Te Aroha tramp

After the XPD I did a lot of lying on the couch contemplating life and imagining all the things I would do after retiring from Adventure racing. Whilst it was good for a week or so it wasn't long before the restlessness set in and I found myself looking for a new challenge and something to focus my energies on. The answer was staring me straight in the face. The Godzone !! - a new adventure race based in the adventure capital of NZ -how could I resist. Before I knew it I had signed Team Macpac Girls on Top up for yet another adventure race and another year of racing.

With racing comes training, so the New Year period was set aside to kick start our training programme for 2012.

As the South Island has considerably larger hills than we have up here in Auckland we decided to go back to TeAroha and do some hill reps. This time we only decided to do two reps and a circuit rather than three solid ups and downs. We left Auckland at 9am and were standing at the base of Te Aroha by 10.30am ready to head out into the rain and start our little adventure. Aiden Boswell who is also doing the Godzone joined us for the outing and kept us amused with his hunting tales.

Our first up and down was reasonably painless and flew by without any of us noticing. At the top we spotted some cable ties on the ground that must have blown off the tower - someone decided we should have a competition to see who could pick up the most - so a short manic interlude took place as we scrambled to collect as many as we could elbowing each other out of the way - luckily there was noone else around as we looked like a pack of crazed animals searching every possible spot for sightings of cable ties.

The second repeat was a bit harder and the conversation suffered somewhat. We were all feeling our legs by the time we summitted for the second time.

From the top we headed off the back of the mountain down to Tui Mine and then took the Domain track back to the car. What an awesome little circuit with reasonably good runability. It was made more exciting by the level of water pumping down waterfalls and streaming crossing the track at one point where we had to cross a stream.

We arrrived back at the car wet but happy. A great training outing had by all. This was followed up with a hot pool and a catch up with friends near Matamata. What an awesome way to farewell 2011 and welcome in 2012.