Tarawera Ultra Race Report (60km)

*Apologies - this is a really long post and I don't have time to do an abridged version atm - i've bolded some of the interesting stuff for those that just want to scan through*

Tarawera Ultramarthon 2013 – 60km

Preparation

With race day on Saturday we planned to make our way to Auckland on Thursday, pick up Sophie & Calebs spare car and drive down to Rotorua on Friday morning. Leaving plenty of time to relax and attend the running seminar and registration on Friday afternoon. Jesh only just got a standby to Auckland on the Thursday and spent all day at the airport which wasn’t ideal… but thankfully made it in the end. I had a minor hiccup with some poor strapping on Thursday before leaving for the airport but this was quickly resolved by posting on the race f/b page about my dilemma. Within 5 mins I had an 85k’er, a physio from Hamilton (thanks Scott) offering to redo the job for me on Friday.

We had an awesome sleep on Thursday night – blackout curtains and some seriously good insulation at the Sudima hotel at Auckland airport! Having a good sleep the “night before the night before” is often the best thing as many people don’t sleep well prior to racing. Particularly when you have to set the alarm for 5am!

Friday was fairly relaxing as planned and I tried to drink lots of water and eat lots. Don’t think I really ate more than normal though – just more carbs. Running seminar with the elites was great – albeit a bit nerve inducing!

Here's our nutrition selection for the following day.

And me trying on the five finger socks we got - a little weird but surprisingly comfortable.

Attempted to go to sleep around 10pm after packing everything for the following day, but sleep was fairly elusive. I never got into a decent deep sleep and maybe had about 4 hours the whole night. Jesh had an awful night, waking at 2pm with very bad stomach pains. This has happened a few times before, causing rushed visits to the doctor. Blood tests have showed increase in levels of pancreatic enzymes but it’s never turned completely acute.  Something we need to follow up on this week.

Race day

Alarm went off at 5am and I made a rushed trip down to the BP for some panadol and nuerofen (why on earth didn’t either of us have this!) which he took along with some gastro pills.

Very rushed breakfast at hotel was not ideal and I definitely didn’t eat enough. Jesh could barely even eat and I think even then we weren’t sure he’d be starting the race.

By the time we got to the visitor centre the painkillers seemed to have kicked in so we kitted up and set off for the start line. Final toilet stop for me and then we went to take a photo…. Doh, I’d left the flippen card for the camera in my laptop! Now we (and when I say we I mean Jesh) were stuck carrying the damn thing for no reason! Pretty disappointed as I’d planned to take lots of pics of the race. 

6.30am on the dot we set off… near the back of the pack.

Redwoods Visitor Centre – Tikitapu (Blue Lake): 13.7km

Very slow start to ‘race’, walking a lot of the first 3 or so km’s as we had the first of the biggest, steepest hills straight away. Additionally there were some nasty narrow stairs which saw us going into a funnel and slowing to a stop at several stages. It was very warm and muggy, cloud cover and 430 bodies mixed together made for a sweaty start! It was pitch black in the forest so 90% of us had headlamps on – it looked pretty amazing going up the hill! I was feeling very very nervous about the lack of visibility but was also confident in the awesome job Scott had done taping my ankles.

Here's us around 8km's in - looking happy atm!

Copyright © 2013 Shaun Collins

In some ways it was good to be forced to go so slow at the start of an ultra… however it wasn’t going to help us get to the first aid station in our goal time of 1:40-1:50. We finally made it to Tikitapu (Blue lake) after 13.7km just after the 2 hour mark. Grabbed a banana and a piklet, and off we went again.

Tikitapu – Okareka: 5.8km

The next section was only 5.8km and included a very loooong uphill gravel road which we felt obliged to walk at this stage of the race. You are told time and time again not to ‘over-run’ the first hills, and it was comforting to see others around us slowing to a walk at the hills too. I’m pretty sure this section also included the only couple of km’s of road we had. I would have KILLED for a bit of road later on in the race.

