You're here for a long time, not a good time

Terry’s Pre-Race Briefing Notes.

Briefing Notes

Welcome to a world of pain that you’ll all be experiencing soon enough.

In 2012 I completed the old 161km in 32 hours , So I have some appreciation for what you are about to get yourselves into. First 100kms were ‘fine’ last 60 was the toughest thing I’d ever done. November 2015 I did vast majority of the new course. It has more vert but over-all a better configuration I believe. I’ll try to keep this briefing informative and as interesting as I can.

Most of you are well experienced and won’t pay too much attention to what I have to say and that’s fine – How you run a race is very subjective so don’t get too hung-up on what I recommend. Feel free to come up and quiz me at registration.

Here’s the crucial stuff!!

6am Saturday the 161km, 100km, 50km and 42km (marathon) start together. Please DO NOT arrive earlier than 30mins before your race start. MAKE SURE you have gone to the toilet BEFORE you come out to the start! (Your accommodation loos will be nicer than our port-a-loos!) Yes you will need your headlamp and all your ‘required gear’ with you at the start. If your pack looks a bit light we may do a random inspection. If we find you are not carrying all the required gear you will be given a penalty. (And made to go get the rest of the gear)

Race numbers must be attached to your front – they need to be visible as you pass by marshals – most marshals will be recording your number and time and feeding that info back to us here so we can keep track of you. If your number is under a jacket or something you’ll need to lift your jacket up to show the marshal. Pin it on low down…

Hopefully you have all dropped off your ‘DROP- bags’ that you want us to look after for you here and/or up the mountain. Make sure your bags are clearly labeled. You are also allowed any support you wish from your support crew in start/finish area.

The course is clearly marked with a variety of mediums. Reflective tape, trail marking tape and these standards plus fluro paint so no reason to get lost.

There are plenty of hazards on the course including rocks – to stub your toe on or to roll your ankle over and prickly Spaniards to give yourself a nasty wee spike. Major area’s for concern are exhaustion, dehydration and hypothermia. This is a very steep and challenging course – you will need to be refuelling regularly from just after you start the race. Depending on the day it could be very hot, dry and windy so you may need more water than you’ve been training with at home in Wellington – or it could be snowing so make sure you get shelter behind a rock and put on your extra layers of clothes if you’re getting cold!! I have seen very experienced runners get hypothermia cos they didn’t get their jacket out of their pack – don’t want any of you doing that here. On the 100k and 161k you will be passing TW – a major intersection on the course with an aid station and medical personal – if they tell you to put extra clothes on we need you to do that – after you pass them you will be carrying on up to the top of the mountain it’s relatively flat followed by long down-hill sections so we don’t necessarily want to leave it up to your brain-dead state to decide if you should ‘rug-up’ or not.

Toileting – there are toilets here at the MARQUEE– please use these when you come through the start/finish area – the appropriate etiquette if you have to go out on the hill is: for number ones – just pop behind a large rock – for number towes please go behind a large rock – lift up a smaller rock – do business then replace the rock – you should not have too much trouble finding a good rock.

Aid Stations - base (Marquee) and TW,will have hot potatos, soup, water, TAILWIND, chips ETC. We will have marshals at the aid stations and they will help you with what you want.

Water refill - you hold your bottle, the marshal will turn the tap. They will prompt you - please be prepared to go along with them.

Now for the course notes.

The first loop I’m going to talk about is relevant to all runners.

You will start off with a nice wee trot around the ‘home loop’ – just a bit less than 5km then back through near the start finish area to shouts of encouragement from all your supporters and then head out up the mountain. The first 12 Km will be lit with reflective tape.

You will be basically following a ridge so not a lot of natural water – we will have water containers for you to fill-up out of at a marshal point 15km up towards the top of this loop. So I suggest you start with your 2L full and re-fill at the containers. (You’ll know how much water you need for the first 2 hours)

At the water containers you will leave the road for a wee while and follow a fence (4km) – it is mostly very steep, it is marked with ORANGE tape every 100m or so, so you know you’re following the right fence – you don’t have to run right beside it, you can get out into the paddock a bit and follow sheep tracks that head in the same direction as the fence. Soon around here you will meet our nasty little friend the ‘prickly Spaniard’ they come in a variety of sizes but the leaves/spines on them are all very hard and you really don’t want to kick one or fall on one. Please watch your footing on this section of the course.

