New Zealand: Tarawera 102k and our North Island Vacation

Leaving the airport in Auckland, it was my first time “driving left,” and while I was good about being in the right place and diving into the roundabouts, I might’ve hopped a curb or two as I drifted left in the narrow lanes.  Meh, it was a rental.

Takes a minute to get used to

About an hour after leaving the airport, we were hit the trails for the first time in New Zealand.  And we found a beauty!

15 minutes of NZ hiking uphill = picture above

The next day we visited the Coromandel region to the north, to climb The Pinnacles.  Also an amazing hike; it’ll probably rank very highly on our top 10 list when we revise our list of favorites after this trip (a routine post-vacation exercise for us).

At the tip top 

That night we drove to Waimarino to do a glow worm kayaking tour.  That was pretty neat - you couldn’t really take worthwhile pictures of the glow worms but just imagine thousands of greenish glowing dots along the sides of a narrow channel of water.  There was also an unreal-looking sunset sky before we headed out in the kayaks.

Crazy - none of us could take our eyes off the sky

The next day we took in some Maori culture and visited the stinky geothermal springs around Rotorua, where we were staying.

Amazing.  Stinky, but amazing.

Then there was the race: the Tarawera 102k.  Julie made the wise decision to step down to the 62k as it was raining all day Friday and projected to continue throughout Saturday race-day.  We decided to listen to the race briefing, since the two of us had spent maybe a combined 5 minutes researching the course.  They said even with the constant rain it should remain runnable since the drainage was good.  Yep.  That’s what they said.

Why must you turn this hotel into a house of lies?!

In the morning we took a bus to the starting line of the 102k (Julie had to take a second bus to her starting line), and sure enough it was still pouring rain.  One funny thing Julie and I both (separately) noticed was Cody Reed at the starting line - he actually had someone holding an umbrella for him until a few seconds before the start (like he wasn’t about to get drenched anyway), and was wearing sunglasses even though it was going to be overcast and rainy the entire time.  Then he did these theatrical leaps up at the front before we took off; anyway, we had a good snicker at that after the race.  The runners seemed to start as fast as they did at Bandera, but I started even slower and there were probably no less than 40 people in front of me after the first 1.5 miles through a golf course.

As far as the rest of my race, it was about 25k of actual running, 70k of slop, followed by 7k of actual running.  One bright spot was seeing Tarawera falls around mile 20-something.  I actually stopped for a few seconds to look at it, which I would probably never do in a non-vacation race.

I didn’t take this picture, but this is what it looks like

The muddy mess was very reminiscent of Bighorn last year and I mostly stopped having fun a bit over halfway through, when the steep 1200’ mud-ascent began.  I mostly regretted my decision to wear my lightweight road flats but it probably wouldn’t have mattered most of the time.  

These are in the washer now, hoping they survive

My mantra going uphill was ‘Vacation Pace.  Vacation Pace’ and I sure took my sweet time going up anything with a slight incline — and there was 10,000’ of climbing, so it was a long day.  The downhills were still fun though, and my reckless tendencies on technical downhills translated into a pretty decent beta as I would fly past a lot of 100k’ers tiptoeing gingerly down the muddy slopes.  This also resulted in several falls for me but we weren’t in Texas where you had a 50/50 shot of eating it into a pile of rocks; here I always fell down harmlessly into piles of mud, which emboldened me even more.  No one passed me the entire race after the first 10k or so.

I got to run past Julie a couple times due to the criss-cross courses, and there were some really amazing views running along Tarawera lake.

With about 2 miles to go, I took a wrong turn.  It just wouldn’t be a proper trail race for me without a little bonus mileage.  This time it cost me an extra 1k (0.6 miles) and one spot in the race.  I ran across the line unceremoniously in about 11:08 in 19th place out of 450-ish starters in the 102k.  The guy who finished a minute ahead due to my wrong turn, actually won the 40+ age division; thankfully I don’t turn 40 until the end of the year or I really would’ve been kicking myself for giving away the old-man trophy.  I also got “chicked” for the first time in a trail race (excluding the ones Julie and I ran as a couple), as 3 ladies kicked my butt at Tarawera.  It was bound to happen sooner or later!

Happy to be finished 

I’m still grateful I can complete a race like this.  I really haven’t been running at all lately, maybe 2 runs in the past 2+ weeks and nothing that would qualify as actual training since October.  I was in mediocre shape for Bandera and even worse for Tarawera.  But I was in really good shape this past spring, and would really like to get back there - I’ll try and use the next 2 months to build up to the Boston Marathon in April as a way to get my mojo back.

The day after the race, we headed back up to Coromandel to see Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove.  For some reason, I was expecting Hot Water Beach to have hot water, but it was relatively chilly.  I guess you’re supposed to dig a hole to get the effect, and people were furiously digging but I didn’t notice a difference in the temperature.

Julie looking longingly at the superior sand holes

Cathedral Cove, to my dismay, was about a 1.5-mile hilly walk from the car.  We had flip flops on too - Julie seemed fine, as usual after running an ultra, but I couldn’t keep up with her and slowed us down considerably as rain continued to pour down on us.  It was still totally worth the walk though, and had some very impressive scenery.

Finally we drove back down to our Airbnb in Miranda, which had a nice view of the bay.

In general, the North Island was just awesome.  You do have to drive an awful lot to get anywhere (all on narrow 2-lane roads), and it rained most of the time, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing.  As I write this, we’re headed on a plane to the South Island to start ‘Part 2’ of this trip of a lifetime!

Hello mountains!