Still feeling pretty good now but as we approached the 19.5km mark at Okareka we were slowly realising our time goals may have been a wee bit lofty! According to the race results we got there at 2:45, which was not too bad, and bang on pace for the 8:25 finish. However knowing how much slower we were going to get later in the race I was starting to feel much less confident about this ‘plan’. Not knowing what the trail was like ahead though I still calculated that if we could roughly keep this pace we’d be in around 9 hours.

Copyright © 2013 Shaun Collins

Okareka – Millar Road: 2.7km

This next section to Millar road aid station was really short. But boy oh boy those 2.7km’s were starting to feel really long by now with all the ascents. Can’t remember much else through these few km’s, we grabbed quite a bit of food at the Millar Road aid station as we know the next leg was the longest stretch without aid. I made a mistake here by being in too much of a rush at the aid station and not taking the time to fill my camelbak fully. Paid for this in the last 40mins of the following leg.

Overall, really loving it at this point. Such beautiful scenery and so glad to be finally out doing this race we'd been building up to for so long. 

Millar Road – Okatanina Lodge: 14.8km

This was a looooong stretch and I started to hurt a bit towards the end. A couple of river crossings here saw us clambering up and down steep river banks. The last short section and this 14.7 took us 3:25 so quite a bit slower pace now. We had so many sections uphill that had to be walked, and it was difficult to get into a good rhythm as the hills just kept on coming!

My left quad was starting to give me issues towards the end of this leg. I still don’t know what causes this – it’s a horrible feeling like my leg is going to give way on me. Even though I felt i’d consumed enough calories and electrolytes I knew I was starting to get pretty dehydrated. I decided to have 2 gels within 20mins of each to try and give me a boost. It seemed to work fairly well and the quad didn’t give in completely.

The very cool thing about the end of this leg is we started to see some of the fast 85km teams pass us – heading to the finish line! So we knew it wasn’t too long before the 100km elites would pass us.

We arrived at Okatanina Lodge aid station at 6:11, 45mins slower than what my race plan dictated. However in the grand scheme of things I still felt positive we could get through the next 20km’s in around 3 hours. Oh how naïve I was.

We handed our camera to Margo and she said she was leaving that aid station at 4.30pm… I remember saying ‘no worries we’ll be back by 3.30’. Oh dear, why was I so confident.

We stocked up on quite a bit of food here – hells pizza had arrived but neither of us really felt we could stomach that. I definitely wanted savoury though, the thought of having to have one more gel was making my stomach turn. I grabbed a huge piece of bacon and egg pie another half banana and off we went for the final 20km – the out and back bit of the new fire course.

Here's us leaving this aid station - not so smiley now.

Copyright © 2013 Shaun Collins

Okatanina – Humphries Bay: 10.4km

To say this 10.4km was technical is a huge understatement in my world.

A little background – when we did the 100km Oxfam run 6 years ago we were pretty unprepared for the off road parts of it (around 60-70% of it is off-road). I always regretted not doing more trail running in preparation for that. However it was NOT all trail, let alone technical trail. There was a lot of running through farms, big fields etc, as well as trail bits.

Knowing tarawera was mostly trails we did most of our training on the Abel tasman. The Abel Tasman (at least 20kms in from Marahau) is EASY compared to what we had to deal with for this last 20km.

The trail was single track, climbed up high, and consequently had some nasty cliffs to run along. And when we weren’t running along this narrow Cliff side we were running through the jungle. Yes, the jungle. Tree roots totally littered the ground making it impossible to navigate at any pace for fear of tripping and falling. And by now the fatigue was well and truly set in, making concentration very difficult. Your brain just stops doing anything but the basics to keep you moving forward. I remember trying to figure out roughly how many calories I’d be burning that day. It took me about 30 mins to calculate 500 x 10.

In addition to this we were running the part of the course that was out and back. We had to give way to everyone coming towards us. This made it impossible to get into any sort of rhythm. The only saving grace of this aspect was that 99% of people we gave way to were so gracious and were encouraging and smiling. And to have the elites run (fly) past us was absolutely tremendous. They too made a point of making eye contact and saying something. We were feeling very awestruck as Sage Canaday (the winner) and Timothy Olsen (Jesh’s hero) flew past. At the time they came through Sage had about a 20min lead on Timothy so Jesh let Timothy know what he had to gain.

