The MASSIVE O...

The day finally arrived for the Big O to have it's first run on the brand new course that Shaun Collins of Lactic Turkey had been planning for months.... lots of months in fact.

This race was originally scheduled for very early in the 52 in 52 challenge... however forests get chopped down a lot around here and a big patch right in middle of the course was removed very close to the original date and as such the permission for the course
was revoked.

Raewyn Adrian Blommerde

Second time lucky and a hardy crowd gathered at Kiwi Ranch at Tikitere. Again, as I find more and more now, many of the usual suspects were there, Steve Neary, Rebecca Edgecumbe, Mike Duckett, schoolmate Raewyn Adrian Blommerde and Vera Alves... complete with inhaler (if this puzzles you, read the Arthurs Half write-up, it's worth it). Also the lovely Lyndsey Anselmi and husband Damien were along for the jaunt with fellow Te Kuitian Caris Teo. Leah Anstis chose this event to end her raceless period - a decision she later questioned!

Vera

The longer of the 3 events was the '35km' event that included a boat ride across Lake Okataina as part of the fun. They headed off quite early in the misty cool conditions... and were gone...

Shaun got us together in the fabulous barn that served to house us for the day and gave us the briefing on what to expect... and he was pretty accurate ... on this at least!

And then we were off... 1 and a half km of gentle climb warmed us up and then we started climbing for real, 300m vertical in the first 6km. What was so great though was the mix, along trails around the ranch, then through some farmland (up through farmland), through some light forest and into the bush. No trails here, tape on trees showed the course and away you went.

And I really came into my own on the downhill bush bash stages... several times during the race I was passed by various runners either on the flat or heading up a hill only to blitz them on the technical downhill. Part of the secret is my fabulous Inov-8 X-Talons which continue to amaze and of course give so much confidence.

We came out of the 'Bush-bash' onto the trail from Lake Rotoiti to the Educations Centre. I have run this trail once before and fortunately we didn't have to run the worst of it. Just before arriving at the Education Centre at Okataina I caught up with Rebecca and Mike who were running the long course... well they had been, they had bailed and decided to run the 21km instead.

Leah (in the purple) looking less than impressed

At the Education Centre we refueled and then the hill I knew was coming... the big climb on Western Okataina trail to the trig... this climb is such a dog... it just goes up and up and up... I passed Katherine Jancys and Katy Jones early on heading up here, another couple who had bailed on the Big Course... but about the same time Caris Teo zoomed past me like I was standing still and was soon out of sight.

Bliss!!!

Eventually I reached the highest point of the trail (part of the advantage of having run this trail so much was knowing that) and not long after that came upon a chap, sitting on his own in the middle of nowhere telling us to leave the lovely trail and go run in the bush where there was no trail... back in the bush-bash. This was a biggy.. just under 2km of technical downhill and I loved it, first I reeled Caris back in, she was picking her way slowly down the hill and was (I learned later) getting a bit upset by it all. Further down the hill I passed the two guys who had run away from me just after the Education Centre.

Heaven!!!

Towards the bottom of this hill the Garmin said 18km and after the downhill I was feeling pretty good and so I decided to push for the last 3km and see if I could hold the good climbers as bay until the next downhill.

So the next 1.5km had just over 100m of vertical climbing, but I wasn't worried because just over that hill must be the finish...

Caris Teo passing me again!

... but it wasn't, I crested the hill and saw... another hill.... at least the trail was going down... and it kept going down for 3km... yes 3km... so now I had done nearly 23km and instead of seeing the finish, all I got was another uphill. The interesting bit about this section was that it was through firstly newly sown forest and then farmland... so I could see the chasing runners behind me... so this spurred me on.

So up the next hill, certain that this must be it... but alas, no... down to the bottom, GPS on 24.5km now and the up another bloody hill!!!

Mike & Rebecca

Finally civilisation appeared and a circuit around to the side of the ranch, along the road and into the barn for a finish  in 3:33:19 and a distance on my watch of 26.52km (others had it up to nearly 28).

Man this is hard.... love it!!!

Ok, so Shaun got his measurements wrong... didn't matter... what a magic run... and we had the best of it. The long runners got to the boat to find that the lake was too rough and the boat couldn't take them over. They backtracked, some got picked up at the Education Centre and those that finished had run an Ultra!

Lyndsey Anselmi

The Big O may have turned into the Massive O... but it was a massive amount of fun and is a must enter for next year!!! I will just prepare for a 27km race next time.... as a sideline to this, I was due to run the Counties Half the next day, but had to give it a miss after such a mammoth run.

I can't pass up this wrire-up without mentioning that my lovely daughter Kate ran the 10km and really enjoyed it and finished better than she expected.

The other nice thing was that Kiwi Ranch comes with it's own Hot Pools, which Kate and I gratefully used to ease the
aches.

The Big O broke a few people... and that's always tough, but for me it was love at first run!

#22 was a goodie!