The Year of the Goat

Text taken from the club newsletter.

THE YEAR OF THE GOAT by STEPHEN HEALEY

Three of us agreed to sign up for The Goat Adven- ture Run earlier in the year, and as two of us had never run that distance before we had some work to do!

In preparation, I signed up for my first ever race in July; Nat and I were going to run in the Double Rainbow 16 km event south of Rotorua. But the Tuesday before the race Nat texted to say he had the flu and couldn’t make it!!! However, I went down by myself and had a reasonable run; first step ticked off working up to the big day.

We then both went down for the Rotorua Tough Guy in August. Nat said not to wear a coat as I would get wet and muddy anyway. As we headed out the door of the barn and up the first hill it started to hail. I was in a short sleeved thermal and wondered what I was doing there.

The Big O trail run was next in September. I was down to run the 21 km event while Nat had signed up for the 10 km. Driving down it was wet and miserable and I had not run for two weeks as I had been away skiing, so I chickened out and dropped back to run the 10 km with Nat.

Next was the Xterra Karangahape Run. I ran the 19 km event which was similar in profile to the Double Rainbow, but longer, higher and more scenic. It was my toughest run to date.

October also saw us running in the Fat Ass Kiltathon around the shores of Lake Tarawera to Hot Water Beach. It ended up about a 16 -17 km run, everyone in tutus or kilts. Lots of fun, with a boat ride (with open bar) back to the road end. This is a fantastic run, my favou- rite of the year.

November came and Nat ran the Toi (18 km and his toughest race to date, very hot and very hilly) and also the Karapiro 21 km, both of which I was unavailable for.

We finished our preparation with our longest run up to that point, a 30 km trail run over undulating ground at the Tect Mountain Bike Park between Tauranga and Rotorua. This went quite well for both of us, and was a good confidence boost with the Goat only two weeks away.

I woke on Saturday 30 November with a very sore throat. One week until the Goat and I was com- ing down with the flu…..gutted. Sunday to Tuesday I was a write off. Wednesday a little better. Thursday better still; there was hope yet!

Friday I was back to about 85%, the flu had been in my head and chest and my legs felt weak just walking to the dairy, but I was improving. We were supposed to leave Friday by 3 p.m., but Nat rang to say he would be half an hour late. This suited me as I had a busy day ahead as well. I finally got everything done by 3:30 p.m., just as I got a phone call to say Nat was at home waiting for me. Rushing back I forgot my running watch and phone as I quickly packed up, so was without both for the weekend. What else could go wrong!

We arrived at our accommodation, just a minute’s walk from the Powderhorn, and went up to registration, taking our jackets for confirmation that they were accept- able, only to be told we needed all our gear there for a gear check before they registered us. I didn’t see that written down anywhere! So back we go to pick up packs and gear, lucky we were staying close by.

Everything checked out and we headed back for a rea- sonably early night; about 11p.m.

Up at 6 a.m. we sorted gear, drinks and breakfast and wandered over to the bus. Driving around the mountain the conditions didn’t look flash. Cloud covered the whole mountain and the weather forecast was for a band of rain to come through between 8 a.m. and 2p.m The top of The Bruce was miserable, very low visibility, cold and misty. I elected to run in a short sleeved thermal and a jacket

(which never came off).

Eventually the appointed hour arrived and I lined up at the start gate alongside a runner I knew from Tauranga. I managed to get myself into the second wave and that seemed to work out quite well.

The gun went and we took off down the road. I quickly settled into the middle of the pack, where I remained until we dropped off the road. The next three hours were a bit of a blur; we had just 50-100 metres of visibility the whole race and conditions were very wet. The track was a mudbath in places; ankle deep and more in the ruts, which we tried to avoid as much as possible by running on the grass verge above. Fur- ther on, where there are a lot of places where the route comes to steep drop offs, this got interesting. Normally you would just run down these dirt banks, but they had become muddy and very slippery, so instead it involved lower- ing yourself down as far as you can and then running down a greasy slope trying not to slip over. The rivers and streams were all up a bit, but still pass- able without too much trouble. They had race wardens out at 3 a.m. that morning checking the streams before mak- ing a call on whether to run the event or not. Luckily we got the all clear to race, as I would not have enjoyed racing on a substitute course after all that build up and expecta- tion- it would have been a bit like kissing your sister!

“The 3 km sign eventually turned up. This was the hardest kilometre I have covered in a race; well that was until the next

The wind got stronger and stronger as we ran around the mountain. Winds were predicted up to 65 km/hr for the day and it felt close to that at times. Fortunately it was from the northwest and so mostly behind us. A south- erly would have raised the stakes considerably - the lower temperatures would have been a real problem - it was cold enough as it was. It even started to sleet or hail for a while.

I ticked off the main landmarks as we went; the first big climb up out of the Whakapapaiti Stream, then the climb up the lava fields. Dropping down to Lake Surprise I felt remarkably good. I was running strongly and felt I was making good time. I had set a goal time of under 3 hours and I felt like I was still good to get there in that time at this point.

Coming down the hill past Lake Surprise I came to the long downhill stretches of boardwalk. Normally back home on the Mount I would take these two at a time, but as much as I tried I just couldn’t get up the courage to do this. The steps were wet and with 16 kms already under my belt I just didn’t have the confidence to tackle more than one at a time.

