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Racing the Lake to Lighthouse

Richard Ussher / 07.12.2010

Now in its third year the Genesis Energy Lake to Lighthouse is starting to become a regular feature in our calendar. This year it was shaping up as the best field in the men’s side of the race and although it was a small women’s field Elina would have competition from last year’s runner-up Louise Mark.

Our arrival in Tuai seemed to quickly filter through to many of the kids in the area and before long we were dragged off to the lake to see who could do the biggest bomb. There was also a lot of interest from the kids in riding our bikes. Although most of them could only just reach the pedals sitting on the top tube they spent hours entertaining themselves on the MTB’s while we got down to packing our gear for the first day of racing.

On the first ride up to the lake I decided to try and get a gap on some of the other main contenders and within a couple of kilometres I’d managed to get a gap along with Karl Moore who’d been on the same team as me at the recent Tour of Southland. Elina had also managed to get a gap in the women’s field and was almost with the chase group of men at the top of the hill.

The first kayak was uneventful, I slowly pulled away from Karl but it was very hard to gauge what the gaps were to the rest of the chasing pack.

By the time I’d reached the run transition I was able to see a group of paddlers just entering the final stretch of river and knew I’d have at least a few minutes advantage starting the run.

This year I was wary of some of the quicker runners in the pack and so the plan was to run conservatively for the first 27km section (expecting in many ways that I would get caught) and then to try and stretch away in the second half of the run. Jarad Kohlar form Australia and Trevor Voyce were the two I expected would have the biggest influence on the run.

By the halfway stage no one had caught up and the limited info I had was that I had around five minutes on second place. Heading up towards the Panekiri range is always a bit daunting as you can see the ridge line way up in the distance. Once up there the views are incredible but the hard work is also far from done. The ridge line continually rises and falls for almost twelve kilometres once you first reach it until the descent finally starts just over two kilometres from the track end.

I reached the final transition feeling a bit sore from the 47km on foot but much better than in previous years and enjoyed the six kilometres plunge down to the finish line on the MTB. By the bottom the exhilarating ride has almost banished the memories of toil and pain from the long run.

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