Noah's ARC

Our first actual adventure race of the season, the ARC! (Adventure Racing Coromandel) For this race, all the adventure racers from New Plymouth split to make 3 even teams to give everyone more experience for the bigger races coming up. I was captain of our team, which included (from left to right) me, Bronwyn, Hannah and George.

George's dad is pretty much a pro photographer, so most of the pictures in this post are from him.

My ARC this year went pretty much like this:

Friday night:

Check in and race briefing

receive maps

plan route and final packing

Studying the maps and planning a route

sleep

Saturday:

Race kicked off with a raft building and paddle leg

   

then a short bike

  

a run/trek on a sick coast trail, including a stream bash to a waterfall

 

a long bike section, including a optional section through the local bike park, a rifle shoot, and a 300m tunnel!

 

a run/trek, including a zipline thingy across a river and a swim to get 2 checkpoints.
 

This was by far the most exciting part of our race, as the trail we took ended just short of the zipline due to a rock slide, and rather than run back and around to the track on the other side of the river, we decided to slide/fall down a 5m cliff/bank, cross the river and climb a equally as foreboding cliff on the other side. We made it with only minor scrapes and bruises, but everyone was pretty scared, because we dislodged some pretty big rocks, I caught the two girls after falling down the bank, and then we had to use a rope to get up the other side! It certainly made for a good post-race story though!     

one last final bike

finish!

dinner and debrief

The three teams from New Plymouth took first, second and third, and Danny and Oak's junior teams cleaned up as well, so we were all pretty happy and exhausted on the way home :D

A massive thanks to our support crews (i.e our parents) and our amazing coach, Mr. Hewlett. We couldn't have done it without you!!!

  

Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving has traditionally been one of my very favorite holidays. I mean, what can compete with  family, amazing food, sports and no school? But this year I've had a very unique Thanksgiving. For one thing, it was the first week of my Summer vacation! For another, I was away from home, camping with my adventure racing team and doing some intense training, and then even when we did have our feast, it just isn't quite the same with no extended family.

I spent Thanksgiving day in Tongariro National Park, on a practice rogaine (basically an 8hr treasure hunt with full packs) with my team.
      
Although pretty tough and hard, it was also super fun, and we saw some amazing country!

When I got home Friday I basically went straight to sleep, and when I woke up (late) Saturday morning I was immediately recruited to make pies for our Thanksgiving feast with a bunch of the Americans from our branch.

The lemon meringue pie (bottom right) is mine. I literally pulled lemons off our tree and was zesting and juicing them less than a minute later! It made for a pretty delicious pie if I must say so myself :D Although, I have to add that Danny's apple and Oak's strawberry pies were pretty amazing as well.

I think this picture illustrates that even though our Thanksgiving was a little different, we still managed to enjoy it to the fullest :)

NPBHS Ruthless

Meet New Plymouth Boys' High Ruthless. From left to right: Cory, me, Callum (Cory's little brother), and Will (Hillary captain from last year). Usually Boys' and Girls' high can get closer to 5 or 6 teams together for an adventure race, but because this one was right before our mock exams, and a 7hr drive away, we were the only four.

It was an amazing race, with a huge kayaking leg, some tough biking, a mine exploration, rifle shooting and some very muddy trails.

 

 Only five school teams from the country entered, two didn't finish and one finished three hours past the deadline, so we ended up winning by even more than we probably deserved. My only regret is that when the host announced that our team had won by four hours he didn't call us Ruthless :D