A few weeks ago I entered a moutain bike race around Lake Tekapo, in the central south island. It was a tough, cold, wet, and fun, 90 km circuit through drizzle and a lot of snow. The first half involved 45 km of rough fire trails, but only about 500 metres ascent. I had to fix a puncture and some loose spokes at 20 km, and around 30 km the light drizzle turned to snow; the snow got quite heavy, and continued until I was halfway around the other side of the lake.

While it wasn’t really cold, the rain and snow meant that my two pairs of socks and two pairs of gloves got soaked, and just didn’t cut it; I fought numbness in my hands for the entire race, and after about 15 km, my feet were completely numb; this actually made the river crossings a little easier - I couldn’t feel the icy water at all. The feeling returned to my hands in a very painful manner just after I crossed the finish line, and to my feet when I had a post race shower. I made it to the half way point after about 3 hours and 15 minutes, and had a 10 minute break. This was slower than I’d have liked, and I gave up on finishing in 5 hours. What I didn’t know was that the second half of the race was nearly all on public gravel roads; I managed to average almost 30 km/h all the way back, crossing the finish line in 5 hours and 19 seconds.

Despite the winner having finished before I made it halfway (3:05 - ridiculous), I was happy with my performance, and proud of the fact that, without that damned puncture, I would have been well under 5 hours. I awoke on Monday morning to find 10 cm of fresh snow on the ground. It was a pleasant surprise, but meant that getting back to Dunedin took quite a long time.