Dive Into Adventure with Air New Zealand and DOC

So here is the promotional video that was made for the trip that Beth won back in December. We made mention of this in the 2014 Year in Review post. The editing and footage is pretty awesome. Courtesy of Karl from Monster Valley. Watching the video reminds me how awesome this place is and that I want to go diving. I would like to say we aren't on a never ending holiday, but I do get out and enjoy the country as much as possible. May take this show on the road. We'll let you know in the coming weeks.

Race update: DNF

Just a quick recap. Ended up being only 3 swimmers that showed for the race even though more registered. They thought I was nuts for swimming bare foot, but the water wasn't that cold. Superior and early Buffalo Lake are worse and I swam those without a wetsuit. Anyway, I had a slow swim, but was first to exit at 40 minutes including the kayakers. I got on my bike and started the course. Passed by 2 guys flying at 1 hr and 1:20 into my ride. Beth said the first rider left 11 minutes after me. I made it to the grass clearing where the 50km run was happening and I assed off twice going over deceptive ditches. There was cut grass hiding even deeper trenches. The first swallowed my front wheel and I buried my handle bars in mud. I also banged up my body, bruised my knee and my chest. I continued on and about 10 minutes later my race was done. I hit a second hidden pitfall and snapped my derailleur hanger. I was about 30km into a very hilly ride and I'm fashioning a single speed. I shortened my chain so I could ride a bit but I had to apply consistent tension or the chain would drop. Going over bumps the chain would drop. I tried to make it work but lugging a broken bike over 70km in cycling shoes wasn't going to happen. Got picked up by the volunteers and driving back. Ended up being a much shorter day than I planned but the pool felt amazing.

The Journey to St James Mountain Man

Just a quick recap of the race and how I found myself entering. The race website is here, http://www.stjamesmountainsports.co.nz/ and I happened upon it by chance while I was looking for Challenge Wanaka as I would like to do another Iron distance. I know I didn't do as well as I could have last year at Taupo as I came to it injured. This year, I've been lucky I guess and had a few set backs early on. I pulled my bum muscle which laid me out for 6 weeks. Then I had LASIK which was only really 4 days. Then there were little bouts of illness, but I've done a lot of prep work. Is it enough? I don't know.

In preparation, I've done a few bigger events with a lot of shorter training days. I've been to Taupo, Rotorua, Thames, Queenstown, and around Auckland to train. I did Queenstown Marathon wearing a full pack to train with the weight. Coincidentally it also pissed down with a cold rain so my rain jacket and gloves came in handy. I've since purchased a UD Adventure Vest to jockey the weight around and for better fit. The pack I did the run in is mainly used for my long MTB rides, so now I have 2 packs for the race. I'll be transferring the mandatory gear between the 2, but the comfort derived from switching will be amazing. The following weekend I did the Lake Taupo Huka Challenge. A short 85km race with a lot of people. It was not that fun. I would have rather road the road race with the fierce wind. The ride itself is pretty awesome, but not with a lot of people. I've also done trail runs here and there including a 3hr return to the top of the Pinnacles just behind Thames. If I can stave off getting injured in the next week, I feel like I've prepared well. The race is 9 days away and we are starting our journey there on Friday.

We have a short overnight planned in Tauranga for an interview for Beth and visiting my friends Matt and Zenda. Saturday, we'll be heading to Rotorua so I can get one last decent ride in. I'll be meeting up with some friends from Auckland for  morning to mid-afternoon ride. Then its on to Tirangi Saturday night before heading to Wellington to catch the ferry over to Picton. Where we'll be doing an overnight dive trip to see a Russian shipwreck. Then a couple nights in Nelson before getting my feet wet at Lake Tennyson and busting my lungs and hopefully not my ankles during the of the bulk of the St James Mountain Man. All up it will be roughly 90 miles traversed with a course deadline of 16 hours. It doesn't quite measure up to Iron distance, but the elevation and time difference definitely make up for it. I'm sure I'll be spent after the race.

There is no athlete tracking as far as I'm aware as there is no phone service for much of the area. So for those that want to live vicariously through me, I'll be wearing my SPOT Tracker for the race, except for the swim. You'll be able to see my progress across the South Island in near-real time, here. You may have to select the proper activity on the left hand side.