I wanted to add one pic of an elite here - mostly cause this pic shows the terrain we were dealing with. See the roots on the ground here!

This is Mick Donges from Blue mountains, Australia who won the 100km last year. 

We arrived at the Humphries bay turnaround and I remember having a laugh, thinking how much of a joke my ‘race plan’ was now. So similar to the joke most women's 'birth plans' turn into after 30 mins in labour. It had just taken us 2 hours to cover 10km!!! In addition to this the pain was now getting pretty unbearable going downhill. My quads were absolutely screaming at me. I downed a couple of panadol and some electrolyte pills with the food. The volunteers at this aid station were awesome. There was no way I could concentrate enough to fill up my camelbak so they just take it off you and do it. They were asking us what we needed and offering encouragement. Such a top job.

Copyright © 2013 Shaun Collins

Humphries Bay – Okatina Return

Feeling a bit frustrated and disappointed leaving this aid station – as we knew now that we’d be lucky to make it back inside 10 hours. But we also knew we just had to get it over and done with.

Met a girl running back who was running in barefeet, the whole last 20km. She said she’d grown up in barefeet and had run the first 40km in fivefingers. I could not fathom how she was managing over all the roots and stones but she seemed to be doing fine!

By now the combination of the fatigue, pain and frustration were reaching a peak. For almost the whole 10km back I felt like I was going to cry. But it was a weird physical reaction more than emotional. My face literally starting to crumble, chin wobbling, mouth downturning… but I actually forced myself NOT to cry. There was no way I was going to waste energy doing that! Or risk getting further dehydrated.

For the last 5km we were passing the final people on the course. This included an amazing 80 year old man. He was running with two pacers for the last 20km for fairly obvious reasons. As they came towards us, on one of these steep cliff side tracks, he lost his footing and fell over the side. Jesh literally dived after him to grab his hand. I then had to go after Jesh to grab his other hand, and someone was pulling my other hand. Apparently not only in the movies. This was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. There is no way he would have survived if he’d fallen all the way. We pulled him up and the only injury appeared to be a badly scratched arm. He was of course very shaken and his pacers made him sit down and told us to carry on. Dying to know what happened to him so will post on the f/b page to find out. But what a flippen legend  80 years old and running an ultramarathon. And he was running too!

Which was more than I can say for our last 10kms J. Actually the last 20km we ran more uphill than we did down. It just hurt way too much to run downhill!

Those last few km’s seemed to go on foooorever. But we finally reached the end – 10:27.

Copyright © 2013 Shaun Collins

Straight into the lake for 5-10mins to try and soothe the legs. And then aid station for some food. I can’t believe I ate pizza that had been sitting out for four hours! Flat coke has never tasted so good. Unfortunately we had forgotten to pack cash so could not partake in the delicious food stalls that were at the finish line. The $5 we did have went on a hot chocolate for Jesh who had started to shake with the cold. He didn’t warm up all night and reckons the lake dip stuffed his core temperature.

We hung around at the finish line for the next few hours. Great fun, encouraging those runners who were coming through to finish at the 100km. I was hoping to see my friend and former PhD office buddy, Rongo, come through this aid station on his way to finish the 100km. But talking to his partner he was having some real difficulty and running way behind time. She was pacing him for the last 15km and was unsure he’d even be able to finish. They also had moved the cut off time for coming through this aid station forward an hour because people were taking a lot longer than anticipated and they couldn’t cope with an influx at the finish line at 2am. So Sophie ran out to meet Rongo to try and get him to run faster and meet the cut off. They ran an incredible 5km in 25mins on the most technical part of the course to make it through so he could finish the 100km. Absolute legend.

Very tired, but happy, we boarded the bus back to town at 7.30pm and heading to the hotel for some well-deserved room service!

A very very tough day at the office and while I’m still slightly disappointed in our time I’m mostly very proud to be an ultramarathoner – for the 2^nd time.

I will definitely be back to Tarawera to get the rest of the set – 85km next and 100km after.

For the rest of this year I’m hoping to knock a decent bit of time off my half marathon and run my first marathon!