lisa morgan

It's a long time since my last update in here and the reason is simply that I haven't been doing very much riding!  But in the last few days I've picked it up a bit, and yesterday was a bit special as I had a crack at the 'longest day ride' which serves as a fundraiser for arthritis.  More here.

It's fair to say I was not well prepared for a lot of riding (an 8 hour in July and 6 hour in August doesn't really qualify!).  Over the last few months I've slowly come to the realisation that my days of high level training and racing are over - the last couple of concussions have left me with pretty awful ongoing symptoms when I try to ramp it up.  It's devastating in it's own way but I'm so grateful for the years I did have and it opens up a new chapter in my life - one in which bikes will still feature a lot!

I've always been up for a good challenge and recently Ken built one of his spare CX bikes up again for me to use for a bit.  A social ride on Saturday at Makara Peak with the girls was the perfect time to take it out for a spin and despite a bit of wet stuff it was an absolute blast.  It's a good thing there is now such and awesome alternative to Ridgeline to get back down these days because I'm not quite up to that yet, but Northface was amazing to ride on it.

On Sunday I joined a large group of PNP riders for an introduction to the new Tora track over in the Wairarapa.  Ken and I loaded up the CX bikes (and I took the Felt as well just in case) and headed over.  The plan for the day was a social loop in the morning followed by one or two laps of racing in the afternoon, but after the social ride took a lot longer than expected, and the loop wasn't quite the family friendly, smooth, flowy track a lot of people were prepared for the race was dropped to one lap and I'd had quite enough of getting beaten up!  I opted instead to lead out the kids race so they all knew the little lap before sending them off at full noise for a couple more.

So with my 8 and 6 hour races and a couple of rides on the cross bike I was as ready as I was going to be to hit the dirt at sunrise on the longest day.  It's a long time since I've been up at that hour and I couldn't believe I used to do it all the time just to fit a ride in or get to work early enough for a decent ride later in the day - the sacrifices of an elite athlete - so worth it at the time!

I was buddied up with Ken again for the day and while I was a bit more sensible for 15 hours of riding and took the Felt he was once again on his CX bike with standard roadie crankset - the man is a machine!  We'd initially considered a lap of Karapoti but a LOT of rain had fallen in our neck of the woods in the last couple of days so we opted for the shorter and safer Challenge course.  It's pretty nice to be able to do a loop like that from your doorstep and only spend about 15 minutes on sealed road.

Including a coffee stop, some quick photo stops, calling in on the guys at Bike Hut where I picked up some of my favourite endurance food, Sharkies, and doing a lap of the bmx course on the way home we managed to spend about 4 hours before getting back home for pie and extra caffeine.

Next up was the Crazyman course.  On the way we called in to see Gav at VIC who wasn't terribly impressed with our meagre progress after about 5 hours at that stage (some people are very hard to impress but he didn't even offer us a snack!).  Then it was over to Wainui Hill where we were very lucky to have a tailwind almost all of the way up before very cautiously crossing the traffic to head down Snail Trail and in to the Wetlands.  By then it was time for a can of coke from the local fishie store before heading up Jungle Gym and Labyrinth.  True to Wainui form I started to struggle to breath a bit in there and that continued for a lot of the ridge section as well - it was very humid, a bit wet at times and occasionally the visibility was very limited - the rest of the time it was just pretty bad.  I stopped taking photos because there was nothing to see but I did snap a little bit of footage.

Having ridden up the singletrack and feeling a bit off I wanted to stick to the new Crazyman course so we skipped the descent in to (and climb out of) Moores Valley.  I'm enjoying the freedom of riding what I want rather than what I need or have to - it's still a novelty

We made it through the only technical little section unscathed before bombing down to Kingsley St and dropping down to the Retreat behind a digger - that section is steep - it's impressive what a digger can get up and down!  There were some workers down there who were very cheery in letting us through while they were hunting around for a pipe they'd recently put in but apparently weren't too sure where - somewhere under all the mud!

Once we got back to ground level my lungs came right which made my legs wake up but I was pretty keen for a good break, some food and a change of kit so took about an hour out to do all of that (including caramel slice - I like this non-elite thing!) before heading in to town.

We met up with Jude who was doing a solo longest day mission and had just finished a meal after battling with the wind and trail-alligators up on Skyline.  I was keen  for her to come with us because with about 4 hours to go and conditions getting worse I was struggling to stay motivated.  Ken seemed like he'd just be able to keep going no matter what - even on a bike that leaves you feeling very abused after a short period of time.  But Jude was headed in a different direction so I sent out an emergency text to get some people to come out after work but they were also all going in different directions or had already ridden.

In the end we headed up the grand loop but at the top things were pretty rough in the wind.  I managed to stay on with the help of my non-training bodyweight but Ken was looking like being flown to Palmerston North against his will so we headed down North Face and waved the white flag at the carpark.  It wasn't such a bad idea because it meant we got to spend the last couple of hours before official sunset having beer and wedges in the pub with a bunch of others who'd done varying lengths of rides throughout the day as well - and in some ways that seemed very much in the spirit of the day.

• We did just under 130km of dirt riding (the first 115 or so in the first 9 hours) and were out for about 12 hours total including breaks
  
• We didn't drown in the lake on the Challenge course
• Ken didn't get whisked off to Palmerston North in the gale winds
• We were stalked by a bunny who appeared twice up at Karapoti and twice more in Wainui - Jude also saw him on Skyline - they are fast, bunnies are
• I nearly turned down an offer of beer from an Irish lass but quickly thought better of it because you don't turn down an offer of beer from an Irish anything
• It was awesome seeing the updates from people doing the same or similar things all over the country for both a good cause and a lot of fun
• There is life after elite and it's a hell of a lot of fun but I'm glad I did my time

Next up of course is Christmas which I will finally spend with family for the first time in 5 years and the bonus is I'll get to ride in the forest in Rotorua for Christmas - that's a bit special!

And in the new year... keep an eye out for this smiley little chap!