What is next? We have some dives planned. I'm planning an over-night hike to a DOC hut. I may try tackle the Cape Brett Challenge, but we'll see how this race goes first. I may need to take some time off? Yeah right. When do I relax?

2014: A year in review

Happy Holidays to all our friends and family and greetings from New Zealand!

2014 has been a great year. We moved to the Auckland area from our small town Thames last December when Kaleb started a new job. He works doing programming and BI for BCS, a company that builds and runs baggage handling systems at airports and package handling systems for shipping companies. Chances are if your baggage was lost on some vacation, BCS systems weren’t at the airport you were travelling through. Kaleb’s first week on the job was spent in Kuala Lumpur. He now works with cities all over the world. We keep hoping he’ll be sent to America for work, so at least the flight there is covered.

I’ve been working on my master’s degree in predictive analytics from Northwestern University in Chicago. The program is completely online, so it’s all possible from here. I went full time until August, and now am just doing part time. I have only 2 classes and a capstone project or thesis until I’m done. I should finish up in August this year. I’ve also found employment as a Geek (yes this is my job title) for Datamine. I do predictive modeling and data analysis for a variety of New Zealand and Australian companies. It’s a company with a great many smart people working there, so I’m learning a lot.

Kaleb and I are not the biggest fans of living in Auckland. Though we live in a nice house in a great area (and have a pool), we find living in the city a bit defeating of the purpose of living in another country and we miss the sheep in our yard in Thames and the beaches of the Mount. For this reason, we may look to work remotely for at least part of 2015 from somewhere else in New Zealand, likely by a beach or mountain. We are lucky that being IT geeks this is possible.

So, what have we done in 2014 you ask? We started the year with a visit from my parents. Luckily, we were in between houses, so we were able to spend some time in Auckland, some time in Thames, and some time in Akoroa at a timeshare. We did a lot of hiking in the time they were visiting. We hiked the lava fields of Rangitoto Island, around the Coromandel peninsula, up the Pinnacles track on Christmas, and in the hills of Akaroa. We also made time to visit Hobbiton.

After my parent’s visit, it was my friend Angi’s turn to come for a visit. Her and I spent some time in Auckland and took a road trip, hitting up the beaches in the Mount, the mountains in Taupo and Tongariro National Park, the wineries of Napier, and the small town of Te Aroha. Angi got to experience hostels for the first time and we had a blast. We were also able to see my friend, Kat, finish her 41 km swim across Lake Taupo. Yes, that’s 1 km short of a marathon in pretty cold water without a wetsuit. The other reason we miss Thames is the town has an abundance of nutters like Kat who make us look normal and who do Ironmans as training days.

Two days after Angi left, Kaleb’s dad came for a visit. He was there in part to watch Kaleb do his first Ironman race at Ironman New Zealand in Taupo. Unfortunately, Kaleb broke his foot earlier, so running was out of the question. Still, he finished, though walking the marathon portion was incredibly boring and took him longer than the swim and bike combined. Predictably, Kaleb was not satisfied with his performance and wants to do another one at some point. In a month from now Kaleb will be doing the St. James Mt. Man race on the South Island. It’s not exactly an Ironman as it has only 2 km swimming (in very cold water), 100 km mountain biking, and 50 km of running up and down a mountain.

April and May were packed with busy weekends. Kaleb got his certification for scuba diving, so we can finally dive together. We both got our advanced diving certs later in the year, so we can go deeper and cooler places. We went cave tubing in Waitomo where the caves have glow worms. We went up to Northland over Easter weekend and enjoyed staying on a house boat, climbing some dunes, kayaking and seeing where the Tasman and Pacific meet. May brought the 50th Rotorua marathon. I managed to sprain my ankle, so had to drop down to the half marathon, but Kaleb was able to complete his first marathon where he got to run. He is a nutter as he didn’t train.

