on the day was atrocious, it had been pouring for days and the sky didn’t look promising. The run came first, so I was off to Wainuiomata to wait. Jony was back a bit sooner than I had expected, which was a good thing but it was a bit of a shock to see him so soon.

The cycle leg went up Jungle Scout and Jungle Gym and then along Labyrinth in the Wainui MTB Park, and then along the Hutt skyline for a very long way (coming down at Silverstream) and along the Hutt River trail for about 12km. It was impossibly muddy all the way, pretty soon I had no clean surface on me. The worst bit was getting mud in my mouth, going to wipe it off with my arm, only to smear even more mud on my face. At 18km my speedo decided it had had enough so it stopped working, not a big disaster, but frustrating as I was relying on it to pace myself. I was mostly just hoping not to set the record for the slowest time ever, but ideally getting under the 3 hour mark, slower than the average, but still an ok target for me. After my speedo died I really tried to pick up the pace, desperately hoping I was on target. I got back in a time of 2 hours 38 minutes, so I was very pleased with that. I had pushed it pretty hard along the Hutt River trail and I was literally still panting like 20 minutes after.



Jony and I came 12th out of the 18 mixed duathlon teams; we were pretty pleased with that result. It was a really well run event, the guys obviously knew what they were doing - and special thanks to Michael Jacques for being flexible with the age limit so we could enter. It was really enjoyable and I’m uber-keen for next year.