You will go up some quite steep hillsides and feel free to pull yourself up on the fence but please don’t cross over the fence because that is not our property and we don’t have permission to run on that land.

Keep following the fence for 4km and you will come to SOME ORANGE TAPE that WILL DIRECT you off the fence and straight across country following white electric fence standards – some thick sections of Spaniards here so watch your footing again – also some awesome open country and hard ‘moss’ fields to tramp/run across. Before you get to the top YOU WILL COME ACROSS SOME of the ‘magical’ alpine streams. You will run down one for a few hundred meters then back up another one before you will join up with a marshal and an aid station at about the 25km mark. More water, some muesli bars and TAILWIND.

From this aid station you now just follow directly down the road (rough farm track) - the first 3km are actually runnable! Smash out some 4min ks… before you get onto a quite steep 12km of down-hill 4WD track (This track gets steeper as you get closer to the bottom and just goes on for quad screaming ever!). Just up around the corner here – less than a km away is ‘Mirror corner’. This is where the Marathoners will be directed left, back to here and finished. The rest of you will be directed right, back out into the hills for a small but quite ‘punchy’ Loop of Deception that will bring you back with about 4km to backtrack over the first section you ran out of here in the dark. Then you are back through the start finish area and away out on your second loop-

At the start/finish area we will have big pots of vegan Pumpkin soup and boiled potatoes, there will be water, TAILWIND and you can receive what ever food or support your support crew would like to offer you. There will be tea and coffee available, that sort of thing…

The 100mile second loop and the 100km last loop are BASICALLY the same, EXCEPT THE 100MILERS NOW DO THE WATER-RACE SECTION AS PART OF THE 2ND LOOP.

The second loop now starts with the old ‘Death Climb’ – not as bad as it was because you are starting it after only 50kms (not 100 as before!) however it is a little bit worse because you now go all the way to the top (14km) at leaning rock (bypassing TW aid station and drop bag pick-up point). The last 3 kms are not so steep but you are ‘off trail’ so quite uneven under foot. There will be marshals with Water half way up and at Leaning Rock. THE LEANING ROCK AID STATION NOW HAS TAILWIND AND POTATO CHIPS.

FOR THE 100MILERS ONLY (100km’ers just skip this paragraph, shoot to TW and carry on in the next paragraph) After leaving Leaning Rock, you have a sweet 2km of good 4WD track before being directed a sharp left onto a terrible 4WD track that eventually leads you into the water race section. It’s quite steep and rough underfoot, many of you will be starting to call me all sorts of unsavory names at this stage. Eventually you will meet a lovely marshal who will direct you back to TW via a nice wee traverse across some slips and cliffs before back onto the main road and a good hike back to TW. (Aid station – soup, spuds, medics – you’ll need them…)

From here you will be directed down THE MOUNTAIN ABOUT 1000m, before swinging left HEADING up to Mt Horn. Another 600m vert and you’re at the Mt Horn aid station. After you leave the aid station at Mt Horn you have a pretty step descent following some old power lines. This descent is killer! You then have a lovely traverse! About the only ‘near’ flat section of the course and you can possibly even still run sections at this stage!

The last bit of this loop is the ‘pylon track’ which HAS LOTS OF ‘undulations’ and switchbacks that just seem to go on and on for ever…

Now your back at the marquee and the 100km’ers have finished!! Wooowhoo!

You hundred milers just have one more ‘loop’ to do.

The final 50km for the 100milers. You will start out back the way you just came then be directed up a different ridge and some new trails ultimately taking you to Mt Horn, Aid station. At Mt Horne then just carry on up to TW. 17km from the Marquee with 15 of them being of a pretty decent gradient of ‘up’!

OK, so the first 127km have been the warm up. Hopefully you’ve paced yourself and taken it real easy cos from here on things start to get tough.

The ‘loop of despair’ - From TW you head out onto the original loop of despair which, after 127kms already is quite buggering. You finish the ‘loop of despair’ back at TW before doing an out - and - back to Leaning Rock, returning to TW.

Now you have a long (but not too steep) and glorious down hill all the way passed Mt Horne and straight on down to the pylon track. To finish you just have one more uphill back to the ‘bicycle wheel’ and then one big down and a wee bit of ‘flat’ to the finish!!

If you keep putting one foot in front of the other eventually you’ll get back here- to a glorious reunion with your supporters… and our medical team.

To finish. Medals for 42km, 50km, 100km and buckles for 100miles will be handed out at the PRIZE-GIVING.