2014 was one of those magical years that included a World Cup, so naturally Kaleb and I had to be in Brazil to watch some of the games. We flew through and stayed for a few days in Santiago, Chile. We explored the city and even got to take a trip into the Andes. That’s when we realized that we don’t miss snow or its ability to get buses stuck on mountain roads. In Brazil we first stayed in Fortaleza, then Natal. We went to three games. Driving in Brazil was quite an adventure, as was navigating the mishaps caused by FIFA and Brazil’s ill-preparedness for the games. Despite this, we had a wonderful time and were sad to have to leave South America. We were almost getting to the point of simple communication in Portugese.

In late August and September, I took a trip back to the States. I planned things brilliantly so my birthday lasted much longer than 24 hours. I left New Zealand at 11:30 pm on my birthday, and landed in Honolulu at 10:30 am on my birthday (also my nephew’s birthday). I was able to spend a week with my sister and her family in lovely Honolulu. We did a lot of swimming and made a trip up to the North Shore. After that, I spent a few days with Kaleb’s brother and his family in Minneapolis, and was able to see many friends. Then it was on to Milwaukee, with a brief day trip to Northwestern University where my cousin Pauline, a freshman there, showed us around the school I had been attending for more than a year, but never been to. After that, Angi and I spent a few days in Vegas visiting friends and luckily, not losing all our money.

This Spring (Fall in the US) has been fairly uneventful, with both of us working and training most of the time. We went to Queenstown last month for the marathon. I made it a whopping 5 km before suffering a stress fracture and having to pull out. Kaleb was using the marathon as a training day, so did it with a full pack on. Despite the cold and torrential rains, he had a pretty good race.  The week after this, Kaleb went to Taupo and did the cycle challenge, an 85 km mountain bike ride (not a race, as most is done single file). Kaleb has been in Rotorua and Taupo several weekends in prep for his race next month. We’ll be driving down to the South Island and found a great Russian cruise ship wreck we can dive along the way.

Earlier this month, we went on a dive trip thanks to Air New Zealand and DOC. I had won a competition they had, and we got a free trip to Northland to go sailing and diving. We were even able to invite two of our friends to go with. We went sailing with two of New Zealand’s Olympians and dove some beautiful areas in the Poor Knights marine reserve. We even had a DOC (department of conservation) representative to tell us about all the wildlife we saw. The weather was brilliant the whole time. Pictures and video should be up on Facebook soon.

Kaleb got Lasik on Monday. With his sensitive eyes and my healing leg, we are having a pretty low key holiday week. We don’t have a lot planned for the upcoming year aside from Kaleb’s race next month. We hope to both make it back to the states. We’ll also be applying for permanent residency here in New Zealand. This is almost like citizenship and allows us to move back and forth if we want, though for now we plan on staying in New Zealand. Happy holidays to all! We wish you a great New Year!

Beth & Kaleb

Sizzle, sizzle, crackle, oh crap that's me

I finally pulled the trigger on getting LASIK. I've wanted to ditch glasses and contacts ever since I had to start wearing them in college. I still remember sitting in the first row and asking Kelly what the numbers for our homework that the teacher wrote on the board were. So I've had glasses since 1998 and just got around to having my eye ball shot with a freaking laser.

Prior to surgery, the nurse warned me that the next 24 hrs was going to be the worse of it. I said I handled having my ACL done twice and my shoulder once. I can handle pain. That pain last a lot longer than just 24 hrs. Recovery took months not weeks. This shouldn't be terrible. They also kept mentioning that I would smell vapor from the laser. I have to say that vaporized Kaleb smelled a lot like bacon. So in other words to 100% of the bacon lovers out there tasty.

Its been 24 hrs since I laid down in what they called 'theater', to me it was akin to the sterile room the Intersect was located in. (Not everyone is a Chuck fan so there is your hint.) Anyway, I laid down had some suction cups forced on to my eyeball. I felt like the Mountain was trying to squash my skull (GoT reference). I was a little paranoid that my eye would explode at one point and managed to eek out an 'ouch'. They were done about 3 minutes later. I sat in the recovery room waiting to be picked up. Beth drove back home which I don't remember much of as I slept. I know for next 12 hrs when I was up it felt like I had sandpaper for eyelids. I also go to wear some cool plastic shields over my eyes until I woke up today. When I woke up this morning, there was no pain only a little dryness and I was able to read without my glasses. I did my follow up this afternoon and I'll be able to swim and run in the next couple days. As I'm supposed to avoid dust, I'll be doing inclines on the treadmill until next week when I will return to the trails in my neighborhood. I also have to update my drivers license to say I don't need corrective lenses anymore. Now I wonder if I can sell my unused contacts back to 1800contacts.