Reaching the bottom and back on gravel and rock, I had my one fatal lapse in concentration. I had just passed three runners over some steep broken ground, got a little ahead of them and then strangely took my eyes off the ground ahead to look ahead to the valley below. At this very instant I caught my foot on a rock, stumbled and ended up sprawling forward in a heap, grazing my hands and knees. I quickly recovered, got up and took off again, just in front of the three people who I had just passed and who obviously thought I was an idiot. This was the only time I hit the deck all day but it was a rough fall. Coming down to the Mangaturuturu River I passed a stretcher team heading North. Obviously at least one person fared worse than I did. Climbing back up the bank to the hut, I had a brief glimpse of a lot of people peering out at me and continued on into the gloom.

At this point I came to a sign saying 4 km to go. I got there just after 12 p.m, so had 30-odd minutes to cover the last 4 km to get in under three hours; should be possible surely! I had forgotten how steep the climb up past the water- fall is. The minute we started up this, everyone dropped to a walking pace, it being so wet (it was raining steadily now) and the rock was very slippery. One of the guys I was climbing up with got on a flat section of rock and just started sliding backwards; he managed to stay on his feet, but was skiing backwards down the rock slope. I managed to get a hand on his backpack and helped to slow him down until he recovered and stopped his slide.

one...”

Passing the marshalls all through here I was feeling bad for them, as at least we were moving to keep our body temperature up and the wind was at our backs. They were stuck there for hours in the one place and had the wind and rain in their faces, but most of them were encourag- ing, with a smile or a “well done” as we passed. They did a great job under very difficult conditions.

The 3 km sign eventually turned up. This was the hard- est kilometre I have covered in a race; well that was until the next one which seemed to take forever. Passing the 2 km sign we could hear some crazy marshalls up ahead at the road. They had cow (goat?) bells and were yelling and screaming encouragement to everyone. The only trouble was that we heard them a long time before reaching them. It seemed to take forever to get up to the road and we still could see nothing ahead so still didn’t know how far to go.

Arriving at the road I hitched up my skirts and started to run up the road. After about a minute I was tapped on the shoulder by a guy I had been crossing paths with for the last few kilometres. Turning I saw he was walking up the road beside me. I didn’t need any further hints and promptly returned to a walking pace, travelling just as quickly and saving considerable energy. There was a guy just ahead of us still running, but he was travelling at the same pace as us and swaying from side to side like he was drunk; he really looked like he was having a very hard time of it. About this time the wind picked up considerably and the rain was driving in from the northwest; blasting us on our left-hand side. I tried to keep my hood up, but it kept blowing back off and I just gave up in the end. Finally the slope eased and the car park came into sight. At this point I started running again. Coming up to the finish line they were calling names and times, but my number was covered by my jacket anyway. I have no idea if they called my name or not and I didn’t even look at the clock. Crossing the line I could see a finishers’ tent ahead which I headed for as I desperately needed to get out of the wind, rain and cold. Someone stopped me and handed me a medal. This was the 10th anniversary race and all finishers got a medal this year; I just snuck in for a silver one. Then, as I approached the tent, another person stopped me and said they need my transponder off my shoe. I looked at him and at my shoelace, which seemed a very long way away from my frozen fingers, and suggested somewhat brusquely that I would adjourn to the tent now, take it off in there and bring it back out. Standing around in the cold and rain and struggling with shoelaces with frozen fingers seemed ridiculous.

The last four kilometres had taken me somewhere around 50 minutes to complete; the slowest four kilome- tres of my life.

Mamas Mile (around one kilometre) had taken me just over 11 minutes to complete which was around the average time for the people around me most taking 10- 12 minutes to get up this stretch. I ended up coming in around 3:17, slower than I hoped, but under the condi- tions I wasn’t really disappointed with that.

Inside the tent and out of the weather there were drinks, bananas and goat curry, all of which I indulged in though I couldn’t finish the goat curry. But as I stood around I got colder and colder and couldn’t stop shiver- ing. Eventually I just couldn’t stay there any longer and went off looking for the gear bags. These were waiting downstairs at the café with the upstairs having heaters going, but just as I walked in a crew member said buses were about to leave so I decided to bail and get back down to Ohakune for a hot shower. I went down to the bus, hopped on, only to wait nearly an hour before enough other people got on to allow it to leave. This also meant I missed the free burgers and beer that were served up in the café. By the time I heard about these I didn’t want to hop off the bus in case it suddenly filled up and left. It was about 2 p.m. before it eventually got underway. I fell into the showers back at the motel, having first to hose out my shoes and socks which contained a horrendous amount of mud and silt.

My abiding memories of the race will be of mud, rain, mist and cold. This was the worst weather they have run in over the ten years of the race and it must have been close to being cancelled. One of the guys I ran it with had done it two years ago and has a number of marathons to his credit. He said this was by far the hardest race he has ever done. However, I’m already looking back on it fondly and can’t wait to return and have another go on a good day. It was a fantastic day out and a wonderful event.

Thanks to Nat and Jym for tackling it with me; we already have plans for a number of more events over the coming months: a run around Ngauruhoe is next in our sights and two of us have signed up for the Tarawera 60 km event next March; who knows what is next… From a tramper who ran to keep fit, I seem to have morphed into something else entirely. Don't wait ‘til you are as old as I am before trying trail running, it is a whole lot of fun and opens the door to a heap of new places you might never have seen. Get out there and give it a go, you just might surprise yourself as to what you can achieve.