Its a motherwhaka - Whaka 100km

Due to the friendly locals in Rotorua this actually ended up the Whaka 32 for me (and 70 out of 100 competitors) so much like my race I'll keep it short and full of crap lols.

Trip started uneventfully enough after knocking off work a couple of hours early on the the Friday to get a clear run out of town. Had the compulsory feed stop in Bulls and wasn't held up by doche Lada drivers for a change. First disaster hit when I got to Vegas at about 10pm and realised I'd made the amateur mistake of having my bike a bit close to the exhaust burning my tire.

With the race starting at 8am the next morning I was royally fucked, how would I find a 29er tire at this time of the night? After much dramas and in retrospect lolz eventually found one. Thanks also to Blair (Slidecontrol on Vorb) who also offered me a tire. If the rest of society was like the mtbing community, NZ would be a much nicer place.

After the torrential rain of the Friday, woke to a grey, drab but thankfully dry Sat. After a slow start caught up to decent group and settled into a nice rhythm. Was fairly happy with the pace we were riding but the penny started to drop that things weren't going as planned. One of the local riders in our group was sure we had gone wrong somewhere but none of us knew where. After a huge road climb which I knew was meant to be in the last 10km it was confirmed we were lost but not knowing where or when we had no option but to continue on. Came to the finish line after 32km, less than 2hours, and some bemused looks.

As it turns out the course had been tampered with after the first few riders went through so most of the field went the wrong way. Unfortunately this is not the first time this has happened, but I still can't comprehend why someone would go out of there way to ruin other mtbers day. To the organisers credit they tried to at least put on some race for us so we were told we could rejoin the race at the 60km after the leaders went through.

After and hour off the bike in the cold my legs and head weren't really in it. The final straw was when even Big Gay Al was able to ride away from me on a climb, oh the shame. After a cleat issue had really had enough so bailed hitting up a few new tracks (Corners and Little red riding huck) on the way home.

All in all an epic fail. Consoled my self with Zippies before returning to Prizegiving to gasbag and snafu a Groundeffects voucher. Not to completely waste a weekend hit up the hotpools before consuming my own bodyweight in Ribs at Lonestar.

Next morning the weather had again turned to rubbish so after a big breakfast headed out of town. Had lots of snow across the desert road..

and only just made it through before they closed it off.

So not the the return to racing I had planned but at least I learnt that "not preparing is preparing to fail". Next time I'll take a leaf out of a wise riders book and write the directions on my stem. Oh course for a 100km it will have to be 200mm stem making my bike completely unrideable but at least I won't get lost.