Not forgotten, just busy

It may look like I have been slacking on posting, but we have been living it up. It is starting to look like summer here! We don't have to put up with the massive amount of snow and cold weather you are getting back in the States at the moment. We are spending our time outdoors and some at the beach.

Recently,  I've received my Advanced Open Water diving cert from Performance Diver in Takapuna. Consisted of 5 adventure dives that took place at Poor Knights, Taupo, and Lake Pupuke. Beth is working on hers, but the lake dive was a little too cold for her. We are going diving the weekend of the 5th as some lucky devil won a trip from Air New Zealand. Typically that person is me, but this time it was Beth. She won airfare, lodging, a sailing experience with NZ Olympic Silver Medalists, a day of diving at Poor Knights, a car hire, and a few meals for four. We would have liked to have taken our friends Shiv and Katherine, but they are heading to India. So I got to ask some of my diving friends to come with. So Helen (who is celebrating her b-day on the 4th, the first day of the trip) and James will be joining us.

I'm still training for my big race in January, but I've had a 6 week set back as I managed to pull a muscle in my butt while out on a 2 hour run. This took a long time to heal, but I still managed to get some riding in. I headed down to Taupo a couple weekends to ride the course as well as a long road ride in Tauranga. On the 2nd ride in Taupo, while riding the K2K, I had the pleasant experience of breaking a spoke and taco-ing my wheel on a fast descent. I rode to the bottom of the hill to tell my mates what happened and that I would be heading back in to Taupo for a replacement. I managed to find the only 26" wheel at the shop that luckily already had the rotor, tube, and tire installed for a reasonable price. I then drove back out to the trail head and waited for my friends to get back before joining them on the W2K track. The next day we rode part of the Huka Challenge course, a 85km mtb race I'll be doing this Thanksgiving weekend. So in preparation, I've hit a lot of places around Auckland to mtb except Woodhill. Its on my list of places to go, but I've just managed not to make it out there yet. All in preparation for the upcoming Mountain Man Race.

Last weekend, Beth and I went to Queenstown for a marathon, or what I would like to call a long training day. Once again its preparation for the upcoming race. Obviously this is my longest run since the last marathon, but its also drastically longer than any of my long runs in the past couple months. I managed to be able to run without extreme pain only a couple weeks ago. Having pulled my glute, I was unable to run basically any distance without crippling pain. So I had physio, acupuncture, and a couple massages to help rid myself of the pain. I ended up doing a lot of exercises to help strengthen the area as well. So the last couple weeks, I started off doing a couple 3ks, a 5k, a 7k, and an 11k before strapping on my pack for the 5 hours of fun. Whats in my pack you ask? Just the compulsory gear: full thermals, hat, gloves, first aid kit, emergency blanket, head lamp, rain jacket, 2 litters of water, 8 oz flask of Perpetuem, 6 gels, 3 sachets of baby food, a pill bottle of Endurolytes, a roll of quick-eze, wind vest, and wool arm sleeves, cycle cap, and sunglasses, and my phone. I might have left something out, but regardless my pack wasn't light. Beth has been having some sciatic nerve pain in the last couple weeks and tried to change her event to a shorter distance, but no luck. So she started with me knowing that she would drop at some point and get picked up by the SAG wagon. We got out to the start line early as we were shuttled out of Queenstown by the event organizers between 5:45 and 6:45 for an 8:15 start. It was also a chilly and wet morning. The rain drizzled down and left us chilled before even toeing the line. We both had our rain jackets as we both had packs. Beth planned on doing a half with walking and would wear her jacket to keep her warm. We queued up in the 5hr group and crossed the mat a couple minutes after the initial horn sounded. Beth made it about 5km and then experienced a very sharp and localized pain above her ankle. This was an acute pain that wasn't caused by trauma, but it forced us to walk. (Still don't know what happened, even though we sat in the ER for about 5 hrs on Sunday.) We walked to the next aid station, roughly 2kms away, where she was able to grab a van ride back to Queenstown. I continued on working on my strategy of running 15, walking 1 where I would eat some food and drink some water each time. I would then consume 2 endurolyte pills every hr. I wasn't looking to break my old time, I was concentrating on finishing the race with a lot of energy still in the tank knowing that my next big run will be a 50km trail run with 900m of elevation gain. At the 33km mark I was extremely glad I had the extra gear I had been shuttling around. A strong wind popped up over the lake and smacked you in the face with a bitter chill and a few minutes later the skies opened up for a 2nd time. I managed to be fairly comfortable with my rain jacket, gloves, and sleeves on, but I kind of felt sorry for the people running in tank tops. I could tell they were cold as their skin was bright pink with exposure. I did see a few people who opted for the the trash bag poncho to keep a little warm. Oh well, I find it better to be over prepared rather than not prepared at all. After the race, I quickly showered and we caught a flight back home. I was greeted with 2 text messages and a voice mail. I had the feeling that my time wasn't recorded and they were checking to see if I was ok.

