This just in from Tristan Rawlence who bravely battled the infamous Karapoti course on the 3rd of March.I think the photos and the T man's excellent report accurately convey that he was well inside the 'hurt bag' for the majority of the race!
"....Well were to begin my gearing was 34x17 so 2-1 ratio which i think was about right because the top 5 at least ran that gearing.
So the race started and 5 of us broke away in the first few kms and Nelson was representing in the bunch with Aaron, Chris and I plus 2 as it became obvious later on absolute animals from up north somewhere.
Aaron and the other two got a gap after the a few hills and Chris and I were running/riding (in that order) together. Chris was riding a single speed steel jump bike which was to put it lightly rather heavy, and understandably wasn't sparking due to his 444km ride/win in the chch 2 nelson the previous weekend.
In fact he was having so much fun on the downhill, forgetting he was running xc tyres suffered a puncture.
I caught up and passed with Aaron down the rock garden and then ran up devils staircase and moved into 3rd(for now) on the last walk, well for everyone else it was a climb as loyal single speed rider Aaron rode past giving his orange Ventana SS death as i could only look on blurry eyed and think hmmmm perhaps if i had actually ridden one of these single speed contraptions before i might actually be able to ride up here aswell and then i thought perhaps if i had done any riding in the last month would have helped too.
In the end i finished 4th, 50sec behing Aaron in 2hrs 51 being the 5th ever person to do a sub 3 on a single for karapoti. the two animal i spoke of earlier were 10mins ahead setting new records of somthing silly around 2hrs 40...."
like i said never again!
Cheers for that Tristan, you did us all proud!
And I guess credit should go to cycle-photos.com, but that goes without saying!!
Mountain Pedaler out...
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