IT Consultancy and Adventure Racing

link:http://akattack.rhizome.net.nz/

The ak attack is a 4 or 8 hr mountain bike orienteering event held annually in the akatarawa forest. I say annually, as it's run for 2 years in a row, and given that over 100 people entered this year, hopefully it will run for many years to come.

A friend, Keri Devine, is over from the uk at the moment seeing her knee specialist, so i suggested that the 8hr event would be great therapy, so she came down from Auckland and brought accomplished vet Wayne hodgetts with her, so we entered the mixed class.

After eating Keri's parents out of lasagne the night before, we arrived at the start off the Maungakotukutuku road at 0730, grabbed the maps and started planning a route that would take us on a big loop south, then back through the transition area to refuel and a loop north to finish off.

The event started bang on time at 0830, and we joined the main throng heading south, though most people took other tracks off the main road, and we were on our own as we pushed up to our first control up the hill towards Waterfall rd. We had been warned that our yet summer had led to a lot of overgrowth, and the organisers weren't joking as we had to push up a track that would normally be rideable in summer.

After getting our next control we pushed back up, then rode down through all the grass, doing a good job of clearing it for anyone following us, and then leaving a big pile by the start of the track after emptying our derailleurs.

Back on the road, we turned right following a valley filled with power pylons, and picked up a few points on the road and in a well mapped section of forest.

Here we made our first navigational mistake which thankfully Wayne picked up almost immediately, so we only lost a couple of minutes doubling back to the side track i had missed.

Dropping down onto the karapoti course, we were buzzed by a seemingly endless stream of motorbikes as we climbed dopers. After being asked if we were heading towards the bogs by one team coming down, and receiving a snigger in reply to our yes, we turned left at the top with some trepidation.

The next 2k took us an hour, but netted us 160 points as we carried and dragged our bikes along the section jokingly marked 'many bogs', rather than '1 huge bog' as it should have been!

When we eventually came out to a rideable area, we were happy as pigs would have been in the bogs we just left, and it was nice to get back to using the bike for it's intended purpose as we rode along the ridge between deadwood and big ring, we came across Mike Sherwin by the entrance to a track with an 80 pointer on. We intended to go and grab another 80 points before coming back and riding down this track, so carried on past.

We entered the bush once more carrying our bikes, and Wayne disappeared off the front being much more experienced at this kind of travel than Keri and I, we eventually caught up and slid with our bikes down to the control we were aiming for.

We decided that as we were out of water and the track was slippery walking, we wouldn't double back, but headed on down until we came across Paul Chaplow and Dave Hicks coming back up. This was our second nav error, we'd probably missed a right turn. Not knowing how far back up the bank we would have to scramble we decided to drop down to the road and try and cover some distance to some other points.

The track we were on steepened ridiculously, and got very slippery/ rocky, but we made it down to the road and much easier going got some pace on.

Heading back to the start/ finish we picked up another 20 points, refilled water and food at the car and devised a northern loop to grab some last points.

At this point we'd covered 45K in 6.5 hours, so decided to cover another 15-16 in the last 1.5, though some of it was on good road, which we would have to make the most of!

Sure enough we cranked up the pace heading north, passing Colin and Barryn on the road as well as a car that appeared to be hydrolocked at a ford.

Sensible people were heading back towards the Finish at this point, but we arrived at the base of our last hill loop after 13 minutes, grabbed a 10 pointer, and headed up the hill full of confidence.

This was a steep, rutted hill that was virtually all walking, thankfully Wayne again showed his AR pedigree by walking faster with 2 bikes than Keri and I with a bike between us.

Grabbing the first checkpoint a bit of map analysis showed that up and over should be faster than back down and up the other side, so we left the A team about to head back and pushed up and over, to give ourselves a rocky 300 metre descent on the other side via another control.

Unfortunately the time in (and out of) the saddle was taking it's toll, and the descent was pretty slow, bringing us back to the bridge with about 25 minutes to go, we decided that was enough time for a quick detour to grab another 30 points even after Keri took time out to make friends with a pack of hunting dogs heading in the opposite direction.

Passing the car who now had a friend with it pumping inspirational heavy metal into the countryside we crossed the river and a boggy creek where we nearly lost Keri, and ran the bikes up a short track, arriving with 30 seconds to spare on our cut off, we rode back down, passing a team heading up, made our way around the pool, and hightailed it back to arrive at the finish area with about 3 minutes to go.

Result : 3rd in class, 10 points behind 2nd ;-( and 210 points behind 1st ;-((((