Yup, I was correct. This happened to us a few weeks prior at the 1st race of the State Beach Swim Series. Beth and I are both doing the 1.5km race at Takapuna again this year, but we opted for the permanent timing chips as we'll be doing at least 12 races this season. Being the first race of the year, some of the kinks weren't worked out and we were recorded entering the water, but not exiting. So we got an email asking if we remember our times. Needless to say, both weeks so far someone has been faster than the other.

The weekend before Queenstown, I happened to find a local 6 hour adventure race and managed to put together a team, the ninja tortoises. This comprised of a former co-worker and 2 people I met from 2 different meetup groups. First is Banu, former co-worker who had never ridden a mountain bike. Next is Paula, a kiwi lass who I met mtb at the RAT. Then there is Peter, who I met at a 10k run who happens to be from Massachusetts. None of us have ever done one of these before, but I know a guy from my days at TCDC that has done heaps of them. So I asked if he wouldn't mind getting together and just giving us some ideas as what to expect. So we met up at a little tapas bar and chatted for a couple hours. We left the bar both excited and nervous. We were told the race location the week of the race, so there was little chance to explore the area, so hello GoogleMaps. We weren't given the format until an hour before, we knew there was going to be a water activity, mountain biking, and run/walking while doing both check points and mystery activities. With Rod's guidance, we took roles that would divide the work out amongst ourselves. Banu and Peter were navigation, route planning. Peter and I did spotting for check points. I also mothered the group asking about feelings, ensured food and water consumption ( I like to eat, ok) as well as keeping our answers/score card. Paula was keeper of the check point descriptions and Banu was the keeper of the mystery activities. We had a lot of fun running around both Omana and Duder Regional Parks and we got a heap of take aways. We won 2 spot prizes and took 1st for our division. We are looking forward to entering our next event and already started talking what we could do to improve. This day alone could be an entire post and it might. I just have to find time to do it.

New Challenges

It should come as no surprise that I like to challenge myself. Earlier this year I got my open water certification for scuba. Beth and I have been out a few times since then. We are getting our advanced open water certification next month.

One of my dives includes the drift dive, I recently did down the Waikato River in Taupo. This involved riding the rivers currents from Cherry Island to shortly before the Huka Falls. Unfortunately Beth couldn't come as she had a sinus infection. So I carpooled with Amanda and Jerome, friends of Helen. Who is a friend I made during the Open Water course. We ended up going out to the Prawn Farm on Sunday and fished for prawns. I ended up catching 6 of them.

Now I'm back to training for races. I'll be doing the Huka Challenge. Which is an 85km mountain bike race. Beth and I are looking at doing a marathon in December. Originally we wanted to do the inaugural Queenstown marathon, but it filled up very quickly. These events will be good training for my large event for the year, St James Mountain Man. It comprises of a 2km lake swim, a 103km mtb ride, and a 48km trail run. I may even do the K2 again as it will be good to do the climbs, even though I haven't been riding hard as of yet.