Peak to Pub

At the beginning of the year my buddy had asked me if I was interested in making a team for the annual Peak to Pub race which is a Triathlon consisting of snowboarding, mountain biking and trail running. Its a real cool race with the starting line at the top of the mountain and the finish line at the local pub in the closest town. I told him it sounded like a great idea and I would love to do the run portion. At the time I had all of these training plans and workouts planned (don't think I ever did one).

We recruited a German for the bike portion so our relay team consisted of a Kiwi (Jono) doing the snowboard section, German (Marvin) doing the mountain biking, and Canadian doing the running. Talk about an international team!

This crazy weekend started Friday morning waking up very late and only having 20 minutes to pack up and get out of the house for the crazy weekend ahead. I literally threw my runners and a change of clothes in a bag, made a PB&J and was in the car ready to go. It was a 3.5 hour drive to Ashburton where we were staying with Jonos family. Friday night we literally never left the couch.

Saturday morning it was very disappointing hearing that our race had been postponed due to high winds on the mountain. So we decided to go see a Lord of the Rings film site from the Two Towers movie. We went to Mt. Sunday which was an hour outside of Ashburton where the kingdom of Edoras was in the Two Towers. It was once again a very slow night, consisting of homework, television and bike tune ups.

Sunday morning we all got up all ready to race! We ate breakfast and headed straight up to the mountain. It was a real crazy drive heading up the very steep mountain road to the ski resort (Mt. Hutt) where the triathlon was being held. Thankfully it was such a beautiful day that when we reached the top we could see the whole country-side and the oceans coastline! Buzzay!

We had our race debriefing and each headed to our transition zones. It kind of sucked that I was only up the mountain for only a half hour, but it was so awesome for that small time. The race started and I anxiously awaited the arrival of Marvin at the transition. When he finally came I had to take the pinny off him and then I was off starting my 11km journey! (And a journey it was)









First two kilometers I was literally running  down a river that was around 40cm deep. Glad to be out of that, the river dried up and I was running through the dry riverbed for the next 6km; rolling my ankle around three times. The river led me to a highway where the dreadful swim across the RDR was waiting for me (RDR is the Rangitata Diversion Race which is part of an irrigation system that is around 12m across). I had to jump in and swim across. I planned out that I would jump in early and flow with the current across but just my luck; the current was going the opposite way... Had to work twice as hard!

After the river it was a couple kilometers until the finish; it took me around 500m to actually recuperate and recover from the swim. I was very thankful to see the finish line and picked it up for a last final push. Hitting the finish I was congratulated with a beer that almost came back up as soon as I drank it.

I found out after the race that Marvins breaks had snapped as soon as he started his portion of the race so he only had front breaks for the entire bike! The crazy German still pulled it off!
We stuck around for awards and spot prizes. Marvin actually ended up getting free brakes by telling his story in front of the whole crowd. We got another round of beers, ate dinner at Jonos, packed up and were back on the road to Dunedin.



We ended up coming 12th out of 42 teams and placed 9th out of the mens teams. Super awesome weekend! Had a great run and some amazing times with the boys!

20th Birthday Kiwi Style

My Birthday started on the Sunday, September 30th with my bestie Laura staying up with me until 12am. As soon as the clock hit October 1st she proceeded to beat the hell out of me while screaming "ITS YOUR BIRTHDAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" While I curled up in the fetal position trying to defend myself. Once Laura's arms got tired of hitting me, the birthday battle came to an end and I went to bed planning on getting up for my 9am class.

Waking up Monday morning I didn't share the same feelings as the night before and had this strange idea of "its my birthday! I don't need to go to class..." So I made an awesome breakfast, went to the gym and came home to get the house ready for the evening ahead. I heard a rumor from some Kiwis that a dairy close to our flat had a birthday special of getting 5 scoops for just a dollar! So we ventured over to "Dundas Dairy" in hopes of us all splitting this massive ice cream. But much to my surprise the ice cream special wasn't there anymore (they only did it for 6 months and then stopped? sucks to have your birthday in the other 6 months of the year...) 

Walking home after that strange explanation we encountered all of these drunk Kiwi girls running around the road trying to round up people for their initiation (basically long story short some roads are so prestigious for partying that the people living there next year literally have to be initiated by the students living there this year). And these 'wastey cases' are running around on a Monday afternoon trying to find people to help them. Of-course Laura forces me to do it saying "its his birthday, he'll do it!" And that was it, I was running behind these drunk Kiwis back to their flat where 40 other people were waiting for our arrival. I really want to forget what happened next, but I will tell you this. It required this girl to lick ketchup off my stomach, take a shot of tequila (almost spewing on me), then wiping off the rest of the ketchup...? Definitely a story for the birthday books!

Running out of there, Laura and I headed home both very shell-shocked on what we just experienced. I got in the shower right away and got ready for everyone to come over.  A bunch of us headed out that night for a birthday BYO to an Indian restaurant. Apparently it was a rule was made that I had to wear a huge colorful sombrero the entire night which was pretty good at acting as an umbrella. 

                                                               After Robs Great Idea

Dinner was great! I made a very terrible speech, spilled half my curry on my jeans and barely ate what was left of my curry because we were all talking so much! Once the obnoxiousness group of us paid we all traveled back to our flat for some drinks and drunken banter. I couldn't believe it but I got heaps of birthday presents! A Canadian cupcake platter, carrot cake, and candy card was all made for me! Definitely was not expecting that.

BYO

Overall it was such an awesome experience to celebrate my 20th birthday in NEW ZEALAND! It was much different than any other of my 19 birthdays before; lets hope the big 21st can top it.