Karapoti..I put this race in the same category as the Tour of Southland. A race everyone wants to do but how many actually enjoy it? I’ve raced Karapoti before but haven’t had the enjoyment until this year, my 2 previous attempts haven’t made it to any newspaper articles! I first came to this event way back in 1994 when I was 12 and raced the 20km and finished in the top-20.
This year I came to Karapoti “wanting” to race and in my pre-ride I actually enjoyed it but still thought it was just one mongrel of a bike race..it just is..it’s a true old school mountain bike race. When I got in to the sport that’s what we rode on our fully rigid beasts bouncing round like pogo sticks on a sugar high.
I dislike cold water a lot and even get goose bumps jumping into a warm shower so running through a river at the start of a race at 10 o’clock in the morning isn’t on my list of favourite things to do!
The pace was pretty quick up the gorge with big rig Tim Wilding riding like he had a motor on his bike, Mark was putting in his grunt as well. This pace saw myself and a group of round 5 other riders slip away and we stayed together until the “warm up climb” which split the group. Stu, Tim, Anton and I got into a good rhythm, managing a small gap over the others and as the climb went on Tim and I tussled our way to the top with a small lead over Stu. From the top of Deadwood to the Rock Garden, Stu and I were fighting to stay with the flying Tim who eventually hit his powerband twitch and was gone. I was in 2nd and knew I had to pin it to hold this spot because on this course you just never know how far riders are behind you. At the top of Dopers Tim had round 2mins on me so for the last part of the race holding 2nd was the priority.
Coming out of the Gorge on to the road section I saw a hunched over Mark chewing on his bar to reel me in. Hitting the river I went too far to the right and found myself not touching the ground and had to doggy paddle for a bit to resurface and get motoring to the finish line. Quite an experience for a non-swimmer like myself! I held on and it was a great feeling crossing that line!
Mark didn’t bother with a swim at the end and came through another 9 seconds after me. Anton ended up having a superb ride, coming in 4th, just a tad over 2 minutes off the Junior Record, I’m sure by the time he’s finished Junior he could quite possibly have his name on both records? As the event doubled as the NZ Marathon Championships I take claim to 2nd for the Elites and Anton took the Junior title for this. Stu rolled in to finish 5th after a puncture up on the Boulevard.
Great race all round – Karapoti and I are now even thinking about becoming facebook friends now that we have found out we quite like each other!
Congratulations to Tim, brilliant ride and great to see him take out another big event. To those who rode Karapoti well done for finishing and even cooler the “always working hard and not leaving time to ride her bike” Bex took 23mins off her last years time!
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