Avalanche Peak Race

So as expected, my lack of training didn’t pay off. Somewhere over 4kms in the Crow Valley I went from having a great time to Not Having Much Fun At All.



Everything started out just great, of course. Got to the top of Avalanche Peak in just over 1h 15min and felt great. It was a perfect day for the ascent, the mist was clearing off of the top and I headed up with a small bunch of people climbing at around 15-18m a minute, quite a pleasant pace (or so I thought)


At the 1km mark - and having great fun.

Running along the ridge towards Rolleston (which we hadn’t done last year because of the weather) was fantastic, a rollercoaster of small climbs and descents, followed by an amazing descent of the scree to the Crow Valley – so much easier than with a tramping pack on your back.

The boulder field at the bottom was a great opportunity to eat a few mouthfuls of chocolate and get my breath back. It turned out I had picked up a reasonable cut on my leg when descending the scree, I hadn’t even noticed until a race marshal pointed it out.

So I headed off down the Crow Valley. This was fun too, there are a lot of sidle sections of track in the bush and descending over boulders. You then ford the Crow River and after sideling a couple of screes soon pick up the good bush track that cuts out to the Waimak. And it was here that I realised that I was stuffed.

Up until that point the ground was fairly technical, moving over it quickly was limited by the difficulty and individual skill levels. However the bush track should have been easy running, on so many tramps I have commented to Carolina how great it would be to be able to run this sort of track, and when I finally got the chance my body just said: No not today. This was somewhat unexpected, as normally I come to an agreement such as “OK, but this will hurt for a couple of days” or “OK, but you’ll be throwing up at the end”. Instead it was more of a: “Ha – you’ve been tramping for the last 2 months. Wasn’t much running was there?! Expect me to run continuously for the next 12km or so – you must be joking!”

So the gravel bash down the Waimakariri turned in to a horrible torturous section that I just wanted to end. The parts where I walked people came past me in slow motion, - they were running just faster than I was walking. The parts where I ran I was clearly catching them, but it couldn’t be sustained. The problem was, my energy starved brain finally worked out, was that I didn’t have a running pace that was slow enough. Somehow it was just impossible for me to run slow enough to stay with the group I was in.

I got there eventually, - there were a couple of sections, at Klondyke Corner and on the Bealey River Bridge where the spectators caused the Pride in me to force a more sustained run for a few minutes – until out of sight at least. Finished in 3h 50 min, which was around 20mins down on last year given the length of the course. To give you some comprehension of how bad I felt after the race: For two hours or so, I was Never Going Running Again, and for a day and a half there was No Way I Was Ever Going to Race Avalanche Peak Again.

Next year I will do some proper training.


At the finish: smile is purely for the camera. At this point things that I hated included (but were not limited to): the Waimakariri River Valley and Gravel, the hot and sunny weather, people shouting at me to run faster up the last hill, the hill at the Bealey Hotel, being 34, thinking I could run 25km and climb 1400m without any training, Replace Sports Drink for not working as well as expected, Chris and John for getting me hooked on this event last year.